My Books Of The Month

These are 2 of the books I have read this month that are worth recommending



BELONG TO ME Marisa de los Santos A++

A follow-up to her best-selling novel LOVE WALKED IN. It's the story of newly married city couple, Cornelia and her handsome half-Filipino oncologist husband Teo, who moved to the suburbs with perfectly manicured lawns, beautiful people, and their equally beautiful children. It sounds like a shallow chick lit but the novel has so much more depth and meaning. All the characters are very well presented and developed, the wit and talent of the author are very evident. She deftly wrote about friendships, families, relationships, love, and death with her funny beautiful warmhearted dialog. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

SHARP TEETH Toby Barlow A++



A fast-paced and bloody thriller about werewolves disguised as ordinary dogs living among the unsuspecting citizens of Los Angeles. Not for the squeamish, this novel has everything: action, rival gangs, murder, revenge, drugs, and romance written entirely in free verse. I am already imagining it being made into a 'biting' but cool film noir. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

lines from page 43

Lycanthropes first came out of the native tribes in the Northwest,
born, legends say,
from a native thirst for a superior warrior.
But when the weather turned,
their packs were wiped out knifed and skinned in fear
as native American witch hunts
took on their destruction
as a sacred, healing mission.
On a hundred nights,
surrounded and fighting mad,
pack after pack were driven into drought-dry woods
where they were all burned down
to smoldering stumps.
The howling shook leaves in distant trees
and rolled through the valleys

like the screams of lost birds

echoing the thunder.

Layer Cakes - Sapin Sapin And Kueh Lapis

I have never made sapin sapin nor was I enthusiastic about it before. To me it is just a three-color layered bibingka. The sapan sapin that I remember had only 4 ingredients: sweet rice, coconut milk, sugar, and food coloring, which probably is the Laguna style. The recipe in my Little Kakanin book uses three kinds of milk: coconut, sweetened condensed, and evaporated, and has ube and langka (jack fruit). Well, I made my sapin sapin with more flavoring, the ever present buco pandan and anise extract for a 4-layer sapin sapin. It was not easy to remove from the pan because it sticks everywhere but I love it!
While browsing the internet for the recipe I found several Malaysian layer cakes called Kueh Lapis and I was attracted by the thin beautiful layers. Looking at the ingredients and procedure, it's very similar to the sapin sapin. The finished cake has a firmer texture, more like a softer Chinese tikoy and not as sticky as sapin sapin, and therefore easier to slice and makes a lovely but yummy snack. I also love it.

Sapin Sapin

2¼ cups sweet rice flour
1¼ cup rice flour
1 cup sugar
2 cups coconut milk
red, yellow, and purple food coloring
optional ingredients:
1 cup finely minced buco
pandan extract
4 tablespoons ube powder
½ cup finely minced langka
½ teaspoon anise extract
banana leaf

• Line a 9-inch round pan with banana leaf, set aside. Mix flours, sugar, and coconut milk until smooth. Divide into four portions. Color one portion with red and add anise extract, add buco and pandan extract into the second, add yellow coloring and langka into the third, and add the ube powder and purple coloring, if a deeper purple is desired, to the remaining portion.
• Preheat the pan in the steamer for 5 minutes. Pour one color of your choice and steam for 15 minutes. Pour the next 3 portions, one at a time, steaming for 15 minutes each time.
• Cool completely before removing from pan. Serve with cooked until brown thick coconut milk (latik or budbod).

Malaysian Kueh Lapis

>

950 ml coconut milk
400 gm rice flour
280 gm tapioca flour
½ teaspoon salt
550 gm sugar
10 pandan leaves
350 ml water
food coloring and flavoring

• Mix coconut milk, flours, and salt. Boil pandan, water, and sugar until sugar has dissolved. Remove pandan and stir into the flour mixture and mix well until smooth. Divide into 3 portions. Add green pandan paste to one portion and pink color to another portion, leave the third plain.
• Lightly oil a square baking pan. Steam pan for 5 minutes in boiling water. Pour 1 cup of white mixture and steam for 10 minutes. Pour 1 cup of green mixture on top of white mixture and steam for 5 minutes. Pour 1 cup of pink mixture and steam for 5 minutes. Repeat with white and green mixtures steaming 5 minutes each. Add more pink or a drop of red coloring to the pink mixture and pour on top of green. Steam for 10 minutes. Cool completely before cutting into shapes.

