Kusina Maria

a Filipina’s food and cooking blog

Category : Entrees

Radish Cake

Radish Cake from Mandarin Garden Tea House

Radish Cake from Mandarin Garden Tea House

Those times when I didn’t eat rice and I dined in Chinese dim sum restaurants, I’d eat raddish cake with my dim sum. In Chinese dim sum, it’s Lobak go.

Radish cake is also called turnip cake. It is made of shredded radish (or daikon), rice flour, and some other ingredients such as Chinese ham, dried shrimps, and carrots. It is pan-fried with a thin crust on the outside but soft and tender on the outside. It originated from the Cantonese style of cooking.

Surprisingly, it does not have radish’s bitter taste or bite.

It is commonly served in dim sum and other Chinese restaurants and is served during special Chinese occasions such as the Chinese Lunar New Year. The dim sum restaurants usually serve it with a sweet chili dip or soy sauce. Some eat it with oyster sauce, Hoisin sauce, or other sauces.

The flavor complements the taste of most other dim sum dishes such as siomai or dumplings, taosi pork, and sweet and sour fish. It is also a good carbohydrate or starch substitute.

In Davao City, I usually eat radish cakes at the outlets and branches of the Mandarin Garden Tea House and the Dimsum Diner.

Cafe Demitasse’s Chicken Pesto Parmigiana

Here’s a wonderful innovation by Cafe Demitasse: Chicken Pesto Parmigiana.

Chicken Fillet with Pesto Sauce and Parmesan Cheese

Chicken Pesto by Cafe Demitasse

Parmigiana is originally made with eggplants layered in such a way that it resembles the shutters of a window. From this visual, the dish was named “parmigiana” an adaptation of the word “parmiciana” meaning window shutters.

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Seafood Paella

Seafood Paella by Ria Jose

Seafood Paella by Ria Jose

One of Daddy’s favorite dishes is Seafood Paella. When I made it for his birthday, I almost failed because there was just too much seafood that the oven’s heat wasn’t enough to cook the rice.

But I have cooked it twice already. Successfully.

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Ria’s Beef Stew

My Beef Stew at CACS

My Beef Stew at CACS

One of the things that made be weep and bleed during my Basic Skills Course at the Center for Asian Culinary Studies was Beef Stew which we made on Day 12 Beef Fabrication Day. It was the first time I spent hours just cooking.

Center for Asian Culinary Studies

Mise en Place for my Beef Stew at CACS

I volunteered to make the Beef Stew because I was a big fan of beef stew. And my cousins? They looove beef stew. Boy, did I both love and hate the cooking process. Mise en place was a bitch. I had 28 ingredients to prepare. And the cooking part was just pure torture. HOURS and I literally mean HOURS in front of the stove, watching the pot, stirring to make sure the stew didn’t dry out and burn.

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