The bold, distinct scent and taste of bagoong is not for the timid, too. Bagoong [bah-goh-ohng], for the uninitiated, is tiny shrimp, fish or other shellfish mashed with salt and then allowed to ferment until it becomes an intensely pungent but flavorful paste. The late food writer Doreen Fernandez wrote about bagoong from the island of Negros Occidental where shrimp that are too small to sell in the markets are mashed in the boats on the shore, with the boatmen mashing them with their bare feet and their paddles.

Bagoong alamang is the paste made from shrimp while bagoong isda is salted and fermented fish like anchovy and round scad. Bagoong Balayan is a version of bagoong isda that originated from Balayan, a town in the province of Batangas, south of Manila. It isn’t a thick paste like most bagoong but it is a smooth liquid without the faintest trace of the once-spiny fish bones that have all melted through fermentation. Whole fish grilled over hot coals accompanied with steamed sweet potato sprouts — talbos ng kamote — is impeccable with bagoong Balayan and a squeeze of calamansi juice.

Sour green mangoes are inconceivable without bagoong alamang and so is kare-kare, the stew of oxtail and vegetables flavored with toasted peanuts and thickened with pounded rice. When I eat alone at home and I pine for something simple, steamed rice fluffed with a fork and mixed with bagoong alamang sauteed in garlic, onions, and tomatoes is my go-to meal. But when I crave extravagance, crispy pork belly dressed lavishly in briny bagoong alamang — binagoongan — is the unequivocal choice. The burns on my fingers and arms, not to mention my soiled shirt, are all well worth it.

Binagoongan Recipe, makes 4 servings

1-1/2 lb pork belly, cut lengthwise into 2-inch thick slabs
6 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon salt
canola oil for deep frying and sauteeing
1 small onion, chopped
1 tomato, chopped
1/2 cup bagoong alamang (salted, fermented shrimp paste)
a few Thai chilies (optional)

Place pork belly, 2 cloves of garlic, and salt in a pot and add water, enough to just cover the pork. Bring to a boil and reduce to simmer. Continue to cook until the pork is fork-tender, about an hour.

Drain the pork. Measure 1/2 cup of pork stock and reserve the rest for future use. Pat the pork dry with paper towels and cut into 2-inch pieces.

Fill a wok or a pot with at least 2 inches deep of oil and heat the oil. Deep fry pork in small batches until brown. Fish out with a strainer and place on a platter lined with paper towels.

Heat oil in a pan over medium high heat. Saute onions until fragrant and softened, about 5 minutes. Add the rest of the garlic and saute until lightly browned, about 2 minutes. Add tomatoes and saute until softened, about 5 minutes. Add bagoong alamang, 1/2 cup pork stock, and chilies. Bring to a boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Add pork belly and combine well. Serve warm with steamed rice.

I could just write to tell you about how I’ve been enjoying my mom’s visit. About how I’ve been enjoying coming home every day to her home cooking that I have so longingly missed. Bistek, caldereta, mechado, daing na bangus and all the good stuff. But I wouldn’t be completely honest with you if I left out the part about my worries. I have become my mother when it comes to worrying. We are clearly cut from the same cloth. Worrying is what we do and we do it so well.

I worry about my mother a lot. About her getting older, about her health. About having my own life separate from hers. A heavy cloud of guilt hovers above my head all the time. A feeling of guilt that we’re thousands of miles apart and our mother-and-only-son relationship has been reduced to once-a-week twenty-minute hurried phone calls and once-a-year two-month condensed visits. As much as I enjoy having my mom around, her visits quickly turn into some form of inconvenience. An interruption in my life. Two months is a long time! There, I said it. It drives me crazy that she insists on doing dishes and laundry by hand! That’s what technology is for, I keep on telling her! Two months under one roof is a long time but I don’t think we have any other choice given that we don’t have the luxury of money and time.

I know, I am too foolish to dwell on such insignificant inconveniences. Life is too short to be constantly worried about such little things. There are so many things to be thankful for and I am. I truly am thankful for her good health at seventy five. Her getting along well with Dennis. Her home cooking. Her buko pandan that always hits the spot.

