Asia-Pacific

Yesterday I went back to my brother’s house. The plan was to make adobo, embutido, lumpia, and fruit salad (similar to ambrosia). When I got there we added pancit, and apritada to the menu as well. We got started around 6 and were a bit overwhelmed at first…there was so much to make, we didn’t know where to start.


My sister-in-law got started with the fruit salad while I got started with the pancit – this time we used both the rice and canton noodles with chicken, savoy cabbage, and carrots. Then we started with the lumpia – mixed the meat with carrots, cabbage, scallions (forgot the garlic) – and my daughter and sister started rolling – 100 lumpia which we cut in half. Then onto the embutido, which is essentially a meatloaf, the adobo, and finally the apridada – kind of reminded me of salona. I was crazy with the garlic and it yielded wonderful results.

By 8, it was time to eat, the fellas couldn’t believe we made all that food. It was crazy…we decided that we are a Filipino catering crew and would get together for the next party. My dad arrived with his Cambodian friend, a very attractive woman – she initially seemed a little overwhelmed. As we were standing in the kitchen, it just felt like family – everyone got out their cameras and started taking pictures. The Cambodian commented about the rice (“is this how they eat rice in your country?”)–somehow it was hard; I think too much was put into the rice cooker. After dinner we were putting up the food and were trying to figure out what to do with all that rice…she said make fried rice…I said, there’s no time like the present…and we got to work. We were all laughing because I had everybody excited about cooking and this was the very first time we met this woman and she was frying rice (garlic, onion, egg, mixed vegetables – she desperately wanted meat but we had none). It was so good (almost like the Bennihana rice); she said it was Chinese style because it is only relatively recent that Cambodians fry rice.

Her English is limited but of course I asked her about the food. She told me many things and said that next time she would come with her daughter so we can cook and the daughter can translate. I’m thinking this might be the beginning of a Friday night cooking club.