World Class Chefs
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Ramilo (Ram) Villaluna
Ram is a budding chef from Iloilo City (Molo). He gained his training in Culinary Arts at the Center for Asian Culinary Studies under food guru Gene Gonzalez, Institute of Culinary Education (formerly Peter Kumpps) in New York. He took up bread making, and he studied food styling under Delores Custer of the Culinary Institute of America. It all started in Antique where his father owned a restaurant many Antiquenos learned to love. He continued the culinary legacy of his father and now, Ram owns a catering business, Cindy\'s Catering. Food is Ram\'s life, seriously speaking. I am short in saying that he is married to the food industry that, he spends most of his time teaching and mentoring at the Department of Culinary Arts at the University of San Agustin in Iloilo. If one cannot find him in the classroom, Ram will be on the road crisscrossing Iloilo and Antique having first hand in the management of his thriving businesses from both provinces. He also has a once-a-week TV show in GMA 7 \"Food Trip\". I met with Ram once before and he exudes perfectionism, the character that will beam him up to the limelight of culinary arts. At present time, Ram is extremely busy in Manila. I believe he is one of the finalists in The National Food Showdown 2010 sponsored by ABS-CBN. We wish you all the luck, Ram! Maybe, after this showdown, Ram will have the opportunity share favorite recipe here at ILONGGO LIVING.
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Archive for September, 2009
Homemade Meat Loaf
September 29, 2009
Since temperature here in Southern Ontario is constantly dropping over the past 2 weeks, we try to use our oven more often for cooking. Baking is good during fall and winter as it serves two purposes: cook our food and at the same time warms the house. During summer months when it’s hot, we use our outdoor BBQ to grill food as it’s too warm to use the oven inside the house. Today, my chef prepared Meat Loaf from scratch. This entree is everyone’s favourite!
Meat loaf is made of ground beef and if anyone can get hold of ground steak, it's the preferred material.
Ground beef mixed with Lipton onion soup mix powder, Worcestershire sauce, oatmeal, pepper, ketchup and salt. Bake it in a loaf pan at 325C for 45 minutes.
Nothing beats home made MEAT LOAF! Serve hot.
FLASH FLOODING HAVOC IN MANILA
September 28, 2009
MY DEAR FELLOW COUNTRYMEN IN NORTH AMERICA AND SYMPATHIZERS! MY HEART GRIEVES FOR OUR DEAR FELLOWMEN BACK IN THE PHILIPPINES WHO ARE AFFLICTED BY THE RECENT FLASH FLOODING CAUSED BY TYPHOON ONDOY (KETSANA) . PLEASE, LET US DO SOMETHING TO HELP ALLEVIATE THEIR MISERY RIGHT NOW. I KNOW A BLOG, THE LEGENDS LEGUE AUTHORED BY BRYAN (BE) ESPIRITU, WHO SELLS T-SHIRTS (MANILA GUERILLA) OF MANNY PACQUIAO. HE WILL DONATE 100% OF THE PROFITS FROM THE SALE TO THE PHILIPPINE NATIONAL RED CROSS…. AT THE SAME TIME YOU GET YOUR T-SHIRT. LET’S UNITE OUR HEARTS IN THIS NOBLE ENDEAVOR! CHECK OUT THE LINK. Personal & Financial disclosure: NONE!
I dedicate today’s food post to the victims of the said flooding calamity back home. I got permission from Brian Espiritu of THE LEGENDS LEAGUE to copy and paste of today’s post in his blog. Please read up and open your hearts! Thank YOU MGA KABABAYAN AND THANK YOU Bry!
Manila Guerilla: Philippine Red Cross Fundraiser
Published by: be.
I will be donating 100% of profits from the sale of my Manila Guerilla tee to the Philippine Red Cross to help provide aid for the people affected by the storm that hit the Philippines with a months worth of rain in just 6 hours and caused the worst flooding the country has seen in 42 years.
I will be making personal contributions in the form of a box full of IdeallClothing tees, but I’m in no position to be throwing thousands of dollars out in donation. This is where I need your help and support. In the spirit of TheLegendsLeague and paying our lives forward I am hoping that your purchase of one of our Manila Guerilla tees will provide you the opportunity to wear something as a proud sign that when someone else was in need, you played a role in offering your hand in assistance. This design was a piece I did to show thanks to the one man who gave me some level of pride in my background, a culture that I know very little about, and I now hope that it might stand as a symbol for hope in an alternate form for those affected by the storm.
