I hosted another dinner for my friends last week because 1. We love to eat and 2. We had guests from across the world who also like to eat.
STARTERS:
I wanted to do loose interpretations of street food as starters/ or food that is typically Pinoy. I played around with Filipino flavors and mixed them with that of other, mostly Asian countries. I love coming up with stuff like these starters because it's always fun!
I put a squid ball on a bed of carrot + green mango salad and wrapped them in lettuce leaves so they ended up being a kind of squid ball bomb. On the street, these are usually served with your choice of sweet, sweet and sour and sweet and spicy sauces so I made nuoc cham to dunk them in-partly for selfish reasons as I love nuoc cham and also coz I thought the sweet/spicy/sour/salty Vietnamese dipping sauce would work well with the other elements.
This is usually ORANGE when you see it on the street, but I made my kwek kwek with five spice and with a chili-hoisin-honey sauce.
While this isn't traditionally "street food", Pinoys love thier Chicken Lollies! I made this Thai style marinated in green curry paste, patis, bagoong, ginger etc and baked it in the oven. Meanwhile, I added some coconut milk + drippings to the mashed potatoes for an interesting twist.
And the last of the starters was toasted bread with kesong puti topped with dilis and drizzled with honey.
MAINS:
For the mains, I thought of a set of food that might work together (and obviously what I like eating hehe) It still went with the Fun Filipino theme that I love so much---you know, the older I get the more I appreciate and really like Pinoy food! Never was a fan growing up!
Lechon Kawali tossed in a brown sugar/soy/fish sauce/garlic glaze and topped with coriander. Love the flavors of this sauce, I also use it for wings!
From the outside, this looks like any other fried lumpia, but what I did was I stuffed it with egg noodles (if the Vietnamese can put vermicelli in their spring rolls, why can't we do this? lol) smoked fish and ubod and had a toyomansi dipping sauce. Super simple but bursting with flavor!
My favorite growing up--- no twists and turns here, just yummy, Royal Tru-orange prawns! Cooked in orange soda, butter and garlic! Seriously, you don't need much else!
Lastly, I made beef Rendang- typically known as a Malaysian dish but also really popular down south as a Maranao dish! Since my boyfriend's family is from Lanao, I have made it my mission to little by little learn how to make a few dishes from Mindanao! Thanks to my REAL (and damn good) chef friend Hylton Le Roux (Pi Catering) for the recipe! It was my first time to make it!
DESSERT:
For dessert, I mixed two Filipino faves on one plate. First, I baked Milo cupcakes earlier that day and warmed them in time for dessert--Yes MILO cupcakes, so good! Then I topped them with ube ice cream and a few halo-halo condiments such as kaong, langka and macapuno.
Guests:
Maybe we should start doing URBAN DINNERS again. What y'all say? Would you wanna be invited to something like this? :)
