Foot and Fire

Constant practice makes perfect. Hunger is the mother of kitchen innovations. Try and try and eat all you tried. These are some kitchen wisdom one can wield while doing some expwriments. We sprout mongo here but it is not as long as two inches as those used by the Vietnamese in their Pho. We only have a day or two of soaked mongo and we remove the outer skin one by one. Ours is what we put in our fried lumpia. I love sprouted mongo because it has high Vitamin C content and I want to prove a point among people who bwlittle our humble bean because it causes their arthritis. Well, this protein rich bean do mot have skin anymore, so arthritis is not going to work here even after eating it for three meals. We can add this to our pansit, stirfried beef or chicken, omellette, ukoy, soup and many more. I can also eat it as is as its taste and crispness remind me of singkamas.  Well, my secret in achieving the length is in the basket I used and the allowance for the roots to go ...

I used the Pho Ga to make soup base for noodle soup. "Pho" means soup, "Ga" means Chicken.  The Kanokwan is a Pad Thai Paste, I already used it up. It is not good. It has no peanut in it and it is very much loaded with sugar. The Tom Yum soup base (another Thai specialty) is still lying in the cabinet for some days of kitchen experiment.  Thank you to my Saigon-based friend Anna Wang for the generous gift. We enrolled together in a cooking class in Ho Chi Minh City and we passed the cooking test together!

By GERLIE M. UY My First serving of Pho Ga... The coriander leaves should have been left in the stock while it boils and should not be served.... *Stock 1 native dressed chicken 4 liters water 3 cinnamon sticks 1 stalk Coriander with roots 1 thumb-sized ginger,crushed 3 cube Pho Ga stock (use 1-2 chicken stock) fish sauce 2 liters hot water *Noodles Rice noodles Hot water *Garnish: Chopped spring onions mongo sprouts celery leaves coriander leaves quail eggs calamansi or any citrus (I used dalandan) chili sauce fish sauce How To: Clean whole or sliced chicken and add in 4 liters water in a pot. Add cinnamon sticks, coriander roots and stem with some leaves, and crushed ginger. Let boil until chicken is tender and water is reduced to about half. Remove the chicken and set aside in a bowl. Separate the flesh from bones and sliced into strips, if preferred. Chicken may be served as is. Remove other solids (or leave it with the stock). In a large bowl, place the dried rice noodles. Put ho...

By GERLIE M. UY Eating is one of the highlights of every trip, next to photo shoots of course. And in vietnam, Pho is the mother of all meals...After a week of partaking Pho, we almost adapted to the no-salt taste and always-with-herbs mixture. In Tam Coc, a friend "luckily" picked a summer roll with lampunaya inside, we were all amused. My friends had their first taste of the abundant Dragon Fruit  there too. Meanwhile, I enjoyed their instant Pho on our last supper before heading to the airport; it tasted like the real thing. The instant hit among us was the deep fried dpring rolls and the beef/chicken with mushrooms and onions of Sa Pa Global hotel... Fried chicken with stir fried bamboo shoot. Unlike the way we cook it, they do not blanch the shoot so that it taste and smells so wrong. Fried chicken on top of fried rice. PHO BO, or beef noodle soup.. we were accustomed to its almost no-salt taste after a week of having it...LOL Condiments for the Pho... L_R Chili sauce w...

The Gifter from Saigon and the Pacman look-alike chef! By GERLIE M. UY <p><p><br><br><br>ThT</p></p> Thank you Anna Wang for the pasalubong ingredients. Unfortunately, I don't know how to put our gasul tank back today and I still have to wait for rescue to arrive. Hilarious! Just when I am excited to concoct something out of your gifts considering it's raining cats and dogs here... Ms. Bernadette hold over the whole of the rice paper pack (And she laughs at me for being rice-noodles and rice-paper crazy the last time at the airport! hmmp). Here are what I got, and I am excited to experiment... super duper... Banh xeo for the pancake.. rice noodles for th...