I have been remiss with this list. The haze of Christmas and the ensuing lethargy that results from too much festivity, too much eating – heck, too much of everything – has drained my energy. My computer is dying of neglect (if that’s at all possible), so resistant am I to actually plopping down in front of it to type away. Today is also Bin’s and my 9th wedding anniversary – yup, we got married the day after Christmas, crazy folk we are – so there’s more celebration later. But enough of my moaning and groaning, albeit goodheartedly. Frankly, I’m psyched to take a break from my reality and hibernate in the blissful mist that is Christmas. One thing that’s remained constant for me throughout this holiday season is my hot chocolate. It’s the one thing that spells Christmas for me along with ensaymada (Filipino brioche) and a thick slice of ham. Because I’m more relaxed at this time of year, (at least with the food that I put into my mouth), I’ve been experimenting with different milks and sugars when making my cup of hot ...

It must’ve been all the cheese in Rotterdam and in Paris that made me want a cheeseboard. After seeing all that cheese and all those cutting implements, going back to a regular saucer and table knife just didn’t seem right. So I search high and low, scouring gourmet shops and food stores. I’m quite pleased to discover that there’s a fine selection of cheese cutting implements available locally to suit most budgets, sold separately or in a set. I’m all ready to fork over an obscene amount for three cheese knives when I see this cheeseboard set – goodness, what could be more perfect! Labeled a Complete Cheese Service, it’s a bamboo cheeseboard with three knives. The board is made from bamboo, dubbed one of nature’s hardest woods. It’s smooth and has that fine woodsy smell that I associate with sophisticated wood products. The knives, which are of forged stainless steel, include a cheese knife good for cutting chunks of hard and semi-soft cheeses; a planer, useful for slicing neat and thin portions of cheese; and a spreader for soft, ...

complete Christmas gift list I’m the odd man out at my house because I don’t like marshmallows. My Bin and Boo buy these bagfuls of marshmallows – jet-puffed, miniature, jumbo, pink whirligigs – whatever variety is out there, they eat it. I don’t even like it in hot chocolate since I find it superfluous, although mini marshmallows bobbing in the brown liquid is quite the visual delight. There is one type of marshmallow that I do like however, even though it looks nothing like the fluffy orbs associated with the term. I’m talking about the marshmallow cake from Costa Brava. Soft and light with a slight tang, this is an exquisite dessert. A sponge cake that gets its remarkable “lift” from the eggs (whites and yolks) that are beaten together, the “marshmallow” appears here in the form of the frosting. Popularly known as 7-minute icing, it’s a filmy, meringue-type of icing made of egg whites, cream of tartar, water, and vanilla. The mixture is beaten constantly in a double boiler for exactly 7 minutes, hence the name. This is the same type ...

A crinkle is one of those classical cookies right up there with chocolate chip and oatmeal. It’s a drop cookie made from the simplest dough and “dropped” – hence the name – in round balls onto a mound of powdered sugar and then baked. It’s a work of art when it comes out of the oven with its dramatic puffed tops, craters with cracks of white in bold contrast to the moist brownie-like center. The best crinkles in Manila are exactly what I describe above and they’re made by Charisse Sarmiento who calls her baking company Pink Chocolate. While I’ve never associated those two words together, Charisse explains it to me, “I called my company Pink Chocolate because pink is my favorite color and anything pink is thought of as sweet to the taste and eye.” She’s also had a long love affair with chocolate, thus the majority of her products are what else, but chocolate based. More power for the chocolate lovers! Charisse recently quit her day job to go full time into her two passions, baking and chocolate. When she sent her crinkles to me (a must-try! she says), part ...

complete gift list Farah Tolentino-Ylagan is a die-hard Francophile. She thinks and speaks in French and she’s a chef who trained in Paris and received her certification there as well. When I meet her, she tells me that my Paris posts brought tears to her eyes. A Filipino through and through whose heart is in France, Farah finished her college education in Paris with a major in hotel management. A summer in between semesters landed her at Ledoyen, a restaurant gastronomique along the Champs-Elysées. She began with office work and later on, was invited by the restaurant’s Michelin-starred chef to do kitchen “tasks.” Holding her own against an all male staff, Farah recalls, “I got really O-C (obsessive-compulsive) from being there,” and liked working in the kitchen so much that nine months later, she enrolled at the Ecole Supérieure de Cuisine Française, a top culinary institute in Paris. Coming back to Manila just a few years ago, Farah worked the line at the Intercon’s Prince Albert for two years. After a few consultancies and a brief fling with a restaurant venture, she started Le Canard d’Or, which is now ...

complete gift list Elaine “Len” Lo is a frequent visitor to this site and she’s attended almost all my events: tea party, cookbook swap, and baking demo . Truly, she exhibits the kind of loyalty that every food blogger wishes his/her readers to have. It’s no surprise then that, like several readers of this blog, Len is a dessert lover who’s also quite the master in the pastry kitchen. I once caught sight of her in Santïs fervently rummaging through the chiller “…looking for some raspberries.” I bump into Len more often online, however, where I occasionally read about her dessert adventures on her aptly-titled blog, JustDesserts. Judging from what comes out of her kitchen, this is one ambitious, innovative baker whose desserts I drool for in front of my monitor. So imagine my pleasure when I finally get to sample some of Len’s desserts from her business, Cosmo Bread. She calls it that because she wanted ”… a simple name, easy to say and remember, and that would go well with bread.” While she professes to a love for cake-making, her real passion is for ...

My sister’s bathroom looks like an apothecary: rows and rows of lotions, perfumes, and sets of coordinated shampoos, conditioners, and soaps line her shelves and almost every available space. One miscalculated move and I could end up knocking her toothbrush or P2,000 perfume into the toilet. What’s scary is that she’s not the only one whose bathroom looks like it was decorated from stuff bought at The Body Shop or Essences. My sister-in-law’s bathroom looks like that too, as well as a few other females I know who smell like “Love at First Glow” or “Dewberry.” Me, I’m no big fan of scents. It’s not that I never appreciated them – heck, there was a time in college that I reeked of Ck One, Benetton Colors, and Exclamation cologne – not all at the same time of course, but man, I was mad for those smells. Then when I hit my twenties, my nose shut down. Suddenly, scents became anathema to me. One whiff was enough, but if I had to go around smelling like it, then I might as well puke. Personally, I prefer the aroma of brownies or sugar ...

What is ham but simply the leg of a pig cured for several days or months by salting and drying. A minute amount of saltpeter (salitre) is added to improve penetration and to give hams that characteristic pink color. It’s the ham that I remember most about my childhood Christmases. Back then, my lolo (grandfather) would buy ham from the PX stores in Clark when the US Bases were still there. For Christmas dinner, Lolo would slice half-inch cuts for each of us eagerly gathered around the table. I remember the slices to be square in shape with striations of fat coursing through the pink, juicy meat. Sometimes I’d be lucky enough to get some of the pinkish-beige ham jelly that would stick to the corners. When the Bases closed down, the ham disappeared from our Christmas table only to be replaced by Yunnan or some such Chinese ham; but they never came close to the ham of my early Christmases. Looking back now, I realize that the ham I loved then was probably some tinned variety -- fake stuff that probably couldn’t be called ham these days. But to my young palate ...