Beef Tapa is one of the favorite morning dish of most Filipinos. It's one easy recipe that anyone can prepare without any cooking expertise needed.

Tapa means cured or dried with a sweet and delicious taste. Traditionally, tapa is being dried directly under the sun to preserve the meat. However, doing that procedure is seldom practice nowadays. Commercialized beef tapa does not undergo drying anymore.

Tapa is one easy recipe for those busy Moms who does not have enough time to cook in the morning or during dinner, so it's better to have beef tapa ready in your fridge. Here are the ingredients that you need and how to prepare beef tapa.


Ingredients:

500 grams beef sirloin, thinly sliced
3 tbsp garlic, minced
2 tbsp sugar
1 cup soy sauce
1 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp salt

Procedure:

1. Combine all ingredients into a mixing bowl, mix well.
2. Cover and marinade for a minimum of 12 hours or at least overnight.

Cooking Instructions:

This cooking steps help you get a tender beef tapa.

1. In a pan, place enough water just to cover your marinated beef.
2. Add 3-4 tbsp tapa sauce to retain the taste of your marinated beef and 3 tbsp cooking oil.
3. Cook beef tapa until the water evaporates and fry with the remaining oil.
4. Best with atchara and fried egg.

Beef tapa is also one good source of income. One of my neighbors used to sell tapa and tocino to her friends and in our area. Now that you know how to prepare beef tapa, you can now start making money at home.

Calamares or Calamari is one of my favorite appetizer. It's not just a simple appetizer for me but can be a good dish to pair with rice.  When I was still working, this dish served as my lunch or dinner.

Here in the Philippines, Calamares is one of the famous street foods together with kwek-kwek. However, this food does not end only in the streets because a lot of restaurants are now serving Calamares.

Fried Calamari is a Mediterranean dish that consists of a batter-coated squid, deep fried and being serve with a lemon on the side. Other restaurant serve it with mayonnaise instead of lemon as condiments.

Here's how to cook fried calamari or calamares.

Ingredients:

1/2 lb medium to large sized squid, sliced into rings about 1/2 inch
2 cups flour
2 cups cooking oil
2 tbsp dried parsley
1 tsp iodized salt
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
lemon juice or kalamansi juice

Procedure:

1. For Batter, combine all dry ingredients
2. Put the squid into the batter, make sure the squid is well coated.
3. Fry for 2-3 mins (oil temperature must be 350-375 degrees to achieve crispy calamari)
4. Sprinkle a little bit of salt into the fried calamari for flavor
5. Squeeze lemon juice or kalamansi juice on top. May serve with mayonnaise if you want.

Image Source: cocinay recetas

Humba recipe is a very common dish in the southern part of the Philippines and one of the comfort foods of every Filipino household. During my child days, my late grand mother would always cook Humba for us and I really love her version of cooking it.

Humba is somehow similar to the famous pork adobo in terms of appearance. It uses the same basic ingredients of pork adobo, however there are additional ingredients added for it to have a different taste.

Based on the information gathered, humba is from Chinese origin, the rump of ham or pork cooked with garlic, water, soy sauce, brown sugar and other spices.

Pork humba has a lot of variations from household to household. And I will be sharing one of those variations using Piña as an additional ingredients.

Ingredients:

1/2 Kilo Pork liempo, cut into chunks
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 head onion, diced
1 tbsp cooking oil
2 1/2 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp cane vinegar
3 tbsp soy sauce
3 tbsp tausi(salted black beans)
1 piece laurel leaf
1 tsp whole paminta
1 cup pineapple chunks
1 cup pineapple juice(syrup from pineapple chunks)

Procedure:

1. Preheat pan with oil, cook pork liempo until it turns brown.

2. Add onion and garlic and let it stay for a while or until the onion turns transparent.

3. Pour in soy sauce together with laurel leaf and whole paminta.

4. Add pineapple juice and simmer over medium heat until pork is tender. Add water if needed then bring to a boil.

5. Add vinegar, salted black beans and sugar. Simmer for 4 minutes.

6. Add the pineapple chunks, mix and allow to simmer for 3 minutes.

7. Serve warm and enjoy.

This version of pork humba is coming from Visayas and Mindanao. Other version includes dried banana blossoms which my late grand mother used to cook for us. You can replace pineapple chunks with dried banana blossoms if you want. On the other hand, Luzon's version of humba does not have salted black beans, instead they use bananas or toasted bread.

