April 20th, 2009 § § permalink
Its summer again, and with the increasing temperature nearing the 40s a sudden rise for cold beverage runs parallel with it. If its not cold beverages, ice cream for sure runs through your mind. I’m very particular about ice cream because its something you have to finish and not get only a portion to find out that you didn’t like how it tasted. (Happened to me more than once.) Aside from the usual gallons offered by local creameries, here is a list of a few of my favorites: DQ Blizzards and Chowking Halo-Halo. (Will try Razon’s next weekend!)
Tucked away in an up & coming mall of Silvercity in Libis, lies a quaint little ice cream shop which offers customizable ice cream. The twist? Its Yoghurt! (healthy!) For the health conscious but still would like to enjoy a frozen treat this is the way to go. Offering fruits for toppings and a few nuts and candies, fruits were the way to go. California Berry anyone?
From the array of choices that were there one could really pick the only ones you wanted in your Yoghurt.
Images on the wall show the different concoctions one can make as well as celebrity customers.
We ordered our yoghurts Medium (because we weren’t sure how it would taste like.) A medium cup + 3 toppings was about P115
I picked, Mangoes, Blueberries, and Almonds on mine, and GF picked Strawberries, Blueberries, and Cherries.
Mine tasted fine. The acidity of the Blueberries would have complimented the sweetness of the mangoes had they been ripe enough. (Yes California Berry, make sure that the fruits you use are ripe!)
But I still missed the sweetness that ice cream had but it was different. It tasted good and I could say I would definitely go back.
GF loved her concoction. I didn’t get to taste hers as I was driving and was pre-occupied in finishing mine! But she says its her new favorite place so I guess it’s that good.
I give it 4 out 5 Chef’s Hat only because the mango was not ripe!
Definitely worth to check out at least once! GF and I will be back soon!
Cheers & Happy Eating
April 7th, 2009 § § permalink
Ok so I just got back from my 3 day spontaneous road trip with Ken Leo and GF. I must admit to gaining a few pounds due to the amount of eating we did. But more so, the quality of food served. (Whoever said that province = vegetables, I now can prove them wrong.) From the minute we touched down what greeted us was a beautiful little suckling pig roasted to perfection over a charcoal pit on a manual rotisserie.
The juicy-ness of the meat of the pig could already be felt just by looking for it. This was a pig slaughtered just for us. It was killed the morning before we arrived and cooked for the whole day just in time for our arrival. The pig or piglet was cooked to perfection. The type of perfection one can only achieve through years of practice and knowledge gained throughout the years. Truly this was a specialty of the house.
As you could see, we could hardly contain ourselves from posing with the pig! We were so excited to eat that we already plopped down the tables and started getting ready for the feast the awaited us.
Even the girls with GF was posing with the pig and getting in on the action!
After a grueling 20 mins. of just looking at the pig, the dinner bell finally sounded. With the sudden on rush towards the table one can’t help but feel excited to taste the roasted pig even if just to see how perfectly well cooked the insides are.
The dinner consisted of a generic mushroom soup for starters, 3 main fares, and a dessert.
(Due to excitement I forgot to take a picture of the soup.) So onto the main dishes.
1st Main Dish: Roasted Pig.
The meat was so perfectly cooked that one could literally just feel the mean just melting away from the bones. It was also so tasty, that you couldn’t help but avoid not using any condiments such as lechon sauce or soysauce & calamansi. And of course who would not eat the skin? To put it simply, I’ve been an avid lechon eater as long as lechon was served at any family gathering or restaurant, and by far this was the best skin I’ve ever tasted. The skin was both crunchy and soft. Not tough to the taste but contained enough texture to satisfy that sensation. It had a thin coat of fat underneath to provide that complimenting taste to the juicy-ness of the skin. One could literally hear or feel the skin go "crrrruuuunnncccchhh" upon biting into it. Sweet with a hint of saltiness at the same time. The joyous celebration of flavors that erupt in your mouth as you start chewing on the skin is to put it simply sublime. The sinfully delicious part of the roasted pig is just unavoidable. With every bite knowingly adding to your cholesterol count, you chug along and for a brief moment, simply just enjoy being alive. Need I say more?
But it didn’t end there. As I started digging in, I was looking around for the usual accompaniment of lechon, the lechon sauce or Mang Tomas. I finally summoned up the courage to ask our gracious host and chef, for the lechon sauce, and she pointed at the bowl you see in the picture. This was home made sauce. It was made from pure liver seasoned with spices and herbs. (Due to the complicated nature of doing this liver patee and the fact that it is a family recipe, I didn’t want to post here the ways of making it.) The liver patee was heavenly. Complimenting exactly the taste of the meat without overpowering the flavors of the meat themselves. This was 2 food soulmates finding each other. The texture of the liver patee was a bit rough and unlike the usual lechon sauce which usually is a thick liquid, this patee was more of a paste that you slathered all over your lechon meat. It was a little sweet without the usual taste of liver. GF loved this part of the lechon and was the reason she ate a little bit more that usual.
