This is probably what one would call a “retro” drink, or to put it another way, a vintage beverage. That’s because with all the new ingredients and modern gadgets we now have, this drink seems somehow to belong to another era.
After I was able to cook Señor Anastacio de Alba’s recipe for croquetas de bacalao (see Inquirer Lifestyle, March 28), I felt challenged to try his recipe for fabada, which his son Miguel Angel demonstrated at the Maya Kitchen Culinary Center a few weeks ago. Challenge is the word because it takes a lot of time and patience to cook this Spanish bean stew.
He has lived in the Philippines longer than he has lived in Spain. For 60 years, Anastacio de Alba, originally from the medieval city of Avila, has been cooking Spanish food for Filipinos.
Some years ago, I took lessons at the Mandarin Oriental Bangkok’s cooking school.
As I write this, the mouthwatering aroma of slowly cooking meat is wafting from my kitchen. It’s the beef adobo recipe of Glenda Barretto—chef, restaurateur, cookbook author and the culinary genius behind Via Mare Restaurant.
I never imagined I would see it happen—a cookbook which I can’t hold, whose pages I can’t turn, and which weighs practically nothing. And yet it accompanies me everywhere.
Today being Valentine’s Day, love seems to be permeating the atmosphere. As a consequence, gifts as an expression of love are the order of the day. Probably the most popular Valentine’s Day gifts are flowers and chocolates.
One day at a time. That’s the motto Joy Asuncion Jopson Kintanar has learned to live by. After all the turbulence of the past, it’s a philosophy that serves her well now that she’s in her senior years. Widowed twice, she was once married to the martyred activist Ed Jopson, and later to Rolly Kintanar, also an activist-leader who was likewise killed by gunshot.
Perhaps this is what some would jokingly call sosyal na tilapia, or tilapia for society’s upper crust. Cut into fillets, stuffed with olive tapenade and served on a pool of tomato sauce that’s been infused with wine and saffron, it’s a far, far cry from inihaw na tilapia or some such dish.
In her television shows “Fresh,” “Sugar” and most recently “Bake,” Canadian chef Anna Olson demonstrates how to make both simple and complex dishes: cinnamon buns, for instance, or French meringue and the Canadian holiday beef pie called tourtiere.
When Ferdinand Magellan set out on his voyage in search of the fabled Spice Islands, he should perhaps have landed in Indonesia. For in this archipelago of 17,508 islands, spices and herbs grow abundantly.
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