Image Source: Del Monte Recipe Guide

I will be sharing to you this simple appetizer which I copied from Gerry's Grill Restaurant. It's so easy to prepare and I am sure you will also love this simple appetizer. It's the Green Mango Salad of Gerry's Grill Restaurant.

Green Mango Salad is a combination of onions, tomatoes and crushed chiraron and here's how to prepare this simple recipe.

Ingredients:

1 green mango chopped
1 large onion chopped
2 tomatoes chopped
3/4 cup crushed chicharon
Sauteed alamang (Sauteed Small Shrimps)

1. With the tomatoes remove the seeds before chopping.

2. Combine all five ingredients.

3. Add alamang according to taste.

This appetizer is best for fried dishes and grilled recipes. You can add a little chili if you want it spicy hot.

Kare-Kare is one of the favorite foods of Filipinos. It is a classic Filipino food that composes of vegetables, stewed meat in a thick sauce made from peanut and is not complete without the shrimp paste.

There are a lot of variations in cooking Kare-Kare and one of it is the Kare-Kare recipe that I am going to share to you. I prefer using pork pata instead of ox tail and ox tripe.

Kare-kare Ingredients:

1 1/2 Kilo pork pata
4-5 pieces head of pechay
1 sachet of Mama Sita Kare-kare peanut sauce mix dissolve in 1 cup water
3 medium size eggplant, cut into cubes
1 bundle of string beans (sitaw) cut
3 table spoon Lady's Choice Creamy Peanut Butter
1 medium size of banana bud, quarter cut
4 head garlic, chopped
2 large onions, chopped
1 pork cube
2 cups water
cooking oil
salt
sauted shrimp paste

Procedure:

1. Let's start with the veggies, make sure to wash your vegetables before cooking. Put a little amount of cooking oil in a pan. Fry eggplant until it turned brown both sides. Set aside.

2. Wash pork leg properly then put it in a large pan. Put half of the onions and half of the garlic. Sprinkle a little salt enough to give the pork some taste. Cover pan and DON'T put water. Cook for about 5 minutes or until pork is cooked with its own juice.

3. Put 1 cup of water and bring to a boil. Add water if necessary. Add pork cube and simmer for about 10 minutes or until pork is tender. Separate pork from broth. Remove all scum that was formed out from the broth. Set aside.

4. Saute garlic and onion. Add string beans, banana bud, and pechay. Cook for 2 minutes then add in pork leg. Stir cook for another 2 minutes. Pour in pork broth and let it simmer for 3 minutes. Add kare-kare mix solution and 3 table spoon of creamy peanut butter. Let it simmer for 5 minutes. Add fried eggplant and cook for about 2 minutes or until vegetable are cooked.

5. Serve with sauteed shrimp paste.

Enjoy your kare-kare!!! =)

Siomai or Shumai is a traditional Chinese dumpling and is also known as pork dumpling. There are a lot of variations on its ingredients since others are modifying it according to their taste and sometimes according to the availability of the ingredients. Though Siomai is a Chinese food, we can't deny the fact that this food has made its way to the heart of the Filipino’s. We can see a lot of stalls in the streets, malls, schools and restaurants who are serving this food.

This Siomai recipe is more on a Cantonese variation. Cantonese Siomai is basically made of ground pork, minced mushrooms, and shrimps, thus it sometimes known as pork and mushroom dumpling.

Ingredients:
2 1/2 lbs ground pork
1 1/2 cups white mushroom, minced
1 cup shrimp, minced
2 cups water chestnuts(singkamas), minced
1 tbsp ground black pepper
1 cup onion, minced
1 cup carrots, minced
1/4 cup scallions, minced
2 tsp salt
1 piece egg
5 tbsp sesame oil
1 pack wanton or siomai wrapper

Chili Paste
1/8 kilo chilies (Siling Labuyo)
3 tbsp cooking oil
2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced

Cooking Procedure:

1. Combine all the ingredients except for the chili paste ingredients and the wanton. Mix until well blended.

2. Place 1 heaping tablespoon of mixture in the center of each wanton wrapper. Press down gently to make sure there's no air.

3. Press wrapper up and around all the sides of the siomai leaving the center open.

4. Grease steamer plate and arrange siomai that won't stick with each other. Steam for 15 to 20 minutes on medium heat. Be careful not to overcook so siomai would not end up too dry. If you don't like your siomai to be steamed, you can dip fry it, just don't overcook.

5. Serve with calamansi/soy sauce dip and chili garlic paste.


Chili Paste Preparation:

1. Combine chopped chilies and minced garlic, then simmer for 20 minutes.
2. Add oil, simmer and stir well.