Seafood Platter at Red Plate, San Pablo City

Tonight was probably my third time eating at Red Plate, a little restaurant along Mabini Road here in San Pablo City. I think they've been in operation only for a few months, if I'm not mistaken. If I visit a place more than once, then that probably means I like eating there. Or at the very least, my first experience there was good enough for me to want to come back and try other things on their menu.

Now this Seafood Platter (pictured above) is NOT on their menu for some reason. I only knew that they served it after seeing a photo of it at their Facebook page. I had wanted to order this because it looked really good and I wanted to try it.

Now I do want to say that after eating at the now defunct Hi-Kari restaurant in Ultimart a couple of years ago, I developed a really violent distaste for anything that's breaded. I avoided breaded anything. Squid. Shrimp. Specially breaded fish. Most specially breaded dory. It also put me off eating breaded chicken, but there have been exceptions. I still like KFC for instance.

Anyway, with this in mind, I don't know what possessed me to try this dish, specially after seeing it laid out in front of me and seeing everything was freakin' breaded.  But it looked pretty nice. And it was a LOT. I think this would have been enough for Ilyn and me. I didn't even need rice. If I had been a drinking man, this would have made awesome pulutan.

I tried everything, and I thought it was pretty good. My distaste for breaded stuff seemed to have taken a break. I particularly liked the breaded gindara. I never knew gindara tasted so nice. It was the first time I'm tasting this fish. I might go ahead and buy some of these ginadara steaks I see at groceries and try cooking them for myself.

This dish is a bit expensive at 600 pesos, which I only found out after I got the bill. Like I said, this wasn't on the menu. But I think it's only appropriate for the amount of food on it. And as I said, it's a lot. I wasn't even able to finish it. I had at least half of it wrapped to take home.

As for drinks, I wanted to try their house blend ice tea. The flavor of it was interesting. It reminded me of aratiles. Aratiles actually tastes very nice, but having grown up eating it, I got sort of sick of the flavor after a while.

Later, I had their house coffee, which is also interesting. As I've mentioned in other posts, I always try to taste the coffee of all the restaurants I eat in. The coffee beans were freshly ground and brewed so that's a plus right there. The coffee did come in packaged, meaning they already included cream (or milk?) and sugar and chocolate sprinkles on top when they give it to you. It was just OK, but I do like to have the choice whether to add cream on it and how much sugar. I really don't take cream or milk in my brewed coffee. But their coffee tasted nice so I really have nothing to complain about.

Ilyn had the Beef Stew, which she really liked. Although she did say it was slightly "ma-sebo". I don't know the exact translation. The closest is probably "fatty".  Whenever I cook beef, I pre-boil the beef for a few hours to soften the meat. And then I would put it in the ref for a few hours or overnight. The following morning, you can see that all the fat had solidified on the surface of the liquid. That is something I take out because that's what gives beef the "ma-sebo" taste.

It's an ample amount of serving for 130 pesos. Everything is cooked absolutely soft, specially the beef which is just right for something like this.

Next time I go back, I will try their Burger, which I hear is pretty good.

Beef Pares

Beef Pares is a dish that's quite common in Manila, but not so much here in San Pablo City. In fact, I've never seen it made and sold here. I could be wrong of course, but since I couldn't find it easily here, I thought I'd just cook it myself.

This is a recipe I came up with late last year. I'm putting it on this blog for my own future reference.

Recipe/Procedure


Boil 1 kilo beef for 3 hours until meat is very tender. Watch out because after 15-20 minutes dark brown scum will form on top. Remove it!

If using a pressure cooker, it's up to you how long you boil it. I don't have one so I have no idea...

After boiling, let it cool then refrigerate for a couple of hours. Fat will solidify on top of the liquid... remove it!

Drain from broth but don't throw broth away. Marinate beef in 1/2 cup soy sauce, pepper and 1/2 cup sugar. Marinate overnight!

Sautee 1 bulb crushed garlic, 1 big onion and around 1 inch grated ginger. Place beef. Let it fry a bit. Place broth, and let simmer for a while. Add back the marinade, and 2 pcs. star anise. Boil some more. Add salt to taste.

Dissolve a tablespoon of cornstarch in 1/2 cup of broth and place slowly over stew while stirring. Once the sauce is thickened, this is done. Optional: Before serving, add a few drops of sesame oil.

Make sure to remove the star anise before serving so no one gets to bite on it.

For the soup: You can get this from the extra broth. Just remove any remaining scum, reheat and add salt (to taste), and before serving, mix in a few drops of sesame oil and chopped green onion.

