Filipino Food

Banana Lumpia

Well, my friends, I have one more Filipino dish to share with you that didn’t make it into Filipino Food Month. It’s your bonus recipe– totally free! This is one of my very favorite things to eat. This is a dessert version of lumpia, and it is seriously tasty. I remember rushing to the student store at my school at lunch or merienda whenever these were fresh and buying them for 5 pesos (about $0.12) each.

In the Philippines, banana lumpia is made with a cooking banana, called saba. I have never seen saba here in Minnesota, so I struggled for a while to figure out what to make these with. Saba bananas are short and squat, and are starchier than regular bananas, but not as starchy as plantains.

I had tried making these with plantains before, and the plantains were too firm and stayed very separate from the rest of it. Then I tried regular bananas, but they just got mushy with the frying. I decided to try one more thing, and it worked quite well!

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Lumpia {Filipino Food Month}

I really should not be writing this post right now. I’m neck-deep in Easter prep since I’m hosting this year, but there was no way that I could have a Filipino Food Month on this blog and not share my favorite Filipino dish.

Lumpia is a Filipino egg roll. Unlike Chinese egg rolls, lumpia are made with spring roll wrappers and have more vegetables in the interior. These are “regular” lumpia, if you will, but there’s another type you’ll also find often in the Philippines– Lumpia Shanghai– which are a bit more similar to Chinese egg rolls.

I certainly don’t want to alienate any of my readers, but I personally think that Filipino lumpia is the best kind of egg roll that ever was. Period.

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Pork Adobo {Filipino Food Month}

It’s the last week of Filipino Food Month and I haven’t made nearly as many things as I was hoping to. I guess that means I’ll just have to stick in some random Filipino Food posts here and there. There are so many things I want to try my hand at.

Today’s dish is Filipino Pork Adobo. It’s really nothing like Spanish or Latin American Adobo, although Wikipedia tells me that the name comes from Spain. Apparently sometime during Spain’s 300+ year occupation of the Philippines, the Spanish started referring to this dish as adobo due to its vinegar content, which is really the only similarity between the dishes.

This is really simple to make, and the pork can easily be switched out for chicken, if you prefer. Both pork and chicken versions of this dish are common in the Philippines. In this house, Hubs makes pork adobo. Easy for me– I only had to take pictures this time. 🙂

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Sans Rival {Filipino Food Month}

Sans Rival -by amber's hands-

Last weekend was my birthday, so I made myself a cake. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you might know that every year, I make this Marble Cheesecake. It’s delicious, but since it’s Filipino Food Month over here, I decided to make something different: Sans Rival.

I remembered this cake that my mom used to get now and again when I was little. I hadn’t had it in ages– my younger sister doesn’t remember ever having it at all– but I looked up some recipes and decided to give it a go.

Sans Rival is a Filipino dessert that is decidedly French in origin. Layers of daquoise (a meringue made with nuts) are sandwiched together with French buttercream. While French daquoise is traditionally made with almonds, this is made with cashews. Once all the layers are assembled, buttercream is used to frost the entire thing, and then it is adorned with more cashews.  Since I had never made this before, I consulted a lot of recipes but followed this one by To Food With Love most closely.

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