I know not of diet pills that work fast, but God knows it doesn’t help to look back on days of good food and playtimes with Gim!

It has been more than a year that Pepper Lunch came to the Philippines, but last November was the first time that I took Gim there. :) It was his birthday month, so he came and visited me. It was the first time in around three years, I think, that I was able to be with him on his birthday. I know, I know! Bad girlfriend!! (The pains of long-distance relationships.) But I definitely made it up to him this time around – I brought him around Manila and took up the bill most of the time, ok!! (He is probably too busy studying for the 2011 Philippine Physician Licensure Exams so he won’t have time to read this and kill me. But once he is a wage-earning doctor, he gets no more freebies from me!)

This is Gim at Pepper Lunch, while we are waiting for our order. So excited!

I got my Beef Teriyaki order first! Gim is inspecting it. He’s like, “Why is it raw?!?”

And I’m like, cook it cook it quick! Here I am turning over my meat on the sizzling plate so it will cook because I don’t like eating raw food. And it’s hot, smoke everywhere, so fan the heat away, fan!

He finally gets his order, Mixed Seafood, I think. We start eating. Yum!

All Done! No more???

You can find Pepper Lunch in the following locations:

The Power Plant Mall, Makati
Concours Level, Rockwell Center
Tel: +63 2 895 3164
Fax: +63 2 895 6185
Hours: 11am – 10pm

Shangri-La Plaza Mall, Ortigas
Garden Court Level
Tel: +63 2 634 3231
Fax: +63 2 631 6410
Hours: 10am – 11pm

Alabang Town Center, Alabang
2nd floor Corte de Las Palmas
Tel : +63 2 856 7062
Hours: 11am – 9pm

Greenbelt 5, Makati
2nd floor – Phase 1
Tel : 482 4319
Hours 11am – 9pm

…was spent with Gim and my family, and super lots of food! :)

Before I start overdosing on leucine and going on my starvation diet, let me happily reminisce all the food I ate during the New Year!

The spread!

This was all cooked by my mom, me and Gim during the afternoon! My mom made her famous paella, super full of shrimp and clam goodness! Gim made the crispy pata, very yummy though it wasn’t that crispy in the inside because it was a rainy day! We weren’t able to completely dry the meat, and even resorted to a hair dryer at the latter part. Hahaha! Gim also made the potato salad, and it was sooo delicious! And me? I made the carbonara! Hehehe! It was very creamy and tasted bacon-y. :)

This is me when I look ravenous!! Look at that glint in my eye. I’m scary…

Here is Gim, tired but happy!

And at the end of the night, I got Gim to give me some trensas! (Braids.) Haha. He did a very bad job at it, but you gotta hand it to him for trying. I ♥ him so much, hahaha! :)

We were so tired after cooking the entire afternoon that we ended up sleeping after we ate!!! Which is to say… we missed actually ushering in the New Year. Does it mean Gim and I will be sleeping together in 2011? Hmmmm!!! (Definitely not opposed to the idea, hahah!)

I had some saging rebosao for my late night dessert tonight. It wasn’t as complicated as I thought it would be. I thought you needed to put the bananas under hand dryers for the sugar to crystallize or something. My mom’s made them for years but I never really bothered to look at how she cooked them, I just ate them, hahaha!

But tonight when I got my craving, my boyfriend offered to cook them for me, and I watched while he cooked so I would know how to make them. Theoretically.

Saging rebosao, or saging rebosado as some people also call them, is caramelized bananas. Super easy to make. Just buy some unripe bananas (if you buy the soft ones they’ll be overly tender and sometimes fall apart during cooking) and peel them. Slice in half vertically. Deep-fry them in hot oil for about 5 minutes, just enough until they’re golden. Take them out and clean the pan. Put a cup of water, and about a cup of sugar too. Stir continuously until the concoction is thick, sticky and syrupy (definitely don’t stop cooking if still watery). Like if you took a spoonful of the mixture, and dropped it back onto the pot, it would fall slowly. If syrupy already, drop the fried bananas into the mix and turn off the fire. Coat the bananas in the mixture repeatedly. Since the syrup will make them stick together, ensure to unstick them with a fork and keep mixing. Until you see the sugar start to crystallize, and when all the sugars are crystallized, you can stop mixing, and start serving! :)

They’re super yummy, and you can find this delicious dessert only in Zamboanga. I kept looking in Manila, and never saw anything like it. :( So I’m loading up on them while I’m still home. :)

Unfortunately I ate them all already, and I forgot to take a picture. :( Next time, I will surely upload some. :)

To make a quick single serving of ice coffee, you can follow this recipe. (Just adjust it for more servings.)

