Chef Foundation

We’ve always been known for our love of food, but for most people, that hearty appetite comes at a price. With our increasingly hectic lifestyles, there’s hardly any time to exercise or get fit. Add to that the fact that Filipino cuisine tends to be high in fat and calories. Yes, it’s great food, but you have to admit it’s not exactly healthy.

But before ditching that adobo or taking out those South Beach cookbooks, here’s some good news: there is such a thing as low-fat Filipino food. In fact, you can make any dish diet-friendly with just a few simple tweaks-without giving up any of the flavor. If all that eating is taking a toll on your waist, start eating healthier with these tips and 1. Make substitutions

One of the secrets to low-fat cooking is replacing common ingredients with low-fat alternatives. Start with your oil: most people use regular cooking oil, which is made from animal fat and very high in cholesterol. Use vegetable-based oils such as corn, canola, sunflower, or if you can afford it, olive oil. When making salads, replace mayonnaise with mustard or vinaigrette, and use fresh instead of canned ingredients.

A common problem with substitution is that they don’t always work. You can’t expect them to taste the same as the original, but they don’t have to taste bad. It takes some practice and experience to know which ingredients will work together and which ones will not. Feel free to experiment-you’ll learn from your mistakes and get the hang of it in no time.

Fish is a favorite replacement for meat dishes. Try this low-fat recipe in place of steak and meat chops.

Grilled Tuna Steak

Ingredients:

4-6 fresh tuna steaks

1 bottle of Italian dressing

I heard something disturbing this morning. One of my girls told me that she was Googling recipes for Panipopo and came across some that called for store-bought, ready-made dough.. which you would then proceed to roll into dough balls…

NO!

NO NO NO!

Oh, and NOOOOO!

It’s not THAT difficult to make real Panipopo dough from scratch – the store-bought stuff is too generic and… just not right!

So don’t be lazy. I’ll walk you through it…

By the way,THANK YOU so much Auntie for entrusting me with your top secret recipe, but… um… you might wanna close your eyes now…because I’m sorry.. but if I don’t share, I’m scared a whole generation of people will think it’s okay to make Panipopos with store-bought dough balls… *sigh*…

Right. Let’s start from the beginning.

For those less fortunate out there who don’t know, panipopos are a Samoan dish usually eaten as a dessert or with a hot beverage, preferably Koko Samoa. Its name says it all:

Pani = bun (not ‘bread’)

Popo = Coconut, specifically mature coconuts that are ready to be ‘milked’ lol… Eh, you know what I mean.

So, coconut buns. Hot, steamy buns baked in a pool of sticky, sweet coconut cream sauce that you can use for further bun dipping… mmmm….

I’ve come across a few variations of the recipe. Some of them will call for eggs and milk, which results in a more ‘bread’ like consistency… I’m not a fan of that one because the bread then tends to soak up too much of the coconut cream sauce and get too mushy. But hey, if you like mushy, go for gold…

…and go to Google, cause this version (my Auntie’s recipe) produces a more, “springy” type of bun that’s still moist and spongy… and is way better.

Because I said so.

Okay, you’ll need these ingredients:

The Bun

Standard Flour
Salt
Butter
Sugar
Dry Active Yeast
(VERY warm) Water

The Sauce

Coconut milk or cream (pe’epe’e)
Sugar
Flour (for thickening)

The Cook

Confidence
Good reading skills
Faith in me
A sense of adventure

Don’t panic that I haven’t put any measurements up there. This recipe is flexible. Just pay attention.

Four cups of flour (and I’m talking about coffee mugs, not the measurement cups) will fill about two-and-a-half to three 15-1/2″ x 10-1/2 apas (pans). With around 24 buns a pan, that’s like 60 buns all up, more than enough for ‘cup teas’ at home.

The rest of the measurements will follow the number of cups of flour you use. If you use 4 cups flour, you’ll need 4 spoons of sugar and 4 spoons of yeast. If you want to feed the neighbours too and go for 8 cups of flour, then use 8 spoons of sugar and 8 spoons of yeast.

You with me so far?

Cool.

Here’s how we do it. Watch:

The Flour Mixture

First, dump our flour (let’s say its 4 coffee mugs full) into a bowl. Toss in a ‘pinch’ of salt – half a teaspoon is good if the word ‘pinch’ makes you nervous.

See that block of butter there? It’s been sitting at room temperature for a while, so it should be ‘softened’ now. Since my hands are always clean, I’m gonna break off some of that butter (maybe start with about 50 grams which is like a quarter cup, but YOU Google the conversion)… and I’m just gonna rub that butter into the flour.

