Burnt Lumpia: Filipino Food | Filipino Recipes | Culinary Hijinks

Arroz By Any Other Name

When spending Christmas at my parents' house, we adhere to quite a few traditions:

• My brothers and I challenge each other's manhood via video games.  This past year it was Guitar Hero.  I'll admit that my brothers are better than me at virtually rocking.  But I rock literally. So there.

• My dad challenges everyone's religioushood (I just made that word up) by not attending Midnight Mass. While my mother, my brothers, my wife and I attend church late Christmas Eve, my father stays home and practices his finger jabs and throat punches on a wooden dummy in the garage.  He then practices his striking with the business end of his belt, jangling the metal buckle like a jingle bell (he's festive like that).

• My mom challenges my wife's stomach-hood (again, another awesome made-up word) by telling her to eat more and more at the dinner table. Any Pinoy who has ever brought a non-Pinoy home knows what I mean:

Mom: "Why don't you eat?"
Wife: "I am eating."

5 minutes later...

Mom: "Are you OK? Why don't you eat some more?"
Wife with mouth full: "Um, yes. Ok, I'll have more pancit."

2 minutes, 39 seconds later...

Mom: "You're not eating! Have some more rice! Rice! Eat! Eat! Eaaaaaaat!"
Wife with gastrointestinal pain and no other choices: "Ummm. Uh. Yes. Please."

And so it goes at my parents' house on Christmas Eve.

As fun as all of that sounds, and it really is, there is one other tradition that I look the most forward to: Arroz Caldo.  And seeing as the theme for the latest Lasang Pinoy event is rice, I see no better entry than my mother's Arroz Caldo.

Little Boxes

I apologize for my lack of posting the last few weeks, but things have been very hectic at the Burnt Lumpia Worldwide Headquarters as of late.

In addition to all the hoopla around my birthday and Christmas, the wife and I moved into new digs. And even though our new place of residence is literally only a couple of miles from our old place of residence, a move is still a move and is a pain in the ass nonetheless. On top of all that, I was also out of the state for a few days before Christmas as I traveled cross-country with a couple of buddies of mine. I returned just in time for my wife and me to visit my parents on Christmas Eve, and then visit her parents on Christmas Day.

Considering all of the above circumstances, there hasn’t been much time for unpacking, let alone blogging—our house is strewn with moving boxes, birthday boxes, and Christmas boxes. All I need now is a Balikbayan Box and I’d be the reigning champion and title-holder of the Quadruple Crown of Cardboard Containers.

Oddly enough, the one box I do not have is ye ole internet box—there still is no internet connection at the new Headquarters. The cable guy was supposed to show up last weekend but didn’t, and now he’s supposed to come and install this Thursday. As such, I’m posting this from somewhere I probably shouldn’t be.

Anyhoo, I had a couple of Christmas-themed posts and recipes that I wanted to put up, but I guess I’ll have to shelve those for now and hope they are still relevant in a year. With any luck (or with a reliable cable company) we will have the internet up soon and I could get back to gracing everyone with inane blog entries replete with jokes that are humorous only to me. Good times.

Meanwhile, why don’t you click on the “Links” in the upper left of this page and get to reading some of my fellow food bloggers. They are all excellent, and they all have internet connections.

Happy Holidays!

30's the New 20

Urasawa is a restaurant that you wouldn't know was there, unless you knew it was there. It's located on the corner of Wilshire and Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, but its lack of exterior signage keeps it relatively hidden within its prime location.

Luckily for me, I've known about Urasawa's whereabouts for quite some time, reading about the restaurant in various magazines and food blogs over the last couple of years. But because of the insanely high tab at Urasawa (the most expensive in Los Angeles), I've been able to only lustfully daydream that I might someday afford to dine on the Japanese offerings of its now legendary namesake chef, Hiroyuki Urasawa.

Well, after a year of planning and saving, my wife and I amassed enough coin for us to eat at Urasawa. And besides, it was my 30th birthday.

The Oyster. Considered.

My dad has this saying that if you don’t get mad, it won’t get fixed.

This maxim usually applies to certain circumstances in which my old man is trying to repair something around the house or in his garage.  The scenarios usually start off very innocently, like screwing a shelf into a wall, unclogging some backed-up pipes, or genetically engineering his clone.  But as soon as something goes wrong—like a missing shelf bracket, a futile and useless plunger, or a volatile and unstable strain of DNA—my dad goes berserk and starts cursing up a storm.

He usually starts off with a few innocuous “Goddammits!”  Then he moves on to  spewing out some “Sons of bitches!” that serve as a warning to those within earshot that he’s about to blow his top.  But once he starts dropping F-bombs and MotherF-bombs, it’s time for my brothers and I to scurry away and hide, lest we be commanded to find my dad his “Pillips head screwdriber”.  On such occasions of unbridled fury, I always want to tell my dad that Jesus was a carpenter. But I don’t think he’d get it, and then he would surely stab me with said screwdriver.

My dad’s rage doesn’t last forever.  Once he’s done fixin' whatever he was fixin', he calms down, shrugs his shoulders, then walks over to my mom and mutters his mantra: “If you don’t get mad, it won’t get fixed.”

Now, I’m not much of a handy guy.  I own zero powertools and most of my handiwork consists of erecting crappy Ikea furniture.  So in terms of being a man about the house, I haven’t witnessed any of my father’s fury passed on down to me.  However, it’s a completely different story when I’m in the kitchen.  My inherited wrath was no more evident than when I tried shucking oysters for the first time.

