Ground Lamb Shish Kebab at Middle Eats is TERRIFIC!

I can no longer count how many times Ilyn and I have visited Middle Eats here in San Pablo City. It truly is my current favorite restaurant in town. Check out my first review of Middle Eats here!

Tonight we decided to come back again and we treated ourselves to their "Mixed Shish Kebab", which consists of 6 skewers of different kinds of kebab which includes beef, ground lamb, chicken and sea food.

No, your eyes aren't fooling you. There are only 4 skewers in that photo above, but that's just because I was a very bad food blogger and we ate the two kebabs before we remembered to take a picture! I guess that's only to demonstrate how we couldn't wait to dig in.

Although all the kebabs were good, I thought the ground lamb kebab was just spectacular. It was marinated with a variety of exotic spices and was grilled just right. It was very tasty, quite spicy (but not too much!). Dipped in their home made tzatziki sauce just drove it over the edge!

Guys, I highly recommend this place. If you're ever in San Pablo City and are looking for something different, check this place out.

It's located on the ground floor of the Malinaw Foundation Building (Masonic Temple) at T. Azucena cor. P. Zulueta, beside Simple Treats. It's open from 11:00am to 11:00pm.

Aside from the Mixed Shish Kebab, we also tried a new item on their menu, an "Nacho Pizza" appetizer, which looked very much like a small pizza cut into 4 slices. It had ample toppings of vegetables, cheese and meat, but the crust wasn't  heavy on the stomach. Perfect appetizer!

After the meal, we had some Turkish Coffee, which tasted quite exotic to me. It was quite nice. I do know that Turkish Coffee isn't really a type of coffee, but it's a name that's given to a unique way of preparing coffee. Basically, beans are grounded much more finely than normal, then boiled several times in an "Ibrik". Be sure to order just "half" if you want them to use the Ibrik to make the coffee. Apparently, if you order "full", that amount of coffee won't fit into an Ibrik so they use a coffee press instead. It doesn't change the taste though.  I think they may add a little bit something else to it to make it more unique. Whatever it is, I like it.

Cabbage Roll

Inspired once again from a recipe I found at Chef John's Food Wishes, I tried out this technique of wrapping some filling with cabbage and  simmering it in stock and tomatoes. I would often do a lot of these cooking experiments but not all of them makes it to this blog or onto video, specially those that turned out to suck.

This however, this turned out fantastic!

We had some left over lumpiang shanghai filling from lunch earlier today and I thought I could use that filling for this dish. Now you can come up with a filling of your own and use whatever you like. You can use chicken or pork or fish... it's really up to you.  This recipe is more of the technique of doing the cabbage roll itself.

These were the ingredients I used:

1/4 kilo filling. (I used lumpiang shanghai filling which included chicken, carrots, onion and spring onions)
3/4 cup washed uncooked rice
1/2 can Capri Whole Peeled Tomatoes (I like this brand because the tomatoes are really nice and red)
1 medium sized cabbage
1 medium sized onion, chopped
2-1/2 cups chicken stock
salt and pepper
2 bay leaves
kinchay

First you need to prepare your ingredients. First up is the tomato. Take half of the canned whole peeled tomatoes, put them in a bowl and crush them until they form kind of a rough sauce. Now you can always buy canned tomatoes that are already crushed of course, and you can choose any brand you like, and of course, you can just get regular tomatoes for this, it doesn't really matter. Well, it matters to me actually because as I said, I really love these canned tomatoes. Buy one and see for yourself. It's amazing.

Second, take out the core of the cabbage and place the cabbage in a deep pan of boiling water. Within a few seconds, those cabbage leaves are going to peel off. Using tongs, carefully remove each one as they detach. Do this until the entire cabbage is deconstructed.

Third, take your meat filling and add the rice and around 2 tablespoons chopped kinchay. Mix that all together very well.

