Cooking with a Palayok

This is something I've working on for some time now – Filipiniana themes for my Etsy shop and yes, they are now available. I have my illustrations on mugs, throw pillows, phone cases and tote bags. 

I took a video of the throw pillow and showed it on my IG, it's super fluffy and feels smooth to the touch, you can watch it here: Cooking with a Palayok Throw Pillow Video.

I drew this design reminiscing about my childhood. The first pot of rice I ever cooked was in a toy clay pot, or rather, a miniature clay pot. Miniature clay pots were popular when I was a kid and we mimicked how grown-ups would cook in my grandma's kitchen. So there we were pretending to cook using shredded leaves and water when my grandma's sister passed by. 

She said go and get the real thing so you can learn how to cook! And we did. The rice didn’t turn out  edible but I was a kid cooking with real rice with real fire for the first time, so much fun!

Throw pillows:

And Mom's the Best
My Wife's the Best Chef

Caramelized onions

I enjoy cooking, specially the freestyle kind - look at what's available and cook something up from those. When I get a craving, I'd look up the recipe, compare it to the tons available online and follow them loosely. One that I recently tried was milkfish in oil cooked spanish sardines style. It was yum, a bit overcooked because I wanted the bones to be really soft and edible - but still yum. It was a simple process of putting everything together in a pressure cooker, salting it slightly, and waiting for 45 minutes (which I extended to 1 hour 15) on medium heat.

From that dish, I really enjoyed the shallots. They were soft and caramelized, they were just heavenly - something that would go well with so many other dishes. So yesterday, after painting the new members from my Emirati clay collectible line, I peeled about 5AED worth of shallots and pressure cooked them with carrots, dill pickles, chili pepper, bay leaf and peppercorn (forgot the garlic!). 

It was soft, sweet and heavenly. Now, the whole bunch is waiting in the fridge to be served with fried or roasted dishes.

This reminded of a popular Philippine snack - fried peanuts with garlic. The garlic is usually sliced thinly and comes out really tasty and crunchy. People would usually squabble over who gets the few garlic slices, so my father, who also loves to cook, solved this particular problem by cooking garlic with peanuts - it was a whole wok of sliced garlic with barely any peanuts!

Yesterday's version of spanish sardines, is everything else except the sardines. Works great, now my hubby, who is not very fond of fish but is very fond of caramelized onions, can enjoy this too. 

Aren't the colors so pretty?