Philippine Cookbook

Rating:
Summary: good and simply done
Review: Easy to follow recipies, good explained with detailed discription. Wide range of different foods. Price quality is good.

Rating:
Summary: Philippine cookbook by Reynaldo Alejandro
Review: I've had this book a couple of years now and I found some of the recipes easy to follow like the chicken adobo and mechado. I try to make these two recipes at least once a week. Though I did find the Brazo de Mercedes (found in the dessert section) hard to understand because it doesn't really give a thorough detailed type or explanation of ingredients needed. For example the author didn't exactly say what type of milk needed- Filipinos use canned evaporated milk and I find it doesn't work with regular milk you find in any U.S. supermarket in the dairy section. It also doesn't give you a specific amount of time or how long it takes for the milk to be reduced to two cups! (the recipes calls for 5 cups of milk to start with and simmering the milk until it is reduced to 2) That could take an hour or more. I found Violeta A. Noriega's Philippine Recipe made Easy more thorough and detailed.

Rating:
Summary: Philippine cookbook by Reynaldo Alejandro
Review: I've had this book a couple of years now and I found some of the recipes easy to follow like the chicken adobo and mechado. I try to make these two recipes at least once a week. Though I did find the Brazo de Mercedes (found in the dessert section) hard to understand because it doesn't really give a thorough detailed type or explanation of ingredients needed. For example the author didn't exactly say what type of milk needed- Filipinos use canned evaporated milk and I find it doesn't work with regular milk you find in any U.S. supermarket in the dairy section. It also doesn't give you a specific amount of time or how long it takes for the milk to be reduced to two cups! (the recipes calls for 5 cups of milk to start with and simmering the milk until it is reduced to 2) That could take an hour or more. I found Violeta A. Noriega's Philippine Recipe made Easy more thorough and detailed.

Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your time
Review: If you are a rookie at cooking filipino dishes or simply can't cook at all then this book isn't for you-actually this book is more complicated than the other filipino cookbooks I got. I also recommend not get getting books that have bad/neutral reviews. I have found "Philippine Recipes Made Easy" by Violeta A. Noriega and "Filipino Cuisine: Recipes from the Islands" by Gerry G. Gelle, helpful and PLUS they have excellent reviews!

Rating:
Summary: Connect the dots
Review: OK, I must have read that connect-the-dot gripe somewhere but I can't think of any other way to describe this mechanical, ledger-like presentation the author has presented his recipes. The simplistic approach has become as annoying as those pretentious hate, er, haute cuisines I see in some cook books. For example, the nilaga and the pochero is usually served with a cold dish of garlic, black pepper and mashed sweet potato but that was missing and you can't help but think the author just browsed thru the internet and with the help of a word processor just cut and pasted the recipes to meet his deadline. Perhaps this also explains why the book is printed on depressingly cheap paper with no photographs. If you are new to Filipino cuisine that is rather disastrous because all you get is a sorry photocopied landscape of uninspired recipes. How could you, Mister?

Also, I find the kowtowing to American taste plain stupid. Lemon juice for the venerable sinigang? What's wrong with tamarind? Using lemon thins out the punch of the sharp taste we are after. The high water content of lemon juice renders the whole symphony of flavors to this recipe insipid. Besides, this is the information age where exotic ingredients are not as exotic as they were eight or ten years ago. Just troop to your nearest gourmet store and see what I mean (unless, of course, you live in an obscure little town down somewhere in the Arctic). And why adapt a native recipe to American taste? If American flavor is what I am after, I will just dwell on club sandwich and all its vicissitudes for all I care. Why will I waste my time with adobo or sinigang or kare-kare?

Now I don't want to confuse you because others have reviewed this book favorably. I was born and raised in the Philippines. But my qualifications do not end there. I am also fiercely Filipino in everything. I am also passionate about food. Having immersed myself in the more globally-renowned cuisine of Thailand, Malaysia, India, China and even Myanmar I now can declare without guilt Philippine cuisine is one of the world's most underrated gastronomic pleasures. Everyone says Thai cuisine is the best in Southeast Asia. But that is only true because Philippine cuisine is almost never mentioned or even considered.

So a word of advice to the genuine-Filipino-cuisine seekers. This cookbook does not in any way represent authentic Filipino cuisine. Look somewhere else where the sinigang is punchy, the adobo tangy, and the kare-kare is compleat and spelled with a 10-karat "K."

Now you have an even bigger problem. Only a handful of decent cookbook exists for Philippine cuisine - to complicate matters even more, most of them locally published.

Could this be the reason why we are rarely mentioned along with, say, Thai, Malaysian, Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese cuisine?

But, of course, that is only me thinking out loud.

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic recipes! Well organized and easy to follow.
Review: The Philippine Cookbook, by Reynaldo Alejandro captures the essence of Philippine cuisine. The recipes are well-organized and easy to follow. As a self-proclaimed connosieur of Filipino foods, I highly recommend this book if you're searching for an authentic taste of the Philippines.

Rating:
Summary: This book....
Review: This book is okay, easy to follow, but it just doesnt meet my standard of cooking...

