"Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all.”
-Harriet Van Horne

If you’re a regular follower of our blog, you may know now that I have exchanged a career in nursing for an unknown future in the culinary industry. I’ll be honest; there were times when I had doubts if I’ve made the right decision of switching careers, but I always find inspiration from people who have experienced the same things that I’ve been through and have become successful. One of them is Chef Myke "Tatung” Sarthou of Tatung’s Garden Cafe, who decided to brush aside writing and production work to put on a chef’s garb and start a restaurant business.

Hidden along the residential community of Sikatuna Village in Quezon City, a home-turned-restaurant stands with a luscious menu offering a modern take on Filipino Cuisine.

It’s a rainy Saturday morning when we were invited for a lunch at Tatung’s Garden Café. The façade gives little clue that there’s actually a restaurant inside.

Chef Tatung truly understands Filipino cuisine. He shared that Filipinos eat with flavors that are close to nature, and that our cooking is greatly influenced by our environment. That is the reason why in creating his dishes, he made sure that his food tastes like what they really are. A chicken dish should taste like it’s made of chicken. It’s as simple as that.

Buffalo Wings are considered American staple food, together with our favorite burgers and fries. They’re the kind of food people don’t ever mind getting down and dirty in eating because it’s best savored using your bare hands, licking all the crevices of your fingers clean of the delicious buffalo sauce and blue cheese dip.

Friday’s Buffalo Wings
(photo from here)

I had my first taste of the hot wings when some of my friends and I once dined at TGI Friday’s in Greenbelt. They ordered their usual nachos, burgers, and fries. One friend suggested we get the Buffalo wings, but another friend was quick to negate, saying that it’s too spicy for her taste. But since I love my food hot and spicy, 10 minutes later, we had two servings of Buffalo wings on our table, and they all agreed that I ate 2/3 of it.

After that dinner, the Buffalo wings flew straight up my all-time favorite food list, but it’s not everyday that I have the luxury to buy wings at Friday’s. So I decided to make some myself at home, and it’s a good thing that I have a very generous sister like Mhel, who shouldered the expenses for the ingredients.

My first attempt to make Buffalo Wings at home – all gone in about 15 minutes!

The Homestyle Buffalo Wings recipe I’m sharing with you are bits and pieces of different stuff I found on the internet. Not one recipe matched what I wanted to do because there is one requiring me to broil then bake the chicken wings, instead of simply frying them; another has a lousy breading mix recipe, but their instructions for doing the buffalo sauce was by far the simplest among all I’ve seen. And almost all sites had a recipe for blue cheese dip to accompany the chicken wings, but blue cheese is out of the question too expensive for me. But, we’ll try that, too, soon.

One of the many places I wanted to visit in the future is Texas. Why? Because I think I eat like a Southerner, a Texan. I love my meats, cheese, and anything really fulfilling. I think I was a country / cow girl in my past life.

When I heard about Carol’s Texan 5′s first Bloggers Buffet, I couldn’t help but get all excited. Just looking at their menu, pictured below, my mouth started to water.

I’ve heard that Carol’s Texan 5 offers the best chicken and ribs this side of Manila. And, please, if the photo above didn’t entice you, I don’t know what else would. And I can’t wait to try everything!

What also got me all hyped up about this buffet is because the dishes were from the personal recipes of Carol, the owner. I love homemade dishes that’s why on this blog, we try to recreate dishes we’ve tried at a restaurant or we’ve seen on TV ’cause nothing beats the taste of food prepared with love at the comforts of one’s home. It’s an intimate experience for me, really, when someone cooks a homemade dish for me.

I really hope I’d be one of the lucky ones who’d get picked for the Bloggers Buffet. My bro Ken will be blogging about this on What The Fat to try his luck to get invited also. He wants to try everything on the menu above, too! Hahaha. My perfect food trip buddy.

