I Need A Break!

I'm taking a much needed rest from blogging. Check back after a month.

that will be me for the next few weeks...

Spaghetti With Butter

Last Friday my daughter came home with her leftover dinner of spaghetti and veal scallopini. The container was so big I transferred the food in a smaller dish. The next day, when she woke up to have it for brunch she couldn't find it. She thought I threw it away. Well, somebody ate it. So to make amends I made a similar dish, Thin Spaghetti with Butter, Bread Crumbs and Lemon, and Beef Scallopini Marsala.

Thin Spaghetti With Butter
8 ounces thin spaghetti
1 tablespoon olive oil
¼ cup dry bread crumbs
zest of 1 lemon
4 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 tablespoon chopped flat leaf parsley

• Cook spaghetti according to package directions.
• In a small skillet, heat olive oil, add breadcrumbs, stir fry until golden brown, about 1 minute, then add lemon zest. Set aside.
• In a large pan, heat butter until melted and slightly brown, add salt and drained cooked spaghetti, toss well, add bread crumb mixture and parsley. Mix well. Serve hot.

This spaghetti dish is so delicious, I love the hint of lemon and the texture of bread crumbs. This will go well with any meat dish, including KFC fried chicken.

Menudo

I ate a lot of menudo when I was a child. It's a staple in cafeterias, carinderias, during fiestas and every household I knew, it's the second adobo in the country. They may have different ingredients but they seem to taste the same wherever you eat it. As an adult, I rarely had it, can't explain why and it's a wonder this is only the second time I made this dish.

Menudo
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
1½ pounds pork, diced into ¼ inch pieces
1 Spanish chorizo, diced into ¼ inch pieces
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
1 red bell pepper, diced
2 teaspoons sea salt
ground black pepper
1 large tomato, diced
1 cup water or chicken broth, or more as needed
1 large potato, diced into ¼ inch pieces
1 can green peas

• In a medium saucepan, heat olive oil, add garlic and onion, stir fry for 2 minutes. Add red bell pepper, pork and chorizo. Stir fry for 3 minutes. Add tomato, salt, black pepper and water. Bring to a boil, cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Add potatoes, simmer for 5 minutes. (Add more water or broth if needed). Add drained peas and cook 1 minute until peas are heated through. Serve with rice or as pan de sal filling.

I remember menudo had liver in them. I don't like liver, if you do just add them with the potatoes, or cook them separately and add to the cooked dish.

Milan - A Most Annoying Movie

Filipino Movie Review

Milan F

I just wasted 90 minutes of my precious time watching this really really really annoying Tagalog movie. This is one of the reasons I rarely watched Filipino movies in the Philippines. Recently, I started watching tagalog/Filipino movies and liked some of them, even the corny but entertaining Enteng Kabisote and Crying Ladies, if you can believe it. The Debut and Pinoy Blonde are very good, I highly recommend them.
Somebody in my house put Milan in our Netflix list and I was also interested because I had a cousin who was murdered a little over a year ago by a fellow Filipino in Italy. He was an Italian citizen, had lived in Italy for over 12 years. He was killed because the other guy was jealous of the success of his business, which was recruiting Filipinos to work as domestic helpers, etc. in that country.

The cheesy opening music was a bad sign that this movie will suck, but I was determined to watch it and give it a chance to prove me wrong about Filipino movies. I did not know IT WAS HOPELESSLY BAD! The movie opened with a shrill nagging voice of a woman, who turned out to be the daughter of Nora Aunor, and the whole movie seemed to have lots of shrill women... AND men. The main character, Lino went to Milan to look for his wife, he did not have her telephone number or address, it never occured to him she did not want to be found, dumb. Lino was so wimpy, kept harassing Filipinos outside subways and on the streets and refused to understand the word NO, that I wanted to hit him upside the head during the entire movie. Near the end of the film the pretty wife turned up with an unbelievably ugly baby, he finally learned what happened to her and he went outside, started hitting the wall while crying (he's always crying) and kept saying "I am not stupid, I am not an idiot", I kept answering the TV hoping he'll hear me "yes, you are too", like a child in a playground, I can't help it because he IS STUPID, AN IDIOT, AN IMBECILE.... Stupid acting, stupid directing and stupid dialog, arrgh! The movie tried to show THE HARDSHIPS OFWs have to endure working abroad, but I remained unsympathetic, I'm sorry to say, but they are there illegally and they chose to work there as domestic helpers, duh! Watch this movie only if you are a masochist.;D