Meme, Myself, and I

Julie over at One-Wall Kitchen tagged me for this meme. I've always wanted to do one of these, but I've never been tagged before.  Now I feel like one of the cool kids at school.  As such, I will use this opportunity to talk about myself whilst scoffing at my lackeys and underlings.

On to the meme...

What were you cooking/baking 10 years ago?
10 years ago I was in college at THE University of California at Santa Barbara. So I know for a fact that I wasn't cooking much of anything. I was eating lunch at the DLG. Literally.

What were you cooking/baking one year ago?
A year ago, I was cooking things like chili, osso buco, coq au vin, fried chicken, risotto, grilled steak, chicken stock, gumbo, pot roast, and beef and broccoli. I still cook many of these things when I get the chance. Believe it or not, I've never cooked a single Filipino dish until I started this blog (OK, maybe that is believable. I am such a rookie).

Five snacks you enjoy:
I'm not much of a snacker. Oh, wait, I know:

1. Anderson Valley Brewing Company (Barney Flats Oatmeal Stout, Hop Ottin India Pale Ale, Boont Amber Ale)
2. Deschutes Brewery (Black Butte Porter, Mirror Pond Pale Ale)
3. Anchor Brewery (Anchor Porter, Anchor Liberty)
4. Sierra Nevada Brewery (Pale Ale, Porter)
5. PBR

Five recipes you know by heart:

1. A proper Old-Fashioned (I prefer Maker's Mark, no soda)
2. A proper Martini (3 parts gin, not vodka. 1 part vermouth. Stir with ice, no shaking. 1 olive)
3. Pinakbet
4. Chicken Adobo
5. Chicken Stock

Five culinary luxuries you would indulge in if you were a millionaire:

1. Many trips to the Philippines to try the cuisine of each region.
2. Trips to Spain and Japan (I've never been).
3. I'd raise my own organic, all-natural pigs (I'm serious).
4. A meal at The French Laundry every couple of months (more frequent visits would bankrupt me).
5. *And I'd open up a restaurant named "Steers, Beers, and Rears".  It will be like Hooters, but classier. It will be a steak and brewhouse in which thong-clad beauties would bring patrons large cuts of rare beef and foamy steins of ale. There will be balloon animals and magic.  There will be a jovial bartender named Rodolfo and he will refuse to wear an eye-patch over his one milky eye.  The men's restroom will be wallpapered with images of smiling monkeys and there will be ice in the urinals.  There will be a 3 foot by 7 foot oil painting of me with a lumpia hiding my identity at the front entrance.  My grandpa will be the doorman and he will have a toothpick betwixt his lips.

*I'm only joking. That is, unless someone actually opens up a similar restaurant to much fanfare and acclaim. In that case, I will sue you!  Beef, beers, and exposed buttocks are my idea!  Hmmph.

Five foods you love to cook/bake:

1. Pinakbet
2. Longanisa (I've only made it twice, but it's an awesome experience)
3. My secret chili recipe (it's not that great, but I like making it)
4. A fatty rib-eye steak seasoned with only salt and pepper, seared on a scorching hot cast iron pan.
5. Turkey gravy (I can't explain why. It's like some strange alchemy to come up with perfect gravy).

Five foods you cannot/will not eat:
I'm not gonna say there is anything I won't eat.  Sure, there are things like balut that I have never tried and would probably be scared to get near, but I'm sure under the right circumstances I would try anything once.

Five favorite culinary toys:

1. 8-inch Shun Ken Onion Chef's knife (it is my baby and I keep it scary sharp)
2. All-Clad saute pan (we make everything in that pan, from homemade tomato sauce to chicken adobo).
3. Krups ice cream maker (I eat a lot of ice cream and I drink a lot of beer. I weigh 300 pounds).
4. My grill (not my iced out mouth, my gas grill).
5. Thermapen instant read thermometer.

Five dishes on your "last meal" menu:

1. Raw oysters on the half-shell
2. Sushi
3. My mom's pinakbet
4. A medium-rare rib-eye steak
5. My wife's homemade apple pie with homemade vanilla ice cream

Five happy food memories:

1. I don't know if this is necessarily happy, but one time, after taking me and my brothers to see Willow (don't ask), my dad tried to make pancit palabok (a type of Filipino noodle dish) for us. The noodles were way overcooked and became rubbery, but I forced myself to eat it because I didn't want to catch an elbow between the shoulder blades from my dad.  The pancit palabok wasn't great, but I have that memory etched in my brain for some reason.  Good times.
2. A cheap Hawaiian plate lunch I had with my wife on our honeymoon.
3. When I was a little kid, I remember my grandmother making the cake for my aunt's wedding. I don't remember what kind of cake it was, but there were all these layers and scraps of layers and flowers made out of icing. My grandma let me eat the scraps and the extra icing flowers. I only weighed 200 pounds then. I was 11 years old.
4. Sushi at Morimoto.
5. Lunch at Aux Lyonnaise.

I am passing this meme off to Krizia, Manggy, Oggi, Pat, Joey, and Christine, but none of them should feel obligated to participate.  And if anyone else wants in on this, have at it.

Oh, and one more thing.  If you haven't noticed already, I've consolidated my About page, links, and a recipe archive all in one place under the "Lumpia Filling" heading at the top left of this blog. Have a gander.