Prawns with Squash & Coconut Cream Soup

This soup has all my favorite things... coconut, prawns, lemongrass, a hint of chili and the color orange. Serve it in a blue and white bowl, sprinkle with green scallions and you have a wonderfully sunny dish. The original recipe called for canned coconut cream and frozen prawns. Canned coconut cream is good, but freshly made is much better. I bought freshly grated coconut (called niyog) and fresh prawns in the market. I used the grated coconut to make the coconut cream called for in the recipe and saved the prawn shells for the soup. Much of the prawn flavor is in those shells, especially the heads, so I highly recommend using fresh prawns if they are available in your area.

Prawns with Squash & Coconut Cream Soup

1-2 tablespoons virgin coconut oil
3 cloves garlic, chopped
4 scallions, chopped (white part only, reserve green for garnish)
2 small red chilis
1 stalk lemongrass, cut into 3-inch pieces (discard tough upper green part)
1/2 teaspoon Thai shrimp paste
2 vegetable stock cubes
2 cups boiling water
500 grams squash, cubed
3/4 cup coconut cream
250 grams prawns, shelled, deveined and butterflied (reserve shells and head)

1. Heat oil in pan, add garlic, scallions, chilis, lemongrass and shrimp paste. cook, stirring frequently, until scallions are soft.
   
2. Add squash and stir thoroughly. Add stock cubes and water, bring to a boil, simmer covered for 10 minutes. Discard lemongrass and chilis, puree soup in a blender until smooth. Pour back into pan and stir in coconut cream and prawn shells. Simmer for 5 minutes, pressing on the heads and shells.
   
3. Strain soup, pressing on the shells to extract all the juices. Pour back into pan and discard prawn shells. Add prawns to the soup and heat gently until prawns are cooked. Serve sprinkled with chopped green scallions. Serves 4 as a first course.
   

Pigging Out on Filipino Food

Two days ago I had lunch in a Filipino restaurant in San Bruno. It was quite good as evidenced by the amount of food we ordered and the amount we had left to take home. We ate as if it was the last time we were ever going to eat Fil food again. Our craving for Fil food led us to drive out of San Francisco and head towards Patio Filipino. The place was almost full, a few tables were left for us to choose from. If I didn't know better I would have thought I stepped into a time warp and was transported back to the Philippines. Everyone was Filipino, from the waiters to the customers and no doubt the chef. Filipino faces and chatter were all around. Feeling right at home we chose a table and proceeded to order. The food was authentic and well executed. Philippine food is influenced by it's Chinese and Spanish ancestry. In this case, the food served at the restaurant was of the Fil-Spanish variety. We ordered all the standard Fil dishes. Bulalo, a beef marrow soup with cabbage; Bangus Sisig, a local fish chopped and seasoned then served in a sizzling plate; Green Mango Salad, chopped green mangoes, onions, tomatoes and seasoned with fish sauce; lastly Binagoongang Baboy, deep fried cubes of pork tossed with fermented shrimp sauce. We ate all of this with Garlic Fried Rice. For dessert we had the Fil-Spanish (as far as I know this dessert doesn't exist in Spain) Brazo de Mercedes, similar to a a cake filled with cream or custard and rolled into log, in this case the cake is a spongy meringue filled with a thick egg custard, each slice is surrounded with a Creme Anglaise and topped with fruits. We walked out and drove home in stupor.

Patio Filipino
1770 El Camino Real
San Bruno, CA 94006
(650)872-9888

Indonesian Fish with Sweet & Sour Sauce

This recipe is from a new cookbook I purchased several days ago. I served it last night as part of a dinner menu consisting of two other dishes. Too bad my camera is still on the blink (charger is not working) because the dish looked very good with the turmeric almond sauce dotted with cherry tomatoes and scallions. This is one dish you simply can't eat alone but, is perfect with steamed rice. I served two kinds of rice - a white and a purple rice from the mountains of Banaue. Purple rice happens to be my favorite and is quite rare. There's only one place I know that sells it in Baguio and even they have a limited supply. The purple rice is grown, harvested and packaged by a cooperative of indigenous Batad women farmers in Banaue's rice terraces. They also grow several other varieties of rice like red, brown and sticky white rice.

Fish with Sweet & Sour Sauce
from Cooking Around the World: Indonesia, by Sallie Morris

I doubled the spice paste and sauce ingredients called for in the book and used 2 cups of water instead of 1.5 cups to make the sauce.
serves 4

2 fillets of red snapper (about 1 kilo)
cornstarch for coating
oil for frying
salt & pepper

for the spice paste:
6 garlic cloves
4 lemongrass stems
2-inch fresh langkawas (galangal)
2-inch fresh ginger
1 1/2-inch fresh turmeric or 1 teaspoon ground
1/4 cup ground almonds

for the sauce:
2 tablespoons brown sugar
6 tablespoons Arenga or cider vinegar
2 cups water
4 lime leaves (optional)
1 bunch Tagalog onions, peeled and left whole or 8 shallots, quartered
2 cups cherry tomatoes or 6 tomatoes, quartered
6 scallions, sliced thinly at a diagonal
2 red chilies (optional)

Grind all the ingredients for the spice paste in food processor.

Season the fish fillets with salt & pepper. Lightly coat in cornstarch and fry in hot oil, about 8-9 minutes each side. Drain on paper towels. Place on serving platter.

Leave a little oil from frying in the pan, add the brown sugar, vinegar and water and bring to a boil. Add the lime leaves, Tagalog onions and spice paste, simmer for 1 minute. Add cherry tomatoes and simmer for 3-4 minutes until sauce has thickened. Add scallions and pour sauce over fried fish.

KKK Cafe & Restaurant

You would be hard pressed to find a good Filipino restaurant in Manila. Most Filipino restos are simple ihaw-ihaw (grilled food) or mediocre fare served in a large family-style setting. Well, my sister and I discovered an exceptionally good one in the Mall of Asia, called KKK (named after a secret society founded in the late 1800's called Katipunan). Everything we ordered except one dish (the Garlic Squid) was superbly cooked and presented. My favorite is the Buro at Talong (buro is a process of preserving food by fermentation with vinegar, lemon or salt, in this case, the dish was made of shrimp buro). Although the dish is meant to be a salad and is made with fermented rice and shrimp I still ate it with additional steamed rice. The buro went perfectly with grilled slices of eggplant and topped with a chiffonade of greens. Others we tried - Vegetarian Sisig, Binagoongan Baboy (pork stewed in shrimp paste) and the disappointing Garlic Squid. Can't wait to go back and try the rest of the menu!

2 recipes for buro:
Balo-Balo
Tagilo

Happy New Year and a Wonderful 2007!