Yeah It’s Me, Cooking: Pancit Bihon Guisado

I’m no expert in cooking but I love good food. Now it’s time to stay longer in the kitchen and see if the magic WOKS with me, one recipe at a time.

Happy first year to me, happy first year to me...I did cook pancit but what a nice way to cap off the dinner night with delicious slices of cheese! One of the few Swiss dining experiences I enjoy now is eating some cheese after meals. Swiss cheeses (and French too) are OH, so yummy!

This is it, pancit! Isang taon na! (It’s one year already!)

I celebrated my first year of stay in Switzerland by simply cooking pancit last Saturday. Next to rice, pancit is another big star on the Filipino dining table. In every celebration, pancit is a must. It goes with a lot of varieties, but the most common of all, which I cooked for myself is what we called pancit bihon guisado.

Pancit (or pansit) is a Filipino term for noodles in Filipino cuisine. The Chinese introduced noodles into the Philippines and it has been adopted into a local cuisine since then. There’s also a food lore handed down from the Chinese, that noodles should be eaten on one’s birthday because noodles represent long life and good health. In my case I don’t only wish the same for myself, but also for a much longer, much enjoyable stay. Though it wasn’t my birthday yet, that must have been the other reason why I served pansit to celebrate!

I wasn’t alone in making the verdict this time around. That night I’ve got a family of three to feed; and the couple who shared the dish with me are not definitely new to cooking. As a neophyte, I was at their mercy. What’s even more perplexing, it is my first time to cook this fancy dish.  I could have felt more relaxed when I learned that the term pancit in Hokkien language (pian i sit) means “something conveniently cooked fast,” but it didn’t turn out that easy for me. Wawa (Poor me).

Yeah It’s Me, Cooking: Beef Teriyaki Steak & Mini Beef Samosas

It's beef teriyaki on a gloomy Sunday. Forgive me on this photo, I brightened it up. It really was gloomy that day.

I’m no expert in cooking but I love good food. Now it’s time to stay longer in the kitchen and see if the magic WOKS with me, one recipe at a time.

It is supposedly a full-course Asian meal but I just ended up making two dishes from the original menu (Asian salad and ginger edameme rice were crossed out); simply because I realized that I’d be improvising them in the end. Well I just really did that, so I felt compelled to rename the two dishes – Beef Teriyaki and Mini Samosas.

They're ready. Am I?

Cooking skills in a measuring cup

I’m no expert in cooking but I love good food. Now it’s time to stay longer in the kitchen and see if the magic WOKS with me, one recipe at a time.

“The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you’ve got to have a what-the-hell attitude.” – Julia Child

Julia Child as herself and Meryl Streep as Julia Child

Yes, I’m unleashing the Julia Child in me. Admittedly I am equally inspired by the movie, Julie & Julia, that yes partly, I’ll start writing about my learning experience in cooking.  Yet perhaps unlike Julie, I won’t turn this way of expressing my passion for food into an obsession or a dragging chore.  I’m an IT professional by day, an avid food lover by night.  But I’m too fixated to enjoying other things, too occupied with getting over the daily hurdles and challenges, and too crazy for anything else.  365 days for 536 recipes as a goal is way too much for me. Whew, thanks but no thanks! It’s just going to be one recipe at a time, s’il vous plait?

On a side note, I won’t be only cooking anything French or something from Julia Child’s colossal cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  It’s going to be any kind of cuisines that pique my interest, may it be European, American, Latin American, African, Arab, Asian or anything in between. But since I am from the Philippines, expect a bit more Asian from me.

So before I begin, let me go through this list of cooking techniques I got from BBC.  I suppose there’s even a much longer, complicated list but I guess I can start from here, right?  If you’ve got a better list, feel free to give me a copy.  Coming from BBC of course, these techniques are much European (or British to be exact).

I have this feeling I am in a beginner’s level but I might also be wrong.  Let’s see how it goes (a pre-assessment of sorts, I’ll be honest so don’t worry).

La Toque

I must have been wearing a different hat lately. And I’m enjoying it!