BIKO

Yield:   8 - 10 servings
Time:  50 minutes

Equipment:

Carajay

Deep pan 

Measuring cups and spoons

Wooden spoon

Square baking pan

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups Malagkit rice

2 1/2 cups coconut milk or 1 tetra pack coconut cream mixed with 1 1/2 cups water

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup coconut cream

1 teaspoon toasted then crushed anise seeds (optional)

1 cup coconut cream for latik. (optional)

Procedure:

• Wash and drain the Malagkit rice.
• Place Malagkit rice in the deep pan and add the coconut milk and the salt.
• Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until rice is done.
• In a carajay, combine the brown sugar and the coconut cream. Cook while stirring constantly until thick. 
• Add crushed anise seeds if preferred. (optional) 
• Add the cook Malagkit rice to the coconut and sugar mixture and stil until well-combined. 
• Spread the cooked biko in the square pan. Top with latik.**

** To make latik: in a small pan or carajay, cook 1 cup coconut cream over low fire stirring constantly until small solid particles form and separate from the oil. Continue stirring until the latik becomes crispy and golden brown. Do not burn. Remove from heat and strain. Spread the latik on top of the biko and slice into squares.

Tip:  Refrigerate the biko for about thirty minutes for easier slicing. Rub the knife with oil or butter to avoid the biko from sticking to the knife.

KUTSINTA

Yield:  2 dozen small pices
Time:  20 -25 minutes

Equipments:

Steamer

Measuring cups and spoons

Mixing bowl

Muffin pans

Wooden spoon

Ingredients:

1 3/4 cups water

2/3 cup brown sugar

1 cup all purpose flour

1 teaspoon lihia (lye)*

Procedure:

• Prepare and preheat steamer.
• Combine water, brown sugar, all purpose flour and lihia in a mixing bowl.
• Mix until sugar is dissolved and there are no more lumps.
• Pour mixture into small muffin pans. Fill each muffin cup full.
• Carefully put the pans in the preheated steamer and steam for about 15 to 20 minutes or until set.
• Remove from steamer and cool slightly.
• Unmold and serve with freshly grated coconut.

* Lihia (lye) can be bought in the public market from vendors who sells food extracts.

MY KITCHEN JOURNEY

I have a sweet tooth and I love chocolates. I am a self-confessed coffee, ice cream and chocolate addict. I love and eat with much gusto everything Filipino especially our native delicacies. We have a big orchard and two big gardens back then so we always have a steady supply of fresh fruits and vegetables. My grandmother would preserve the extra fruits and sell the extra veggies to our neighbors. sometimes my grandparents would give it away for free.


I love fruits and my love for it would always drew the ire of my grandfather. I don't have the patience to wait for the harvest time. I would always sneak and climb every fruit bearing tree in our backyard namely, santol, dalandan, avocado, jackfruit, balimbing (starfruit) kaimito, guava, kalamansi, papaya, banana, lanzones, tambis (in our local dialect)and yes, even the thorny kalamansi tree( ours had very big, orange colored fruits when ripe). I was given my own santol tree when my lolo saw me climb the big santol tree beside our house which had a bee colony at the time. I've never seen my lolo so terrified and mad at me at the same time. So he gave me the Santol tree beside the creek for my disposal. I am allowed to climb and pick all the santol i want anytime as long as i will not climb again at the big santol tree beside the house. I like to pick the fruit there because the whole santol fruit was very sweet. My lola would make preserved santol . She would sometimes make salted camias and santol candies. They were so delicious.


My grandmother on my father side was a great cook and an expert in making home-made native delicacies: suman, puto, mamon, bibingka, ube-haleya, arasip, moron, binagol, sagmani, turon, banana cue, kamote cue and a whole lot more. Up to now, the taste of her home-made bibingka lingers in my memory and I haven't tasted any that taste better than the one that my lola served. She made the best tasting pickle I've ever tasted and also the best dulce de leche ever.


