Philippines

Hundreds of entries have been posted. I had to go through each and everyone of them sometimes going back to those I have already seen just to make sure I picked the best shot. For the Catch a Real leaf contest, my choice is daddyjoey’s Real People, Real Leaf entry. It was impressive how he got these hardworking people to take a break and indulge in a little photoshoot. I also loved that he created a short poem to accompany his entry. I love it! Congratulations daddyjoey!

Here are some photos from his winning entry:

Daddy Joey pls. dont forget to send me your complete name, address and contact number. You will be contacted within the week to let you know how you can claim your prize. Congratulations and keep drinking Real Leaf!

You all know how much I love cheesecake. I made a simple cheesecake, a chocolate cheesecake and now I have successfully whipped up a mocha cheesecake. This was inspired by the most perfect coffee cheesecake that my friends and I had while enjoying coffee and great conversation at Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. Surprisingly, my cheesecake proved to be the most perfect among all those that I have baked. No cracks, intense taste. So I am sharing with you my tried and tested recipe. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

Crust

1 cups crushed graham crackers
1 stick of butter

Filling

16 oz cream cheese
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
3/4 cup all purpose cream
2 tbsp instant coffee granules
1 tbsp hot water
1 tbsp flour
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Procedures:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Combine all the ingredients for the crust in a bowl and mix with a fork until evenly moistened. Coat the bottom of an 8-inch springform pan with this mixture and refrigerate for 15 minutes.

Mix the coffee with the hot water to make a coffee paste.

Beat the cream cheese on low speed for 1 minute. Add in the eggs one at a time. Gradually add the sugar. Continue beating while you add the cream, vanilla extract, coffee paste and flour.

Pour the batter into the pan and bake in a water bath for 1 hour and 10 minutes. Leave inside the over for another hour. Cool overnight for best results.

Thank you very much to all those who participated in the Discovery Travel and Living Christmas Giveaway. Everyone’s ideas were different, unique and really interesting. I hope everyone had a very nice Christmas celebration!

Winners:

I will be sending emails to all the winners regarding details of their prizes so please watch out for those. Congratulations and thank you for making this contest successful!

** Special thanks to Discovery Travel and Living

These days I always get chided for not sharing my recipes for dishes that I serve to friends and family. I tell them its not that I don’t want to share, I just have limited time to sit down and actually come up with witty words to go with the recipes that I publish. I don’t want my posts to be just a recipe. I try to add some story or two to accompany my recipes because in reality my recipes are parts of my life.

The following recipe is inspired by one of my husband’s favorite fast food dishes, the Mongolian Barbecue. It is called Mongolian Barbecue but all it really is, is stir fried meat, seafood and rice mixed all together. Typically when you go to a restaurant here that offers Mongolian Barbecue, you are given a bowl for you to fill with tons of ingredients to choose from. There would be different meats, seafood, vegetables, rice and of course the create-your-own Mongolian sauce or you can choose from the restaurant’s default blend. The chef would then stir fry everything in a big grill or wok or whatever they use to cook your order. The result would be hot, steaming and delicious Mongolian barbecue. Because of all the ingredients they offer, eating out at Mongolian Barbecue places can be pricey. So I decided to recreate the same, if not similar experience at home.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup of chicken thigh fillets
1/2 cup of pork tenderloin chopped into small pieces
1/2 cup of squid rings
1/2 cup of shrimp
1/2 cup of carrots sliced into thin strips
1/2 cup of chopped cabbage
1 cup of bean sprouts
1 cup of cooked white rice
1 large onion chopped
1 clove garlic minced
2 tbsp sambal oelek (optional, you can omit if you don’t want the heat)
2 tbsp sesame oil
3 tbsp teriyaki sauce
3 tbsp kikkoman soy sauce
1 tbsp brown sugar
salt and pepper
spring onions chopped (for garnish)

Procedures:

Combine meat, seafood, vegetables, rice in a bowl. Set aside. Combine teriyaki sauce, kikkoman soy sauce and sugar in another bowl. Set aside.

Place wok or frying pan over high heat. When wok starts to smoke put in sesame oil. Then stir fry sambal oelek until the oil absorbs the spice (or until your eyes tear up). Then stir fry garlic and onion. Be careful not to let the garlic burn so keep stirring! Stir fry the meat until they are slightly cooked. Add the seafood and the rest of the ingredients including the condiments and keep stirring until everything is cooked.

Pour into a bowl and sprinkle with spring onions. Enjoy!

On the heels of my Discovery Travel and Living Christmas contest, I am now partnering with Coca-Cola to give away an 8GB Ipod Nano with Photo/Video Camera. All you have to do is be like a paparazzi and capture interesting photos of a person drinking Real Leaf Green Tea. The more creative, the funnier, the cuter, the more heartwarming the photo is and the more interesting the story is behind the photo, the better the chances of it being chosen as the winning entry. 

You can submit as many photos as you can as long as you leave a comment here in this blog about your entry with a link to your photo. This contest will run from December 28 to January 30. The winners will be chosen on January 31, 2010.

Contest Mechanics:

• This contest is open to all readers of Kubiertos.com from the Philippines.
• Take a photo of any person drinking Real Leaf Green Tea or with a Real Leaf Green Tea. Upload this photo at any photo sharing site, blog, Facebook, Tumblr or multiply account together with a short (or long) write-up about the photo (why, where, who or anything you want to write about the photo).
• Leave a comment on this blog post with a link to your entry.
• You can submit multiple entries but a participant can only win once.
• The contest will end on January 30, 2010  11:59PM Manila time.
• The most creative, funny, cute, heartwarming or interesting photo (and story) will be chosen as the winner. A similar contest will be run on About My Recovery, Starmometer, Our Awesome Planet and Yugatech producing one winner each. Coca-cola will then choose an overall winner from the 5 winning entries who will win a grand prize of Php10,000 and 1 year’s supply of Real Leaf Green Tea!
• Me, my family including my relatives up to the second degree of consanguinity or affinity are disqualified from joining the contest.

