The egg is the perfect food. It is the ordinary everyday food, the eat-all-day food, the food to eat when there's nothing else, the food that makes everything special. Why is that? It is the taste of the egg. It has a rich yet simple taste that improves any food that it joins. Eggs makes everything taste and look good.
To some people, bacon is a powerful word. It elicits a strong response when it is heard. It evokes a strong emotion when it is said, pausing briefly, making a mental drumroll, before letting the word cascade with a heavy breath.
Filipino sausage is generally called longganisa and the style varies from region to region. When I was growing up, the only longganisa I knew was the bright red, short and fat ones from our local market. They were sold in links and had to be boiled before frying. The main flavouring is garlic and there were no herbs nor spice save for a generous amount of black pepper. The seasoning is a perfect balance of saltiness and sweetness.
There was one thing that I didn't like about it. There were big globules of fat interspersed in the minced meat. I know that what I have just said would send some people running off to find THAT sausage but I am not some people. I hated fat then and still do now. I have horrid memories of what fat tastes like so I will end the subject here.
There are good days and bad days. And then there are really good days. Such days are when you open the front door and a delivery man hands you a huge hamper full of chocolates.
My kids, when they were actually kids, shared my love for collecting cookbooks. Cooking was one of the activities we enjoyed doing together. There are a number of recipes that we've used time and time again because they were easy and delicious and always produced perfect results.
Pan de sal simply means "bread of salt". It is the staple bread eaten at breakfast in the Philippines. Believe it or not, in the Philippines where rice is the staple food, there are panaderias (bakeries) in every corner selling freshly baked pan de sal from dawn until the late hours.
Beef tapa is a classic Filipino dish which simply means fried beef slices. It became more popular when it was included in the trio of perfect sinangag (fried rice) and fried egg partners alongside longganiza (Filipino sausage) and tocino (cured pork).