Buko Pandan Recipe, makes 6 to 8 servings

2 3-ounce packages Alsa green, unflavored gulaman
4 pandan leaves, washed and tied into a simple knot
1 12-ounce jar nata de coco, drained
1 16-ounce bag frozen, shredded young coconut, thawed and drained
1/2 cup Nestlé cream
1/3 cup condensed milk

Prepare gulaman according to package instructions. Dissolve gulaman in a pot of water, add pandan leaves, and bring to a boil while stirring constantly. Remove pandan leaves and pour gulaman into two 8×8-inch glass baking pans. Once gulaman has set, cut into 1/2-inch cubes.

Combine gulaman, nata de coco, young coconut, cream, and condensed milk in a large bowl and mix well. Serve chilled.

I unplugged everything. From my Mac to my phone. No emails. No tweets. No instagrams. No foolish status updates.

With a bowl of calamansi sorbet in my hand, I sank into my favorite chair — a comfortable, indigo reading chair with handsome mid-century lines — across the room from a large sun-soaked window. I stretched out my legs against the heavily scratched floor and took a long, deep breath. I sat quietly while I listened to Philip Glass. Ever haunting Philip Glass. A rapid cascade of notes from a solitary piano serenaded me. Sad. But beautifully sad.

I carved a spoonful of the sorbet from the white bowl and admired the flecks of green zest strewn throughout. I took a deep whiff and reveled in the fragrant scent of calamansi. A scent like no other. A scent of summers past. Heat swimming around me. Sweat on my forehead. On my temples brushed off with the back of my hand.

I savored the spoonful. The tang. The sweetness. These beguiling, little limes never fail to refresh. Calamansi has this remarkable effect on me. When I was little, my mom used to fix me a glass of freshly squeezed juice every morning. She sweetened it with sugar and chilled it with ice cubes that clinked every time she stirred the juice with a spoon. A swig after a cool shower on a hot summer day always left me refreshed. Reinvigorated. Calamansi repairs and restores. Like an afternoon with Philip Glass. Like a good book. Like a quiet, solitary walk. Pico Iyer couldn’t have written it more beautifully in his New York Times piece,

Nothing makes me feel better — calmer, clearer and happier — than being in one place, absorbed in a book, a conversation, a piece of music. It’s actually something deeper than mere happiness: it’s joy, which the monk David Steindl-Rast describes as “that kind of happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens.”

A cello joined the lonely piano and it cried mellifluously. I sat quietly in my chair as I happily took everything in. The strings and the piano. The calamansi sorbet. The joy of quiet.

Calamansi Sorbet Recipe
Recipe based on David Lebovitz’s Lemon Sorbet Recipe from his Perfect Scoop, makes about 3 cups

2 cups water
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons calamansi zest
1/2 cup freshly squeezed calamansi juice (from about 24 calamansi limes)

In a medium, nonreactive saucepan, mix 1/2 cup of the water and the sugar. Add zest into the saucepan. Heat, stirring frequently, until the sugar is completely dissolved. Remove from the heat and add the remaining 1-1/2 cup water, then chill thoroughly in the refrigerator.

Stir the calamansi juice into the sugar syrup, then freeze the mixture in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

To make lemon sorbet, Lebovitz uses 2-1/2 cups water, a cup of sugar, zest from two lemons, and a cup of lemon juice.

How to Make Ice Cream Using Freezer Bags

In place of an ice cream maker, use freezer bags to make your ice cream or sorbet. Harold Mcgee shares an easy way to make ice cream using freezer bags in this Chow video.

Make a brine with 3 quarts water and 1 pound salt, divide it between two 1-gallon freezer bags, and store bags flat in freezer. To make ice cream or sorbet, sandwich the bag of mix between brine bags, enclosing stack in towels.

The clouds had cleared at last and the long spell of rain had ended. At least, I hoped it had. The past weeks had been riddled with on and off showers stitched together by uninspiring, gray days. The rain had thankfully given our garden a good soak but it’s time for it to go. The stormy weather had kept us from working on the girls’ coop. Of course, being the perennial worrier that I am, I dwelled on thoughts that we may have bitten off more than we can chew when we decided to build the chicken coop ourselves. But, truth is, the coop is coming along just fine. Slowly but surely. Thanks to Dennis for all of his hard work.

