Mirsbin’s Kitchen

whenever i feel low, i begin to think of the smells of the many dishes that my mom or my lola prepared when i was still young. right now i’m thinking of the my lola’s adobo. after school, i would usually go to her place to have early dinner (they have dinner at 5, talk about nothing after 6!). just as i would turn the corner of my lolo’s street i would start to smell the adobo.

there are many smells in our kitchen, the smell of christmas whenever my mom starts eating chestnuts. i like it when we saute garlic, onions and ginger as “pang-gisa” for our dishes. then there’s the smell of ripe mangoes or indian mangoes with bagoong. my nephew likes the smell of freshly baked brownies, i also like the smell of pandesal. i also like the smell of fresh strawberries being mixed in condensed milk. why don’t you try to close your eyes and mix those strawberries and the milk and let your nose inhale in the sweet sweet smell. it reminds me of baguio.

now that i’m attending cooking school i make sure to check out the scents of the dishes. especially when the chef would saute some herbs. tasting would be at the end of each class but i make sure that i memorize the smell of the dish.

i just need to smell the food and it will make me relax. but to taste the food that we prepare at home is a different story. amoy pa lang masarap na, pano pa kaya pag natikman na! hehe

I just love Shakey’s Garlic and Cheese thin crust pizza. I had this for merienda, thanks to the supplier I met this afternoon for the billboard. Well she didn’t have the billboards that I needed but I’m so thankful that I was able to eat Garlic and Cheese Pizza.

I remember the days when I was still working in NTI. We would play Command and Conquer or Diablo until 12 MN and have pizza plus a bottle of coke delivered. We always ordered Shakey’s that time, must be because the big boss was also the owner of Shakey’s. Later on when I resigned the office moved to the same compound where the commisary of Shakey’s was located. That would have been fun to check out. There was even a time when we held the Christmas party in Shakey’s Greenbelt, I think that branch is now closed down since it’s now the new Greenbelt 4.

What kind of pizza do you like? Thin crust or Pan?

I was looking forward to eating dimsum and other chinese dishes for one week in Hong Kong. I wasn’t disappointed when we ate at a small restaurant near the hotel. We were surprised to learn that they had an english speaking waitress. She even gave us ice for our Coke. But since we didn’t know where the dishes were called, my brother had to point at the other tables and check what the other people ordered. We got white chicken with asado pork and it had a light brown sauce which was so delicious! Just tonight, I asked a Chinese friend what it was and he said maybe it was Chong fan sauce. If I were to come back in Hong Kong, I will definitely go back to the small resto and eat there again. We had that same order for 2 more nights with Stir fried beef and crispy noodles.

The other food finds were not as fabulous as the white chicken but still tasty just the same. Tired with really aching feet and a full bladder, we really had to find a restaurant in the middle of Mongkok. We settled to eat in a air conditioned resto which we thought was quite clean. The disappointing part was the waitresses couldn’t speak nor understand English. My brother’s charade’s skills were put to a test. Finally they gave us a menu with pictures and we had to look at it really hard since my brother couldn’t decipher if it was chicken or pork. They finally got our orders correctly except for one. We got two crispy noodles. So the charades started again until they understood that we wanted Hofan. Thankful that they finally got our orders correctly, we ate silently. But my brother wanted ice for his Coke, so he did some gestures again but finally realized that they will never understand him.

We did try out KFC and McDonald’s, somehow the burger in Mcdo still smelled Chinese. That certain chinese smell when you eat dimsum. In KFC we had honey biscuits, was it because of British influences? Maybe. Take note, they don’t serve gravy with your chicken. I just imagined that Moby would die with just the thought of it. But we still managed to eat our chicken. The meals also came with corn on the cob. Sarap