Last year I donated 100% of profits from the sales of TheLegendsLeague beaded necklaces and pendants to an effort in Kenya provided by my friends at Schools Without Borders. I was questioned as to why I had never done anything like that for “my people”. I am seeing this as a chance to do that.
Purchase a tee HERE
Love&Respect as usual,
be.
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The Flood
This was an email that I received from my uncle this morning.
People are stranded in Cainta, province of Rizal, eastern Manila.
Aida De Leon grieves in Pasig City, east of Manila.
An aerial view aboard a Philippine Air Force chopper shows devastation brought by Tropical Storm Ketsana in Cainta, province of Rizal, eastern Manila.
Residents are evacuated by police boats during flooding in Cainta Rizal, east of Manila.
A Philippine Air Force aerial shot shows damaged houses in Marikina City, Metro Manila. More than 70 people were killed, Manila was blacked out and airline flights were suspended as a powerful tropical storm battered the main Philippines island of Luzon.
Residents wait to be evacuated from a partially submerged house during flooding in Bocaue, north of Manila.
Thousands of people in the Philippine capital and nearby towns were marooned by flash floods after a strong tropical storm hit the main island of Luzon, disaster officials said.
Residents cross a flooded street with the use of a rope in Quezon City.
A boy is lifted onto the roof of a building to escape the flooding in the Quezon City suburban of Manila . Nearly a month’s worth of rain fell in just six hours Saturday, triggering the worst flooding in the Philippine capital in 42 years, which stranded thousands on rooftops in the city and elsewhere.
Residents clamber on electric wires to stay out of floodwaters while others wade neck-deep in Cainta Rizal, east of Manila.
A victim of floodings is rescued in Pasig City, east of Manila . Authorities rushed rescue and relief to thousands of people who spent the night on the roofs of their submerged houses in Manila and surrounding provinces.
Commuters wade through waist-deep floodwaters after heavy rains dumped by Tropical Storm Ketsana (locally known as Ondoy) on Saturday, Sept. 27, in Manila, Philippines.
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It’s difficult, as I write this, to see people who remind you so much of yourself – although I know so little about my culture – have to go through this. I’m reminded all too many times that some of us will not know the feeling of pain until it happens to someone we can directly relate with… too many times.
My heart & hope goes out to everyone in P.I. right now.
Fusion Cooking
September 27, 2009
The beauty of living here in Canada, or in North America in general is, the flexibility in Filipino cooking. It used to be a taboo altering specific dish and would be strongly reprimanded by “senior staff” at home. But one has to keep an open mind and does not have to adhere at certain rules in preparing the dish. That’s where fusion cooking comes in and evolution of contemporary cooking! A hint of certain Filipino dish on top of an exemplary and unique flavor. That’s what my chef and I has been doing over the years. We discover certain food material that could fit in to another dish, making it more exciting and palatable! Sometimes, we ran out of name(s) to call them. Take for example the food that my chef has prepared lately. She does not know what to call it as she added pork instead of the usual fish. What do you call it?
The ingredients she used are: sweet corn, mushrooms, ampalaya tops, red pepper and ground pork.
She prepared it like dinengdeng but one cannot call it as such as she added pork in it.
It looked so delish and tasted superb! Wouldn't you agree? But this lowly dish has no name.
Polvoron (Short Bread)
September 25, 2009
Polvoron or short bread is a popular Filipino delicacy made of toasted powdered milk, flour or wheat, sugar and butter and molded into shape. It used to be a small scale cottage industry item and at times made to order. Now days, polvoron can be found on the shelves of huge supermarkets, pasalubong houses and balikbayan stores inside the international airports all over the Philippines. It is also interesting to note that abroad, one won’t have a hard time finding polvoron in Asians or Filipino stores all over North America! To make polvoron more enticing, makers of them added pinipig (rice crisp), chocolate, ube and the like, for texture and flavor. The molded short breads are then wrapped in colored cellophane or Japanese paper (tissue paper). The color of the wrapper before does not mean anything than to make it more appealing and interesting to consumers. Because of the recent addition of more flavors, makers of polvoron uses colored cellophane to signify specific flavor (i.e. purple for ube, etc). That’s what Sasmuan Delicacies of Pampanga just did. Wow! Polvoron has come a long way, indeed!
