The Pinoy Food Photo Blog combines my family's love for eating and amateur photography.
Photography is also a hobby which I enjoy but am still learning. read more?
Posted by Lauren | Under Restaurant with 1,657 views
Monday Dec 29, 2008
The second leg of our road trip was a stay at White Beach, Puerto Galera in the island of Mindoro. We were only there for one night and half a day but I like Galera better than Boracay; it’s easier to get too, less pretentious, and it feels more alive.
One thing I noticed as we were looking for a place to have dinner is that there are a lot of simple, hole-in-the-wall type restaurants that offer kabab on the menu. Maybe it’s because there are a lot of tourists from the Middle East who go to Galera. There were about ten Israelis sitting at the table behind us, and their conversation was like background music to our meal. It almost felt as if we were in another country.
My friends and I spent our weekend on a crazy road trip around South Luzon. First stop: Tagaytay, which we reached at around 9 pm because we had only decided to go on the road trip late that afternoon. After checking in at the gorgeous 8 Suites Hotel, we realized that we hadn’t eaten anything since leaving Manila. I was particularly insistent on having bulalo for dinner, a clear beef soup that gets its rich flavor from the bone marrow of the beef shank. Bulalo is a specialty of Tagaytay but oddly enough, we had absolutely no idea where we could find this famous bulalo – or at least, we didn’t know which restaurants were renowned for serving bulalo.
Posted by Noemi | Under Restaurant with 2,581 views
Tuesday Dec 23, 2008
I forgot that yesterday night would finally show the the food bloggers feature at QTV The Beat. Hosted by Tonipet Gaba, I totally enjoyed the shoot with the Beat Crew, The Shang Palace staff and the exquisit Chinese cuisine. I hope to watch the replay soon. So here are the three restaurants that were featured.
Phoebe’s favorite restaurant is Cibo
(Photo credit to Phoebe)
Posted by Noemi | Under Equipment with 3,002 views
Monday Dec 22, 2008
The last time I used a batirol was in my parents’ house in Cebu when I was still in college. A batirol is a wooden whisk used to mix tablea (a block of pure cocoa) and water into a thick, grainy, hot chocolate drink. In fact, the Bisaya word for “to whisk” is “batil”, which is probably a derivative of batirol. For a truly rich drink, we use one cup of water (225 ml) per tablea. The tablea and water are mixed in a cast-iron pitcher called a tsokolatera. Like a kawali or wok, a tsokolatera (Chocolatera or Chocolate Pot) performs better as it ages; in fact, the batirol and tsokolatera are supposed to last a lifetime and are often passed down from generation to generation. Keep mixing the hot chocolate with the wooden batirol until the drink is thick enough.
I don’t know whatever happened to my parents’ batirol and tsokolatera, but I never saw it again after college. I’ve been looking for my own batirol for the longest time because the hot tsokolate we serve for noche buena doesn’t taste as earthy and strong as tsokolate whisked using a batirol. The last time I saw a batirol for sale was at Glorietta several years ago; it only cost 900 pesos but I’m not sure why I didn’t jump at the chance to buy it. This year, however, I grabbed at the opportunity to buy my own batirol and tsokolatera.
Chili’s is fast becoming one of my favorite weekend hangouts. Besides the fact that their margaritas come in huge glasses, I love the items on their dessert menu. I’m not sure if you’re supposed to mix sugar with alcohol and I have to admit that they don’t really taste great together, but there are times when I crave for something sweet in the middle of a drinking session. Last weekend I discovered that Chili’s had a molten chocolate cakes on their menu, flourless cakes with melted chocolate cake that oozes out like lava when you cut it in the middle. I’ve had a chocolate molten cake in Boracay, so I picked out the white chocolate molten cake to see if it’s any good.
Chili’s white chocolate molten cake is topped with vanilla icing inside a crunchy white chocolate shell and seasoned with white chocolate curls and raspberry sauce. The first bite was absolutely heavenly – I love how ice cream and a warm cake tastes together. This is definitely a dessert that you need to share with someone because the cake is too big to finish by yourself, and it only takes a couple more bites for your throat to start getting itchy from all that sugar. It’s still a good way to get your sugar fix satisfied. Maybe if it had chocolate ice cream instead of vanilla, it wouldn’t feel like too much of a white chocolate overdose.
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