TBK cooks and cooks and cooks

 

   Plating my Pork and Chicken Adobo back in Bahrain in 2017

Hopefully many of you will have been cooking the recipes from my 2023 Online recipe book- we had 72 recipes from around the world, many of them from Guest Chef's here in Palawan ( Mama Jam, Chef Arnel and Poochie) and around the world. I have had some lovely feedback from many people who have been downloading and cooking the dishes from as far away as USA ( Thanks AJ). 

My Guest Chefs who contributed recipes from Colombia, Macedonia and South Africa

If you missed it then it is still online- click the link below:

https://thebritishkabayan.blogspot.com/p/the-2023-recipe-book.html

Each month there were 6 recipes ( 2 starters, 2 main courses and 2 deserts) themed for the time of year ( summer salads and winter warmers) and Chester ( the Hooman) set up a link for each month so you could download the recipes for free.

Chester set up the template so that all the recipes had the same format and uploaded them all to our blog site on the 15th of each month . I cooked every recipe and selected 12 ( one a month) which we made into a Vlog to share on our Blogspot and You Tube channels on the first of each month.

           For example this was our Thai Beef curry which we featured in July.

This was in fact my 4th recipe book and each one has been more complex than the one before. They take a great deal of time to create and then I hand them over to Chester to do the Graphic design and upload them . Each recipe book involves a team of people - so for example in 2017 Corleen made the Chef's uniforms ( Mark Johns suggested as I had 12 recipes from 12 countries I should dress up as the Chef from each country!). James took the photos and Chester did the graphic design and uploading. Kuya Vin washed up! We did 3 recipes each weekend for 4 weeks as James had a full time job in the week. I loved his photos of the food and his artistic direction! We first made a calendar which I had printed and distributed at the end of 2016 for 2017 with one recipe per month. However it was so popular that Chester suggested we make an online recipe book with the recipes and photos in 2018.

This is when I first learnt to cook Adobo back in 2016, with plenty of feedback from my then houseboys, Patrick and Corleen , in Bahrain to get it just right!

It was then that I learnt that for every Pinoy dish there are regional variations so in some parts they add more vinegar, and in others more soy sauce. When I arrived in Palawan Kit's family gave me their coconut vinegar and suggested I use  that in my adobo, and later Mama Jam gave me his " Little Adobo cook book" with 28 different Adobo recipes in! My journey to learn Pinoy Cuisine is never ending and I have already told Chef Poochie I want another lesson next year!

Now you will understand why put on so much weight with all that cooking and tasting!

If you have not seen this recipe book it is still online on my blog site and you can access it , and have a laugh at the wonderful Chef Uniforms I wore, by clicking the link below:

https://thebritishkabayan.blogspot.com/p/recipe-flipbooks.html

My first recipe book was created back in 1976! I was at school in Epsom in the UK and they ran a Duke of Edinburgh award scheme ( for boys like me not into sporting activities!). We had to do community service ( I did gardening for a blind lady near the school), camping and hiking expeditions and an "interest" . I choose cooking as my interest and attended a Cordon Bleu cookery course at Ewell Technical college. I wanted somewhere to record all the recipes I learnt to cook so my mother gave me a recipe book in which you write or copy and paste the recipes ( this was before the computer age where copy and paste is much easier!).

My first recipe book at the back- which I still have 47 years later! The dish in the bowl is a cold spicy tomato soup which my brother , Andrew, taught me to make many years ago. He scribbled the recipe on a piece of paper which I stuck in the book. When I did my OJT/ Internship/ Industrial release at the Cumberland Hotel in London in 1980 I met a wonderful Australian called Annie, who was working as a waitress in the coffee shop. We toured Europe together, worked on a Greek Island when we ran out of money and she returned to Huddersfield with me for the last year of my Degree in Hotel and Catering Administration. As poor students we wanted to make Christmas presents for our mothers so Annie wrote out the recipes on plain paper with her calligraphic pen and we copied them 4 times ( one each for her and I and one each for our mums) and then stuck the recipes into scrap books! 

I still have my copy of the recipes in in recipe book although some of my favourite recipes are now a bit stained with tomato sauce, soy sauce etc!

By 2013 the old recipe book was falling to pieces so when I was on holiday in Australia I started typing up the recipes. Mark Johns suggested I used up all the photos I had taken when cooking the food and so we added them. I spoke to a Graphic artist , who also loved cooking, and she did the artwork and produced the final version for printing. Patrick and Jeyboy ( who was the working in Kuwait but came to Bahrain on vacation) finished all the typing and Adam found a printer who made 50 copies of the recipe book which I gave to family and friends in 2014. Sadly now that version is falling to pieces and I have the final copy!

                                           My 2014 recipe book!

As you can see from the spine it is still well used even now nearly 10 years later!

For over 40 years I have been an avid collector of recipes- In Bahrain they had daily recipes in the English Newspaper which I cut out and stuck in my recipe scrapbooks. The supermarkets also issued recipe cards which I collected and stuck into my scrapbooks . More recently i realised you could find recipes on line so I started to download and print them as I made each dish - and I keep them in one of several lever arch files.  For example this recipe from the BBC Good food site:

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/ultimate-sticky-toffee-pudding

MK introduced me to another site when I was staying in Dubai which has loads of great Pinoy recipes in. You can print the recipe and watch a video of how to make it- this is how I learnt to cook Sinigang!

https://panlasangpinoy.com/sinigang-na-baboy-with-gabi/

I also have all the diets and healthy eating recipes I was given by my dieticians in Bahrain. On my vacations I would attend cookery courses ( Thai, Indian, Malaysian, Vietnamese, Philipino, Cambodian etc ) and I added all the recipes from these, and also bought and was given many recipe books from around the world. 

You can ready more about my recipe books here:

https://thebritishkabayan.blogspot.com/2022/06/tbk-tells-things-i-missed-most-part-one.html

There are also many other blogs and vlogs where I cook recipes from the many cookery books I have amassed over the years:

https://thebritishkabayan.blogspot.com/2021/01/time-for-some-british-recipes-with-twist.html

                                      Yes, we even have a recipe for a cake suitable for dogs!

I hope you have enjoyed reading more about my recipe books and my long love for cooking. Now I have retired and have more time I cook daily and feed my houseboys Joven, Noel and Frythy when they come to work. I also made Lechon Kawali for or last M & M International dinner and last years Pinoy Christmas dinner for 12 people. 

This year I am taking a rest for Christmas and going away for a few days so I will not have to wash up or cook! I have also decided there will be no new recipe books for 2024!

So make sure you get on line and download some of the lovely dishes we created this year!

Chester ( the dawg) and I will be back in the kitchen in 2024 sharing our favourite dishes with you from all our recipe books. Special thanks to Luis for our new Pinoy TBK Blog and Vlog cartoons which you will see a lot more of next year.