Sasmuan Delicacies from Sasmuan, Pampanga.
The color of the individual wrapper signifies the flavor. Purple for ube, green for pandan, red for pinipig, orange for butter and the clear one shows cookies & cream.
Sasmuan Delicacies claims that their product is homemade at its best and of premium quality. Rightfully so! DID YOU KNOW THAT Polvoron is also known as short bread or toasted milk cookies?
Sweet Memory
September 24, 2009
My eyes zeroed in to the pie siting by the shelf in one of the Filipino stores in Mississauga. It says, BUKO PANDAN PIE by Pinoy’s Best of Scarborough, Ontario. I have second thoughts of buying it as it might not measure up with my standard. As I have related before, my buko pie’s gold standard is based from Nang Palang’s. So far, nobody passed beyong that bar (yet!). Anyhow, what will I loose if it turns out to be a flop, nothing! So, here we go.
Pinoy's Best Buko-Pandan Pie
A cut piece of the pie. From a scale of 1-10, it hits right thru the middle, 5!
Some readers may wonder what’s really with Nang Palang’s Buko Pie that made me adopt it as my GOLD STANDARD. Well, here it is: from the pie crust to the amount of real buko in it and the pandan flavoring and coloring. It all boils down to the “real flavor” of buko in it. Some readers suggested the Laguna buko pie and the Tagaytay buko pie, as a “must try”. We’ll see!
Nang Palang's Buko-Pandan Pie. A PERFECT 10!!!
Other Nang Palang's pie flavors. ube, pineapple and the plain, buko pie. Yikes! That made me crave for them now!
Pinakbet – Ilocano Style
September 22, 2009
Today is the first day of autumn or fall. To be precise, it arrived today at 5:18 this afternoon, so summer is over now officially! And I did not even wholesomely enjoyed it here in Canada, darn! To make it more convincing, just look around and one will see the telltale signs lurking … such as, temperature dropping to single digits at night, and speaking of nighttime, it’s growing longer compared to daytime. And if you’re not convinced yet, just drive around and you’ll see leaves of trees starts turning to different colors and hues. Don’t forget people starts to wear long-sleeves shirts, sweaters and light jackets. Cold weather totally beats me up. But, don’t get me wrong, I love the first part of fall, wherein, leaves changes its colors and then falls off to the ground.
Speaking of colors, a food in mind is pinakbet. One of my avid readers, Natie from Jersey, just reminded me about pinakbet and, for sure it’s one of my Ilocano favourite foods, as well! Ilocanos prepares their pinakbet differently from Tagalog. So I was told by my chef. Ilocanos do not use garlic nor alamang in their pinakbet and they don’t saute their spices. They just prepare it with bagoong, vinegar, water, eggplants, ampalaya, okra and onions. That’s it!
One of the basic veggies for pinakbet is ampalaya (bitter melon).
Eggplant is the second "must have" ingredient. Eggplants can go solo in pinakbet! Just plain eggplant pinakbet with oil added. Yummy!
Concoction of different veggies in bagoong and vinegar soup makes up pinakbet.
Voila! Pinakbet- Ilocano Style!
Dinengdeng Galore!
September 20, 2009
My first encounter with dinengdeng was in Baguio City in the late 70′s while attending Saint Louis University’s College of Medicine. Staying in a boarding house means cheap meals and endless replays or re-runs of food. Dinengdeng is one of them! Our landlord used to have a backyard full of sayote bush and, in the kitchen, a Caltex can full of bagoong. What a perfect match for dinengdeng! So, one can just imagine having (sayote, fruit or fronds) dinengdeng every other day, if not everyday for the next 4 to 5 years. At one point, after graduation, I promised myself not to allow my taste buds touch dinengdeng nor lay my eyes on it! Spoke too soon, I guess. I got married to an Ilocano maiden and I swallowed everything I said against dinendeng. Now, dinengdeng is one of my favourite Ilocano dishes. The reason being, my chef prepares it lavishly with variety of vegetables and sagpaws. That made a world of difference compared to what I used to have before! So, here are some variations of DINENGDENG one can make and enjoy eating. It’s almost like our laswa in Iloilo (without the bagoong, of course).
The most lavished of all the DINENGDENG, with two types of sagpaw (shrimps & grilled fish) and with fancy alucon (birch flowers).