I held the strainer firmly on top of the bowl of powdered sugar and, one by one, I squeezed the juice out of the calamansi limes I just picked from our tree. The fragrant scent of citrus wafted to my nose. I always get a kick out of cooking with calamansi grown in our garden. I feel so fortunate I can grow it here. My mom would be particularly impressed that our tree this year is heavy with fruit. Yes, she is visiting very, very soon. She flies in the night before Easter and will be spending the next several weeks with us. We are so excited! There’ll be plenty of time for catching up beyond hurried phone calls. Plenty of time for cooking and eating, of course.

I stirred in the juice with a spatula until the glaze was smooth and thick then drizzled it on the scones in zigzagging strokes. I pinched a small piece off one of them to have a taste. The scone was surprisingly light and the calamansi glaze was perfect. Sweet and tart. My mom would love these, I thought.

I poured myself a cup of coffee to enjoy it with the morning’s treat. And as my cup and saucer clinked on the kitchen counter, Stanford came trotting toward me. So much for the sun, I guess. It’s time for scones.

Honey Calamansi Scones Recipe
Recipe adapted from Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Food, makes 8 servings

For the scones

2 cups all-purpose flour
2-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup honey
1-1/3 cup cream
1 teaspoon grated calamansi zest
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1-1/2 tablespoons sugar

For the calamansi glaze

3/4 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons calamansi juice

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Mix flour, baking powder, salt in a large bowl. Stir in honey, cream, and calamansi zest. Mix until the dough just starts to come together. It will be sticky. Turn it out onto a floured surface and knead briefly, just enough to bring the dough completely together. Add more flour if the dough is too sticky. Pat it into an 8-inch circle. Brush with melted butter and sprinkle with sugar.

Cut the circle into 8 wedges and place the wedges 1 inch apart on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or a silicone liner. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until golden brown.

Meanwhile, place the powdered sugar in a small bowl. Pour and stir in the calamansi juice until the glaze is smooth. Adjust the sugar or juice until the glaze is thick but pourable.

Drizzle over the scones once they are ready and serve warm.

And again, many thanks to all of you for following Jun-blog.   I honestly cannot thank you enough and I hope you’ll keep on coming back for more stories and recipes week after week.

I also hope you’ll join me in celebrating with a bowl of vanilla ice cream and minatamis na monggo — sweetened red mung beans.  One of the simplest desserts my mom taught me is a sweet stew of fruits and beans.  She simmers fruits like saba bananas and beans like monggo in a simple stew of sugar and water with a pinch of salt. She simmers them until they are tender but not overly soft.

Pair the sweetened beans with vanilla ice cream for an unexpectedly delicious treat. Fitting for an unexpectedly sweet recognition.

Sweetened Adzuki or Red Mung Beans Recipe, makes about 2 cups

1 cup adzuki or red mung beans
water
3/4 cup sugar
pinch of salt

Pick over the beans and discard dried and discolored ones. Soak beans in three cups of water or three times as much water as beans. Leave the beans soaked overnight and drain them the following day.

In a heavy saucepan, add the soaked beans, water, and sugar. Use three cups of water for every cup of dry beans. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer, covered, until tender, about 45 minutes to an hour. Store in glass jars.

When I was little I wasn’t particularly fond of cheese.  I ate it but didn’t crave it. I never turned down rice cakes topped with slices of queso de bola or the soft and creamy kesong puti, the Filipino queso fresco made with carabao’s milk, but I never really cared for the cheese itself. I think it’s the tartness of kesong puti that I didn’t fancy. It was too sour for my palate that was heavily skewed toward sugar and salt.

I also wasn’t a big fan of cheddar. The kind that came processed and wrapped in a foil inside a box — the only kind I grew up with! I wasn’t fond of cheese pimiento, too. My mom even bribed me with cheese sandwiches made with crustless white bread decked out with pastel pink and green swirls, which I found pretty to look at but sadly not at all appetizing. I’d rather have my oven-fresh pan de sal slathered with butter and sugar. Or with Lily’s peanut butter, if you twist my arm.