If you want to try the signature dishes only they can serve, here’s more information:

Carol’s Texan 5 contact details and address:
• Delivery: (02) 727.3843 / 0922.485.0154
• Address: Carol’s Texan 5, 2F 713 J. Abad Santos St., Little Baguio, San Juan

Carol’s Texan 5 Services:
• Dine-in (Enjoy your best chicken and ribs at Carol’s Texan 5!)
• Delivery (We deliver to San Juan, Mandaluyong, Ortigas and Pioneer only.)
• Event Food Booths (Got an event? Carol’s Texan 5 booths are available for hire.)
• Party Trays (Order trays of your favorite Carol’s Texan 5 dishes for special occasions.)
• Functions (Hold events at Carol’s Texan 5.)
• Kiddie Meal Sets (Order meal sets for your office and kids parties.)

Go check out Carol’s Texan 5′s website or be a fan on Facebook.

Carol’s Texan 5′s Bloggers Buffet is also brought to us in part by TenMinutesTops! and ClubTravelNOW.org.

For the Love of Buffet & Texas…

Since my family have been trying (take note of my choice of words ) to eat healthier, two of the proteins you’d usually see in our refrigerator are chicken meat and eggs. And I love making all kinds of dishes with them. So, when I was craving for McDonald’s McChicken sandwich, instead of spending almost Php 200 to have one delivered, I decided to make my own Chicken Fillet sandwich.

I’m on a low-carb diet, so I usually just enjoy a sandwich for lunch or dinner. My mother also loves sandwiches so we always come up with our own different sandwich spreads. And this one, I’ll keep on making. I know, there’s flour and all. But, c’mon. I’m on a LOW carb diet, not giving it up completely. Give me a break! Hahaha

Though this recipe is so easy, I still want to share it here for those who haven’t tried making chicken fillet or nuggets yet.

Chicken Fillet Sandwich and Chicken Nuggets
with Honey Mustard Sauce Recipe

INGREDIENTS:

• 3-4 chicken breasts, deboned and cut into cubes
  You will need a food processor or blender for this recipe. If you don’t have it, then, just skip the blending/grinding part of the procedure and just cut the chicken breasts into nugget-sized or sandwich fillet-sized pieces. But, you can also opt to chop them into really tiny pieces, if you’ve got the strength and time to do so.
• 1 tbsp. garlic powder
• 1 to 1 1/2 cup bread crumbs (click here to find out how to make your own bread crumbs, see step #1)
• 1 cup flour
• salt and pepper
• Optional: You can add your own spices or herbs for your chicken breasts. For mine, I added rosemary. But, you can add parsley and/or basil.
• Optional: 1-2 medium-sized eggs
  Half of the batch I made, I didn’t dip in the beaten eggs. But, if you prefer to include eggs, you can go ahead with this.
• 1 cup vegetable oil for semi-deep frying
• Lettuce for the sandwiches

Sandwich dressing: This is the mix that I used for our chicken sandwich.

• 1/4 cup mayonnaise
• 1/4 tbsp. lemon juice
• salt and pepper

Honey Mustard sauce: I don’t have any ingredients available to make barbecue sauce so I decided to make honey mustard instead. But, you can find ready-to-use barbecue sauce at the grocery.

• 1 tbsp. Dijon mustard
• 1 1/2 tsp. honey

When we went to Pagudpud last December and dined at Emohruo Beach Restobar, I really wanted to recreate their Mango Honey Chicken that we all loved. So, for our Noche Buena in 2010, I decided to cook it for us.

I’m so glad I was able to recreate the dish and it really tasted close to Emohruo’s, except theirs was grilled. It’s very simple to do and I know you’d love this! Recipe, after the jump!

Every weekend, my nanay is usually just at home and let me tell you, she gets easily bored. I guess I got that from her. So, what does she love doing? Well, fattening us up! Hahahaha.

She loves cooking and preparing different dishes, mostly for merienda or snacks. It’s one of the things she does to pass the time. Trust me, if you stay at our home for even a week, you’re surely gain weight and would need something like the safest diet pills for women. She’s got this way of convincing you to eat what she prepared no matter how dedicated you are with your diet. Plus, everything she prepares is delicious. None of my friends were ever successful in saying no to her ’cause she’s an awesome cook!

Here are some of my favorite merienda or snacks that my mother loves preparing or buying every weekend:

Palitaw! My favorite merienda! My mother got sick of cooking this for me.

I’ll post her recipe next time.