-
Hungry for feeds?
-
Gardening Love
Jun
27
A box of treasures from the sea
Filed Under Food trips | Leave a Comment
A few months back, my good Japanese friend and her family brought me again to another great restaurant for lunch. The almost unwelcoming facade of Seryna makes you wonder if that shop is ever open at all. Sans the signs, the wood panels make the place look dark and you can only wonder which panel slides open to enter the restaurant. Apparently, Seryna is like this because like any great treasure, it takes a bit of curiosity and wanderlust for you to enter the door. What lies behind their strange door is a lunch packed with treasures from the sea. And here I am, back again in front of Seryna’s, hoping to taste the sea, with only two tiers.
I’ve never seen chirashizushi like this. Usually, I get a bowl of rice with sushi morsels on top. But on this end, I’m served a tiered bento, with the top tier just for the sushi and the bottom tier for the rice and other side dishes. The sushi tier is packed with slivers of tuna, hamachi, octopus, squid, uni, shrimp, and my favorite inari. Naturally, the fish was fresh. So fresh that at some points, I don’t dip it in the shouyu anymore and just eat it straight with the wasabi. The fish was sweet and still had some salt from the sea. During the first time I visited, it even has some cuts of fishes that I wasn’t so sure of but I ended up eating anyway. It’s not like it’s poisoned or anything. But I guess the fact that I’m still alive after my second chirashizushi means eating random fish meat from this place is definitely worth the treat. The sushi tier in is on a bed of grated daikon which you can probably eat if you felt like eating daikon. I really thought at first they were sotanghon, but my friend corrected me and told me it was daikon. I guess daikon truly is a versatile vegetable.
The bottom tier is just as exciting as the top. The rice is topped with kampyo, sakuradenbu, some daikon pickles, and tamagoyaki. But even without these, the rice alone is amazing. Seryna’s sushi rice has a slightly brown mixture, probably due to the vinegar. The vinegar is not too tart which makes the rice strangely taste sweeter. Or maybe it was brown because the vinegar had sugar in it. Either way, despite its unusual shade, the rice completely complemented the freshness and sweetness of the fish. In this chirashizushi, you’d want to eat the rice. Somehow, it doesn’t feel complete if you missed the rice in this chirashizushi.
It also has a side dish of potato salad and soup. For the price of Php320, extravagant sushi like that is probably one of the best sushi bargains you can find. One thing interesting about the chirashizushi in Seryna is that around 25 or 30 sets are only sold in a day. So yes, despite the reasonable price, it is still a rare treat. You have to go to Seryna’s by lunch time and make sure you beat the crowd in ordering this prized box.
Restaurant Tip!!
Seryna
Tel. Nos. 02-894-3855, 02-894-3741
Address: Little Tokyo,2277 Chino Roces Ave., makati City
Notes: The restaurant faces the Plaza Fair entrance of Makati Cinema Square. It’s also right beside the entrance to Little Tokyo (the giant red Tori that says Little Tokyo)
Jun
17
Pasta ala bulungan
Filed Under Recipes, home cooking | 5 Comments
Seriously. My mom went on a marketing spree in Bulungan last Sunday. One of her hauls was this big bucket worth of mussels, locally known as tahong, for 20 bucks (roughly $0.50). It must be around 3 kilos worth of mussels. She also got a bunch of shellfish innards sold for Php50 a kilo. The interesting thing with these innards is that once she looked closer, she realized that the innards contained scallops in it. And scallops for 50 bucks is definitely a bargain in my side of the country. The moment she got home, she showed me her seafood stash and I can’t think of anything else but adding it into a pasta.
My aunt from Italy taught me this recipe. It might be close to a simple marinara sauce but lighter and sweeter in flavor. Whenever we have seafood, even if it’s just mussels, I always try to cook it in this way. You can’t go wrong with this recipe as long as you have fresh ingredients. You can’t get that sweet briny taste if you don’t have fresh seafood. More than that, you’ll also get a tummy ache if your seafood’s not fresh. In this recipe, I only have mussels and scallops. You can be more experimental with your ingredients by adding other shellfish like clams, halaaan, and maybe some shrimps.
Read more
Jun
16
When life throws you fish, make tuyo!
