For vegans who miss puchero: Vegan MoFo #8

Holy crapparoni, I’ve missed 2 days of MoFo’ing. I gotta get my ass into shape…

What I’d like to share today is a vegan version of another childhood favorite: puchero.

I think this dish is something every Filipino family has its own version of. Puchero actually came from Mexican and South American cuisine. It arrived in the Philippines via Spain and I guess, puchero is one good thing we can thank our colonizers / slavemasters of 300 years for.

Puchero, Spanish for “stewpot”, comes from Argentina, Uruguay, and Spain. According to Wikipedia, the preparation and ingredients of the dish vary by region. Spain particularly likes chickpeas while Argentina and Uruguay like theirs meat-based. Puchero is usually made up of a soup of meat and vegetables.

Here in the Philippines we use chicken, beef, cabbage, baguio pechay / Chinese cabbage, and potatoes. We also like having boiled saba / cooking bananas served on the side. For families who can trace their roots to Spain (fun trivia, on my paternal grandfather’s side we get our Spanish blood from a friar), we like adding chorizo / pork sausage and chickpeas. I believe puchero is usually eaten as a hearty soup but for those with Spanish influences, we like ours soup on the side, meat and veggies served separately, and with rice.












I fondly remember the Sunday puchero tradition upheld in my family. We usually chop up the meat and veggies and mix it with rice, tomato sauce, olive oil, and vinegar in a huge wooden bowl. Each of us had an assignment, whether it’s chopping the meat, or the veggies, or pouring the sauce. My dad usually added the final touch, whether it was a splash of vinegar or a dash of salt. It was a family affair and it was so satisfying to sit down and eat the fruits of our labor.

When my brother Michael and I turned vegan, we no longer joined in this tradition. We missed the family food preparation. When everyone else would enjoy the puchero, we would have some completely different vegan meal.

Last Sunday we had puchero for lunch and for the first time we were able to enjoy a vegan puchero! It felt completely familiar at once and incredibly satisfying to eat. We missed our puchero. For our version we cooked our vegetables (cabbage and baguio pechay) and saba bananas in gently boiling water until tender. Chickpeas, usually an afterthought, became one of the main stars of the dish. We cooked ours in garlic, onions, tomatoes, salt and pepper.

And I confess, I missed chorizo – or rather, the smoky saltiness it imparts. Luckily I had a stash of homemade vegan chorizo (off Isa’s Vegan Brunch cookbook) in the freezer. I threw in a couple of chorizos in a sautee pan with about 1 inch of water and simmered them until tender. I then sliced the sausages in half, and then in quarters diagonally. So as not to throw out the now flavorful cooking liquid, I sautéed some sliced onions in it with a splash of olive oil until tender. After setting the onions aside, I added another glug of olive oil in the same pan and fried up the chorizos.


Eating puchero after years of no puchero was… nothing short of amazing. We didn’t have the time to slice up the chorizo and veggies and mix it up with chickpeas, rice, tomato sauce, olive oil and vinegar like our family usually does but it was rewarding just the same. I got bits of everything and couldn’t even fit rice onto my plate.

If you come from a family that regularly eats a meat-based puchero – you can have your puchero veganified! So to summarize:

1. Cook vegetables and saba bananas separately from the meat.
2. Gussy up your chickpeas – cook them with garlic, onions, and tomatoes.
3. Fry up your favorite vegan chorizo, either store bought or homemade. Check out Julie’s Spicy Italian Sausages, they’re a good substitute.
4. The puchero seasonings – tomato sauce (cooked with garlic and onions), olive oil, and vinegar – are already naturally vegan!
5. Mix everything together and dig in!

A well-loved dessert from my childhood: Vegan MoFo #5

Oh mais con hielo, how I've missed thee. I haven't tasted your icy corny goodness in years. How I've longed for your juicy kernels, your crunchy shaved ice, your sweet surrender, your ability to cool this humid tropical weather -- but alas, you are almost always served with dairy evaporated milk. For shame, for shame. It's a good thing mother took me literally when I said I wanted you, and only you veganified, for my birthday dessert. No birthday cake for me, heavens no. And you taste just as good, if not better, with coconut milk. You don't need cow's milk to make you all creamy and lovely. You just need a good dose of creamy non-dairy milk and a healthy serving of sugar (and in my case, brown) to sweeten you up.

While I only had you 2 nights ago, I do hope we see each other very, very soon. I can't wait until our next rendezvous.