For the fried rice: Fry chopped garlic in a wok until it's slightly browned. Add 1 pc. chopped chorizo. Let it fry a bit. Add 2 battered eggs. Mix it around until egg is cooked. Add cooked rice and salt to taste. Mix for around 5 minutes. Before serving add chopped green onion.

For toasted garlic (you can prepare this earlier): Chop one bulb of garlic very very finely. Fry in oil using very very very low heat. You don't want to rush this. This is toasted slowly so that it won't be too bitter. It will probably take 15-20 minutes before the garlic is browned enough. Remove from oil and drain on some paper towels.

On the serving plate just add the garlic and some more chopped green onion on top.

Kinulob na Manok V.2 Chinese Style

Ok! It's time again to do another version of my Kinulob na Manok! This time... Chinese Style!

Ok, I'm only SAYING it's Chinese style. I don't know if the Chinese do Kinulob na Manok, at all, actually. The reason I'm calling it that is I'm adding ingredients that would play up some Chinese flavor to a dish I've done previously.

That means adding more Hoisin Sauce, and adding Chinese Sausage and Star Anise, and removing other ingredients like ketchup, and pineapple juice.

The ingredients I've used are as follows:

1 whole chicken
120 grams bacon
1/4 cup hoisin sauce
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 cup low sodium soy sauce
3 star anise
4 bay leaves
1 chicken cube
3 cups chicken stock
1 Chinese sausage, chopped
1 big white onion chopped
1/4 kilo chicken gizzard (optional)
1/4 kilo chicken livers/hearts (optional)

As with the previous dish, put all of these ingredients in a deep casserole. Me, I put them in an aluminum pot from an old rice cooker. It comes with a lid so it's pretty handy!

Bring that to a boil on high heat, and once it's boiling, turn down the heat to medium, and boil for the next hour and 45 minutes to 2 hours.

I used low sodium soy sauce, decreased the amount of bacon and removed the need for the flavor mix because the additional hoisin sauce would bring in  a lot of additional sodium already. I only used one Chinese sausage this time because well, I only had 1 available. I would have used two if I had it.

The gizzards and livers are optional, although I think once the liver softens and bits of it disintegrate into the sauce, I think it would make for a much flavorful dish.

As always, I love boiling my food for a long time because it makes the flavor fuller and richer. I've learned that boiling chicken for a long time really makes any dish you make taste better. If you boil too long the chicken would start to fall apart, so you need to be careful.

After two hours, take the chicken out of the stew and set aside. Let the sauce continue to boil for 10-15 or more minutes, depending on how much liquid is still left.

At this point, my chicken is close to falling apart, but that makes it easier to cut into. And yeah! This one came out pretty nice as well.

Long Lasting Kinulob

My Dad loves my Kinulob na Manok recipe so much that he absolutely refuses to let go of the leftover sauce, long after the chicken's gone. He digs into that sauce for almost every meal ever since I cooked the thing. Looks like I'll be cooking that again.

Although I've written the recipe down and I know I can practically do it identically next time, I think I'll do a different version of this dish with a different set of ingredients. I'm thinking of playing up the Chinese flavor of it next time by increasing the amount of Hoisin Sauce, Chinese Sausage, and add a few star anise seeds along with soy sauce and sugar. In my mind that sounds interesting... and mouth watering!

I can most likely make a collection of Kinulob na Manok recipe variations, and of course, I'll write them all down in this blog!

Eric's Last Stand

Or more specifically, Baked Potato and Mushroom Cheese Casserole. But I've used "Eric's Last Stand" for the title of this thing for like maybe 8 years now, ever since my pal Jonas Diego asked me what it was called and back then I absolutely had no idea. "Eric's Last Stand" just popped into my mind.

Full disclosure though, I got inspired to do my own dish based on something I tasted at the old Kenkoy Cafe in Malate. I think the dish was called "Dynamic Duo". I couldn't begin to guess what was in it, except the more obvious mushroom, potato and bacon, so I just winged it and came up with this, whatever was available at the local mall. In our case, that's Ultimart, Puregold and SM San Pablo, and of course our own immortal local market.

My ingredients:

1/2 kilo baby potato, cleaned (but not peeled).
2-200 grams whole button mushrooms
1 tablespoon butter
120 grams bacon
1 bulb garlic, crushed
250 ml Nestle Cream
Perfect Italiano "Pizza Plus" Cheese
Monterey Jack Cheese (optional)
Parmesan Cheese (optional)
kinchay, chopped
salt and pepper

You can of course get a bigger can of whole button mushrooms instead of buying 2-200 gram cans, but the strange thing about buying mushrooms in cans is that the bigger the can is, the bigger the mushroom, I kid you not. The small cans contain really really small mushrooms, and the big cans contain giant mushrooms. So it's better to just get 2 medium sized cans for medium sized mushrooms, which are perfect for this dish.

