kare kare – Page 3 – Jellybeans in the City

Happy lunch at Recipes, Tomas Morato

One particularly busy Wednesday, my officemates and I had a hankering to eat out. The desire to leave the office for an hour with good food and good friends was so strong that I decided to donate my packed lunch (which was supposed to help me save on lunch money) to someone else.

Realizing that the restaurant we initially intended to eat in is closed, and luckily spying the resto right across the street which just happen to be Recipes, we decided to eat there instead.

Situated in a converted house along Scout Gandia in the foodie-friendly Tomas Morato area, this relatively newly opened Recipes branch (opened just in September last year) boasts of bright and airy interiors in a dining area that can seat around 40 people, and accented by tastefully placed posters of its signature dishes.

For lunch, we ordered a combination of old favorites and new discoveries, such as:

Gising-gising (Php210). Chopped Baguio beans with ground pork in a (thankfully!) mildly spicy coconut milk sauce.

Crispy Tilapia (Php240). Crispy fillet strips served with a sweet and spicy sauce.

Regular Kare-Kare (Php435). Classic dish of stewed ox tail and ox tripe with vegetables and the restaurant’s own special peanut sauce, served with a side of bagoong (shrimp paste).

General’s Chicken (Php240). Sweet and spicy sauce-covered pieces of crispy thigh fillet chunks with eggplant slices.

Ginataang Kalabasa at Sitaw with Lechon (Php270). Kalabasa (squash) and sitaw (string beans) sauteed in coconut milk and topped with lechong kawali (crispy roasted pork belly).

The flavors of these dishes went very well together. I originally intended to just eat half a cup of rice but I ended up finishing it off. The service staff were friendly and accommodating, quick to refill our water, take away the used dishes and even took our picture.

Lunch was extra-happy with all the good food and good company and I look forward to having more happy lunches here.

This branch of Recipes is located at 86 Sct. Gandia, Barangay Laging Handa, Quezon City. It is open Sundays to Thursdays from 11am to 9pm and Fridays to Saturdays from 11am to 10pm. For inquiries and reservations, call +63 2 6210225 and recipessctgandia@gmail.com.

Other branches of Recipes are located at:

Level 1, Phase 2, UP Town Center, Katipunan Avenue, Diliman, Quezon City (Tel: +63 2 7539163)
4th Floor, Newport Mall, Resorts World Manila, 100 Andrews Avenue, Pasay City (Tel: +63 2 8221547)
5th Level, Shangri-La Plaza EDSA corner Shaw Blvd., Mandaluyong City (Tel: +63 2 6374050)
2nd Level Midtown Wing, Robinsons Place Manila, Ermita, Manila (Tel: +63 2 5671912)
2nd Level Garden Restaurants, TriNoma, EDSA cor. North Avenue, Quezon City (Tel: +63 2 9013686)
2nd Level Corte de Las Palmas, Alabang Town Center, Muntinlupa City (Tel: +63 2 7722216)
2nd Level, Greenbelt 3, Ayala Center, Makati City (Tel: +63 2 7280920)

Recipe: My Mom’s Kare-Kare

Most Pinoys are fiercely loyal to their mom’s adobo. Not me, though. I can appreciate, even like, versions of adobo other than the one I grew up with.

My mom’s signature dish that remains unmatched in my opinion is her kare kare. Oh, yes! Here is where my loyalties unequivocally lie.

The irony is that when I was a kid, I didn’t even like kare kare. I found the idea of eating parts of animals other than the meat and skin unthinkable (and you should see the ingredients while they were still uncooked!). I also found the orange sauce weird, used as I was then to the brown hued sauces of adobo and mechado and the lightly-tinted broths of nilaga or tinola.

Then the time came, right around high school, when my palate began to mature and I started to develop a taste for the unusual, that I decided to give this dish a try.

Ooh, those bits of meat and cow innards so tender they melt in your mouth! That bright orange peanutty sauce that can already be considered a viand even if just accompanied by veggies (sarsa pa lang ulam na)! Put those together in a heaping spoon with steaming white rice and my mom’s home-made bagoong (shrimp paste) and I’m in heaven.

I recently made my mom give me this recipe (she had long ago given up trying to teach me to cook the more traditional or effort-laden dishes) by saying that her granddaughter, #ExhibitA, should start learning how to make it by now.

Ingredients:

1 kilo beef cheeks
1/2 kilo beef tripe and intestines
1/4 kilo ground peanuts (Note: you can substitute this with peanut butter but try to find one that’s sugarless)
2 tbsp flour
achuete (annato) seeds
3-5 cloves of garlic, minced
2 small onions, chopped
1 small bunch of pechay (Chinese cabbage)
1 small bunch of sitao (string beans), cut into 2-inch slices
4 eggplants, sliced
1 small puso ng saging (banana flower bud), sliced
salt and pepper

Procedure:

Clean and boil the beef cheeks, tripe and intestines separately for 15 minutes in a pressure cooker. Chill overnight in the refrigerator and scoop out the fat that forms on top.
In a small pan, lightly toast the flour, then remove from heat.
In a casserole, saute garlic and onion, then add meat, tripe and intestines. Add a bit of the water used to boil the meat. Add the toasted flour and crushed nuts, then stir the mixture.
Add in the banana flower, string beans, and egg plant.
Soak the annato seeds in hot water. Strain and add to the stew.
Stir the mixture until thickened to your desired consistency.
Add the Chinese cabbage and season to taste.