pretty yummy

Pulled-Pork Barbecue Sandwich

Throughout the southeastern states up to the Washington D.C area the air is filled with barbecue smoke and aroma. It is Memorial Day weekend and it seems everybody is firing up the grills, which is a good thing because I love the smell of charring meat and fat. Although Virginia has its own barbecue recipe which I favor because it resembles the Filipino barbecue in preparation and taste, I made North Carolina style pulled-pork barbecue just to compare and I can say I also like it. The basting sauce is very simple, does not have garlic, onions, and ketchup and is not very sweet, a little bit vinegary but still okay. I served the pulled-pork barbecue with a layer of creamy coleslaw and had the sandwich with a large glass of minty melonade, yumm, yumm.

North Carolina Pulled-Pork Barbecue
(recipe adapted from Gourmet magazine, June 2008 issue)
3½ cups cider vinegar
1½ tablespoons sugar
1½ tablespoons hot red pepper flakes
salt and black pepper
8 - 10 pounds bone-in pork shoulder roast with skin
10 pound hardwood coal for grilling
hamburger buns
coleslaw

• Bring vinegar to a boil with pepper flakes, sugar, 2 teaspoons salt, and 1 tablespoon ground black pepper in a stainless steel pan until sugar has dissolved, cool. Set aside 2 C to serve with sandwiches.
• While sauce cools, score pork skin in a crosshatch pattern, cutting through skin and fat but not into meat. Pat meat dry and rub all over with 1 tablespoon each salt and ground black pepper. Let stand at room temperature for 1 hour before grilling.
• Prepare grill for indirect heat cooking over low heat, leaving space in middle for disposable roasting pan.
• When coal has cooled to 300°F, put disposable roasting pan on bottom between the mounds of coal, then fill pan halfway with water. Add a couple of handfuls of unlit coal to each mound of coal. Put grill rack on.
• Oil grill rack, then put pork, skin side up, on rack above roasting pan. Grill pork, with lid ajar, basting meat with sauce and turning every 30 minutes. To maintain a temperature of 275 degrees, add a couple of handfuls of unlit coal to each side every 30 minutes until meat is fork-tender, about 7 - 8 hours, and internal temperature is 190 degrees.
• Cut large pieces of meat into bite-size pieces. When meat is cool enough to handle, shred using 2 forks. Transfer into a bowl.
• Layer shredded meat on toasted bun, add a layer of coleslaw. Serve with reserved vinegar sauce on the side.

Gourmet's note: Pork can be roasted in a large roasting pan, covered with parchment then foil, in middle of a 350 degree oven. Roast 1 hour, then pour 1 cup vinegar sauce over meat. Roast 1 hour more, then baste with 1 cup more sauce. Continue to roast, covered, adding water (½ cup at a time) to the pan if needed, until fork-tender, about 2 hours more. Remove parchment and foil and roast another 45 minutes to 1 hour until skin is crisp.

The Ambassador of Cute

Tadaa! Meet the new Japan tourism ambassador to Hong Kong and China, the kitten with a ginormous head, Hello Kitty herself, hahaha.

The amusing news made me unearth from the basement my daughter's Hello Kitty stuffed toy but couldn't find the really cute frog kerokerokeroppi.

She also had the weirdest Japanese stuffed toy monchhichi (baby and monkey) which I gave to my sister's daughter when we left Manila in 1988. The toy is a thumb-sucking doll in a monkey suit that when removed becomes a baby, it also came with a feeding bottle and then it wets itself.

I don't know what I was thinking when I bought and gave that to my then 1 year old daughter. I thought it was cute. In Hong Kong my daughter bought pencils and pencil cases, book bags, and all sorts of Sanrio items which she stuffed in a box and stored in the basement when she turned 13 or maybe 14.

say hi to Gitta's 20 year-old Hello Kitty