Lola, as i fondly call her, also made the best tsokolate. Our ancestral home was surrounded with cacao trees. I would always look forward to the day my lola would toast the dried cacao beans in a big carajay. I would sneak and scoop some toasted cacao beans and eat them like peanuts. How i love its creamy-nutty-bitter taste melt in my mouth. I would wait patiently beside my lola and watch her pound the toasted cacao beans with her mortar and pestle and then tranfer them to a wooden board to be rolled with a big shell until the beans turned into a very fine- -creamy-shiny paste. How I love to scoop some of the cocoa paste we called tablea with my bare hands and ate it with much gusto like a peanut butter. I love the bitter taste of the freshly ground cacao beans. My lola would laboriously roll the paste into small balls while it is still warm and air dry to let the "tablea" harden. The word "refrigerator" was still very alien to us during those days. I couldn't wait for my lola to finish cooking the tsokolate while she let me beat the tsokolate with her famous batirol to a very creamy consistency. I like my tsokolate bitter-sweet. I can finish three big cups of tsokolate anytime.


While the cacao were grown in our backyard, my lolo had coffee planted under the coconut trees in our farm. I love to tag along with my grandfather to the farm during harvest time. I love to pick the tiny red beans and sometimes peel some and put them in my mouth until the sweet taste vanish from the coffee beans. My grandparents would dry them under the sun after removing the skin. When the beans are thoroughly dried (the husk would crack and expose the beans) we would manually remove them. My lola would toast them in a very big carajay until golden brown. When the beans have been cooled, that is the time my lola will grind them in her stone grinder. How I love the smell of freshly ground coffee. We always have boiled barako coffee in a big kettle, so I am able to drink coffee anytime of the day unlike the tsokolate which is usually served mostly on special occasions. It came to a point that I had to stop drinking coffee because I became nervous and had a difficulty sleeping. I would squeeze myself between my lola and lolo during midnight.


When my family moved from San Miguel to Surigao, I missed terribly all the home-made stuff my lola made for us. Unconsciously, I would scour the stores that sell native delicacies for treats I used to eat hoping to find something that tastes like what my lola used to gave me, but failed. As I grew up, I sometimes caught myself feeling sorry for not having the passion to learn from my lola her trade secrets in making those very delicious native delicacies she used to serve us. Up to now, I'm still trying to achieve the flavors I used to have and loved. But I guess, lola's biggest secret was not really in the ingredients but her great love and passion for excellent, home-made, delicious food. Or was it because all the ingredients she used were all home-grown, very fresh and free from pesticides. Maybe that's what made the difference. She also cooked the best tasting "laing" and "ginataang minatamis na bayabas".

My grandfather was a great cook too. Maybe that was why my late father, my late uncle and my auntie were great cooks. My father's specialty was "humba",  "adobo", "kinilaw", "afritada" and "pancit". One of my aunt's specialty is her "pork tenderloin asado" which I like very much while my late uncle's favorite dish was "escabeche" "lechon kawali", "kinilaw", "mechado", barbecue".


As I learn to cook, I learn to develop my own version of "ginataang langka" and "laing". But I like making my own version of the native delicacies my lola used to make hoping to duplicate the taste 
but I miserably failed. Maybe, It is the reason why i kept on experimenting in the kitchen because subconsciously I was hoping to make them the way my lola did.

 sinigang na boneless na bangus

POLVORON

What is Polvoron ? – It is (Arabic: ghurayba) a type of Andalusian shortbread of Levantine origin popular in Spain and Latin America and other ex-Spanish colonies such as the Philippines during Christmas. It is made of flour, sugar, milk, and nuts. They are normally produced from September to January but are now often available year round.**

 

 

In the Philippines, a number of local variants on the traditional polvorón recipe have been made. Well known variants include polvorón with cashew and polvorón with pinipig (beaten young green rice). There's even strawberry, mocha, chocolate, cookies-and-cream, and a whole lot more. 

Chocolate polvorons and chocolate covered polvorons is a product of Filipino’s ingenuity and creativity and love for chocolate and the dessert itself.

chocolate covered polvoron

               









BASIC POLVORON RECIPE

Preparation time:  25 – 30 minutes

Yield:   2 dozen

Ingredients:

2 cups toasted All Purpose Flour

1 1/3 cup powdered full cream

1 cup sugar

1 cup melted butter  or margarine

1 teaspoon vanilla

Procedure:

1.       In a skillet over medium heat, toast all purpose flour until lightly brown in color. Let cool.

2.       In a microwave-safe bowl, melt butter or margarine.

3.       Place toasted flour in a mixing bowl and mix with the sugar and powdered milk.

4.       Mix the melted butter or margarine with the vanilla.

5.       Make a well at the center of the mixed dry ingredients and pour in the butter/vanilla mixture.

6.       Mix well until well-blended.

7.       Mould using round or oval polvoron moulder.

8.      Wrap with clear or colored plastic cellophane or Japanese paper.

             

VARIATIONS:

To make chocolate polvoron:  add 1’2 cup chocolate powder or shredded chocolate to the dry ingredients     before putting in the melted margarine and vanilla mixture.

