Buko Salad Crumble

January 9, 2019 amcarmen2 Comments

Hello Everyone! I hope you all had a smooth-running first week of the New Year and resolutions haven’t been broken yet. I stopped making resolutions a very long time ago because I never follow them anyway. Instead, I always like to set an intention for the New Year. Read further after the recipe to find out more.

Last week we (as in my family and I) hosted a potluck lunch on New Years Day. Our relative brought over a TON of food. Even though I asked them in advance what they would be bringing so that we wouldn’t double up on the same dishes, it was the quantity of each dish that went beyond my expectations. Amongst the dishes that they brought over was Buko Salad.

Buko Salad, or in English, Sweet Young Coconut Salad, is a mainstay dessert dish served in every, or any special occasions such as fiestas or birthday parties. The main ingredient of this dessert is definitely freshly shredded young coconut meat, accompanies by fruit cocktail from a can, sugar palm fruit, coconut gel (nata de coco), condensed milk, and fresh cream. Some (i.e. me) like to add little chunks of cheese into it as well.

With an abundance of it from our potluck party, I could do two things:

Continue eating it as it is, or

Make another dessert out of it.

Which did I choose? Well both obviously! I continued to eat it as it is, and also shook things up with it. I already had the intention of making a Buko Pie Crumble for my series of Coconut Recipes for this month, and when I was eating a bowl of this Buko Salad while watching a teleseyre the day after the potluck, a light bulb flashed. I could totally use this Buko Slad mixture for my crumble instead!

So just to let you know, my measuring cups and spoons were nowhere to be found. I mean, they are probably in a box that I have yet to unpack since moving back to the Philippines – but I wasn’t about to go look for them when I had the oven already preheating and the Buko Salad already in their cocottes. I followed my Peach Crumble recipe to make the crumble, but I ended up just eyeballing all the measurements. Still turned out good though! If not, even better than the one I made for my Peach Crumble.

I ended up having about half of the crumble mixture left over *cheeky grin* so I placed the extra mixture into the freezer and then made another crumble the next day with the apples we had sitting on our table from our 12 Round Fruits for the New Year.

PREP TIME 10 MINS | COOKING TIME 20-25 MINS | SERVES 4

INGREDIENTS

Leftover Buko Salad*

For the crumble topping

100g salted butter (cold), cut into little cubes
1 cup plain flour
2/3 cup white granulated sugar
1/3 cup walnuts, roughly chopped

Ube Ice cream, optional

*Or you can always make a fresh batch to make this crumble.

METHOD

Preheat oven to 190C (375F or gas mark 5).
Divide the buko salad equally into 4 mini-cocottes, filling about half or three-quarters of the way. Set aside.
Add the sugar together with the butter, flour, and walnuts in a medium sized mixing bowl that has been chilled in the freezer for about 10 minutes (this is to help keep the butter chilled when making the crumbled).
With your fingertips, quickly mix the ingredients together until looks like rough breadcrumbs. If your mixture is too warm, put the bowl into the refrigerator for 15 minutes and start again when it has chilled.
Top the buko salad with about 2-3 tablespoons of the crumble mixture.
Place the mini cocottes on a baking tray and into the oven. Bake for 20 minutes, uncovered.
If your crumble topping is still towards the blonde side, turn the grill on and bake for a further 5 minutes or until the crumble starts to brown.
Serve hot out of the oven or at room temperature with ube ice cream (optional).

So, I initially wrote the following up at the beginning of the post, not knowing that I would be getting personal with two long paragraphs. I didn’t want to start my post of with this so I moved it for after the recipe for those who want to read on.

I mentioned in the beginning that I’m not one to make resolutions. Instead, I set an intention. Last year I tackled things with a “there is a difference between giving up and knowing when you’ve had enough” mindset and it definitely worked. The two things that bothered me when I entered the New Year last year were:

My Job, and

A Man/Men in general.

I hit a low point with my job. I wasn’t enjoying what I was doing anymore and to make things even worse, the environment and the toxicity of the people that surrounded me really affected my work and the way I worked. It also affected the way I interacted with my family and friends outside of the workplace – I was always grumpy and always avoided socialising with my friends. For 3 years I put up with this environment, and I let it consume me because I didn’t want to show others that I was weak for letting the people at work get to me. I didn’t want to give up. I wanted to fight. I reminded myself that: there is a difference between giving up and knowing when you’ve had enough. I didn’t give up. I knew that I definitely had enough. I put my foot down and filed for resignation early that year and I’ve never looked back.

Towards the second half of 2017, I met a man and we both fell in love with each other. It was a bit difficult seeing as he was all the way in the States and I was still working in Brunei at that time. We talked everyday. Made future plans together. Heck even made a bucket-list of things we’d do together. Shortly after, things started to die down. He started talking to me less and less each day even though I still tried just to keep things going. Eventually he stopped. He disappeared. He ghosted me as if I never existed at all. I stopped trying. I realised in time that we never really loved each other; we both just fell in love with the idea of falling in love. Did I give up on him? No. I just knew that I had enough trying to convince him and myself that it was love. After him, I had enough with men in general. I stopped looking for love and reminded myself that it’ll come when it comes.

