To translate, from Tagalog, "Good afternoon to you all. Once again, this is Mike..."
On September 14, 2011; out on a whim, while on vacation visiting a friend in Seattle, we decided to make a cooking video, "How to Make Kikyam". The whole effort was spontaneous and inspired by similar videos that have been popping out of YouTube featuring foreign visitors in the Philippines who are enamored by Philippine culture and cuisine. On my part, I have been very much busy in the kitchen since I was eight years old when I watched my mother how to sauté cabbage for lunch and thus leading to a long culinary journey, one of the destinations being Kikyam. As intrigued as I was how Kikyam achieved its appearance, flavor and texture (somehow my mother did not get the texture aspect right), I was able to research the proper way of making them and thus, while cooking a batch in the home of our Seattle based friend, we just decided to make a quick "how-to" video that featured our resident "White Guy", Mike talking in Tagalog preparing Kikyam. What resulted was not something we expected but the comedic timing was just so funny that rather than just getting comments about the food; we have comments regarding the hilarity of it. But for those who did decide to try the recipe, we got very good reviews and some said that the flavor and texture are very much authentic, though there are questions about what were the exact ingredients. To answer those questions, I sometimes reply back to clarify them, but with busy lives, it was just difficult to get back to everyone.
We would like to give our sincere thanks for making this modest video a success. As of this moment, we have 52,773 views and once in a while, we are delighted to still get fans who follow our channel as well as nice comments about the clip. It is this that drives our inspiration to make more. Though the video may be comedic in delivery, still the nature of its content is true. We desire to make each video a teaching moment for anyone who wants to explore Filipino cooking using ingredients that are available wherever you are, in the States or in the Philippines.
The recipes are researched and some are passed from word of mouth from people I knew from long ago when I was a child who spent summers in the hometown of my Dad in Labo, Camarines Norte. An old lady, by the name of Tiyang Torne (whose real name I do not know), used to make the most sumptuous adobo my siblings and I ate. My maternal grandmother, a native of Amoy used to make the best Pata Tim (Hokkien Soy Sauce Stewed Pork Leg) and Chinese Humba (Hokkien Soy Sauce Stewed Pork) we grandchildren ever tasted. These recipes were just described as a "dash of here" and a "slice of there" or a "sliver of this" and a "cup of that"...but what was not well described was the circumstances of that cooking. As common it was to use wood to cook food, the resultant heat was very fierce -- that the adobo was well seared resulting in a caramelized sauce and the spices penetrating well each piece of pork and chicken. The Humba was intense. The lugao (congee) was really soft and delicate. These are the flavors of long ago. It is something we reminisce and hope that once again, revive.
In this blog, Mike and I hope to recreate these dishes and using the videos in our YouTube channel ('prelin") as the illustrative "how-to" procedure and we will supplement them with the written recipe, suggestions how to bring success to the final product as well as interactive commentary so we can share our experiences making them. We hope that you would enjoy looking at these recipes, watching the videos and sharing them with your friends and family. After all, isn't that what we Filipinos are well known for?
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