In a medium sized casserole dish (with a lid!), line the bottom with the smallest cabbage leaves.

You are now going to build your cabbage rolls. Take one of the biggest leaves, remove bits of hard stem towards the bottom with a knife. Take around 2 tablespoons of meat/rice mixture and place it horizontally near the bottom of the leaf. Now carefully wrap the leaf around the meat, folding the sides and then folding the whole thing. Do as many as would fit in your casserole dish.

Carefully place the rolls inside the dish. Sprinkle some salt and pepper over the rolls. Now pour your tomato sauce over this, add the bay leaves and pour as much stock as would cover the rolls completely.

With regards to stock. You can always boil some chicken with a few vegetables like carrots and celery and use the liquid for stock. I didn't have that so I simply used a chicken cube dissolved in 2-1/2 cups of water. Now if you're using a cube, be careful not to add to much salt in the previous step. Not too much would just be right.  The cube comes with quite a bit of sodium already.

Place your chopped onion over the rolls and then cover everything with a layer of the remaining cabbage leaves.

Close the lid, place the dish inside an oven pre-heated to 180 degrees C. You will bake this for at least one and a half hours.

After one and a half hours, leave the casserole dish inside the cooling oven for 30 minutes more before serving.

And there you go!

Serendipity Tea Bar, San Pablo City

I finally got around to checking out Serendipity Tea Bar here in San Pablo City. I've been passing this place regularly and always wanted to try them out. If you're looking for it, it's right next to that big Indian temple that's being constructed near the corner of the San Pablo Diversion road and Maharlika Highway, walking distance from SPC Medical, 7-11, and Liempo Republic.

The first thing I immediately noticed was how young the clientele was. Practically every customer in there was clearly 20-25 years younger than me. I guess it's safe to say it's a hit with the young adults because the place is almost always full with them. Irrationally, I felt kind of out of place for a brief moment. But I guess that's just silly.

True to it's name, it's a TEA bar, not a cafe. So there's no coffee in here. Their specialty is their milk tea, which I hear is very good. I say "hear" because there's probably not a chance that I'll ever check it out for myself, being lactose intolerant.

Ilyn ordered Yakult Peach with Nata De Coco. She said it was very good although she came away with the feeling that it was spiked with something because half an hour later her adrenalin shot up and was pretty much bouncing off the walls for the next hour. I don't mean "spiked" in a bad way of course. Perhaps it had caffeine? Whatever it was, Ilyn was kind of a little too excited and talkative for a while.

As for the food, I ordered Seafood Pasta:

It had shrimp and squid and as a whole it tasted quite nice. It's not something I would lose my head over, but it was good enough for me to want to come back and try what else was there.

Ilyn had Seafood Pesto Pasta:

She said that it was OK, not overwhelmingly awesome, but was simply all right. I tasted a bit of it, and it tasted like pesto. Like I expected anything more.

Now I almost didn't want to write this review because I already had a feeling I wasn't going to rave about it, but I thought well, I can't just rave about things on this blog. I really have to be honest.

And so yes, here are some of the not so nice things I experienced here.

The staff was friendly and helpful enough, so I had no problem with that. The first problem is probably the fault of my own expectations. You see, Ilyn had written down the menu on her notebook the first time she ate here some weeks ago so she can show it to me.

What I immediately noticed was they had a "Garden Fresh" burger. I assumed it was a vegetarian burger because other dishes from other restaurants with the "Garden Fresh" tag was vegetarian. Like Greenwich's Garden Fresh Pizza for instance.

So I looked forward to ordering that, along with their onion rings, which Ilyn said was very nice.

Imagine my disappointment when it turned out the Garden Fresh Burger had a beef patty, but just had a lot of greens and other vegetable stuff in it. No fault to them, of course.