Perfect Italiano "Pizza Plus" Cheese is readily available at our local SM Grocery and I really like using it. It's a three cheese combination of grated cheddar, mozzarella and parmesan, which just works great. Of course, you can just use one big slab of the regular quick melt cheese, which would also be ok.  The Pizza Plus packet comes in 500 grams, and I use about half of that for this dish.

Montery Jack and other brands of Parmesan are also available locally, and because I'm a cheese freak, I use some of both, but this is optional.

Procedure!

First is cook the bacon in a pan until crispy. Chop, and then set aside. If you're a vegetarian, you can do without the bacon, it's fine.

In a pan, stir fry the baby potatoes in oil on medium heat for around 10-12 minutes. Add the butter, mushrooms, garlic,  salt and pepper (to taste). Stir fry for another 5 minutes. One bulb of garlic is a lot, but I love garlic so it's fine to me. But you can use less garlic if you want to.

In a baking dish, put a thin layer of cheese at the very bottom. Place the mushroom and potatoes on it. Make sure to spread it all evenly. On top of this, evenly place the chopped bacon and some kinchay. Pour on the cream evenly on top, and on top of that, add the cheese.

I grated a bit of Monterey Jack and added it on top, as well as a sprinkle of additional parmesan, but as I mentioned this is optional. Add some more kinchay on top.

Place in an oven at 180 degrees C for around 30 minutes or until the cheese has completely melted and is browning on top.

Let it cool for at least 15-20 minutes before serving.

And there you go!

Kinulob na Manok

Whenever I pass this certain restaurant near the SPC Medical Center, I see them advertising one of their specialties called "Kinulob na Itik". Being the food freak that I am, I immediately became curious. I've never heard of that dish before, and I was wondering if I could do it with chicken. (But of course.)

So I went online looking for recipes to Kinulob na Manok, and I found several. The strange thing is, they're all completely different recipes with completely different ingredients.

But the thing that was similar to all of them is that you cook the chicken whole in a deep pan or casserole, and boil it with various ingredients until the chicken is done. That's pretty much it.

So in short, "Kinulob na Manok" is in fact "Stewed Whole Chicken".


I took bits from a couple of recipes, added a few flourishes of my own, and I came up with this recipe:

1 whole chicken
1/4 kilo chicken gizzards
250 grams tomato ketchup
2 tablespoons hoisin sauce
2 tablespoons margarine
240 ml pineapple juice
250 grams bacon, chopped
2 pcs. Chinese sausage, sliced into coins
1 big white onion, chopped
4 pcs. bay leaves
1 chicken cube or 1 sachet ginisa flavor mix
2 cups chicken stock
1/3 cup soy sauce
black pepper (to taste)

As you may notice, I no longer added any salt as the sodium would come from the soy sauce, chicken cube and hoisin sauce.

Place the chicken in the center of a deep casserole or any deep pan that you can cover. Add all other ingredients in the casserole. Make sure the casserole is small enough for the liquid to completely cover the chicken. Turn on the stove at high heat. When it boils, turn down the heat to medium, and cooked, covered, for at least an hour and a half.

That's kind of long and the chicken is close to falling apart, but it tastes great!

Remove the chicken and place on a serving tray, but let the remaining liquid to boil for 10-15 minutes to allow it to reduce into a thick sauce.

On the plate, surround the chicken with the sausages, gizzards, bacon and pour the sauce generously over everything.

I must say, this particular dish came out a screaming success.

The Best Coffee in San Pablo City

To be more precise, the best coffee I've ever had in my life. Period.

Of course, taste differs from person to person, but as far as I'm concerned, this is the one I like best. This is the simple brewed coffee from Simple Treats Cafe, located at the end of P. Zulueta St, here in San Pablo City.

I've tasted a lot of coffees all around, including those of Starbucks, Figaro, Coffee Bean, Seattle's Best, Gloria Jeans and so on. I've even had some Starbucks in New York when I went there many years ago, and none them tastes as great as this coffee right here.

You can also get this coffee from CDC Cafe, also here in San Pablo City, which is owned by the same guy who owns Simple Treats, and both cafes operate the same type of coffee machine, using the same beans.

I'm not for fancy coffees like lattes, cappuccinos, frappes,and things like that. I like just simple black brewed coffee. That's coffee at its very basic. That's how you can tell if it's really good when it tastes great without any sort of additional flavor enhancers.

Next time you're in San Pablo, and you want some really good coffee, try this out!