Birthday buko pie

Happy happy birthday to Michael, my awesome brother who turned vegan the same time I did and has been my animal-rights fighting buddy ever since. I can honestly say that vegan life would've been more difficult if not for him. He was the only vegan I knew for the longest time (until the vegans started coming out of hibernation when they heard about my bakery) and the person I'd rant to when I'd get angry about an AR-related issue. He also convinced me to adopt our cats when I was still hesitant about keeping pets.

Here he is with my mom, my 2 other brothers Gabriel and Antonio, and the birthday pie I made for him: buko pie. Ever since my triumph with my first vegan pie, I've been dying to make buko pie.

Buko pie is one of those Filipino desserts that is usually not vegan and something that I've missed eating. Usually the pie crust is made with butter or dairy margarine, or it's got eggwash brushed on top, or the filling's made with milk. Michael requested buko pie for his birthday instead of traditional cake, and so I went on a mission to make my first buko pie.

Quick lesson: buko is the young version of coconut. While the coconut looks like a hard ball of brown hair, buko is a hard green ball. The coconut's meat is used to make coconut milk while buko meat is softer and is used fresh in fruit salad or other Pinoy icy desserts. Also, it's from the buko that we get one of the best juices in the world: buko juice.

I immediately turned to my mom's favorite cookbook when it comes to all things Filipino: Let's cook with Nora, by Nora V. Daza, the Julia Child of the Philippines. As you can see in the photo it's been well used. A lot of the newsprint pages have been splattered with sauces and the book cover had to be wrapped in plastic because it was in a serious state of disintegration. My mom bought this in 1996 for a whopping P85. For the foreigners out there, according to this site the peso was around P26.25 to the US dollar in September '96, so the cookbook would've costed a whopping US$3.24! I believe this edition was the 1969 edition with retro drawings of the dishes.


The recipe was easily veganizable. Actually I'm surprised that buko pie isn't naturally vegan. The recipe for the pie filling called for buko meat, sugar, coconut water (aka buko juice), cornstarch, and evaporated milk. Why do people insist on using cow's milk when making a coconut dessert? What's wrong with coconut milk?

I made the 10" pie crust from The Joy of Vegan Baking (you can use VeganYumYum's pie crust recipe here). The buko pie filling recipe was for an 8" pie so I just added 1/4 more of the ingredients.

You can buy buko meat and buko juice from your local coconut purveyor, usually found in markets / palengke. I bought mine from the market in BF, Paranaque, along Palanca St. for P17 per buko. The coconut guys sell both adult coconuts and bukos -- fresh as they hack open the fruits right in front of you. For this recipe, just ask your coconut guy for the juice and meat of 3 bukos. Get the meat as a whole, don't get it slivered up. While waiting for them to prepare your order, enjoy a glass of buko juice.


Buko pie
adapted from Let's Cook with Nora by Nora V. Daza

1 prepared 10" pie crust (top and bottom)

2 1/4 c. buko meat, sliced into chunks
3/4 c. + 3 tbsp. raw sugar
1/2 c. + 2 tbsp. buko juice
1/2 c. + 2 tbsp. coconut milk
1/3 c. + 1 tbsp. + 1 tsp. cornstarch

Preheat your oven to 400 deg F.

Place the buko meat and sugar in a medium saucepan. In a medium mixing bowl, whisk the cornstarch, buko juice, and coconut milk together. Add the cornstarch mixture to saucepan.

Heat the pan on medium heat and cook, stirring continuously until thick. The consistency of the mixture should be like thick gravy. Add the mixture into the prepared crust and top it with top crust. Crimp the edges with your fingers or with the tines of a fork. Make slits on the top (or use a fondant cutter to make cute holes like I did).

Bake the pie for 30-45 min or until golden brown. Cool the pie in room temperature for several hours, then place in the refrigerator to cool down further. The pie is best served cold.

Notes on making buko pie:

1. If you want a pie with more "bite", get your buko meat malakanin. This is thicker than the usual mala-uhog type, which is softer and better suited for buko salad.
2. Keep the buko meat and buko juice in the refrigerator at all times!
3. I used canned coconut milk -- in fact I think I used light coconut milk. If you want a richer pie, feel free to use regular coconut milk or even coconut cream. If you're feeling domestic, why not make your own coconut milk?
4. I used raw sugar to keep things white-sugar free, but feel free to use white sugar. This pie isn't super sweet so it's perfect for people who aren't into desserts. If you'd like a sweeter pie, you can increase the sugar to 1 to 1 1/4 c.
   
5. The proportions of the ingredients was 1 + 1/4 of the recipe in the cookbook. The pie could actually use more filling, so if you want a meatier pie, try these proportions: 2 1/2 c. buko slivers, 1 c. + 1 tbsp. raw sugar, 3/4 c. buko juice, 3/4 c. coconut milk, and 1/3 c. + 2 tbsp. + 2 tsp. cornstarch.

Happy pie making!

Apple pie and black eyed peas and cats, oh my!

Today (Saturday) was one swelteringly humid day(probably 30 deg C or +90 deg F in the kitchen!), but that didn't stop me from baking my first vegan pie. Quite frankly I get intimidated with pies... I am not good at making crusts. The last time I made a pie was 2 years ago for my mom's birthday -- a (non vegan) apple pie. I hated rolling the dough on our kitchen counter because the dough would almost always stick on the surface.

But can you believe I haven't had pie in 8 months? And before that, about a year and a couple of months? Yeah, if I craved pie, I'd have to make it myself (ditto with cake, cookies, or cupcakes)...

So I did just that today. At first I was looking at Lauren Ulm's blueberry hand pies, but I was thinking, maybe I should stick to traditional pies (also, where the heck would you find blueberries in this country?). Then I spotted her mini apple pies, then I remembered Colleen Patrick Goudreau had an apple pie recipe in her cookbook, The Joy of Vegan Baking. That pretty much sealed the deal.


Colleen's instructions for her flaky pie crust were extremely easy to follow. I was a bit apprehensive about pie-making today because of the heat, but her tip to freeze everything -- the margarine, shortening, and flour -- helped mixing the dough a breeze. There's a 1-hr waiting period between mixing the dough and rolling it out into a crust, which was perfect because I was able to run errands and buy some apples. Her cookbook called for refrigerating the dough for 1 hour but I ended up freezing mine. If you live in a tropical country, you'll know that freezing dough makes more sense than refrigerating it.

Then came the hard part: rolling it out. I cheated and lined my kitchen counter with my Silpats, which helped immensely (I know I know, I'm a fake baker!). I suppose you can roll it out on plastic wrap or wax paper. And wow, how easy it was to transfer the rolled out dough from Silpats to pie dish! I may just make pies more frequently now.


Diced apples with lemon juice, raw sugar, cinnamon, and a pinch of salt.

Colleen's recipe was super easy to follow and before I knew it, I had a pie baking in the oven. What excitement! What joy! I was so giddy. Unfortunately I stuck the pie in the oven at around 6pm and it didn't make it in time for dessert -- the recipe recommends letting the pie cool for 3-4 hours, to let the juices thicken. Actually this waiting process was a blessing in disguise... My family is having lunch out tomorrow for my dad's birthday, and he absolutely adores apple pie. So right now I can't say for sure how good the pie tastes like, except that it looks pretty good. Nevermind that the crust looks *slightly* brown -- so I tried to healthify it by using raw sugar instead of brown, big deal. The recipe called for sprinkling the top of the crust with a cinnamon-sugar mixture (I had to cover the pie in foil half-way through baking to avoid even more burntness). Here's to hoping it tastes as awesome as it looks.

PS I never used to crimp the edges of my pie crusts, I'd always just press the tines of a fork in the edges to seal them. I truly feel like a domestic goddess with the whole crimping action :)



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So after sticking the pie in the oven, I was left with an extra peeled apple. Let me tell you that refrigerators (yes we have 2 - the vegan and the omni. Three, if you count the one sitting in my garage, unplugged and unused) in my house don't bode well for little bits of leftovers. Leftovers often get shoved into our refrigerators, never to be seen or heard of again until we go around hunting for extra food containers (because we almost always run out of food containers with all the leftovers being shoved in the fridges -- what a vicious cycle!) and unearth food with fuzz.

I ended up sticking the extra apple in a black eyed pea spiced stew my brother and I were having for dinner (before you gag, read on!). We had a leftover container of this black eyed pea-tomato sauce mixture which didn't really have much taste... It had no spices (except for chili) or herbs whatsoever, only the usual garlic and onions. I decided to throw in a teaspoon of cumin seeds in a skillet of hot oil, sautee some slivered onion and sliced apples, add a dash of smoked paprika, oregano, and cinnamon, then mix in the black eyed pea mixture along with chopped cilantro. Oh and I added in the juice of half a lemon, whose other half I used for the apple pie (I am a total leftover saver!).


An apple and black eyed pea spiced stew = yum!

What a fortunate fortunate discovery -- the apples did not weird the dish out at all! For some reason the sweetness of the apples tempered the spices, especially the cumin. I can't say for sure how long I cooked the dish, because I just winged it. The apples weren't mushy -- they were softened a bit yet crisp. So, tip: apples go well in spiced bean stews.

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Just some gratuitous pictures of the babies:


Poor poor Lucky, the little man has had fever for over a week and seems to be recovering. Last Saturday night I found a lump (!!! I thought it was a cyst!) in the left side of his throat which turned out to be an infected wound that turned into some sort of boil. The vet said he may've gotten bitten by another cat :( Unfortunately for us, the cats can't stay indoors because my mom believes that my youngest brother (who is fond of the cats himself) is allergic to them. We've built a nice cattery for them in the garden and I let them explore the garden during the day. Often times they meet stray cats, and believe me this country is brimming with stray cats. Lucky's on antibiotics for 2 weeks (now on his 2nd week) and we had to spread some ointment on his lump to speed up the healing process. He's had a fever for a week which made him pretty lethargic and sleepy most days. Today he decided to venture into the garden and disappear for the whole afternoon. As I put him back in the cattery I found out that he has another lump, this time in the right side of his throat :( Will have to consult the vet again tomorrow morning.


The little lady herself, who used to be healthier than Lucky, isn't in tip top shape either! Last Thursday night as I cuddled her, I smelled this awful sewer-like smell seeping from the top of her head. As I laid her down I felt my hands were wet and smelled like the sewer. Lo and behold, her bum leg was seriously infected. Apparently, since she doesn't use the paw on the bum leg, her thumb nail had grown so long and grew back into her paw. It caused a nasty infection, which spread onto her bum leg and her chest, causing her fur to fall out! In addition to the ingrown nail was rain getting stuck in her fur -- whenever her chest and bum leg would get wet, they wouldn't dry off properly because of the way she folds her leg over her chest. The vet was able to cut out the ingrown nail and prescribed an anti-bacterial cream to be spread on her leg and chest 2-3 times a day for a week, and antibiotics for 2 weeks. Included with the drugs is this cone she has to wear around her neck so she won't lick off the cream. Oh and, whenever it rains she's not allowed out :(


And Francis Boy over here is the healthiest of them all. This little guy hasn't experienced any sickness or complication whatsoever. Francis loves hanging out in the garden, meowing for attention and getting his ears rubbed by us. He absolutely hates being picked up. Sometimes he can be such a dear dear pet, always begging to be loved, but when he knows you want to put him back in the cattery, he runs for his life and disappears up the mango tree. I guess you can say he's the most streetsmart of 'em all because he loves climbing trees and fences and going into our neighbors' gardens, with nary a scrape or wound on him. He grooms himself quite splendidly and I'm sure he's aware he's one good looking cat.



The picture on the left is of little Francis as a baby, when we newly rescued him. This was taken in October 2008 and I'm guestimating that he's about a year old now. If you look at the pictures on the left (then) and the right (now), he still has the same dagger-eyes expression! Despite his fierce appearance, he is the sweetest, most lovable cat there is. He is almost like a dog in the sense that he doesn't look down on his human, as most cats do :)

A cookie with a twist: Chocolate, PB&J Cookies

Here are some cookies I made yesterday before heading off to a potluck get-together with my missionary girls from Rizal missions. Been hanging around the kitchen during my spare time (when do I not hang around the kitchen?) and wanted to make cookies... Not typical oatmeal / chocolate chip cookies, but something different. So I did some research in my cookbook library and found "You Got Peanut Butter in my Chocolate Cookies" from Eat, Drink, and Be Vegan by Dreena Burton.

I love that Dreena Burton's cookie recipes don't use specialty egg replacers including flax meal and tofu (I think?). Instead, she uses liquid sweeteners such as maple syrup to help with the binding. Well I don't live in maple syrup country... I'm not a honey-eating vegan and I try as much as possible not to use the fake HFCS crap. I got an AHA! moment when I was daydreaming of a PB&J sandwich and thought that perhaps jam could stand in for the syrup.

If you've got Dreena's Eat, Drink, and Be Vegan cookbook, head on over to page 215. I used all purpose flour instead of the barley / spelt and 1/4 cup + 2 tbsp strawberry jam for the maple syrup and agave nectar. As jams are usually chunky, I recommend sticking all the liquid ingredients in your trusty food processor and give it a good pulse til everything's nice and non-lumpy. After mixing the ingredients all together you may notice that the dough's a bit stiff; I added 1 tsp oil apart from the 1/4 cup called for in the recipe.

You won't notice the jam flavor much but it's in the background. The cookies were nice and chewy :)

Curious about the recipe? Let me know if you want a copy.

Pililla Eats

As mentioned in my previous post, I spent Holy Thursday and Easter morning doing missionary work in Pililla, Rizal, a rural poor town about 50km north of Makati. Before I start talking about some of the local food I just wanted to share this picture.

St Mary Magdalene Parish Church in Pililla is 425-years old and made of stone. It’s been preserved and restored amazingly well and I’m sorry I didn’t get to take a snapshot of it. But this is a photo of the Virgin Mary in the Church’s courtyard. It’s a pretty huge statue, probably 6 ft tall or so? The church takes care of 4 dogs and I found this scene after having dinner with my co-missionaries and parish priest. The dogs really know whom to seek for shelter!

Anyway, here’s some local food I came across in the Church parking lot.

I love love love peanuts, especially local ones. Planter has nothing on Pinoy roasted garlic peanuts, and I’m not talking about the junky MSG-laden nuts too! A 1-1.5 oz bag of roasted garlic peanuts was P10 or 21 US cents which was a nice distraction from falling asleep during Christ’s 7 Last Words (sorry Jesus). When I take the bus home from my real job (okay I’ve done it twice only) I love buying the same paper bag full of joy. Yum yum.

You can find this happiness-on-a-stick anywhere in the country but it was especially wonderful in Pililla as we trudged through one of the 3 processions we attended. The tindero didn’t skimp on the brown sugar, thank God. I think it was also P10 for 2 saba bananas.

This cart is owned by a man I like to call Green Mango Guy. His cart is attached to his bike so he can pedal wherever he pleases, peddling his awesome green mangoes.

You can tell he’s a skilled green mango connoisseur – he knows where to cut in the right places and how to carve out the skin.

He lays each green mango in a plastic bag on egg crates for easy display to the salivating customers. I recommend getting the green mango that almost looks yellow / ripe.

Didn’t I say he was an expert? He isn’t like us regular folk who cut out mango skin piece by piece. He carves out the skin in one piece, which looks very octopi-like.

This is one thing you won’t find anywhere else, I tell you. Green Mango Guy makes his own ultimate green mango topping: chili salt. He pounds rock salt with sili labuyo / bird’s eye chili until the chili goodness melts into the salt. He then sieves off the chili, leaving this perfectly orange-hued spicy salt (the other topping option was bagoong or fermented salted shrimp paste that smells like the death of the ocean).
The perfect merienda: ripe-ish green mango topped with chili salt. Bliss for only P7 or 15 US cents. I miss this already!

I love love love Green Mango Guy’s chili salt. I think other variations that would work well with green mango are
[1] salt + chili + sugar, and
[2] salt + chili + fried garlic

Fresh Buko (Young Coconut) Juice: Vegan MoFo #7

Street food carts, especially this refreshing one, can literally be found anywhere around the metro:

I am not a big fan of artificial obese causing drinks (aka soft drinks) and "juice drinks" -- I think those companies should have never been formed! Down with capitalism, down with huge food conglomerates that are out to rob you of your health and wealth!

Sorry, on to mofo'ing...

On a day when the sun turns you black in 10 minutes (everyday!), humidity is at 90% and the temperature is at 90-95 degrees F (30-35 degrees C), a cool refreshing drink is always welcome to soothe your parched throat. Buko juice (never labelled "young coconut water"; juice sounds much more delicious!) is the liquid from the cavity of a young or unripe coconut. The juice is highly nutritious and contains sugar, fibre, protein, antioxidants, vitamins and minerals. It also provides isotonic electrolyte balance and is a good substitute for those sugary drinks marketed as "electrolyte balancing". I guess this makes sense, as living in a humid tropical country drains your body from moisture and makes you tired all the time.










One way to have this drink is to have the "coconut man" cut out the top with his hunting knife and pour the juice into a plastic bag; stick a straw in the bag and you're good to go.

Another far less wasteful and far cleaner method is to have him cut the outer shell of the fruit, slice off the top shell, exposing the meat. Stick a straw through the flesh and drink to your heart's content. It's always nice to share a drink with friends or coworkers. At P16 or US$0.34 for 1 shell, it's a steal.


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If you recall my post about my obsession with rose water, I finally got around to experiment and came up with rose water cake. Here it is fresh from the oven, with the parchment paper still stuck to the bottom. I'll be giving this with frosting on top to my cousin Monica who'll be celebrating her birthday this weekend. The cake came out... how should I say it... skinny? It was about 1-1.5 inches tall. I hope she likes it! The smell was intoxicatingly good. Since it's skinny it feels like a guiltless pleasure and can be eaten it everyday...