Cooking Made Easier

Time was when our mothers were happy enough to collect, read and follow a cookbook. In those days producing a meal, either from recipes handed from generation to generation or culled from cookbooks, was not complicated. One needed only to know how to cut ingredients (to no specific shape or size) sauté, fry, broil or boil. In recent years, we got introduced to seemingly more complicated culinary techniques and terms, such as aspic, braise, glaze, marinate, stir fry, coulis, julienne, au gratin and many, many others.

Thus cooking became more complicated as family members, now exposed to so-called international and gourmet cuisine, expect the "ordinary" housewife to acquire state-of-the art cooking prowess. Nora Daza’s cookbook was, for a long time, a treasure for the more senior home-cooks. It was simple and easy to follow. But through the years, simple recipes were no longer enough. Cookbooks with ‘how-tos’ were written and two cooks, Frenchman Jacques Pepin and American guru Julia Child, successfully published books with photos illustrating the step-by-step procedure of each of the recipes they wrote. A great help, indeed.

Now you can very well get a locally published culinary guide called "Food Magazine’s Step-by-Step Cookbook", a very attractively laid out publication with over 90 delicious recipes and more than 600 color photographs to illustrate cooking techniques and preparations. This is one of the most appreciated holiday gifts we got from a very good friend.

Leafing through the pages, we immediately got tempted to try the Frosted Grapes, considering we have lots of it left over from the Christmas bounty. We did not realize that grapes, like chestnuts, can be recycled this way, an innovative process that prevents waste as it makes for a very welcome and unique dessert. Then there is the recipe for Glazed Chestnuts, a simple interpretation of what we know as Marron Glace from France. But if you are looking for the real thing, go to Terry’s Deli off Pasong Tamo Extension in Makati, where the sweets come from France and Spain. They are pricey, though.

Going back to our new ‘toy’, the Step-by-Step Cookbook, the recipe collection spans the globe, from the Philippines to Asia, the Middle East and Europe. While in Egypt sometime ago, we came across tahini paste and couscous and wondered how we could duplicate them. Not to fret, these are in this new book. Instead of buying imported corn dogs, you can make them yourself, following a recipe in this publication. Needless to say, this book will be a good friend of every homemaker who needs to cook all the time.

Our suki, Laura, has resurfaced at the Muntinlupa wet market in the same corner where she was. Seems she took a leave, got married and had a child. Back in business, her vegetables are fresh and, best of all, her prices are much more reasonable. For P161. 50, we filled our basket with a fourth of a squash, 1 big stalk of celery, 2 stalks of leeks, 1/4 kilo Baguio beans, a bunch of sitaw, white onions, carrots and a cauliflower.

In the wet section, we noted the much lower (from where we go regularly) cost of fish and other seafood. In the past holiday rush, jumbo prawns were sold at P520, the large ones at P300 while squid went from between P80 (small) to P150 a kilo. Bangus was a revelation at P80 a kilo and thus we got two large ones to make into relleno. The downside of this market is that it is really wet! You actually wade through sticky mud and murky water. You need to wear bakya or boots perhaps, or bring some wet wipes to clean your feet and footwear after you leave the market. There is also very bad traffic management as jeepneys are allowed to wait for passengers, clogging the streets so that even a thin person will hardly have room pass in between the vehicles.

We are happy to note that the sidewalk vendors along Nichols Road, fronting the controversial new NAIA Terminal 3, have disappeared. And we join the many citizens who strongly oppose B.F. Fernando’s incredible proposition about how to get rid of household garbage.

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Lydia D. Castillo’s e-mail address: [email protected]