Burnt Lumpia: Filipino Food | Filipino Recipes | Culinary Hijinks

Fresh Mango Pudding From Rasa Malaysia's New Cookbook

Aside from the occasional homemade ice cream binge, or the very rare instance where I actually bake something, I don't usually make many desserts. It's not that I don't enjoy sweets, it's just that my sweet tooth usually gets vetoed by my lazy bones.

So whenever I come across a dessert recipe where I don't have to turn my oven on, my sweet tooth can finally exercise its powers over said lazy bones. Such was the case when I was thumbing through Bee Yin Low's new cookbook, Easy Chinese Recipes: Family Favorites From Dim Sum to Kung Pao, and found a beautiful looking recipe for Fresh Mango Pudding.

Bee, if you didn't already know, is the mastermind behind the megablog Rasa Malaysia. Rasa Malaysia has been an inspiration to me since I've started my own little blog here, and now that I'm working on my own cookbook, the recipes and photographs in Bee's new book continue to inspire me as well.

(Full Disclosure: My own Filipino cookbook will be published by Tuttle, the same publisher behind Easy Chinese Recipes.)

Filipino Chocolate and Wine Pairing

All photos courtesy of Pleasure Palate

This Sunday June 26 from 7-9pm, FilAm ARTS will be hosting an exclusive wine and fine chocolate tasting featuring Filipino-inspired chocolates paired with an exclusive selection of wines.

What's that now? Filipino-inspired chocolates? Well, yes. Tonet Tibay, of Marti Chocolatt,is a Filipina chocolatier who incorporates Filipino flavors into her chocolates. Tonet's chocolates for this tasting will include:

• Ube ~ purple yam in a white chocolate ganache
• Durian ~ durian in 33% milk chocolate
• Senorita ~ sweet ripe bananas with dark Jamaican rum in a milk chocolate ganache
• Jasmine Citron ~ queen of jasmine pearl tea with grapefruit zest
• Barako ~ Liberica coffee beans in a milk chocolate ganache
• Pina ~ pineapple caramel with Ilocano sea salt

While these chocolates sound fantastic on their own, they will be accompanied by wines selected by Filipino sommellier, Santos Uy, owner of Mignon Wine and Cheese Bar.

The event will be held at Kazuyo Sushi, a Filipino-owned Japanese restaurant (man, we Filipinos are everywhere, aren't we?).

General admission to this event includes the chocolate and wine pairing (six chocolates and four wines) for $35.

VIP admission includes the chocolate and wine pairing plus a box of chocolates and wine to take home for $75.

In addition to the chocolate and wine tasting, you can also choose to dine at Kazuyo Sushi before the event. Kazuyo also has a few Japanese dishes with Pinoy twists, courtesy of Filipino Chef-Owner, Joe Cubangbang. Kazuyo is offering a special 15% discount for all attendees who mention FilAm ARTS when they make their dinner reservations or when they walk into the restaurant.

All proceeds for this event will benefit FilAm ARTS.

For more information, and to purchase tickets click here: http://filamartschocolatewinepairing.eventbrite.com/

Salted Butter Caramel Ice Cream (& Turon)

David Lebovitz's Perfect Scoop is perhaps one of the most dog-eared and ragged cookbooks on my magic shelf o' cookbooks. And just because this particular cookbook is dedicated to all things ice-cream, that doesn't necessarily mean its use is relegated to only the summer months--Perfect Scoop gets year-round play at the Burnt Lumpia Worldwide Headquarters.

In fact, our favorite recipes from the book range from David's Raspberry Swirl Ice Cream and Peach Ice Cream in the warmer months, to Orange-Szechwan Pepper Ice Cream, Cinnamon Ice Cream, and Eggnog Ice Cream during the colder months, and Coffee Ice Cream and regular ol' vanilla for whenever the hell we feel like it. Yup, my home-ice-cream-fu be pretty decent.

With all that said, my most favorite of David's ice cream recipes is actually Salted Butter Caramel Ice Cream. Ironically though, a recipe for Salted Butter Caramel Ice Cream doesn't even appear in Perfect Scoop, but the recipe does (thankfully) live on David's blog. Besides being my favorite ice cream recipe, Salted Butter Caramel Ice Cream is perhaps one of the best frozen treats I've ever tasted (probably a close second to Abominable Snowman blood. Mmmm, Yeti plasma).

Anyhoo, what makes this ice cream so good?