1/4 cup instant coffee
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup hot water
4 cups cold milk
Sweetened whip cream

First add the coffee and the sugar to the hot water. Mix until the ice coffee is blended. Then add the cold milk and stir again. For better results, do this in a blender so you get the foamy kind of ice coffee. When you’re done, add a dollop of sweetened whip cream on top. Serve.

Gim and I had a spectacular lunch today. Curacha cooked in coconut milk and Alavar sauce. Divine!

Curacha is a type of crab commonly found in the waters of Zamboanga. As such it’s available in the city markets round the clock. I would love to eat it as regularly as I eat lechon (roasted pork, goes very well with a Sunday) but unfortunately my cook is a bit allergic to crustaceans. He gets hives all over, and hyperacidic, when he eats too much crab or shrimp. So I have to wait several weeks in between curacha fests.

Today happened to be my lucky day. I slept in the whole morning and when I woke up, Chef Gim had already gone to the market, bought three large curachas and whipped up my favorite Guinataang Curacha in Alavar sauce! Yummy! So good it deserves to be on the menu of a five-star New York City hotel.

Alavar is a famous seafood restaurant in Zamboanga City, and they sell Alavar sauce, which is a secret concoction of aligue and spices. Whatever they put it in it, it’s sinfully delicious and makes every seafood dish doubly tasty.

In Chavacano, Curacha means “cockroach”, but the similarity between the two creatures ends in their furry-looking legs. Curacha is a wonderfully tasty crustacean. It is meatier and much cleaner than the mud crab, though ironically with a slightly earthier taste, and it’s meat a little less smooth but just as juicy. However the difference in taste is very subtle and I am sure most people would not be able to differentiate the two without checking their shells. I’m not yet sure which I favor more, the mud crab or the curacha, so I prefer to have them both in one dish!

Jump inside to see more photos of today’s lunch, and Chef Gim’s simple Guinataang Curacha in Alavar Sauce recipe below.

How to Make Guinataang Curacha (or Crab) in Alavar Sauce

Ingredients:
1 kilo curacha or crab
1/2 kilo grated coconut
1/2 kilo Alavar sauce
 1 bulb of garlic
1/2 thumb of ginger
4 pinches of salt
4 pinches of monosodium glutamate (Ajinomoto)
1 1/2 cup of water

Wash curacha or crab. Place in cooking pot. Set aside.

Place grated coconut in a mixing bowl. Pour water and mix. With your hands, squeeze all milk from the coconut. Set aside.

Mince garlic and ginger into tiny pieces. Set aside.

Sprinkle the salt, Ajinomoto, garlic and ginger all over the curacha or crab.

Pour coconut milk all over the curacha or crab.

Turn stove on high heat until the coconut milk comes to a boil. Then drop the alavar sauce into the pot and lower the knob to medium heat. When the coconut oil starts to surface (happens after around 20-30 minutes), turn off the stove.

Serve.

P.S. If you don’t have Alavar sauce, go right ahead and do the recipe without it. It will just be Guinataang Curacha, then.

Ever since I got home to Zamboanga, food has been pouring into my mouth nonstop!

We’ve been getting lots of Christmas treats from friends and family, like fruitcake and brownies and ham, and since my mom and sister aren’t really eaters (I’m worried my sis is becoming anorexic but she won’t eat much even though we force her to eat every mealtime, while my mom is always concerned about her own health and waistline), I get to cram all the goodies down my throat! Hehehe.

To all my mom’s friends: If you’re giving her food for Christmas, you now know who really eats it. Hahaha.

I may have to look into that Leptovox sometime!