                                                                                          

To make nutty polvoron:  add ½ cup toasted and finely chopped nuts of your choice and mix it with the dry ingredients before putting in the melted margarine and vanilla mixture.

NOTE:  If you are to coat the polvoron with chocolate, refrigerate the molded polvoron for at least 30 minutes  for it to harden for easy handling (polvoron tends to crumble easily making it hard to handle when coating with chocolate). 

How To Mold Properly:  Press polvoron mixture firmly on a ceramic or glass plate before releasing from the moulder

HOW TO COAT POLVORON IN CHOCOLATE:

Melt 250 grams semi-sweet chocolate or white chocolate with 1 tablespoon Cocoa Butter Substitute (CBS) over low fire in a double boiler. Remove from heat when melted and slightly cool the melted chocolate. Drop the refrigerated moulded polvoron into the melted chocolate. Turn upside down to coat the entire polvoron. Using a dipping tool or a fork lift coated polvoron and tap a little to remove excess chocolate. Let rest on a greaseproof paper and let the chocolate set. Drizzle with more melted chocolate if desired.

HOW TO DIP IN CHOCOLATE:

Hold polvoron and dip half in chocolate or coat one side with melted chocolate.

 

More Advanced:   Decorate with icing flowers or make a cake-like polvoron

my original creation: chocolate coated ube-haleya polvoron, chocolate coated peanut-caramel polvoron and chocolate coated dulce de leche polvoron

**Source: Wikipedia

PICHI-PICHI

PICHI-PICHI is made of grated fresh cassava. It is originally rolled in grated fresh coconut but since grated coconut can spoil easily, we Pinoys came up with a more modern and popular version to prolong its shelf life and  make it more delicious and attractive by rolling it in grated or shredded cheddar cheese and added some flavoring and food colors. Like the puto, it can be flavored in many different ways. Let your imagination go wild. Sky is the limit :)), as i have said, don't be afraid to experiment and create or come up with your own version.

EQUIPMENT:

• Steamer
• Grater
• Measuring cups and spoons
• 2 round pans or muffin pans or puto molders
• Disposable plastic gloves
• Mixing bowls
• Wooden spoon or spatula
• Saucepan
• Strainer

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 cups grated cassava
• 2 cups pandan water**
• 1 1/4 cups sugar 
• green food coloring
• freshly grated coconut

PROCEDURE:

•  Peel and grate cassava to make 2 cups.
• Combine in a bowl the grated cassad cassava and pandan water.
• Add in the sugar and stir well to dissolve. 
• Tint the mixture with green food coloring.
• Divide the mixture and pour into two round pands or pour into individual puto molds or into muffin pans.
• Steam in a preheated steamer for about 45 to 50 minutes if using round pans otherwisw cooking time will be shorted if individual outo mold or muffin pans are used.
• Pichi-pichi is done or cooked when it is set or becomes clear in color.
• Using disposable plastic gloves, scoop a tablespoonful of the cooked mixture while still hot and using 2 tablespoons, shape into a ball. Roll each ball in the freshly grated coconut.

** To make pandan water:  Put 2 1/2 cups of  water and 3-4 pandan leaves in a sauce pan. Boil until the water becomes fragrant and sweet-smelling. Strain and let cool before using. You may opt to just use plain water and just add 1 teaspoon pandan extract to the mixture instead.

VARIATIONS:

• Roll each pichi-pichi in grated cheddar cheese instead of rolling it in grated coconut.
• Add ube extract and tint with violet food coloring to make ube flavored pichi-pichi and roll in grated boiled ube yam.
• Add vanilla extract and tint with yellow food coloring and roll in golden toasted coconut niblets for a nutty taste.
• You may opt to roll the pichi-pichi ball in shredded semi-sweet chocolate or in chocolate sprinkles. 
•  To make your pichi-pichi look more mouth-watering and attractive, place in fluted or paper cups.
• Don't forget to keep your left-over covered and refrigerated to avoid spoilage.