Well for one, its base components of butter (Butter in ice cream!!!), salt, cream, milk, sugar, and eggs all come together to form something simultaneously rich, sweet, salty, and ever-so-slightly burnt-sugar-smokey. It's crazy that something can taste as complex as this ice cream tastes. Secondly, it's also a nice reminder of me and the wife's trip to Europe some time ago where we inhaled various vats of gelato--including copious amounts of Caramel Buerre Salé (ohh lar lar). Which is why, around this time every year, our ice cream maker cranks out some Salted Butter Caramel Ice Cream--it's an oldie, but a goodie.

Caramel Buerre Salé w/ Ilocano Asin

And since I was recently on the subject of Philippine Sea Salt, I do want to mention that the delicate crystals of Ilocano Asin provide the wonderful (and necessary) salty hint that makes this ice cream really stand out.

And while homemade Caramel Buerre Salé is nearly perfect on its own, I do like to nestle a scoop of it between crisp homemade Filipino Turon (AKA saba banana egg rolls):

LA Times' Pandan Chiffon Cake with Coconut Glaze

Walk into most any Filipino bakery (in the U.S. and in the P.I.) and you are just as likely to find a display of brightly decorated chiffon cakes as you are to see the plain-jane likes of freshly baked pan de sal and ensaimada.

Big chain Filipino bakeries like Golidlocks and Red Ribbon, as well as smaller mom and pop joints, all crank out various frosted, iced, and overly sugared chiffons ranging in flavors from chocolate, to mocha, to mango, to pandan, to macapuno, and the ever-popular (and ever-purple) ube. Heck, my family even loves the neon tropical chiffon cakes (passion fruit & guava!) from King's Hawaiian bakeries.

Yup. We Pinoys loves us some chiffon cake.

But how on Earth did an American cake come to be such a popular dessert amongst Filipinos? Well, probably in the same way that spam, ice cream, and hamburgers made their way into the Filipino culinary landscape--American tastes and food products crossed over to the Philippines during the American occupation of the Islands in the first half of the 20th century. Ever since then, chiffon cake (and spam, and ice cream, and hamburgers, and many other things) has stuck with us. Ah, colonialism!

Anyways, when the LA Times recently ran this story on chiffon cake (and provided recipes for a basic chiffon as well as chocolate, hazelnut-orange, and pandan-coconut) I knew I had to dust off my angel food cake pan and give one of the Times' chiffon recipes a try. Although I considered ube-fying the basic recipe for chiffon cake, I decided to instead give the pandan-coconut recipe a whirl (my cup runneth over with a crapload of ube recipes).

If Elvis Were Filipino...

Everything I know about Elvis Presley, I learned from The Honky Tonk Man. Which is to say, I don't really know anything about Elvis Presley. Spending many of my formative years watching professional wrestling has somewhat skewed my world view. It turns out that Elvis didn't really like smashing his guitar over people's heads. Who knew?

Anyways, what I do know about Elvis is that the guy had a serious addiction to peanut butter and banana sandwiches (among other things). Elvis loved PB&Bs so much that the sandwich has become something of a cult dish over the years.

Although spreading peanut butter and mashed bananas on white bread, and then frying the whole mess--grilled cheese-style--in butter sounds incredibly satisfying to me, I've never actually had a peanut butter and banana sandwich. But I've concocted something that may be just as good, if not better, than a PB&B:

An Ube and Saba Banana Sandwich!

Homemade Ube Pop Tarts

My childhood was not without its fair share of processed convenience foods. Seeing as both my parents worked, and worked often, the refrigerator and cupboards at our house were usually stocked with enough TV dinners, frozen pizza, frozen waffles, boxed macaroni, Instant Ramen, and the like, to last an ice age or two, or to at least feed three undersupervised boys for a few days.

Luckily, the high dosages of yellow number 5, high-fructose corn syrup, trans fats, and nitrates had no long-term ill-effects on my brothers and me. Wait, scratch that. Both my brothers (ages 35 and 28) now have gout (seriously). Though somehow I managed to escape that fate. Good times.

Anyways, my favorite junk/survival food from back in the day had to be pop tarts--the toaster pastries that I believe were meant for breakfast, but I took to eating the tasty pastries any time of day. I was especially addicted to the strawberry pop tarts with the white frosting and sprinkles.

Although I've long since shaken my addiction to the sugary toaster shingles, I still sometimes get the urge to buy a box of pop tarts whenever I pass them in the grocery store--for just a taste of nostalgia. But then I take a look at my own young son sitting in my grocery cart and realize that if any of that processed pop tart-y goodness got into his system, he would surely run through the walls at home.