This is a guest post from my boyfriend Gim. Here to talk about his favorite pastime: good eats. – Flisha

I looove burgers. I especially like the meaty, juicy ones. Not the paper-thin slices that they serve at the school canteen or at the 3M burger stand beside the plaza in Dapitan; although these paltry snacks would sometimes do if I were really desperate for something to eat. The former ’cause it’s dirt cheap and the latter ’cause it’s the only fastfood joint open 24/7 in Dapitan.

No, these are not the burgers I prefer. According to a friend of mine, they’re made of cheapie-patties. A nearly transparent circle of meat that’s put in between bread just so you could call it a burger.

No, the ones I like are the ones that make you go “mmmmm!” with every bite. Like the burgers in Big Joe’s in Dipolog. Or more recently, the ones in Big Bite Burger House located beside the Catribo Complex here in Zamboanga City.

We (Flisha and I) visited the place yesterday on a tip from a classmate. And true enough, the burgers were scrumptious! I got the cheeseroom burger while she got the rodeo burger. (Sorry for the blurred pics! I was too excited to focus.)

Although the patties themselves were not as thick as I wanted them to be (but considerably thicker than the average burger patty), it was as juicy as can be with just a hint of smoke and charcoal, a result no doubt of the charcoal grill used in cooking the patties.

This isn’t how they normally cook their patty. They usually do it on an electric griller. But for an additional five pesos ($0.10), they prepare your patty in an honest to goodness charcoal grill. The mushroom and cheese in my burger as well as the fried onion ring in hers made for a delicious filling. So the next time you get that burger craving, be sure to pop in at Big Bite’s Burger.

Come to think of it, I wonder if using the charcoal grill is actually energy efficient?

Big Bites Burger can be found beside Catribo Complex along Governor Alvarez St, Zamboanga City.

It’s Grandma’s Best, hands down.

In fact, I think it’s the best restaurant in Zamboanga del Norte, and after tasting their Squid Aligue Spaghetti, I’m tempted to say it’s the best restaurant in all of Philippines. Except that I haven’t visited all of Philippines yet.

Grandma’s Best is hidden in a residential part of Dipolog, which makes it a bit hard to find, as coming from Dapitan, Gim and I had to navigate through many roads just to find the elusive little canteen of a restaurant.

There is nothing to boast about the facade of Grandma’s Best, as it looks like an ordinary carenderia. The tables are simple rectangular plastic tables covered with cheaplooking cloth, the chairs are uncomfortable monoblock plastic white chairs, the walls are unadorned except for a few paintings here and there.

Service is nothing special. The waitresses look like that spinster aunt of yours who’s looking after your house while you’re gone (in her pink shirt and jeans). Water is available, but you have to get it yourself in the water dispenser at the back of the room.

But I’m not dissing this wonderful little restaurant. I’m simply amazed that a restaurant that looks so ordinary that it can easily be mistaken for a canteen (unless you happen to glance at the fridge that contains all of their rich-looking desserts) can serve such wonderfully fantastically delicious and divine dishes.

Grandma’s Best dishes I’ve tried and I swear are to die for:

Squid Aligue Spaghetti (Php80)

This scrumptious dish is soooo rich you’ll want to come back everyday to Grandma’s Best for a retaste. It’s filled with squid rings and pasta mixed in a rich and creamy sauce of sinful aligue (crab fat), topped with loads of cheese and freshly cut spring onion. It’s a disservice to call this dish “spaghetti” because it resembles nothing like spaghetti, but more like pasta for the gods, it is that rich.

Lengua (Php120)

I have always loved lengua (literally means tongue, but as a dish it means tongue of cow), and when I saw this dish in the menu, I ordered it right away. The dish I was served did not disappoint me in any way (except that it was served in a rectangular plastic container, but ah who cares if the food tastes great, huh?). The lengua was very soft, and swimming in a bowl of richly creamy mushroom sauce, and bursting with the dark, deep taste of beef. It’s definitely one of my favorites.

Beef Stroganoff (Php100)

You can take this with rice, or with pasta. Gim ordered this dish, and he chose pasta. I had only a few bites of this but I can say with all my heart I wish we had ordered two of these so I could have eaten a whole dish on my own! It may look like squid aligue spaghetti, but tastes nothing like it. It’s soft, tender beef mixed with creamy pasta topped with spring onions.

