Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Roast Beef | My Favorite :)


Celebrated my birthday last Saturday and I cooked Roast Beef. Yummy! This is my family's favorite and my mom's recipe.

I read the recipe, kept reading it while cooking just to make sure everything is right, but what I love about this is that it's very simple and uber delicious.

Here is the recipe:

Ingredients:
2kilos beef, loin
1 bottle Lea Perrins Oyster sauce
soy sauce
4 cloves garlic, chopped
pepper
msg
1 can Jolly Button Mushroom
1 can Campbell's Cream of Mushroom
1 pouch Nestle All Purpose Cream
1 cup butter

Directions:
1. Marinate beef in oyster sauce, pepper and msg for 30 minutes to 1 hour.
2. Boil marinated beef until tender. Let it cool and refrigerate for 2 - 3 hours.
3. Slice the marinated and boiled beef.
4. Saute garlic, cream of mushroom, and nestle cream in butter. Add the beef with the marinate sauce.

I got really good feedbacks from my friends during the party. They asked if everything that was on the table was catered. LOL. I prepared everything which included Vegetable Salad with Mayo-Curry dip, Chinese Style Cream Dory in Light Soy Sauce (you can find that recipe here), Pinoy Style Red Sauce Spaghetti, Sizzling Sisig (ohhhh-- not everything, my brother cooked Sizzling Sisig LOL) Tiramisu and Buko Pandan Salad. I'll post my (small) birthday party pictures right after this one.


Happy Cooking,
Umbrela :)

Monday, January 23, 2012

Beware of Ensogo Discount Vouchers | http://ensogo.com.ph UPDATED as of January 26, 2012

Disappointing! Disgusting!

All these words are not enough to describe their service.

I have purchased 5 vouchers for Mt. Pinatubo Trek, and have been trying to contact ensogo and trekpros for over a week thru their contact numbers and email addresses but no one bothered to reply. With this, I started to feel nervous. The vouchers amounted to almost 5k.

See below image...
Curious enough, I have checked their FB page to see if I'm not the only one having the same problem. See below...




So it's clear, I'm not the only one. Also, I called my credit card company and found out that I was double charged for the same tour package. I booked two tours but cancelled the first one and have informed Ensogo about this and they said they will reverse it -- that was January 12, 2012. It's January 24 now and my credit card said that it is still posted and I still have two payments on the same tour. WTH!!!

I am now waiting for their reply regarding all my concerns -- the reversal of the doubled charge tour and the cancellation/booking of my above vouchers. Let's see what they will do.

I am going to report them to TULFO and I am not kidding! I am giving them until this Friday to accomplish all my concerns. 

This is gonna be my last purchase from Ensogo. Bye Ensogo!

P.S. The real package for the Mt. Pinatubo Trek only costs Php1,300.00 -- I know because I'm from Pampanga and my boss knows an operator for the said tour. In their site, it is priced at Php2500.00 and they are offering it for Php999.00.


Updated screen captures here as of January 26, 2012:







More and more complaints. TSK TSK TSK!

I have a contact from GMA7 which is an email away, and also please see this DTI online complaint form.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

La Vie En Rose



I read the news yesterday @ yahoo.ph about "63-year-old pianist puts up impromptu ‘concert’ for train commuters" and fell in love with his rendition of the song LA VIE EN ROSE. I googled it up and found a bossa nova version of it by non other than Philippines' Queen of Bossa Nova -- Sitti! :) I love Sitti and her music. Watch below..






Inspired by it, I created the above image and made it my cover photo in Facebook. I googled and googled about the song and learned that it was originally sung by Edith Piaf. The song also is the title of Edith's biographical film http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Vie_en_rose_%28film%29 and what I'm gonna do next is find the DVD of the movie, buy and watch it.


I love the lyrics. It's the most romantic song ever. How I wish there's a studio-recorded bossa nova version of it. In english the lyrics translates as:




La vie en rose
Hold me close and hold me fast
The magic spell you cast
This is la vie en rose
When you kiss me, Heaven sighs
And though I close my eyes
I see la vie en rose
When you press me to your heart
I'm in a world apart
A world where roses bloom
And when you speak
Angels sing from above
Every day words
Seem to turn into love songs
Give your heart and soul to me
And life will always be
La vie en rose



Love! Love! LOVE! 


I've been humming it non-stop.

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Chinese-Style Cream Dory in Light Soy Sauce

My mom cooked Fried Cream Dory last week and I didn't like how it tasted because in my opinion Cream Dory should be steamed! LOL. I told her I'm gonna find a recipe and would teach her how to cook Cream Dory the right way.