So what is my intention for 2019? To be honest I haven’t thought much about it, but I looked at myself and where I am in life right now. What do I want to achieve by the end of the year? And this is it:

Go with the flow. Force Nothing. Let it happen.

Trusting that whichever way it goes, it’s for the best.

Happy New Year once again to all!

BON APPÉTIT

– Ally xx

Buko Pandan

December 24, 2015December 24, 2015 amcarmen1 Comment

Buko Pandan

Hello Everyone! We’re on our second last day of Festive Filipino Foods! If you have been living under a rock and basically haven’t been following my blog for the past week and a half, I have been posting a recipe every single day for the past 10 days now (tonight will be the 11th of 12 posts) cooking up recipes leading up to Christmas Day. Tonight, I will be sharing one final dessert recipe before I close this series for the month of December. I have saved the best savoury dish for last tomorrow, and if you’d like to take a stab at what I’ll be making, here are some clues: Spanish-inspired with lots and lots of seafood including prawns, clams, mussels, and calamari.

But enough of the seafood talk, that will be for tomorrow – tonight I will be sharing with you a recipe for a dessert that is a classic Filipino favourite known as Buko Pandan, that originated from the island province of Bohol in the Central Visayas region. It is a dessert dish found on the tables at every fiesta and family gatherings. The two main ingredients for this dessert are buko, which is a young coconut, and screwpine leaves which are locally known as pandan leaves. You can find these leaves in most Asian grocery stores, but if you’re a lucky duck like me, you might have a neighbour that grows these leaves and you have full access to it for free. However, you can use bottled pandan extract if this is more convenient for you.

At first glance, this sumptuous dessert can be mistaken for Buko Salad because of the similarity in texture and dairy ingredients used. However, the green gelatin which contains the aroma and flavor of the Pandan gives the distinction. — Vanjo Merano from Panlasang Pinoy

The dessert is usually topped with pinipig (immature grains of glutinous rice pounded until flat before being toasted), but I just went for what I had in the pantry, which is cornflakes and it’s just as good because you get that crunch in the dish anyway from it too. Rice Krispies may be used as well. I don’t think it is really added, but I like my Buko Pandan Dessert with large sago pearls, which is why I have added it to the dish. I’ve read that you can also add palm seeds or nata de coco in your dessert too if you like.

ps: before I move on to the recipe, I’d like to first apologise once again for a later than usual post. We’ve had a busy morning/afternoon cooking up a storm in the kitchen for our Noche Buena, and I only had time to write this post in between cooking/waiting times, and after all the cleaning up after our dinner.

Buko Pandan Ingredients

PREP TIME 15 MINS | COOKING TIME 90 MINS | SERVES 10-12

INGREDIENTS

3 young coconuts, flesh removed and cut into strips
1L water
1 packet (200ml) crème fraîche
1/2 can (190g) condensed milk
1 packet (10g) unflavoured green agar-agar powder, or simply just gelatine powder
1 cup large sago balls
1 cup white sugar
2 tsp pandan extract*
Handful of cornflakes

*You can extract your own from pandan leaves, and here’s how you can do it: Place the pandan leaves and water into a blender (1 bunch (12 leaves) to about a half cup of water). Blend until the leaves are chopped very finely. Pour contents through a fine sieve and press against it using a spoon to draw out any extra juice. Discard the leaves. Tip: if you keep the extract in a sealed bottle, you can keep it for up to one week in the fridge. Do not freeze though.

METHOD

Dissolve the agar-agar powder in 1L of water. Add the sugar, stir, and bring to a boil over low heat for about 10-15 minutes. Once done, pour into a large square mould (about 10″ in size) and leave it aside to cool down before placing it in the fridge to completely set.
Meanwhile, bring a large pot of water to a boil, about 2L. Once boiling, add the large sago balls in and cook until tender – mine took more than an hour to cook through, about an hour and 20 minutes to be exact.
While the sago is cooking away, mix all the ingredients together (except for the cornflakes) in a large bowl. Check to see if your gelatine has set, and once it has, cut it into small chunks and mix in the bowl together with all the other ingredients.
Once the sago is done, drain and add it to the mixture. Give it once good final mix and then place in the fridge for about 3-4 hours before serving.
Serve chilled, topped with cornflakes, or anything crunchy, and enjoy!