There was, however, one exception to my cheese rule: queso ice cream.

Cheddar cheese ice cream on a hot summer day is pure, simple joy. Heck, even if it is cold and miserable outside I wouldn’t mind getting lost in the salty bits of cheese strewn all over. Queso ice cream makes me happy. The kind of happiness that’s salty and sweet.

I love it when cheese ice cream is piled up high with scoops of very purple ube on top of a crunchy sugar cone. Or when it is sandwiched between hot, freshly baked pan de sal. I never forget to tear a piece of bread to try to soak in every ounce of precious melted ice cream on my plate.

¿Qué hora es? Anong oras na? Is it half past three yet?

My homemade queso ice cream marks my foray into ice cream making at home. After three dozen eggs and a little help from a friend, a very talented Filipino pastry chef to boot, I finally got the flavor and texture right. It was so good that I am now very worried that I just unknowingly opened an entirely new Pandora’s Box.

I see purple ice cream in my future.

Cheddar Cheese Ice Cream Recipe
Recipe based on David Lebovitz’s Goat Cheese Ice Cream Recipe from his Perfect Scoop, makes about 3 cups

1-1/2 cups whole milk
2/3 cup sugar
6 large egg yolks
8 ounces mild cheddar cheese

Warm the milk and sugar in a medium saucepan over medium heat. While the milk is warming, grate the cheddar cheese into a medium bowl.

Whisk together the egg yolks in a separate medium bowl. Slowly pour the warm mixture into the egg yolks, whisking constantly, then scrape the warmed egg yolks back into the saucepan.

Stir the mixture constantly over medium to low heat with a heatproof spatula, scraping the bottom as you stir, until the mixture thickens and coats the spatula. Pour the custard through a strainer into a bowl. Add 3/4 of the grated cheese into the custard and stir until the cheese is melted and mixture is smooth.

Chill the mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator. Keep the remaining grated cheese cool in the refrigerator, too.

Once the mixture is chilled, fold the remaining grated cheese into the mixture then freeze it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Serve cheese ice cream with peanut brittle.

Peanut Brittle Recipe
Recipe from Elisabeth Prueitt and Chad Robertson’s Tartine

3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
1/4 cup water
1/3 cup light or dark corn syrup
3/4 teaspoon salt
1-1/2 cups raw peanuts
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil and oil lightly, or line with a nonstick liner.

In a heavy, deep saucepan, combine the sugar, water, corn syrup, and salt over low heat. Stir with a wooden spoon until the sugar dissolves. Raise the heat to high, bring to a boil, and cook without stirring until the mixture registers 264 degrees F on a thermometer. This will take 5 to 8 minutes. Immediately add the peanuts to the syrup and stir constantly until the mixture registers 310 degrees F on the thermometer.

Remove from the heat and stir in the butter and vanilla until incorporated. Then add the baking soda and stir quickly, making sure you incorporate the baking soda evenly throughout the mixture. Pour the mixture onto the prepared baking sheet, spreading it with the back of an oiled spoon or offset spatula. Let cool just until you can handle it (it helps if you wear rubber gloves), and then pull from sides until the brittle has a shiny, “lacy” appearance. This incorporates air bubbles into the candy, making it more crisp. Let the candy cool completely.

Break the brittle into pieces. They will keep in an airtight container in a cool, dry place for up to 2 weeks.

Learn the alphabet of Filipino food through our glossary. So much is lost in translation, I know, but I hope this glossary will help those unfamiliar with Filipino food become more informed.

A is for Achuete
B is for Barako Coffee
C is for Camarón
D is for Dinuguan
E is for Ensaimada
F is for Fish Balls
G is for Gata
H is for Himagas
I is for Itlog na Maalat
J is for Jackfruit
K is for Kamayan
L is for Longganisa
M is for Mani
N is for Noche Buena
O is for Omelet
P is for Pancit Palabok
Q is for Queso