Filed Under home cooking | Leave a Comment
This weekend was seafood haven at my place. My mom and our maid went to this seaside marketplace in Paranaque which we call Bulungan. Bulungan is a tagalog word refers to a place where you whisper. But this happens in this marketplace because this is where fishermen from the coasts of Cavite drop their haul and sell it to market stalls. Market stall owners would then whisper bids to the fisherman to get their catch. Once the prices have been matched, the market stall owners then sell it to other market stall owners in markets further from the Bulungan. The market is alive every 5 a.m. and pretty much all the freshest catch has been bought already by 8 a.m.
My mom managed to buy a lot of tawilis in this bulungan trip. Once she cleaned them of their guts, she immediately salted them and dried them in the sun. Hence our quasi-fresh tuyo is ready to eat. I’m not so big a fan of tuyo, but I’m sure this would taste interesting if you mix it with some pasta! :3
To get to bulungan is quite tricky since the place is really nondescript. If you go to Paranaque, go to La Huerta (near Saint Paul Paranaque) and ride a large sidecar at 7-11 (or anywhere near the marketplace). Ask the driver to bring you to bulungan and he’ll be driving you through strange side streets and alleyways. Word of advice, get ready to get dirty when you’re there.
May
28
A Burger Celebration
Filed Under Food trips | 2 Comments
Today’s National Burger Day! A great fun day to celebrate these juicy meats, sandwiched between supple buns, possibly glazed with ketchup, maybe even topped with lettuce, some pickles, and cheese. Oh prudence, don’t stop me from overindulging and getting a nice big cheeseburger with everything on it. I’m not exactly a burger person at most (I’m a fried chicken and noodle person more), but occasions like this, it’s nice to enjoy a bite or two from this meaty treat.
While I celebrate this day by having a bite, at Serious Eats’ A Hamburger Today, they’re celebrating National Burger Day with rhythm and rhyme as they compiled a bunch of funny haikus submitted by their readers. Of the lot, my favorite was this…
You once were a cow
Now you are a burger
Tasty little cow
Have a nice burger day today!
Apr
28
Would you like a cup of tea?
Filed Under Food trips | 2 Comments
Sometime last week, I got invited to a tea tasting. I’ve had my fit of coffee tasting, but tea tasting is definitely something I’d love to try. Without hesitation, I said yes, even grabbing Kaoko in the process. It was an event not to miss! And all the more when you have a tea expert guiding you through the tasting! You just can’t resist the invitation!
We arrived a little late. We missed some small details about tea making, but we arrived just in time to know more about the history of tea, the process of tasting and the flavors to look for. Finally, something quite applicable. There was even a comparison of commercial teas and the teas served in Coffee Bean Tea& Leaf. There was a marked difference, for us who didn’t know, how much it’s ground and how ‘fresh’ it is from the picking. These two things truly mattered in your tea tasting.
And then Coffee Bean Tea & Leaf brought out their teas by the cup. We had a shot in drinking Genmaicha Green Tea, a Japanese rice tea with a bit of sencha, Fancy Dragon Oolong Tea, which is naturally sweet compared to the oolong teas we get in Chinese restaurants, the Apricot Ceylon, a nice and lovely fruity tea that screams apricot (If you love the jam like I do, you’ll love this!), Chai, which is usually not to my liking, until this tea came along, and lastly, the African Sunrise, a CBTL tea that will be released in Philippines sometime June. When I tasted this, the first thing that entered my head was bubble gum. Others thought it was caramel. But for me, it’s like the taste of nice and soft, freshly-made bubble gum for slurping. It was lovely. The flavors were amazing and the tasting definitely showed a great spectrum of teas.
This tea tasting was a wonderful experimental experience to me. I just tasted tea and it’s versatility in terms of flavor. It’s great to have a chance to see tea’s potential. Lipton tastes pale in comparison to these teas, and it’s quite grueling to know that you’re getting back to these teas when you get home. Thank god for the tea bags they gave away. At least I have 6 tea cups to treasure. :3
Alternately, Coffee Bean Tea and Leaf is asking your own coffee and tea experiences. Tell them how coffee and tea has changed your life by answering “What’s your Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf Story”. If you do answer, you could get a shot to go to Hollywood. Now isn’t that sweet? :3