Serve hot with freshly cooked white rice and bagoong.

This recipe serves 6 at 570 calories per serving. That’s quite a lot but you don’t get to eat this everyday anyway.

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Got a taste of Bicolandia at Gata, Tomas Morato

Bicolano cuisine is characterized by spiciness and the use of gata (coconut cream): the spiciness gives the dishes a certain excitement while the gata gives them a distinct richness.

I’m not much of a Bicolano food fan myself (but I’m willing to give almost anything a try) so during lunch with my officemates, I found myself trying out a newly opened restaurant along Mother Ignacia Street – Gata: Flavors of Bicolandia, Atbp.

The resto’s interiors have a bright and airy feel; its walls are even adorned by a large colorful mural as well as paintings that depict food and food preparation.

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For our lunch, we ordered some of Bicol’s most popular dishes:

The ever-present Laing (Php235) made of dried gabi leaves sourced directly from Bicol
Adobong Bicolano Liempo (Php250), Bicol’s traditional way of cooking adobo characterized by the lack of sauce
Piniritong Manok ni Lola (Php230), homestyle fried chicken, cooked like how grandma does it 🙂

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The flavors are familiar and comforting but the serving portions are on the small side. That said, my dining experience here certainly merits another visit.

Update: I recently attended a Zomato Foodie Meetup held here. Together with fellow Zomato foodies, I was able to taste more of Gata’s signature Bicolano dishes such as:

Sinantol with Kamote Chips (Php190). Great for vegetarians, this dish pairs deep-fried kamote (sweet potato) chips with the tangy sinantol which consist of finely grated santol rind cooked in coconut milk.
Laing Bites with Gata Sauce (Php180). Another all-veggie dish, this features laing wrapped in deep-fried wonton and served with a homemade gata sauce.
Cocido na Buong Lapu-Lapu (Php495). Bicol’s version of Sinigang, it is less sour but still has a hearty broth.
Kare-Kareng Bagnet (Php330). At last I was able to taste this dish made of sizeable slices of pork belly served with a gata-infused kare-kare sauce.
Kinunot na Pagi (Php295). Flakes of stingray meat simmered in gata, quite a new foodie adventure for me! (Trivia: There’s a joke that when a Bicolano takes some gata to the beach, the sharks and stingrays get the hell outta the way!)
Halo-Halo Turon with Ice Cream (Php110). Classic halo-halo ingredients in lumpia wrapper then deep-fried and served with vanilla ice cream.

Gata: Flavors of Bicolandia, Atbp is located at Unit 3, The Grandia Place, Mother Ignacia Avenue, South Triangle, Quezon City. It is open everyday from 11.30am to 3pm and 4pm to 10pm. For reservations, call +63 995 4627251.

Disclosure: Together with other Zomato foodies, I was invited to attend a foodie meet-up held in this restaurant. Food items specified here were served to allow us to sample the fare and were not paid for by the attendees, including myself.

All-time Pinoy Favorites at Cabalen, Ayala Malls Feliz

What is the appeal of Filipino restaurants? We normally get to taste their offerings via our own lutong-bahay or during fiestas, anyway.

This is a thought I recently pondered as Hubby and I decided to venture out to the newly-finished Ayala Malls Feliz in Marikina for a pre-New Year wandering and we chanced upon a now-open branch of Cabalen. The resto’s regular buffet of classic Filipino dishes is quite a good deal at only Php298 (service charge not included).

Among the flavors we sampled are:

Prichon Wraps. Lechon bits wrapped with carrot, cucumber and green onion strips in tortilla with 3 choices of sauce (hoisin, garlic and lechon sauce).
Crispy Kangkong
Fresh Lumpia (vegetable rolls with a peanut and garlic sauce)
Pancit Puti. White noodles sauteed with meat and veggies and simmered in flavorful chicken stock.
Kare Kare. A stew made of oxtail, beef offal or tripe with a thick sabory peanut sauce.
Bico (sweet rice cake or kakanin with coconut milk) and Ginataang Mais (corn kernels in glutinous rice with coconut milk) for dessert.

We were able to get our fill of these dishes except for the Kare Kare which ran out of meat and was not refilled in time.

Now back to the question on the appeal of eating Filipino dishes when dining out: for me, it brings back childhood memories of what my mom used to make (particularly ginataang mais for merienda in the afternoon) or a way to enjoy childhood favorites without the hassle (the making of some Filipino delicacies are a bit labor-intensive).

Cabalen, in particular, has the added appeal of being a buffet restaurant. If you want to treat your balikbayan relatives to the flavors they have been missing, dining at Cabalen will allow them to load up on great flavors and great family memories.

This Cabalen branch is located at Level 2, Ayala Malls Feliz, Amang Rodriguez cor. J.P. Rizal, Brgy. Dela Paz, Pasig City.