Another favourite of mine for merienda and/or breakfast is Taho. I never tire from eating Taho every morning the last time I visited my folks in the Philippines (which was 2 years ago!). I can’t help it! The vendor is just right outside our doorstep, the same way it’s always been when we were kids. Believe it or not, the same vendor sells it to this day. He used to carry the oversized aluminum tins by way of a wooden plank over his shoulders, on foot, inside our village. Nowadays, he’s got them on board his customised bicycle. His bike …read more

Here’s a tasty, homemade twist to the canned kind. My picky 1-year old liked it and so will you!
Ingredients:
1/2 cup glutinous rice
1 cup sugar
2 cups water
1 can whole kernel corn or 2 cobs of fresh corn, scraped
2 cans coconut milk
Directions:
1. Combine glutinous rice, water and sugar in a deep sauce pan and keep to a boil.
2. After 5 minutes of boiling, add the coconut milk and corn stir well. If rice is tender and soup becomes thick, put off stove. Add a little water if it becomes too thick. Serve hot.
Ahh.. nothing beats a taste of home. Definitely brought …read more

Ingredients:
1 cup sweet rice flour (Mochiko is a popular brand)
3 cups water
3 cups grated fresh coconut
2 cups toasted sesame seeds
2 cups sugar
Directions:
1. In a mixing bowl, combine the sweet rice flour and water to make a smooth dough. With floured hands, shape the dough into small patties, 3 inches in diameter and 1/2 inch thick.
2. Bring water in a saucepan to a boil and drop in the patties. When they float to the top, scoop them out and coat with grated coconut. Sprinkle with sesame seeds and sugar and serve immediately.
I didn’t know anything about Mochiko until I chanced upon …read more

As per my last entry, today is Feedback Friday. Now is your chance to have your say! Whether it relates to the posts I have so far shared with you, or perhaps recipes you’d like to see more of, or maybe improvements you can recommend to make your visit to this site a more pleasurable one.
If you want to keep it confidential, feel free to drop me an email.

While browsing through my trusty cookbook, I realized, I haven’t made any dessert since last year when I painstakingly cooked up some leche flan as my Christmas gift to our friendly neighbors. I don’t think I’ll be making it again this time around. Perhaps I’ll try something new, something easier, like this Sago Pudding recipe I found:
Ingredients:
1 cup sago
3 cups water
1 cup lightly packed soft brown sugar
1 cup water, extra
Procedure:
1. Soak the sago in the water for 1 hour. Pour into a pan, add 2 tablespoons of the sugar and bring to the boil over low heat, stirring …read more

It’s that time of the year again when we all have an excuse to eat more than we should, or eat more of what we haven’t had for a long time — like fruitcake! Being away from home, I consider the holidays a time to reflect on the things, er, food that I miss the most. One of them is the well-loved Bibingka, which is the fruitcake’s counterpart as it is only widely available during Christmas time. A spread of butter and a sprinkle of grated coconut makes it more delectable. Others even garnish it with salted duck egg. Yum!

What’s …read more

There seems to be a thing about Nama food in Japan.  From what I can work out Nama is either fresh or alive and so it is natural that every food producer wants to get on the bandwagon promoting their product as Nama.  Although I draw the line at Nama Caramel icecream that is so blatantly not fresh or alive that it makes it all a joke.  Although it tastes good and is definitely worth eating I feel like boycotting the product simply because of the misleading advertising (not that I really believed it in the first place).

Another classic product of the Sapporo beer factory in Hokkaido is their beer ice cream.  It looks white and ordinary like vanilla but as soon as you get it near your nose you can smell the beer.  The taste is not overpowering and actually surprisingly pleasant.  Nothing like a beer spider and if you’ve ever tried one of those you will be glad to hear it.

In the front of the picture is a ginger ale ice cream.  A bar of vanilla ice cream surrounded by frozen ginger ale.  In the back of the photo is my kanji study.  One is easy to forget, the other is unforgettable.  I’ll let you guess which is which.

It looks surprisingly docile when you open the packet but there is nothing like a sickly sweet blast of strawberry ice cream to make you realise that this is some seriously sweet food.  It is just 2 sweet pancakes (pikelets, hotcakes depending where you are from) sandwiched around strawberry ice cream.  I am not sure what I was expecting but it wasn’t this.