Musings of a Traveling Chef

Two weeks ago, our department hosted a potluck burrito bar.  My colleague, who's Mexican-American, is famous for her sauces.  She made several types of sauce for this event, the cilantro jalapeno sauce, members only sauce and a burrito sauce.  Of the three sauces, the cilantro jalapeno sauce caught my eye due to it's lime green color.  It has a mild jalapeno kick and a rich cilantro goodness.  A lot of people asked for the recipe and she graciously shared it with us.  She mentioned getting the recipe from the America's Test Kitchen show. Jalapeño and Cilantro Sauce Ingredients:  (makes 1 cup) 1 cup fresh cilantro leaves , and stems, trimmed and chopped coarse 3 jalapeño chiles , stemmed, seeded, and minced ½ cup mayonnaise 1 tablespoon lime juice 2 garlic cloves , minced ½ teaspoon kosher salt 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

With my current work, I'm usually off on Thursday.  That means I get to bake or make desserts.  Today, I decided to try a brownies recipe from Bailiwick Academy.  As brownies are considered entry-level baking, I imagine it will work out fine.  Looking at the recipe, I noticed that it would be too sweet for my guinea pigs.  I tweaked the measurement and the ingredients and came out with this delectable walnut fudge brownies which passed my guinea pigs sweet tooth. Walnut Fudge Brownies Ingredients: 200g melted unsalted butter 190g brown sugar 190g white sugar 70g Hershey's dark cocoa powder 30g Hershey's cocoa powder 4 medium size eggs 130g all purpose flour 3g baking powder 200g walnuts Maldon sea salt flakes (optional)

The humble Pandesal is a staple Filipino breakfast or snack bread roll.  It is one of the most sought after bread in our household here in the US.  It is best eaten fresh from the oven and can be dipped in coffee or hot cocoa.  To enhance flavor, some people spread butter or margarine while others add adobo, tuna, cheese, sardines, pesto inside.  Pandesal has evolved to several variants, most notorious is the malunggay pandesal, touted as one of the healthy variants.  The pandesal recipe I will share with you today is the basic one.  Variants of pandesal will be shared below. Pandesal (Filipino Bread Rolls) Ingredients: 375g bread flour 68g  sugar 7g  salt 23g  shortening 214g  warm water 6g  instant dry yeast 1.5g  bread improver Yields:   22-25 pandesal

My dad owns a farm in Northern Cebu.  On one of our conversations, he mentioned that he was giving away some of his fruit produce for free so that it won't rot on the farm.  This made me think that maybe he could preserve and sell them in the local market.  I was also thinking that maybe I can study how and perhaps add this to my line of cookies that I plan to market in the future.  When The Hutong opened a Strawberry Specials class, I didn't hesitate to join. Traditional Homemade Strawberry Jam Ingredients: (yields 4-6 cups of jam) 2kg  strawberries, rinsed, hulled and cut into i-inch pieces (almost ripe strawberries) 5 cups granulated sugar 1/2 cup lemon juice