Go out with your DSLRs, point and shoots, camera phones, or disposables and capture those winning moments to get a chance to win an Ipod Nano and Php 10,000 cash! Merry Christmas!

The atmosphere is charged with Christmas spirit and all around everyone is doing their best to make this Christmas extra special. With all the difficulties the world has had to go through, what with the economic crisis that hit everyone across the globe, the natural disasters that claimed thousands of lives, the cruelty and injustice that many people have had to live with (or die for), it is admittedly difficult to keep our spirits high and happy. But I truly believe that no matter what happens in your life, you should find a way to make things better for you and your family.  This Christmas, let the world know what you plan to do to make this Christmas extraordinary. It may be a small thing or a big thing, but if it makes you or others forget all the problems in the world then that is truly great.

This year Discovery Travel and Living (DTL) is featuring 4 different shows as part of its Christmas programs to somehow make our Holiday season a little bit more special – Nigella’s Christmas Kitchen (on December 14), Willy’s Perfect Chocolate Christmas (December 23), Fun Taiwan (January 1) and The Relic Hunter with Ian Grant (January 2).

Kubiertos.com in partnership with Discovery Travel and Living is giving away 10 cookbooks 15 cookbooks by DTL’s famous chefs, Willie Harcourt-Cooze, Kylie Kwong, and David Rocco to 10 lucky readers of this blog. All you have to do is post a comment here about what you plan to do this year to make Christmas extra special. You can post as many ideas as you want as long as they’re unique. It would be understandable if the basic idea will become similar to others but the details should be uniquely your own. (Ex. Special Christmas dinner can be an idea of many people but you can make it unique by how you plan to do it or what dishes you plan to cook to make it special). The contest will run from December 13 to December 27.

Contest Mechanics:

• This contest is open to all readers who have valid Philippine mailing addresses. DTL will take care of delivering the prizes to the mailing address of all the winners
• Each comment will be considered as one entry to the contest. You can post multiple comments but each one needs to be of a different idea to be counted as separate entries. However, a reader can only win once.
• The contest will end on December 27, 11:59PM Manila time.
• The winners will be drawn by a third party web application – random.org.
• Winners will be announced on December 31, 2009.
• Me, my family including my relatives up to the second degree of consanguinity or affinity are disqualified from joining the contest.

Comment now and get a chance to win one of these prized cookbooks courtesy of Discovery Travel and Living!

Being the busy bees that my hubby and I are, there isn’t always time to pack up and drive to someplace nice so we could just unwind and relax. However, about an hour away from the city, (at least without heavy traffic and all that) there lies Tagaytay, a small town frequently visited by those longing for some cool air and warm meals.

Just past the commercial center where all the famous dining places are, and past the tall condominium (that I still think is an eye sore) is a place that offers coffee and the best cinnamon loaf I have ever tried. It used to be a small place with several tables under the trees and an enclosed dining area that will make you feel totally at home.

A couple of weeks ago, my hubby and I decided to have brunch over at Bag of Beans. We arrived there just before 9 am and we were met by a nice surprise. Instead of being led to a table in the gardens, we were led to a covered dining area that was new to me and seemed much larger than the old one. Although covered it was wide open and faced a courtyard where you will find some picnic tables. It was awesome. The place can now accommodate more people but it still did not lose the coziness and homey feeling that I know it for.

Breakfast was as expected, I mean who can go wrong with bacon and eggs and omelette? The one memorable dish though was the Daing na Bangus (aka milk fish marinated in vinegar and spices) with fried rice. It was cooked to perfection, somewhat crispy on the outside but white, hot and soft on the inside. The flavors too were intense like it had been soaked in vinegar for months before being served to you. I wonder how they did that or where they bought the fish. Hmm.

All in all, my family and I had the perfect brunch. Good food, great coffee and even greater place. Delicioso!

Bag of Beans
115 Aguinaldo Highway,
Mendez Crossing West,
Tagaytay City
Philippines

I am so in love with Pepper Lunch’s Beef Pepper Rice. But its not possible (or practical) to dine out there everyday so I did my best to try and create my own version of a dish that is made out of Beef slices, rice, and a lot of pepper. It was a challenge to exactly replicate the appearance even the taste of the dish that came over from the Japanese but it was something that satisfied my craving. I used thick strips of beef as that was what we had available so for next time, I will make sure to buy super thin slices (like bacon) for my next beef pepper rice.

Ingredients:
1/4 kilo very thin strips of beef
1 cup of corn kernels
2 cups cooked white rice
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp teriyaki sauce
sesame oil
a LOT of black pepper powder

Procedures:

Put wok over high heat. Once the wok starts to smoke, put in the sesame oil. Stir fry the beef strips for about 1-2 minutes or until slightly cooked. Don’t forget to keep stirring or the beef will stick to the wok or worse get burned. Remove the beef from the wok. Add a bit more sesame oil to the wok and put in the rice, soy sauce and teriyaki sauce. Stir fry like there’s no tomorrow. Add in lots of pepper – depending on how much pepper taste you want out of the dish. Put back the beef and corn and stir until everything is cooked. Serve while piping hot.

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