Several weeks ago I asked Kit to get me 3 small recipe books from under my kitchen counter ( I find it hard to bend down that low!) and he selected "Low Fat , delicious!", "The little Inihaw book" and the "Tapas" recipe book.
I cooked from the first two last months and wrote blogs about my experiences with photos of the dishes I made and now its the Tapas week!
For those of you unfamiliar with Tapas:
"Traditionally they are small savoury dishes, snacks or appetisers of Spanish cuisine. It might be breads and meat, or a selection of dishes from ham, stuffed mussels, fried squid, to olives, sautéed mushroom and other vegetables. Essentially, Tapas is a small plate or serving, and it's a great way to try something new."
Source:https://www.sagerestaurant.com.au/what-exactly-is-tapas/#:~:text=Traditionally%20they%20are%20small%20savoury,way%20to%20try%20something%20new. ( accessed 25.08.23)
The first dish I selected ( in line with saving money and loosing weight) was Eggplant and tomato sauce. For those of you in the UK eggplant is the American ( and therefore Philippine) word for Aubergine. Its a simple little recipe and was very tasty- although I am not sure how they think it serves 6 people! I got two portions out of it ( as a main meal rather than as part of a selection of Tapas).
Drying the eggplant by covering with salt and leaving for 30 minutes
The garlic tomato sauce is made with onions, garlic and tinned tomatoes and tomato paste with Basil , sugar and pepper- very tasty
My garlic tomato sauce with Basil
Once the eggplant is dry you fry it in olive oil and add to the tomato sauce....
Very tasty and healthy and cheap!
The second recipe I selected from the Tapas recipe book was a Grilled vegetable salad. This consisted of a variety of vegetables cut up and fried ( or you can grill or Barbecue them) and then you serve cold with a Balsamic dressing.
The prepared vegetables ready to fry
For the Balsamic dressing just mix lemon juice, garlic, olive oil, balsamic vinegar and oregano in a container and pour over the vegetables as you serve them. They say this serves six but I only managed to get 4 portions !
The fried vegetables- you could grill them or cook them on a BBQ
My Balsamic Vinegar Chilling in the fridge!
My regular readers will know that when I saw the next two recipes I had to cook them! The first was Spicy Lamb and Garlic skewers and the second was Lamb meatballs in Tomato sauce. I love Lamb ( or Tupa as it is called in Tagalog) and have introduced it to my friends here who all really enjoyed it. I created Tupa Tuesday and served my houseboys Noel and Frythy a Lamb dish every Tuesday to wean them off Jolibee and Mcdonalds! So far we had 15 Lamb dishes , so the latest 2 additions will make 17. You can see the 15 recipes and pictures by clicking this link
https://thebritishkabayan.blogspot.com/2023/05/tbk-cooks-for-tupa-tuesday.html
This blog has taken ages to produce due to a cashflow crisis in the Blue House! My monthly pension from Compass is around 50,000 pesos a month ( £800) which pays for my house and car rental. Everything else including this lovely food, paying my houseboys, supporting my scholars etc comes from my savings. My brother in the UK manages these for me and we agreed how much I thought I would need this year to supplement my pension. However I overspent in the first 9 months and ran out of cash here in August. He released some more money for me and I transferred this to Palawan. However this coincided with the August Bank holiday in the UK and National Heroes Day in Palawan. I still do not understand why the banks have to be physically open for the money to transfer. It's all done electronically and there is no courier on a moped sitting with 50,000 pesos outside the bank for 3 days to physically put the money in my account. The situation got worse when there was flooding in Manilla due to a tropical storm and the clearing house, which the transaction has to pass through ( according to the nice man in Union bank here in PPC) was closed for two days. So with 3 weekends, a holiday, 2 days of floods there was a 9 day delay in my money reaching me on top of the normal 2 week transfer time- a total of 23 days without money! To make matters worse on 29 August I discovered the money had been returned to the UK as it did not have the new POP ( Purpose of Payment ) code on it. Apparently there is now a 10 digit code ( Food, Pension, rent etc) saying what the money is for, Two further transfers from Lloyds were rejected and eventually I had to get my friend Mike to send the money by WISE for me.
Thanks to everyone who gave me food, offered food on account at their restaurant, offered to lend me money and did my shopping and paid for it and put fuel in my car. So although I had chosen which dishes to cook for this blog I could not afford to get the ingredients! I managed to use up lots of tinned food that I had " just in case it snows" as my mother taught me. I lived off sweetcorn, mushrooms, eggs, tomatoes and the like. I had endless bowls of Muesli and Granola and the guy next door, Benny, barbecued some chicken for me. Then I asked one of my scholars, Elay, if she had any spare money and she kindly got all my shopping with her sister Jhoanna and put some petrol in my car. I finally cut out the fizzy drinks ( and my blood sugar went down from 95 to 58!) and I lost 1 kg in weight!
I asked Elay to buy the cheaper items for me like the ingredients for the eggplant and the grilled vegetable salad but waited util the money finally arrived to buy the Lamb for the two Tupa dishes. It is imported here from Australia and is very expensive. So I was really happy when I finally could cook my Spicy lamb and garlic skewers ( I still need to go and buy some new skewers too!) .
As usual please note the parts I have highlighted- you need bamboo skewers and the lamb skewers should ideally be refrigerated to marinade overnight!
Again I am curious to see that the recipe book says this makes 16 - I presume they mean skewers rather than portions. I gave each person 3 "skewers" so it feeds 5 people ( as a main meal).
Our 17th Tupa dish was Lamb meatballs in Tomato sauce which needed 1kg of Lamb- and this makes 45 balls! Once again with 5 meatballs per person it makes sufficient for 9 people. Another big difference between the UK and the Philippines is that Brits are much bigger ( I am 120 kg) than Pinoys ( Noel is 39kg ) so when I serve our food if I gave everyone the same amount the Pinoys would be asking for containers to take the rest home!
I could not find any lamb mince so used boneless lamb and cut it into small cubes, mixed it with the onion, garlic , basil and egg and breadcrumbs and then fried it. Meanwhile I made the tomato sauce with tomato paste, chicken stock, Olive oil, onion, garlic and pepper. You then serve the lamb in the tomato sauce.
.
I misread the recipe and thought it said "Empanada". Empanadillas is in fact the Spanish name for Empanada!
If you have not heard of this lovely dish then let me explain:
"An empanada is a type of baked or fried turnover consisting of pastry and filling, common in Spanish, other Southern European, Latin American, and Iberian-influenced cultures around the world. The name comes from the Spanish empanar, and translates as 'breaded', that is, wrapped or coated in bread"
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empanada ( accessed 3.9.23)
I first came across these when I visited Kuya Vin in Vigan - which has a strong Spanish influence. Here in Puerto Princess we have an Empanada shop which I have passed many times, so I decided to visit and eat my empanadas there!
The place is called Empanada Princess and is located on the Tiniguiban highway, (Between Life Church & Citi Hardware) , Barangay San Pedro, Puerto Princesa. They have a shop and indoor and outdoor seating area and its open until midnight.
This is what their Empanadas look like:
Empanadas freshly cooked daily at Empanada
Hello, I am The British Kabayan! Feel free to read my stories.
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