

Location : Lazi, Siquijor Island, Philippines
Rediscovering the Kitchen
This September, after moving to a small house with a kitchen, I became active in the kitchen again after a long hiatus. I bought a gas stove, wok and other kitchen utilities. It's still an exciting time for me rediscovering what I can do in the kitchen. All my cooking is wok-based as the wok is my only cooking pan. All food prepared is basically a hack from the many Youtube videos I look over. I mix and match depending on what I feel and depending on what I have at the moment.
Kitchen Hacker
I'm a natural hacker so having understood the underlying principles of making Fish Tinola, I took the liberty to modify so I can uitilize other kitchen items I had. I simultaneously added cornmeal to cook my 'rice corn' with the soup, and I added freshly grated carrot - or my carrot will go bad already.
Ingredients
(I'm not putting quantity since I just threw things in the wok) Fish, water, onion, malunggay, ginger, salt, tomato, spring onion, calamansi
Cooking
Saute onion, garlic and tomato (contrary to the video, I fry aromatics first before boiling them...extracts more flavor). Add water and boil, add fish. When done, add malunggay. Turn off heat. Add spring onion and squeeze calamansi. Serve!
Ending Thoughts
The Fish Tinola didn't taste like any fish tinola, but it was great as well. With the calamansi, lemon grass and kafir I've added, the soup tasted more like a citrus soup with an underlying fish flavor.
Moreover, I learned a few things from that episode - cleaning fish, cooking fish tinola. Unfortunately, sharpening a knife proved too challenging - my dull knife got duller. Still, it was a winning situation.
Lastly, I'm grateful for the fact that the world's knowledge is now at your fingertips - Youtube, GPT4, Google Bard, etc. There is no excuse not to know something anymore.
And yes, I'm grateful to my generous neighbor!
Proper Cooking on Youtube
Preparation: Mix together thinly sliced onion, minced ginger, raw fish, thin slices of biasong (Kefir lime), calamansi juice, coconut vinegar, salt to taste
Improvement for Next time: less ginger to balance the flavor and Tabon-Tabon to remove the fishy taste (not always available)
Final Result: It's not bad. What's great about this is that the fish is as fresh as it gets...probably just hours old. Also, here in Siquijor, you can get pure, homemade aged coconut vinegar - you can't even buy this in big cities.
Youtube:
Ratatouille can look intimidating given the many French sauce you prepare for the dish. But in simplified form, it's really just tomato sauce (for expediency, mine was store-bought) and different cut-up veggies - and that's exactly how I made mine, wok-fried.
The final outcome was predictably nice - filling, flavorful (in a veggie way) and easy to make. The little package of cut-up veggies made 4 meals for me. I partnered it with pan-fried bread. I had to make the last meal an omelette.
Next time, I would stir-fry the aromatics and veggies on high heat first (wok wei) and then add the tomato sauce (instead of the other way around).
Youtube:
However, if you want to do the proper Ratatouille, here's a video from my fav Youtube channel: Recipe30
Ingredients are chayote (sliced thinly to cook fast), garlic, 3 Chinese Musketeers (a name I coined for the inseparable trio in stirfry cooking - oyster sauce, fish sauce and soy sauce, in 3:2:1 ratio respectively - I use this instead of salt), green onions, 2 eggs, corn starch slurry (this adds crunch and volume on the egg omelette).
Cooking was to saute garlic, throw-in the chayote, then toss them in a bowl with beaten eggs + 3 Musketeers + slurry. Add more oil on wok and fry the mixture in low heat so as not to overcook the eggs. Transfer the omelette on a serving dish and sprinkle with green onions.
On the hot wok, add a little more oil and pan-fry slices of bread - mop the bread onto the frying pan to absorb the oil and flavor. Even old bread tastes great when pan-fried. Serve bread with omelette.
The final outcome was a filling and satisfying breakfast especially with hot brewed coffee.
Ingredients I used are bread flour, corn starch, baking powder, tuba (instead of water/yeast), and brown sugar. Bread recipes are generally universal. The difference here is that it's flattened and fried (instead of allowing to rise and bake). Frying time was 2 mins/side on the lowest heat.
Next time, I'll include fried garlic or grated lemon rind on the dough as I ball it. This should infuse an aromatic fragrance when you break the bread.
The final outcome was a flat bread with borderline cookie/bread in consistency - nothing like the soft and tearable flat bread I saw in Youtube. Still, it was good bread.
Ending Thoughts
The kitchen is a playground. With all the infinite videos on Youtube to experiment on, this playground just became a rabbit hole.
--- Gigit (TheLoneRider)
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Next story:
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Oct Food Hack: Pizza, Kinilaw, Coconut Bread, Fish Okuy, Carrot Omelette,Lemon-Grass Tea
(October 2023) A month into my cooking odyssey, I embark on making familiar Filipino dishes I haven't done before - okuy (deep fried fritters with fish), kinilaw, ginisang ampalaya (sauteed bittermellon). I watch several videos, internalize the dish, and see how I can prepare it with what I have in the kitchen - so whatever cooking I do is almost always a hack....more »»
More on Lazi:
More on Siquijor Island:
Jeeps - there are only 2 routes for jeeps within Siquijor Island - and they are rare. Most people have their own motorcycle transport.
Food - these were suggested by a local to me
En route to Cebu City, the ferries usually make a stop-over to Tagbilaran (Bohol) to pick-up more passengers or unload.
There is only one bus plying this route - Sugbo Urban. Tourist class coach, a/c, comfortable, Sun-Fri (these dates keep changing). P420 for bus, P275 for ferry to Liloan. Larena Port around 5 am, makes a clockwise roundtrip around Siquijor Island - Larena, Enrique Villanueva, Maria, Lazi (stops at Lazi market for breakfast and leaves 6:50 am), San Juan, Siquijor (arrives 8am, P50 from Lazi to Siquijor Poblacion) and catches the 1pm ferry at Larena Port (Sundays at 3 pm) for Liloan, Cebu and resumes its land route. Arrives Cebu City (South Bus Terminal) 10 pm.
Sugbo Urban is the cheapest and most convenient way because it goes around the island (clockwise) along the circumferential road, passing through - Enrique Villanueva, Maria, Lazi, San Juan, Siquijor...and back to Larena where it takes the ferry at 1 pm. This saves you the hassle and high transport cost of a tricycle. Besides, it's a long trip from the other side of the island to be taking by tricycle.
These are the nearest popular destinations from Siquijor by boat
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