However, they also told me that their onion rings was unavailable. Ouch. You see when reviewing restaurants, I have a scale that goes from 1-10, 10 being excellent. As soon as I enter any restaurant, they have an automatic 10. Points would be subtracted every time I was disappointed.  When they don't have an item available that's listed on the menu, that's a major disappointment for me. So I subtract one point.

I thought OK, I'll just have a pasta. I chose Pasta Bolognese. Also not available. OUCH. Subtract another point. This wasn't looking promising.

So I settled on the Seafood Pasta. I also ordered Chef's Salad, but I didn't like the dressing too much. In fact, I wasn't able to finish it.  Subtract half a point. At least I was able to finish the pasta, which I actually liked. It's not something I want to try again though, but it was pleasant enough for me to try other things on their menu.

One last thing. They didn't have a change for my money. I don't know, maybe it was just me, but I swear I could hear the dude in the kitchen in kind of a pissed off voice saying that they couldn't possibly have change for my money. I didn't want to make an issue of it, so I let it pass. Subtract 2 points.

In fairness the dude who served us was very nice, and very friendly. In fact, he remembered Ilyn from the last time she visited.

All in all, I wouldn't say it was a completely awesome experience. But it was an OK experience, and like I said, I wouldn't mind trying it again. I just hope that I no longer hear "not available" anymore. That's actually one of the big no-nos a restaurant can commit. And yes, always have change. I hope they can fix that.

Hainanese Chicken at Hainanese Delights

I'm a big fan of Hainanese Chicken, ever since I tasted the real deal at a hawker's center in Sinagpore. (Read  that blog entry here.)

Ever since then, I've been on the lookout for a local version here in the Philippines that would be as good. I've tried several dishes from many other restaurants, including a couple of high end Chinese/Singapore style places, but their chicken always come up lacking.

So far the best local Hainanese Chicken I've tasted I found in Hainanese Delights, which is surprisingly kind of a fast food type place that's slowly spreading across malls in Metro Manila. The two branches I visited was in Robinson's Galleria in Ortigas, and the one in SM Megamall Building A.

Of all the Hainanese chicken I've tasted so far, theirs is the best one I've tasted. The chicken is soft and perfectly seasoned. Their spice combo of ginger, hot sauce and soy sauce is unlimited. (In other restaruants they either had limited amounts of it or didn't have them all together). Not only did they serve the chicken with that special Hainan rice (Rice cooked in chicken stock), it was also unlimited. Other restaurants just serve plain rice which is like WTF. You don't serve Hainanese chicken without serving Hainan rice. That's just wrong. (I'm talking to you, Sentosa, Shangrila Mall.)

Highly recommended, if you want to get an idea of authentic Hainanese Chicken from Singapore!

Check out their website here:
http://www.hainanesedelights.ph/

Delimondo Corned Beef

At first I didn't pay attention to this brand of canned corned beef. No wait. Actually, I did notice it because well, it looked unusual. It looked like a generic product with a simple generic label. Actually, I thought it looked cheap. But the thing is, it wasn't cheap. In fact, this 380g can is more expensive than my usual favorite 380g can of Purefoods corned beef.

I left it alone because I was dubious about it and forgot all about it. Sometime later, I saw two of my acquaintances on Facebook post about Delimondo. I asked them if it was OK because to me it looked kind of dubious. Both of them told me, rather enthusiastically, that it was really very good and even competitive, taste-wise, to Purefoods.

Really? I thought well, OK. The next time I was at Rustan's I will try it out. Yes, unfortunately, none of our local groceries here in San Pablo carry it. I've had to wait until we had reason to to go Manila so I can pass by Rustan's so I can check this out.

I was still skeptical because Purefoods is probably the best canned corned beef I've tasted so far. And I've tasted a lot. A lot of the other local brands doesn't taste as well. They would either be a little too salty, or a little too flavorful. Or both! They are also colored rather abnormally red. I know all canned corned beef are colored, but still... the others really go over the top with it.