I found this recipe ---> http://janiscooking.wordpress.com/2011/04/08/steamed-cream-dory-with-light-soy-sauce/#comment-1312 and at first look I knew it is the one! :)

The only ingredient that I didn't have was the Sesame Oil so I bought one after getting out of the office.

So guys, here it is....


Thank you janiscooking.wordpress.com :) Love your recipe and I'm gonna cook this again for my birthday.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Tiramisu

Dessert! :)

When you don't want a complicated dessert recipe and don't have much time to prepare for one, this is what you should do. Go and buy these ingredients:

3 packs Graham Cookies
2 cans Nestle All Purpose Cream
1 can Condensed Milk
10 packs (3 pieces per pack) Cream-O or Oreo cookies, centers removed and crushed
1 cup cheddar cheese, squares
1 can fruit cocktail, drained

Directions:
1. Mix the all purpose cream and condensed milk together. Let's call this the sweet mixture
2. Layer the Pyrex Pan ( I wanna see the layers of my creation).
3. Here's how you layer the pan:
     a. sweet mixture
     b. graham cookies
     c. sweet mixture
     d. crushed chocolate cookies
     e. graham cookies 
 --this makes one layer, you can make 3-4 layers ( a to e) of this and then....
4. Top it with crushed chocolate cookies, fruit cocktail (or any fruits that are in season, like berries) and cheese squares. Cover with cling wrap and refrigerate.

 See how it should look below:


I did 2 Pyrex Pans with 3 layers each.

Happy Cooking,
Umbrela

Creamy Carbonara

I got tired of cooking the usual red sauce spaghetti, so last Christmas I decided to go for white sauce. Creamy Carbonara it is. Looked for recipes online, read and read, printed some, then took note of the usual ingredients they have.

Went to the grocery with my list of ingredients. I must admit that I have over-bought some of the ingredients and was undecided if I were to buy spinach and basil. I didn't find those two ingredients but found McCormick Basil Leaves. I bought 2 bars of Eden cheddar cheese, 2 450grams of Linguine (instead of Fettuccine), 3 chicken breasts, 1 pack of all purpose flour, 4 250ml packs of Nestle All Purpose Cream, 2 can of Campbells Cream of Mushroom, 1 Can of Jolly Button Mushrooms, 1 pack of Ham (flat) and 450grams of bacon.

So, now with all of these ingredients I started to boil water. Then when it came to a boil, cooked the linguine as per package instruction -- add salt and oil. While waiting for the pasta to be cooked, I decided not to put basil and chicken breasts. LOL. Here's the final list of my ingredients of the sauce (since you already know how to cook the pasta) and followed by the cooking directions.
 :)

Ingredients:
1 450grams Linguine
2 250mL Nestle All Purpose Cream
1 1/2 can Campbells Cream of Mushroom
2 cans water
1 can Jolly Button Mushrooms, cut into halves
450grams bacon, shredded
1 pack ham flats, squares
1/2 cup Eden cheese, grated (then some more for topping)
pepper
garlic


Directions:
1. Fry the bacon until brown use low heat and don't overcook. Set aside.
2. Saute garlic with canola or palm oil. Add the ham and cook till brown. Add the bacon. ( You can set aside 1/4 of the bacon to be used as topping).
3. Add cream of mushroom, water, all purpose cream, and grated cheese. Mix well and bring to a boil.
4. Season with pepper. (How about salt? Do you need salt? NO. The salt will come from the ham, bacon and cheese).

Serve the pasta and sauce separately. Top with bacon bits and grated cheese. Yummm!!!!


Enjoy!

Happy Cooking,
UmbRela

Bulalo

I've been busy cooking this Christmas so I have a few recipes here that I wanna share with you.

The first one is this -- BULALO. It's another Filipino favorite. A lot of families in different areas in the country have built their life and made a life out of this recipe. In Clark, where I work, there's a place called 'BULALUHAN' that is being managed by an Air Force retiree and yeah, people flock there.

At home,we enjoy this recipe every now and then but it is served specially during Christmas and New Year together with Hot Chocolate Batirol. :) It's so simple yet so succulent. But be careful with the marrow and cholesterol. LOL.


Ingredients:
1 kilo Beef
1 kilo special cut beef marrow
2 onions, cut into halves
Onion leeks, thinly sliced
salt
pepper
msg (optional)

Directions:
1. Boil beef meat and marrow till tender with lots of water.
(Option: Refrigerate overnight or less after it cools down and when the fat settles on top, scrape it off. Less cholesterol hehe. Heat it up).
2. Add salt, msg, onions, onion leeks and pepper.
3. Serve hot.



Happy Cooking,
UmbRela