Apple Pie (Php60)

This dessert is definitely one of the best I have ever experienced. My mom bakes the best apple pies I’ve ever tasted, and I was shocked to find out this pie we had just bought was even better! The best part about this pie is the delightfully crumbly upper crust, which tastes faintly of cinammon and confectionary sugar, and the underside covered with lovely apple sauce. Inside of the cake are apple slices which taste heavenly. The normally strong taste of apple is subdued and the apple slices are soft and tender, just the way I like it. The whole minipie is topped with cheese, and the serving is good for two. This dessert is a must-try if you’re ever going to eat at Grandma’s Best.

Lastly, I also recommend their Roast Beef (Php110), however I don’t have pictures of that since I ate it the first time around, when I wasn’t bringing a camera. (It tastes a lot like lengua.)

More pictures of the above dishes:

Grandma’s Best dishes I’m looking forward to sampling in the very very near future:

Cheese Lumpia (Php55)
Chili con Carne (Php75)
Garlic Mushroom (Php65)
Seafood BBQ (Php120)
Seafood Supreme (Php125)
Thai Fried Rice (Php100)
Pistachio Cake Slice (Php55)
Trouffle Supreme Whole (Php380)

Here in the Philippines, we have a sweet treat called Halo-halo. Halo in Filipino means “mix”. Halo-halo is a mix of ingredients such as beans, flan, fruits, sugar, milk and ice, then topped with ice cream, oatmeal and sometimes a cherry.

It’s a favorite Filipino dessert, and the best halo-halos are the ones made by hand by your parents on a hot Sunday afternoon when you were a child. Save that, there are always the food stalls and restaurants.

Here in Dapitan, the best halo-halo is served in Jana’s Place on Josephine Bracken street (named after Jose Rizal’s lady friend).

Gim and I ate this treat a few days ago, when it was stuffy warm all over Dapitan. It sure refreshed us for a good ten minutes. ;-)

P.S. When I went to Japan, they had a similar dessert. They called it Haro-haro. LOL!

I’m a fan of Japanese food. Save for the raw stuff like sushi and sashimi, I eat it all. All the ~yakis like okonomiyaki (fried vegetables) and takoyaki (fried octopus). I love the ~dons too like the gyudon and the katsudon, mmm!

I have yet to visit a Japanese restaurant in the Philippines that authentically captures the taste of real Japanese food. (Most dishes are flavored to suit the Filipino palate, that is to say, sweetened.)

Still I never fail to try to visit any new Japanese restaurant I see. While travelling in Cebu, I happened upon this Manpuku Bento food stall in a mall foodcourt. So of course I had to try it.

As expected, the dishes didn’t quite taste like the ones in Japan, but still I enjoyed them.

I ordered the Pork Katsudon, since I was thinking it’s hard to go wrong with anything fried.

Gim meanwhile ordered some noodles (I made him do it, because I wanted to try some but they weren’t that good).

He got some sushi, too. California maki and salmon. He loved them, but me, eww, no not so much. I’ll stick to the cooked stuff, thank you very much.

They look pretty though.

He and I will be travelling to Cebu again in November. We both got free tickets from Cebu Pacific’s last 0-fare promo. To get the zero fare, we had to eschew our baggage rights and travel insurance rights as well.

I’m fine with not lugging around any baggage. We’ll be staying only two nights in Cebu anyways. But I’m kinda regretting we didn’t get any insurance. I know nothing’s gonna happen during the flight, but the worrywart in me insists we have some protection JUST IN CASE.

I searched the web for some sort of add-on insurance and chanced upon this travel medical insurance. I’m not sure it’s what I’m looking for, since it caters to travel abroad not domestic travel. But it’s a bookmark I’m keeping anyways just in case I need some protection for a future overseas trip (it covers medical insurance and terrorism insurance, among others).

Anyways, I am sure looking forward to another trip to Cebu. Our last visit there lasted only a day and we only got to do some malling in Ayala and SM Cebu. Maybe this time we’ll get to do some sightseeing instead of just face-stuffing. ;-P