And I'm not just even talking about local brands. I've had imported brands as well, and the problem I have with imported canned corned beef is that they're too finely shredded. I like my corned beef to still look like very soft long shreddy beef.

The only one to come close to Purefoods before now was  Highlands corned beef, which I thought was also pretty good.

Ok so I finally got one of these Delimondo corned beef cans. They had a variety of different flavors like this Chili and Garlic as well as Ranch. I was hoping I could find one that didn't have any special flavors because I just wanted to taste the corned beef itself without any enhancements. Finding none, I settled on this Garlic and Chili flavored one.

I didn't do anything special with it. In fact, I didn't even use oil to saute the onion with. I just poured the canned meat directly on the pan and added chopped onion to that. Nothing more. I allowed it to simmer for a few minutes to reduce the liquid and that was it.

And so what did I think?

I think it was excellent! The beef was perfectly soft and shredded to my liking. And the taste was just right and not too salty and not too flavorful. Just exactly right. I loved it. And the one thing it had over Purefoods was it seemed less fatty. Usually when cooking Purefoods I would have to deal with quite a bit of fat that I have to pass the meat through a strainer to drain all the fat before I served it. No strainer required here.

Pretty safe to say Delimondo is now my favorite local canned corned beef!

I wouldn't say I would be switching completely. There is still the matter of accessibility and price. If it was available at local groceries I might buy more of it. Although I think it's expensive, I really wouldn't want them to lower their price and then lower the quality as well. I'd still buy this once in a while whenever I can afford it, but I'll still have my Purefoods from time to time.

[Video Recipe] Baked Blue Marlin Steak

I've been seeing the technique of cooking fish wrapped in aluminum foil and baked in an oven quite a few times in You Tube and other places. I've actually been doing this technique for a while since then, and I thought I'd finally put a recipe I've come up with down on paper (as it were).

I saw some really nice frozen blue marlin steaks at a local grocery and I thought these would be perfect for this demonstration.

These are the things you would need:

1.2 kilo blue marlin steaks (which to me yielded 3 pieces)
3 square-ish sheets of aluminum foil
cold butter
olive oil
6 calamansi (or 1 pc. lemon)
salt and pepper
dried basil leaves
6 cloves chopped garlic
chopped parsley for garnishing

Check out the video for the procedure.



There I specified 20 minutes baking time at 200C, but that's not absolute. You can cook at a lesser time if your fish is smaller or if you use a type of fish that cooks faster like dory.

[Video Recipe] Adobong Manok sa Gata

I finally got around to making recipe videos again! Some of my most watched videos on You Tube are recipe videos so that's a clear message right there. People want cooking stuff on video!

This "Adobong Manok sa Gata" recipe has actually been shot well, way back 2009. I never managed to get around to editing it because honestly, these cooking videos really take a long time to edit. It's not like I can just talk in front of a camera for a few minutes and upload. Putting together something like this takes much much longer. Usually half a day. That's perhaps why I didn't do too many of these... until I found a way I can do it quickly.

And the secret really was to remove my face from the equation and just focus on the food. That would be less distraction ( I know how distracting my face can be! hehe), and it's actually easier to put the video together.

Adobong Manok sa Gata is a traditional Southern Tagalog recipe that has been around for centuries. Our ancestors loved cooking with vinegar because it allowed food to last longer, and this was important during a time when there were still no way of refrigerating food for preservation.

Adobong Manok sa Gata is basically chicken cooked in vinegar, coconut milk and young papaya fruit that hasn't ripened yet.

Here are my ingredients:

1-1/2 Kilo chicken parts including livers and gizzards
1/2 cup coconut vinegar (preferably), or cane vinegar
1/3 cup patis or or fish sauce
2 cups coconut milk
1 bulb garlic, chopped
2 medium sized onion, chopped
2 tablespoons grated ginger
cooking oil
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 young unripe papaya (if you can't find it, sayote would do fine), peeled and sliced

For the procedure, watch the video: