Rhian's Kitch: Heirloom Traditions

               During my free time or when I need a quick break from any routine task or activity I breath and relax by  entertaining ideas and creating plans. I usually document things, create and upgrade. I also use it as a form of activity in teaching Rhian some of the basic and practical things in life.

This is how the concept of "Rhian's Kitch" came into life. It is a module for Rhian to learn the basics of cooking. When I was just about her age, my Tita's thought me the basic process of cooking rice, vegetables and festive meat recipes. Google is not yet around at that time, so all kitchen secrets and stories were passed on with the process. It was my passion for food that made me enhance and enjoy the kitchen duties at that time.

Nowadays, with just one click you can simply extract the needed information in order to whip up the dish that you want. Learning it in real life is still an advantage. In cooking a certain dish you need to experience the process, the hands on experience will show how each ingredient should be cooked in order to achieve the authentic state of the dish.

Creating two of the listed dishes in Rhian's Kitch was sparked when Rhian's Manay Banggi from my husband's side visited the Philippines for the 2015 Christmas Holidays. As a part of managing time effectively, every time we do some cooking for parties, we also use it to document and test the consistency of our recipes.

At dawn my husband is bound to go to the airport to fetch Manay -- to help hubby make Manay Banggi happier, we decided to cook some traditional Filipino dishes.

Pinakbet/Pakbet

This recipe was thought by my Aunt Ely and was mastered by my mum after her retirement. It is already modified in such a way that the some of the meat/sahog were fried just like Bagnet. As an alternative, Bagnet can also be used in order to enhance the taste.

Usually the popular process of cooking Pinakbet is to saute the garlic, onions, tomatoes and meat before adding the vegetables (Tagalog style). Another method is to add all the ingredient in a palayok with bagoong isda and then it is cooked until the vegetables are wilted (Ilocano style).

My Aunt Ely cooked Pinakbet the Ilocano way. She creates the broth then she adds in the vegetables until cooked. 

The secret of Aunt Ely's Pinakbet is the process of cooking the broth and the ingredients that she uses. She adds ginger to the broth. 

For the Rhian's Kitch Pinakbet. It is a combination of the Ilocano and Tagalog style of cooking Pinakbet. We create the broth, then, we set it aside. After that, the vegetables were sauted with the wilted ingredients of the broth. The bagoong isda is used to season the broth while the bagoong alamang is sauted with the vegetables. As a final touch, fried Garlic Liempo or Bagnet is added to the dish.

Pinangat/Paksiw

For Pinangat/Paksiw, the ingredients are simple: fish, ginger, garlic, vinegar and green chiles.

The secret is on the vinegar used for the dish

To make it more special deboned milkfish belly can be used.

  

These are just two of the heirloom recipes from Rhian's Kitch. Most of the recipes listed are from the North. However, new recipes from other parts of the country are also being developed and documented. One of those is hubby's version of Adobo. It was good and tasty, but I would like to enhance it by combining it with another recipe which is Bicol Express. We will be calling it the Adobong Bicol Express. :)