MILI Mili mili mili mili mili mili mili… ma koe MILI Mili mili mili mili mili….

What I want is a consistency that’s crumbly but kinda ‘silky’ at the same time, so I might need to work more butter into the flour, but make sure it doesn’t get too greasy.

When the mixture is just right, I make a well in the middle of the bowl and chuck in my 4 heaping spoons of sugar… don’t get too fussy about the spoon measurement here. With practice, you’ll figure out how sweet you like your buns to be, and the sugar is more for yeast development anyway.

The Yeast

Okay, now it’s time to grab another (smaller) bowl for the yeast. Apparently, yeast works better in either a metal or glass / ceramic bowl, so try to avoid plastic. Plastic is never good.

Anyway, since we used four cups of flour, we’re going to put 4 heaping teaspoons of active dry yeast into the second bowl. Get the tap to run REALLY warm, but not too hot, and pour maybe 2 cups of that warm water over the yeast. Use your hands or a spoon to break up the yeast and stir till its fully dissolved – add more warm water if necessary to do that.

This yeast water (which should be milky grey in color and smell like yummy bread now) goes into the flour mixture, in the well you made with the sugar.

Mix-Up Mix-Up

Grab that long wooden spoon your mum reserves for special hidings and ‘fold’ together all the ingredients now, scraping the flour from the sides of the bowl into the middle, then up and over again till everything is combined nicely. Keep that tap running, cause you’ll need to mix in more warm water in order to get the perfect consistency…

When it’s ready, your mixture will look like a really thick, sticky pancake batter. It should be fairly solid, but if you shake the bowl a little, the batter should ‘jiggle’…

Okay, now cover that bowl with a damp dish towel and put it in a warm, dark place to rise for an hour.

The Dough

When you come back to it, the dough should be double its size with lots of little holes in it. Your whole house should be smelling like home baking by now.

It’s time to knead the dough, which means you just dump a lot of fresh flour on a counter-top (I like to spread it out like a thick white blanket) and turn the holy, sticky dough out onto it. Then, working from the edges of the flour ‘blanket’, I fold the new flour into the sticky stuff and flatten and squeeze and knead until you can form the dough into a smooth, round shape that’s got a little bit of flour dust on the outside.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Do NOT knead the dough for too long. You need to stop working it while it’s still relatively soft when we squeeze it. We want buns, not bagels… or teething rings…

Okay, cover the dough and let rise again for another half hour.

The Buns

When you come back, preheat the oven to about 200 degrees (on a NZ oven ), THEN…

…cut the dough into chunks (about half a fist size), roll into thick ‘strings’, and tie each into a knot. This shape helps the coconut cream sauce to flavour more parts of the bun, but if you have trouble with it, you can also just roll a boring dough ball. Up to you.

[If you find that the dough is still pretty sticky when you come back to it, go ahead and knead it again with a little more flour... just till it's dry enough to work with, but still soft and spongy.]

Fill each pan with the buns, leaving enough space between them to allow for more dough rising and to let coconut cream sauce in.

After you’ve done all the buns, let them sit for a bit cause we need to do the coconut cream sauce.

The Coconut Cream Sauce

Fresh is always best, right… So if you’ve got a coconut tree somewhere, get somebody to climb it. If not, then the best coconut cream you can buy is in a carton, made by these guys ==> KARA

Otherwise, you’re going to have to settle for canned coconut cream. Ala’s make a pretty okay canned pe’epe’e.

Okay, pour two cans or a 200ml carton of pe’epe’e into a container, work half a cup of flour and water into a runny paste and dump that in there as well, then top up with more water until we have enough sauce for all the pans. We should be able to fill the pans so that the coconut cream sauce covers at least half the height of the buns.

[EDIT: While the buns are cooking, check to make sure the sauce doesn't reduce too much. You may have to add more sauce so that there's plenty for dipping, but add it early enough so that it has a chance to come to the boil before the buns are ready. Let's just say raw coconut milk, if you drink enough of it, can make a great laxative.]

But before we start pouring though, we need to sweeten the coconut cream sauce. You do this according to your own tastes, but remember… for some reason the cooking process gets rid of some of the sweetness, so just make sure you add enough sugar into the sauce so that it’s couple notches SWEETER than you think it should be.