But a few weeks ago, I came across this great article in the LA Times about homemade pop tarts. After reading the article, I immediately thought, "Wait a second. I could make my own pop tarts? And I could put whatever I want in them?"

Of course I had to try the recipe out, and of course, I had to put my own pinoy-twist to it as well. The outcome? Homemade Pop Tarts filled with Halayang Ube (purple yam jam) and glazed with ube frosting.

Powered by Polvoron

Although my young son (AKA Baby Lumpia) is only 15-months old and is much too young to indulge in candy of any sort, my wife and I made it a priority to dress the little guy up for Halloween this year and take him out trick-or-treating just so he could properly experience the occassion.

While I wanted to dress Baby Lumpia up as a Zombie-Ninja, the wife vetoed that idea and opted for something "easy and warm" as she put it.

Bones

To the casual observer, my kid's costume may seem to be a simple "skeleton", but I like to say that he was dressed as a member of the Cobra Kai:

Ah, the Karate Kid. It's a classic.

Anyways, besides dressing my kid up as a member of a villainous band of bullies, I also decided to celebrate Halloween by making my own homemade candy. But not just any candy, mind you. I decided to make a batch of the traditional Filipino candy known as Polvoron.

Macapuno Ice Cream/Coconut Porter Beer Float

Wow. Long time, no blog eh?

Although I've been in blog hibernation for the past few months, I've hardly been sleeping otherwise. I've been on the road and working like a dog (actually, I'm sure dogs don't work as hard as I've been working).

But as I've discovered, piloting Southern California's First Filipino food truck does have its perks, as well as provides much inspiration for blog posts (many of which I hope to cover here some time down the road).

For instance, a couple weekends ago I had the great opportunity to park The Manila Machine at the Los Angeles Beer Float Showdown II. Not only was I able to serve hungry bar flies some Filipino food, but I too was able to enjoy in the beer and ice cream festivities.

I Spy The Manila Machine

This year's Beer Float Showdown featured four teams/bars (Boneyard Bistro, Ladyface Alehouse, Simmzy’s and Tony’s Darts Away) that each created a single beer float. I was so inspired by the boozy ice cream floats that I decided to make my own Pinoy-ified beer float at home. But before I get to my own concoction, let's take a look at what went down at the L.A. Beer Float Showdown II.

Askinosie Chocolate Giveaway Winner!

Congratulations to Mia, who won my giveaway for TWO Davao Chocolate bars courstesy of Askinosie Chocolate. Mia's comment was as follows:

"I love dark chocolate and the sweet-salty combination of fleur de sel and chocolate. I would eat this straight up, one square a day."

Out of 99 comments, Mia's comment was randomly chosen using the handy dandy Random Number Generator.

Again, congrats to Mia. You will be receiving a 77% Davao Dark Chocolate bar, and a Davao Dark Milk Chocolate bar with Fleur de Sel.

Enjoy!

Chocolate Sourced from the Philippines... And a Giveaway!

After my recent forays into Filipino chocolate tablea, I assumed that the tablea were the only source of Filipino-grown cacao that I could easily get my hands on. And while tablea are wonderful for making hot chocolate, champorado, and tsokolate ice cream, the powdery discs themselves aren't exactly something on which one can nibble for a quick chocolate fix.

Luckily for me, however, the Burnt Lumpia Worldwide Headquarters recently received three chocolate bars from the fine folks at Askinosie Chocolate--a small batch chocolate manufacturer based in Springfield, Missouri.

One of the many things that sets Askinosie apart from other artisan chocolate makers is that Askinosie sources 100% of its cacao beans directly from the farmers. All of their chocolate bars are made from authentic, traceable, single origin beans sourced in Mexico, Ecuador, and yup, the Philippines! In fact, Askinosie is the first chocolate maker to export cocoa beans from the Philippines in almost 25 years. In addition, Askinosie also pays its farmers above Fair Trade prices, as well as profit shares net 10% with its farmers.

"That's all fine and dandy," you might be saying, "but how does the chocolate taste?!!"

Well, the Askinosie chocolate I received was made from cacao beans grown in the Davao region of the Philippines. Among the three different chocolate bars was the 77% Davao Dark Chocolate bar, the Davao Dark Milk Chocolate bar with Fleur de Sel, and the Davao White Chocolate bar. And like all Askinosie chocolate bars, a picture of the local lead farmer is emblazoned on the Davao chocolate bar labels, as well as the bean origin, variety, and date the chocolate bar was made.