Buko Pandan

BON APPÉTIT

– Ally xx

Kamayan sa Palaisdaan

May 3, 2015January 8, 2019 amcarmenLeave a comment

Hello Everyone and welcome back to an all new Review Sunday! Most of the food that you’ll see here have either already been touched on in previous reviews, and/or recipes, so I may not write much about the food only because it’s nothing quite so special. Kamayan sa Palaisdaan has both a Hotel & Resort, as well as a restaurant, both carrying the same menu but differ in ambience. It is the ambience of the restaurant just down the road from the Hotel & Resort that made me want to write a review and share this place with you – floating bahay kubos on bamboo rafts!

Other than the ambience, I couldn’t really pick out anything special from their menu that really made me want to say, “I’m coming back here for this particular dish!” Though they say it’s an ideal getaway restaurant for seafood lovers, the seafood did not really impress – well I mean, we barely ordered any seafood to be honest.

I don’t know why I am so negative when it comes to reviewing Filipino food. The only reason I can think of is that most of the food that you get dining out, you can easily cook it up yourself at home and it tastes exactly the same. From the dishes that you will see below, I can definitely cook up all the dishes. I guess it’s because I know how to cook these dishes, that I comment the way I do. I’m not saying that these are terrible dishes; if anything, they are my favourite dishes to have when eating at home. It’s just that when I dine out, I want to eat something that I can’t cook myself (or I guess in my case, haven’t attempted to cook yet).

SINIGANG atbp: Sinigang na Sugpo (₱320.00)

Sugpo, as you can already tell from the photograph above is prawn (or shrimp if you’re from that part of the world that calls them that despite being huge-ass prawns). Sinigang is a soup that is characterised by its sour and savoury taste that is most often associated with tamarind. This is a dish that my mom would make a few times a month, varying between different meats such as beef and pork, and seafood like prawns and fish, accompanied by all sorts of vegetables from daikon, water spinach, okra, taro corms, etc. This is a dish I love especially when the weather is quite chilly.

SINIGANG atbp: Tinolang Manok (₱255.00)

This is another dish that my mom would always make, and also great for cold and rainy days. Tinola is a ginger and onion based soup with manok (chicken) as the usual main ingredient, best complimented with green papaya wedges (an alternative is chayote/chokos) and chili leaves. Again, a dish that I love, but very close to the way that I’d make it at home.

SIZZLERS: Sisig Pork (₱205.00)

Of course, a meal in the Philippines would not be complete without sisig! I was actually quite disappointed with this sisig dish though – it came to the table, not only without a freshly cracked egg on top of it, but it also wasn’t sizzling and was very dry.

IHAW: Inihaw na Spareribs (₱310.00)

I love ihaw, and I love spareribs. Sadly, these ribs were dry and weren’t very tender.

IHAW: Inihaw na Pork Chop (₱320.00)

The pork chop option was much better than the spareribs; juicy, tender, and full of that lovely char-grilled flavour.

VEGETABLES: Chopsuey Chicken (₱185.00)

Whenever we dine out, we try to avoid dishes like chopsuey, but because we couldn’t decide on any other vegetable dishes (I know there’s chicken in it but it was somehow placed under the ‘vegetables’ section on the menu). Why we try to avoid this dish is simply because it’s basically just stir-fried vegetables and nothing more exciting to that.

PRITO: Daing na Bangus (₱160.00)

Bangus (milkfish) is the national fish of the Philippines and can be prepared and cooked in various ways. ‘Daing’ refers to dried fish from the Philippines. Fish prepared as daing is usually split open, gutted, salted liberally, and then sun and air-dried. I love eating fried bangus with a bit of pickled green papaya on the side with plain rice. But honestly speaking though, why order fried fish at a restaurant? In my case, because I love it and I couldn’t find anything else in the menu that attracted me to it.

SALADS: Ensaladang Pako (₱125.00)

Quite possibly the worst dish from this place based on my taste buds and opinion. For starters, the taste of what seemed to be raw pako (an edible Fiddlehead fern) did not sit too well with me; it tasted bitter. What made it worse for me were the raw onions and the obvious canned sardines in tomato sauce. Why did I order this? Well I didn’t, my uncle did. I don’t think I even touched this dish after a small bite of just the pako.

JUICES: Buko Fresh (₱60.00)

Fresh coconut juice straight from the shell, need I say more?

Overall, as I have already mentioned above, the menu is pretty average and can honestly be found in many other restaurants (and homes no matter rich or poor) across the Philippines. I guess it’s safe to say that if you are going to the restaurant for the food, it’s not worth the trip to this place seeing as it is also quite hard to find. However, if you want to dine in a bamboo hut on a bamboo raft floating over water, then you may want to make the trip here just for that experience. Dining at the Hotel & Resort isn’t bad as well as it provides a lot more recreational activities that you can enjoy aside from dining, and it also overlooks Mount Banahaw. So ambience and dining experience is a sure 10 for me. Service probably an 8 as even though there were quite a few staff members, it was pretty hard to flag one down whenever we needed something. Food – probably a 5; 6 if I’m feeling generous, but nothing more.