Bake in the Oven

RIGHT! So the oven is hot now, the buns have risen just a little bit more in their pans, and you’ve got a container (jug? pitcher? large bowl?) full of sweetened, thickened coconut cream sauce. The only thing left to do is pour the sauce into the pans, chuck them in the oven, wait maybe 20 – 30 minutes for the sauce to come to a boil and the tops of the buns to become a golden brown, and take the pan out and mmmm…… But wait, there’s a LITTLE bit more…

While the buns are cooling, you might want to brush sugar water over the tops to prevent them from getting dry.. but I think covering the apa with tin foil (only after they’re out of the oven) or a damp cloth will do the same thing.

Eating Panipopo

Congratulations!! We’ve just made AUTHENTIC Samoan Panipopo. You can burn your mouth on them now, I know you want to… but I like panipopos best after they’ve been sitting… marinating… for maybe an hour after they came out of the oven.

Serve them in a shallow bowl, spooning more sauce over them for extra dipping, and with a hot cuppa something nice to drink on the side.

They’re also GREAT the next day, even if you have to heat them up (for less than a minute) in the microwave.

Ia. Ua uma upu.

To get started, this recipe is really easy and so tasty!

Honey

Making wedding cake recipes from scratch is not that difficult. Take it from me. I have been doing this for over 25 years now. The very first of my homemade wedding cakes was a carrot cake recipe and it was from scratch. Homemade wedding cakes are the best. The only time I EVER used a mix was in a high volume situation. It was exclusively the white wedding cake recipe that was slightly time consuming, and the chefs insisted upon my using their mix. If you have ever worked in a professional kitchen then you know how those head chefs can be at times, it is more about saving money and time, but for me it is so much more about quality. I did manage to sneak in all of my homemade fillings though.

Whether you are a professional pastry chef or an amateur baker making homemade wedding cakes for friends and family, these tips may help.

Tips

Try to stick with a simple homemade recipe such as one that does not require a lot of fancy steps. A dump cake recipe is a good choice. I know it does not sound so delicious but dump recipes basically have one requirement and that is that all ingredients get dumped into the bowl at once and mixed. And that is it. What could be easier than that? One of my best and most frequently requested cake is chocolate buttermilk dump recipe. Have all of your ingredients measured out and at room temperature before you start the process of putting it all together. Making a wedding cake if taken in steps is just a matter of multiplying your favorite homemade recipe and baking them off in larger pans. Fill the cake pans 1/2 to 1/3 full. You can fill a pan a little more if using a lighter batter a little less when using a heavier batter. This is the part that you will need to judge as you gain experience. Always grease, flour and put parchment or wax paper along the bottom of the pans. Always let the cakes cool completely before covering and storing. You will need cardboard circles to put under each cake for support when lifting and moving the cakes. You need to decide how many layers your cakes will be before baking, you can bake each layer separate or cut your cakes in half to make two layers. (It depends on how deep your pans are and how much you fill them as to how many layers you get out of each cake.) For wedding cakes I prefer using a two layer cake with one layer of filling because it keeps the cake a little more stable. But you will need to figure out your preferences.

If you have committed yourself to the Scarsdale Diet programs, you have found then that the protein bread is an important part of the diet regimen. Many who are following the Scarsdale Diet program’s method of weight loss either cannot find the protein bread in their local grocery, or are paying high prices at gourmet grocers for the bread. Here is a simple (but exceptionally good tasting) recipe for the bread.

Scarsdale Diet Program’s Protein Bread

Ingredients:

One-cup warm water

One tablespoon dry yeast

The festive period is full of age-old traditions such as eating turkey on Christmas Day. But how did this originate and why should we continue this tradition? It has not always been traditional to eat turkey on Christmas day. Indeed, before the turkey was introduced to Britain, geese, peacocks and even boars’ head were eaten as a Christmas day treat. In 1526 William Strickland imported six turkeys from America and sold them for tuppence each.

The birds were considered to be extremely tasty and a more practical alternative to other livestock such as cows (which were more useful alive to produce milk), or chickens (which were more expensive than they are today). The popularity of turkeys has steadily increased and today in the UK we eat around 10 million turkeys every year.

Henry VIII was reputed to be the first person to eat turkey on Christmas Day, but it was not until the mid twentieth century that the turkey overtook the goose as the most popular Christmas Day meal. Today 87% of British people believe that Christmas would not be Christmas without a traditional roast turkey. Turkeys have the advantage of being affordable, big enough to feed the entire extended family (with guaranteed leftovers!) and fresh – if you know where to buy them from! Naturally they are born in the spring and typically take about seven months to mature to a healthy full-sized turkey.

If they are reared free range they have the space to roam around, ensuring that their muscles and tissues are fully developed. If you want to ensure you have the most succulent and flavorful bird for your Christmas celebrations buy your free range turkeys direct from the farm.