Cookbook love in Powerbooks!

| Khursten Santos

The Complete Book of Pasta and Noodles Big big luffles to Powerbooks!!

For the month of August, Powerbooks has opened their shelves and placed everything on sale. Yes! Everything! Even those pricey cookbooks! Last week, I decided to check it out and a lot of cookbooks were on sale! I oggled over the books that were below P1000. Books such as those by the River Cafe Chefs were being sold at prices I cannot even imagine! Yes, it’s a great time to go cookbook shopping in Powerbooks now and I cannot express how fun it is to buy cooking books there right now! I must add though that even the regular books have a 20% off, so yeah, that washoku book is definitely on my list now, that is if I didn’t buy some manga-related books before. (It was washoku or Osamu Tezuka!)

At first, I wanted to buy the River Cafe Easy series. It seems they’re not as popular locally because their show was never shown here, but back when I had pirated Food Network from South Africa, I had a chance to catch upon their show. They’re a two lady duo specializing in Italian dishes. Their dishes are simple marked with a dash creativity based on the season of ingredients available to them. Some have come and said that they are similar to Thomas Keller’s French Laundry, with an Italian twist. Anyway, the cookbook was great, showing you the ingredients and recipes that match!

However, as much as their book was enticing, rummaging through the booksale pile allowed me to find this book, The Complete Book of Pasta and Noodles. When my mom saw this book she immediately remarked “Ay! There’s no pictures!?”, but god if she only read through the content, it’s a gold mine. The book teaches you the fundamentals of pasta and noodle cooking. It tells you how to make that authentic carbonara (which is not the carbonara that most of us eat in restaurants) and the perfect pasta to match that carbonara. It will teach you how to make that balanced cream sauce without your cream curdling (an old problem of mine! ;_;)  and other pasta, and also noodle fundamentals that people should know. God, I knew that when I struck that book, I hit gold. For a person who was never formally trained in cooking, this was the perfect book for the noodle nut like me. I’m sure, for whatever you fancy, you will find a book perfect for you.  If not, I’ll share some tidbits that I learned in that book here as well! :3

For those cold nights…

| Khursten Santos

Instant Mee... It’s been raining a lot lately and sometimes it’s tiring to really muster up something to cook. After working and traveling for such a long time, sometimes, the last thing you’d want is fixing up a meal. Yesterday, I tried cooking curry at home and I almost chopped my finger off when I dropped my cleaver. ^^;; Anyway, that aside, there is a nice and easy fix that I cook up on those colds nights when you just want to be fed a nice warm meal without having to worry about slicing and dicing.

This is my Speedy mee. I call it speedy because it’s quite fast to make it. And requires no chopping at all. Only a bit of patience to boil the broth. The broth can be your choice of beef, pork, chicken, fish, or if you want, sinigang broth (add chili sauce to make it like Tom Yam). In this bowl, I used instant katsuo dashi stock and konbu, giving it a more Japanese feel. The fish balls and stuff can be bought from the nearest SM Hypermart. Same goes for the noodles which are just wantan egg noodles. These are easy peasy ingredients and can be variated with the inclusion of vegetables or even roast pork/barbecue on top. I also placed drops of chili oil on it because it’s nice to eat spicy things during the warm weather.

To be honest, this is just an upgrade version of the usual instant noodles. Well, it never hurts to take a break from the usual, ne?

 

Hello world!

| Khursten Santos

This website has been long overdue. I’ve been meaning to put this website up but never had the time because I had obligations yet to finish. But now the world is starting to return to me again, I’m more than happy to open up this website again.

This site, of course had turned itself far and beyond from its conception. What used to be a simply a portfolio for people who’d like for me to design something for them,  has now become… my food blog!?! XD It’s crazy I know. But if there is another thing I’m passionate about, other than manga and history is food.

It must have been a bit of a destiny. When I bought this domain name a few years back, the idea of food was completely out of the idea. But it seems to just keep on coming back as though staking its claim on the name.

Well, I guess, here it is now. Running and all. What’s up next is installing those plugins and other brick-a-brac that I love writing about.