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Adobong-Sitaw

How to Make Adobong Sitaw

 I had a burning craving for asim [ah-sim], for sourness. This is how I am when I am distracted and a million thoughts race through my head. I long for the familiar, for the comforting taste of asim. After all, I am Filipino. It is in my nature to crave something maasim, to have a taste for…

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Skyflakes

Skyflakes

 Fifty eight minutes to drive twenty six miles. The map on my phone that traced the route home glowed with reprehensible redness.  I spend practically a tenth of my day, Mondays through Fridays, on my car driving to and from work. That’s a tenth of my day I could spend reading a book, making dinner,…

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Honey-Walnut-Bread

How to Make Honey Walnut Bread

 California poppies. Purple lupines and yellow tarweeds. Those wildflowers that look like little sunflowers whose name escapes me. An image of the East Bay hills covered in a thick blanket of wildflowers came to mind when I tasted the honey. Wildflowers swaying with the wind, dancing gracefully on a steep hillside. Honey bees abuzz around…

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Shepherds Pie

How to Make Shepherd’s Pie

 The dirt was as dark as dark chocolate. It crumbled effortlessly in my hand. It smelled wonderful. Fresh. It teemed of life. All good signs the soil was healthy. I planted my left arm onto the ground to support my back while I knelt on both knees. I leaned forward. I could feel the dampness…

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Tag-Sibol

Tag-sibol

 The knob of butter bubbled quietly in the hot skillet. I lifted the skillet and swirled it around until the butter covered it completely. With the dull edge of a knife I brushed off the thin slices of onions from the cutting board into the pan. They instantly hissed in the heat giving off a…

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Chicken-Sopas

How to Make Chicken Sopas

 An Ed Sheeran song was stuck in my head. It was playing on the radio while Dennis drove me to the airport. The midnight flight from San Francisco to Taipei was on time. In Taipei, I would have to wait nearly three hours for my connection to Manila. I hardly had enough rest because of…

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Nilaga

How to Make Pork Ribs Nilaga

 A montage of old, black and white photographs of immigrant families arriving on Ellis Island is playing on the screen. I’m sitting in the Paramount Theater in downtown Oakland on a Wednesday morning in September. The theater is packed. I’m one of the nine hundred fifty one immigrants from ninety one countries taking the Oath…

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Chicken-Pastel

How to Make Chicken Pastel

 The dirt underneath my feet was damp. The roof of the hen house was damp. The table where I left the trowel was damp. It was the first time after a long time the garden had a good soak, a much needed soak. It started to rain the night before while we were asleep. It…

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Dinuguan-Puto

How to Make Puto (Steamed Rice Cake)

 Am I the only one who thinks merienda [mehr-yen-dah] is terribly underappreciated? It is a meal often missed like almusal, or breakfast on rushed mornings. Merienda is often overlooked. We obsessively prepare for and plan around tanghalian, [tang-ha-lee-ahn] or lunch, and hapunan, [ha-poo-nahn] or supper but more often than not we forget about the meal…

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Happiest Day

 The sun peered through the limbs of our old oak tree casting a mosaic-like shadow on the ground. Dennis stood under it in his pressed navy blue suit and green tie I picked out for him. Tears welled up in my eyes as I walked along the carved path strewn with purple petals. My mother walked beside me, our arms twisted together. The violin, the viola, and the cello played a love song about kaleidoscopes, about wanderers and voyagers. An old friend sang our song then a new one told our story. I couldn’t believe it was happening. I was worried I would start to cry before I could start…

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Five Years

 I found a letter in my inbox the other day from someone in Melbourne, Australia who had just discovered my blog. “I love your blog,” Maria wrote. “It’s homey, practical, intelligent and still very Filipino. It’s writing like this that can take Filipino cuisine into the mainstream, which sadly it isn’t yet in Australia.” Those are big shoes to fill, I thought. She apologized for sounding too patronizing, which, of course, I didn’t mind. Hers is the kind of letter I am always thrilled to receive. I always get so excited to hear from people who get it, who get what the blog is about. She told me she made…

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Barquillos

Barquillos

 When I was little, the old Magnolia Ice Cream House along Aurora Boulevard was, without a doubt, the happiest place on earth. No other place to my mind came close. The ice cream shop, which sat on a sprawling, green lawn next door to a concrete building that housed the plant where the ice cream…

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Garlic

The Scent of Garlic

 I could smell garlic in my breath, which I didn’t mind. When you’re ten years old you don’t obsess about such things. Besides, I felt like I was on top of the world, on the front seat of a jeepney flying at full speed with the cold wind against my face and the taste of…

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Calamansi-Bar

How to Make Skillet Calamansi Bars

 I could hear nothing but the clinking of the spoon against the glass. The sound filled the kitchen as much as the heat of the afternoon did. A strength-sapping kind of heat. I stirred in a spoonful of sugar then added cubes of ice. The clinking continued. Spoon against the ice. Ice against the glass.…

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The Ritual of Cooking Rice

 The quiet click of the rice cooker is music to my ears. It is unassuming, almost unnoticeable unless, of course, you wait for the flip of the switch with steadfast anticipation, like I always do. The click heralds good news. It means the rice is ready. The meal can now commence. The meal is now complete. I’ve owned two rice cookers in my adult life. My first was a welcome gift I received when I moved to California, a hand-me-down from one of the older graduate students in the university. It was sadly short-lived; it lasted only a few months before it stopped working. My second still sits on my…

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