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.

On May 26th, I was invited to the launch of My Elba Kitchen Cookbook at The Grove Rockwell near Tiendesitas. I was looking forward to supporting this launch because we have an 8-year old ELBA gas range at home. We use it for cooking delicious homemade dishes and for baking, too. In fact, we recently used it in baking The Cookie Jar’s Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies, as pictured below.

ELBA is a well-known kitchen appliance manufacturer from Italy. They have been in the Philippines for over 20 years and has been one of the most reliable brands out there. When it comes to the durability of their products, I can attest to the quality because of how long we’ve been using our ELBA gas range.

The My Elba Kitchen Cookbook contains 60 pasta recipes that are easy to follow and prepare at home. Being a recipe follower with a little tantyameter (I recently learned this word ) and some experimentation when it comes to flavor combinations when cooking pasta at home, I would love to prepare some of the dishes featured in this cookbook.

The cookbook is now available at all leading bookstores for only Php 399! So, make sure you grab one. If you want to know what recipes you’d find inside, let me share with you some of the pasta dishes that were prepared right in front of us during the launch by two guest chefs.

First off was Chef Darin Epp from Maxim Cookworks. With him on the photo is the event’s host PJ.

Chef Darin hails from Canada, but expressed his fondness of the Philippines. He’s very entertaining and shared some tips while he prepared two dishes for us pictured below.

Sardine Pasta with Sundried Tomatoes

Salmon with Rosemary and Cream Sauce

Again, take note that these dishes were prepared in front of us. So, that means they’re easy and quick to make. Very effective when you need to whip up a dish at home for your kids or loved ones.

Between the two dishes Chef Darin prepared, I wanted to get a fork and taste the Salmon with Rosemary and Cream sauce. Why? Two words – Salmon and Rosemary.

Next up is Chef Richie Custodio from CCA, one of the top culinary schools in the Philippines today. He prepared five (5) dishes for us with the help of students from CCA.

Over a week ago, I mentioned about Rae of The Cookie Jar sending us 3 of their products to try – their French macarons, Triple Chocolate Cookies and this – their Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie mix.

We postponed baking using the mix for a pick-me-up get-together with my best friend, Tina. I know baking will cheer her up.

As soon as she saw the jar with the ingredients stacked up as pictured below, she got excited and even reminded us we should start baking already.

The Cookie Jar Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie mix includes semi-sweet choco chips, oats, flour, brown and white sugar. Like what is mentioned at the back of the gift tag that’s included with the package, you only need to add butter, eggs and vanilla.

Let me share with you some photos taken during our baking session. If you haven’t tried baking yet, then, these photos might help. You see, it’s so easy, you won’t need any complicated kitchen tools like utility knives or heavy kitchen machines.

I had to stop myself from eating the chocolate chips when we finally opened the jar.

Then, we used 2 sticks of butter and softened them through our microwave. Yes, we were busy chattering away that we forgot that we were only supposed to use 1 1/2 stick of butter. So, using a little Math…

1 stick of butter = 100 g

1 1/2 stick of butter = 150 g

Since Ken, as I’ve mentioned before, is into baking. So, we have this weighing scale available at home. How convenient. You should know that precise measurements are very important when baking. Otherwise, you’d get undesirable results. That’s why, if you’re really planning on starting baking at home, then, you should have this weighing scale available too… just in case. (I forgot how much this costs, will get back to you with the price)

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!

My brother Kien considers himself a microwave chef. He can bake pastries with just the use of our trusty microwave and can do it in minutes! That’s why I so miss him being around. He’s currently in Singapore, trying his luck there. I miss his out-of-the-blue cooking or baking trips.

Everyone in my family loves to cook, even my dad, who usually cooks with wine, rhum or brandy . We’re not experts, but we do make really tasty dishes. That’s why anyone who lives with us for even just a month needs the best way to lose belly fat.

Anyway, we’ve got mangoes at home right now and I wanted to try making my own Mango Brown Betty. It’s a very simple recipe that my brother shared with me years ago. Trust me, you’re going to enjoy making this. And, probably you can even make this now because the ingredients are readily or usually available in most kitchens.

Pardon the poor quality of photos. These were taken back in 2009, when I didn’t know better. I shared some of the things I learned about food photography on my geek blog.

Mango Brown Betty Recipe

INGREDIENTS:

• 3 cups of mango slices (long cuts)
• 4 cups of bread crumbs (read step #1 to make your own)
• 1/2 cup of butter or margarine
• 1 cup of brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon of cinnamon powder