Pinoy Food & Other Cuisine :: Food PhotoBlog and Events |

The Noche Buena meal usually takes place as soon as the entire family comes back from the late evening mass at their parish. We attended the 10 pm mass last night but we spent the hours before church preparing our meal, which consisted of pansit bam-i (Bisayan style), chunky chicken macaroni salad, Majestic ham, and suman for dessert.

We garnished our Majestic ham with a few cherries and pineapple slices and created a warm sauce made out of crushed pineapple and cinnamon to eat it with. There was no rice served since we women in the family didn’t want to stuff ourselves with unnecessary carbohydrates at that late hour. We did, however, have some pan-de-sal with us, which I ate with the ham and liberal amounts of the crushed pineapple sauce.

Dessert was assorted suman that came with a sweet, coconut-based syrup and caramelized shredded coconut.  We served hot tsokolate along with the suman and for a little variation, I crushed a candy cane to give the tsokolate a peppermint tinge.