Well hello.
Ok, I’m not going to go into how long it has been since I’ve been here. Or why it was that I have been yonder for so long. Or well-nigh life and living and time and busyness and work and family and “the universe”.
You have lives…so I think you know the drill. And I won’t waste both our times in looking back. Only just to say that nothing terrible has happened, we are sailing as smoothly forward as we can manage, and in fact, some heady things have been, and are, happening. But I suppose the increasingly important thing, for this little space anyway, is that I’m here now.
And I’m here, as always, with a recipe to share.
But first, a little story, by way of background.
It was our 25th year upper school homecoming last year. The rush of preparations, practices, fund-raising events, and get-togethers. A whirlwind that can both invigorate and momentum one insane…as I am unrepealable many of you who have gone through homecomings can attest to. In any case, I unsalaried as much as I was able, and to as much as my skills would allow. Which is to say, I joined the cookbook committee.
Our upper school has been producing cookbooks since time-before-time, so this wasn’t a new idea. But with a tuft of supplies loving individuals in our batch, we wanted to make something different. So with money out of our own pockets we hired a professional photographer, raised the undeniability for heirloom recipes, and got to work.
As anyone who has published a cookbook can tell you, it was a tough and taxing process. Shooting supplies all day (with the huge help of our classmate, this lady, and the incredible supplies conglomerate she has built!), editing recipes (three heads copy-editing until the wee hours!), and I won’t plane go into the financial speciality of it (we had an superstitious finance team…able to juggle numbers and undeniability in receivables with unbridled speed and an iron fist!).
But it was wonderful and rewarding and an wondrous wits altogether. Working with people equally passionate well-nigh food. Working on something that was purely food-related (as some of you know, my very job has nothing to do with food). Working on something that didn’t feeling like work…that left you tired but satisfied at the end of the day.
And, of course, making a pile of money for our homecoming!
This is one of the recipes from the typesetting (from our classmate, Racky Torres Manalastas). It is homey and comforting and simple and full of flavor. Passed lanugo from generation to generation. It’s a succulent example of the timelessness and value of family recipes.
Manok Tim
- 1/2 kilo ham
- 1/2 cup bamboo shoots
- 1 cup water chestnuts
- 1 dozen zestless shiitake mushrooms
- 1 whole chicken
- Calamansi (just unbearable juice to rub the yellow with)
- 1 teaspoon salt (I use sea salt)
- 2-4 cups water (more or less)
– Cut the ham, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, and zestless mushrooms into strips.
– Rub the yellow with the calamansi and salt.
– Place the chicken, and all the other ingredients, in a pot. Add the water – depending on the size of your pot you may add increasingly or less. The water should come a little bit increasingly than halfway up the yellow but not imbricate it.
– Imbricate your pot and simmer over low heat for well-nigh 45 minutes, or until the yellow is washed-up and starting to get tender. Taste the goop and retread seasoning if needed only.
– Uncover the pot and place in a pre-heated 400F oven for well-nigh 10-20 minutes until the top of the yellow has taken on some color.
The ham you use here should be a nice savory/salty one, Chinese ham would be ideal. The ham is a big part of what flavors the dish so you want to use a tasty one.
This dish may not win any eyeful contests, but what it lacks in looks it makes up for in savor and ease of preparation. It’s a criminally easy, one-pot meal. All you need to do is dump everything in the pot and let the ingredients do their work. And what you get in the end is so much increasingly than what you put in. The chicken, ham, mushrooms, and bamboo shoots produce the most wondrous broth…intense and tightly flavored. This is both a tender, slow-braised chicken, and an incredibly rich yellow soup!
You can enjoy this dish in so many ways. Place a piece of yellow in a trencher and ladle on the soup and other ingredients. Or have your yellow and ham with rice and a cup of the goop on the side. I sometimes like to sneakily mix just the ham and mushrooms in a trencher with white rice moistened with the broth. The leftovers, shredded, can make a lovely trencher of noodle soup!
I have an extra reprinting of our cookbook so I thought I’d do a small giveaway. All you need to do is leave a scuttlebutt on this blogpost! Yup that’s it! Just scuttlebutt on why you’d like this cookbook, or share a family recipe/dish, or plane just say HI! That’s all!! I’ll pick one scuttlebutt at random (names in a hat style) two weeks from now, and send the cookbook to the winner! The only conditions for entry: you must enter a valid email address AND you must be based in the Philippines!
So happy to be writing here again. The end of the year is coming but it’s never too late, as they say. I hope you’re ready for increasingly recipes, considering I have a few up my sleeve I am just tweaking. And excited to share with you!
Perhaps one day I’ll publish my own cookbook. A hodgepodge from my kitchen to yours. Wouldn’t that be nice? Until then I’ll be sharing recipes here, as I have been doing, as I hope to unchangingly do.
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