Birthday supper - Sukiyaki and Sans Rival

For my birthday dinner I made Sukiyaki. I bought the beef (already sliced) at Trader Joe's, since this saved me a trip to an asian store.

Marinate some thinly sliced beef (preferrably rib eye or sirloin) and marinate in soy and sugar. Take a couple of onions and saute them in butter and oil, set aside. Saute the beef in the same pan until partly cooked, add in some carrots, napa cabbage, mushrooms, leeks and tofu. Add in rice noodles that have been softened in hot water. Pour in the sauce of soy, sugar and beef broth. Simmer a few minutes and adjust seasoning. Serve with a fresh egg in a bowl and pour the soup over it.

Dessert was Sans Rival. This is a dessert that we used to buy at a place called La Cibeles on Padre Faura in Ermita when I was a child. La Cibeles closed many years ago, but my memory of their Sans Rival led me to recreate it for my family. It is drizzled with caramel strands. My husband says he prefers Sans Rival to any other dessert.

Sans Rival is a dacquoise - a merengue and nut mix (almonds in this case) baked into wafers, then filled with a french buttercream frosting in between layers (4 here) and covering the pastry. The final layer of buttercream is topped with chopped almonds then drizzled with caramel and chilled. In the Philippines, cashews are used in a Sans Rival.

Intermission - Puchero and Chocolate Cake

I grew up eating Puchero. It is a hearty Spanish-Filipino stew of chicken, beef, pork and chorizo with chick peas, green beans, cabbage and potatoes in a tomato sauce with onions and garlic. It is served with a side dish of roasted eggplant mashed with minced shallots, garlic and vinegar.

I thank my special friends who sent me a copy of Le Cordon Bleu Complete Cooking Techniques. I wish you were here to share my chocolate cake.

My chocolate cake took me years of searching for the right cake recipe and I thank my friend Marivic who made suggestions for the frosting recipe I spent years trying to perfect. Finally, I've got it!

Menu 2

I made the chicken stock over the weekend to save myself time during the week, using the chicken carcasses I've been saving in my freezer for the soup. I definitely do not have an extra 2.5 hours during the work week to make fresh stock, so I froze it.


Country-style Vegetable Soup with Noodles. Cabbage, leeks, chicken stock and vermicelli pieces. Maybe I should have strained the stock before I used it for the soup so it would have been a clear broth. It tasted fine.

Veal Scallops with Apples and Brandy. Veal scallops lightly fried and smothered with mushrooms and shallots in a cream sauce, garnished with baked apples.

Caramel Custard. Eggs, milk, sugar and vanilla and voila! One of our favorite sweets.

I probably won't be making the soup again and will add shredded chicken for a heartier soup. I would also add a couple of potatoes and blend them into the stock for a thicker broth. It's just a matter of preference.

Menu 1

I began reading the recipes last Sunday night in order to familiarize myself with the ingredients and procedures for today's menu. I noticed that the order of preparation was not provided. I armed myself with paper and pen and came up with a list of cooking times and steps so I could get it all on the table about the same time.

I didn't know if I could buy a small airline size bottle of Cointreau at the liquor store. I was wondering why the cookbook had the word spelled with a capital C and found out that it is a brand name of a French orange liqueur. The Cointreau site (http://www.cointreau.com/) says that it is a "marriage of sweet and bitter orange peels". Another site says it may date back to 1849. Since the husband and I are only occassional drinkers (a beer or a glass of wine in 3 months, if at all) I have no idea what this tastes like. I do keep a bottle of Grand Marnier for crepes. Here is a site that gives explanations of various liquers: http://www.physics.uq.edu.au/people/nieminen/liqueurs.html (I am left wondering about the connection between liquers and the College of Physics at the University of Queensland, Australia).

Happily, the man at the liquor store said that I could use the Grand Marnier since they did not sell airline size bottles of the Cointreau.

This cookbook is not for someone without some cooking experience since it assumes that the user has prior knowledge of planning, preparation times and experience to guide them.

Now I know that I have a lot to learn about presentation, as I should have given more thought to the serving dishes to use for each course so that the food would stand out. Oh well, maybe next time.
Cucumber Salad with Mint. Crunchy and tasty. It would have looked better in a green bowl.

Roast Chicken. A simple roast with thyme from my garden, a clove of garlic and a bay leaf.


Peas with Lettuce, Parsley and Onions. The original recipe called for chervil and allowed a substitution of parsley, which I harvested from the garden. The lettuce is wilted in the pan while cooking with the peas and onions.


Fresh Fruit Salad with Grand Marnier. The recipe called for Cointreau and, as I mentioned earlier, I already had some Grand Marnier on hand so I used it. Very yummy fruit salad. I also didn't have an orange so I added some grapes, which livened it up :-)

All in all my family loved it. It took 2 hours to make from start to finish, including the roasting and resting time for the chicken.

My husband and son ate it up. I would serve this meal to guests.

What This Is About

You won't find the recipes for what I am cooking or baking on this blog. This is about my experience with each item that I prepare according to the recipes provided in Le Cordon Bleu At Home: the difficulties, the things I didn't understand and the success of each recipe or failure thereof. Hopefully, pictures of each completed food :-)

I will rely on Jacque Pepin's pictures and explanations for any techniques I don't understand and the DK Pocket Encyclopedia of Cook's Ingredients for items I have not heard of. Chervil, for example, which is called for in the vegetable dish I will be making.

I will not be providing any names of the food in French, which I do not speak. Thankfully, I don't need to speak French in order to enjoy the food.

My other food sources are my herb garden that is planted with rosemary, thyme, oregano, basil (thai and italian), tarragon, mint, parsley (flat-leaf and curly) and chives. We also have bell peppers, banana peppers, sweet peppers (corno de toro) and sungold, yellow pear and brandywine tomatoes.

You will also occassionally find an additional dessert or two thrown in here that is not in the cookbook, simply because I love baking.

Deciding To Teach Myself To Cook

Don't get me wrong. I have learned to cook the basics. I have also spent up to 3 years agonizing over a particular recipe in order to get it right. (My husband will attest to this, having suffered along with these passions.) I now accept that I don't have the money to afford to attend a culinary training institution and that my real life won't let me anyway.

You already know about the husband. There is also a son, a dog, and a for-the-summer hamster in my life.

For several years I have had a cookbook called "Le Cordon Bleu At Home" sitting on a shelf. What made me buy it was the gold medallion on the dust jacket with the words "Learn classic french cuisine from the world's most famous cooking school", and underneath "A complete course in more than 300 recipes". How could I resist?

Armed with Le Cordon Bleu At Home, a copy of Jacque Pepin's Complete Techniques, and the DK Pocket Encyclopedia of Cook's Ingredients I will teach myself to make classic french cuisine. Even if it takes another 3 years.

Just so we are all on the same page, here are the details of each book:

Le Cordon Bleu, Inc., Le Cordon Bleu At Home (HarperCollins 1991)
Jacque Pepin, Jacque Pepin's Complete Techniques (Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, Inc 2001)
DK Pocket Encyclopedia of Cook's Ingredients (Adrian Bailey ed., Dorling Kindersley Limited 1990)

I will cook the first menu this Saturday.