2nd Dish: Pan-Fried Bangus with fresh Tomatoes
Due to me being a meat eater, I really didn’t find anything exciting about this dish, that was, until I tried it. The fish meat was so soft and the fish was already deboned earlier on. The saltiness of the fish skin complimented the almost milky soft of the fish meat. The tomatoes added a hint of sweetness to the dish as well. The skin was both crunchy and salty. The fish belly was soft and flavorful. Also known as the fish fat, it melted in your mouth. GF loved this dish. The fish was freshly caught from a neighboring town. And it was only caught a few hours before we arrived. This was becoming a pattern.
3rd Dish: Assorted Vegetables
Now, I’m not really a big fan of vegetables, but these vegetables were so good that I couldn’t keep from getting again and again. The cauliflower, beans, carrots, pea pods, and brocolli were all stewed in chicken stock and was absolutely delicious. Not being a vegetable lover, I was taken back by the different flavors and textures each kind of vegetable had. The tenderness of each vegetable was also just right. They were not soggy, but also they were not tough. They were boiled just right so as to not lose the flavors to the soup. They were not tough or undercooked either, with each bite providing just enough crunch and texture to satisfy the palette. I enjoyed again. Tita Chit (our gracious host and chef) mentioned also that these were freshly brought down from Baguio. I now attribute the tastiness of everything due to the freshness of the ingredients. (and also the skilled hands and work of the chef!)
Dessert: Fruit Salad
The dessert was a simple fruit salad. With cherries, melons, pineapples, langka, coconut, and a few others which I failed to recognize, all chilled together in cream. It was a bit too sweet for my taste, but as the salad thawed out the sweetness was ok. The fruits were fresh and the ripeness just right (as expected!). It was the perfect end to a perfect meal.
All in all the dinner was great. I’ve never tasted such great food coming from such a simple household. One could already open up a restaurant with the quality of the food that was served and we had the joy of eating for free. If Tita Chit’s becomes a household name around Pangasinan, I can proudly say that I was there! It was the perfect welcome for us. The Food was just simply divine.
What a great start to our adventure!
Cheers & Happy eating!
April 7th, 2009 § § permalink
So for my next entry, I decided to post the lunch. But because my cam kinda ran out of juice during this time, I ended up with only 1 usable picture thus will keep this entry short and sweet.
Ok since I only have one picture of our lunch, I decided to post the picture really big to show off the awesome food that we had.
For our main course we had breaded pork chops and Soured Milk Fish.
The breaded pork chops were juicy and tender. With every bite promising a healthy helping of oily, artery clogging, goodness. Despite every known fact that this will inevitably contribute to an impending illness somewhere in the near future, it was just too good to pass from. (Needless to say I had 4-5 pieces.) They were not marinated. They just had a quick dip in soy sauce and calamansi with a thin coat of flour right before they entered the pot.. The pork chops ended up being juicy and the wondrous rapture of flavors I never knew pork had, before entering my mouth. Cooked over a wood burning, or was it charcoal, pot in oil, they were tender enough that one never needed to look for a knife. (I didn’t use one anyway nor did I use any utensils, except for the spoon for the soup. But I ended up slopping up the soup from the tiny bowls!) Clearly, the amount of time to cook the pork was taken into consideration so as not use a large flame to slowly cook the pork.
As for the soured milkfish, (aka Sinigang Bangus) the soup was just sour enough using real tamarinds (thanks to timmy for this) and avoiding the powdered version to really bring out the flavors of the tamarind and fish. The fish was also boiled in the soup for just the right amount of time so as the meat was literally just falling off the bones upon dissection with my spoon and fork but still maintain enough structural integrity for it not to melt in the soup and become mush. For my personal taste, I love soured anything really sour. (One of the reasons I rarely eat other people’s Sinigang because I find them not sour enough and just completely miss the point of cooking such a dish.) Again, the fish used was boneless so it was happy eating all the way through.
We had bananas and the fruit salad from the other meal (see earlier post). The bananas were a bit hard but sweet nonetheless.
Another thing different with this meal was the special shake that Tita Chit provided. It was a papaya shake. The papaya shake was blended. But something different from regular shakes that I have tasted. The shake or juice didn’t have sugar, didn’t have crushed ice, and didn’t have milk. The consistency of the drink was thick with small chunks of papaya. The drink was cold (but not cold enough for my taste) and sweet. (Not sweet like sugary sweet, but rather sweet like fruit sweet) It was again fresh papaya literally picked from the backyard a few minutes before lunch was served.
This was truly something different. What an experience. (I have the extra pounds and inches to prove it!) Something definitely worth doing again. The pork was just terrific and sourness of the soured milk fish was in my taste perfect. (it was really sour.) The papaya shake was unique and the over-all experience was just great.
And of course, what comes better with a good, yummy meal would be great conversation. Couldn’t ask for anything more, good food, good times. Maybe even in life that’s the key, find a group of people you’d feel comfortable with. Have good food, good conversation, and good times.
Simple. Fun. Fantastic.
Good times!
Cheers & Happy Eating!