Basically, the soup base is made of bagoong and the rest of the ingredients varies as to availability of different veggies. Here, my chef added patani, zucchini and alucon.
With fried tilapia as sagpaw and our favourite, alucon, oyster mushrooms & sigarillas.
A basic type of dinengdeng with no sagpaw but with zucchini, beans, patani and sweetpeas tops or fronds.
Dinengdeng can stand alone without sagpaw of any kind because of its bagoong-based soup. Here, my chef just added sweet corn, mushrooms, ampalaya and kalunay.
Here's the latest dinengdeng we had in Virginia, with grilled mackerel as sagpaw and eggplants and string beans.
Escargot a la Bourguignonne
September 18, 2009
It was unfortunate that my chef and I did not have the chance to dine in at an authentic French resto while we where in Quebec City. So, tonight I will prepare an authentic French recipe called Escargot a la Bourguignonne. The escargot [es-kahr-goh] or snail (kuhol in the Philippines) can be prepared in so many ways. But, the most popular way of preparing this unique shellfish is a la Bourguignonne. The escargot now days are cultured or farmed here in North America but, the ones that I will be preparing are wild caught from Strasbourg, France. I used to remember back in the Philippines, kuhol are abundant in the rice field during rainy season.
Now days, escargot can be enjoyed without having to prepare elaborate procedure. I used frozen pre-made ones, stuffed with garlic butter, parsley, shallots, pepper and celery. Pre-heat the oven @ 300 degrees and bake escargot for 12 minutes.
The only thing that I prepared from scratch was the white wine-butter sauce.
Serve escargot with white wine and everything will be fine.
One can use toothpick or a special small fork to extract the meat inside the shell.
The dark meat of the shellfish tastes yummy! Escargot is best eaten while it's still hot.
Mange à Québec
September 16, 2009
My chef and I originally planned to have an authentic French cuisine while in Quebec city but, we’re so pressed with time as we have to be back to Hamilton before midnight. So, a quick breakfast and lunch was sufficient as we have to catch the 2-hours tour around the city of Quebec before heading an 8-hours drive back to Hamilton that same day.
Breakfast at Van Houtte Cafe Bistro near the hotel.
My order was bacon and egg breakfast wrap.
Great tasting coffee by Van Houtte.
My chef had butter crossant and raspberry & blueberry Danish.
A fusion Thai-Vietnamese resto for lunch was not a bad idea at all.
vermicelli chicken soup with French flavor!
Fried spring rolls tasted almost like our lumpia-style.
A truly fusion food, seafoods platter with a hint of North America, quite distinct!
Beef stir fry.
So, we promised ourselves, that in our next trip to Quebec City in 2010 & 2011, we will indulge ourselves with French cuisine. Appréciez et bonne nuit!
I Left My Heart in Quebec City
September 15, 2009
The picturesque City of Quebec is dubbed as “little Europe in North America”. With its captivating scenery and everyone is speaking in French, rightfully so, Quebec City prides itself as distinct European culture in the heart of North America. Joining a tour group enabled us to learn its history and culture while admiring at its rich European architectures and landmarks. As one American tourist said, ” it feels like you’re in Paris, France”. Because of Quebec’s rich heritage, UNESCO designated this city as one of World’s Heritage Sites. It’s such a shame that we’re short of time finishing the tour of the city, so we promised ourselves to go back next year and the year after that (2010 and 2011). I have to, as I left my heart in the romantic city of Quebec.
The Parliament building (Hotel du Parlement).
The Tourny fountain at the front eastside of the Parliament.
Joan of Arc statue with Loews Le Concorde hotel on the background.
Chateau de Frontenac (front view).
One of the streets, upper part of Quebec.
Lower part, Frontenac area.
European area just below Frontenac.
Another shopping area, Frontenac.
Funnicular train going up to the Chateau de Frontenac.
A beautiful architectural landmark.
Commissionaires building.
Beautiful row of houses wuth French flare in the business area of Quebec.
This church is just across our hotel, right out viewed from our floor-to-ceiling window room.
Le Pur Hotel (front), where we stayed for the night.
Le Pur Hotel (back view).
One of the top towers of the Parliament building.
Musee Nationale des Beaux Arts du Quebec
Front facade of the Musee Nationale.
I will be posting the foods portion of our trip in Quebec tomorrow. Have a good one!
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