Rating:
Summary: Great Cookbook But...
Review: This is a great cookbook, especially for somone like me who is not filipino but my husband is. Therefor needed a resource for cooking those great foods his mother cooks all the time. I came today to actually buy another copy for my mother-in-law who was very impressed with my cooking lately. The milk candy was a big hit at Christmas. However I did notice the same problems as one of the other reviewers. My prime example is the Leche Flan, he lists in this recipe that to make the carmel to use water with the sugar in a pan and cook until sugar is browned. Actually you use no water and then once it has carmalized only a small amount to keep it from crystalizing in your pan. Since I don't know any better I had to do this 3 times and consult other cookbooks before getting it right. If I am unsure about the contents of a recipe I talk to my Mother in law first. The fish soup was another of these, the ingrediants don't come together and make it taste right. The tocino is to complicated when you can by ready made tocino mix and not use the nasty chemical it calls for. But on an upside alot of the other recipes have made me a wonder in the kitchen for our filipino parties and my inlaws have been bragging about my cooking. Overall it's a good book as long as you have a good grasp on filipino cooking as a whole. Clearly I like enouph to purchase a second for my inlaws to have.

Rating:
Summary: Great Cookbook But...
Review: This is a great cookbook, especially for somone like me who is not filipino but my husband is. Therefor needed a resource for cooking those great foods his mother cooks all the time. I came today to actually buy another copy for my mother-in-law who was very impressed with my cooking lately. The milk candy was a big hit at Christmas. However I did notice the same problems as one of the other reviewers. My prime example is the Leche Flan, he lists in this recipe that to make the carmel to use water with the sugar in a pan and cook until sugar is browned. Actually you use no water and then once it has carmalized only a small amount to keep it from crystalizing in your pan. Since I don't know any better I had to do this 3 times and consult other cookbooks before getting it right. If I am unsure about the contents of a recipe I talk to my Mother in law first. The fish soup was another of these, the ingrediants don't come together and make it taste right. The tocino is to complicated when you can by ready made tocino mix and not use the nasty chemical it calls for. But on an upside alot of the other recipes have made me a wonder in the kitchen for our filipino parties and my inlaws have been bragging about my cooking. Overall it's a good book as long as you have a good grasp on filipino cooking as a whole. Clearly I like enouph to purchase a second for my inlaws to have.

Rating:
Summary: Two Filipino Cookbooks compared. This is the loser.
Review: `The Philippine Cookbook' by Reynaldo Alejandro is the old standard on Filipino cooking. It has been out for about 22 years. `Filipino Cuisine' by Gerry G. Gelle is a new title that should replace the older book in the hearts and minds of Filipino cooks.

Ten years ago, when I was looking for a book of Filipino recipes, Alejandro's book was virtually the only volume available, even making it a reference on Filipino cuisine to such major culinary writers as Raymond Sokolov in his important book `The Cook's Canon'. Gelle's book improves on Alejandro's book in almost every regard, most especially where it counts in the description of the recipes.

Even the most cursory look at these two books will suggest that Gelle's volume is the better book. A look at the two authors' biographical sketches confirms that initial impression, as Gelle is a full time professional chef while Alejandro seems to be a jack of all trades, doing as much in dramatics and dancing as in writing and cooking.

Both books give very informative introductions on the origins of Filipino cuisine. Both, for example, point out that the Spanish influence is less direct than an influence by way of Mexico, since the Spanish governors in Mexico were much closer to the islands than was the court in Madrid. Gelle's introductory chapter seems much more timely, however, in that influences and native foods are discussed by region, in much the same way one has come to expect in descriptions of great Chinese, Japanese, French, and Italian cuisines.

While Alejandro's book may have been the best there was 10 years ago, it now has the appearance of a very journeymanlike effort, much like so many inexpensive books of recipes from Latvia, Rumania, Hungary, or Poland. Because, 20 years ago, a simple list of recipes was all you needed to create a credible book on a national cuisine. The book does include some nice extras such as a glossary of Filipino culinary terms and a list of sources. Unfortunately, as almost all these sources are small strip mall stores like the one I used to visit to get my 25 pound sacks of rice and my lumpia wrappers and my mung beans, most of them are probably now out of business.

The bottom line is that Gelle really has the better recipes, and it is this fact which makes his book worth the extra cost and time it may take to find a copy.

Oddly, Alejandro's recipes for adobo, for example are much closer to the way my adopted Filipino family actually cooked adobo, and the way I learned to cook it. Gelle's recipe, however, is quite evidently much closer to how leading native Filipino chefs cook adobo, especially since his recipe for chicken and pork adobo agrees with the recipe in the very authoritative `Bruce Cost's Asian Ingredients'. For starters, Alejandro says nothing about marinading the meats overnight in the soy and vinegar liquid, yet it is evident that this brings the recipe much closer to its Mexican roots. Gelle is also alone in citing that the vinegar in these dishes is not any garden variety Heinz product, but `sukang paombong', a native Philippine vinegar.

Another symptom of the superiority of Gelle's recipes is in the comparison of the way the two authors deal with the classic Spanish empanada. While Alejandro gives a very simple filling of ground beef, potatoes, and raisins, Gelle's filling includes carrots, chicken, pork, hard-boiled eggs, and sweet pickle. The recipes for the dough are different, and I would be hard pressed to prefer one to the other. Alejandro's recipe is slightly simpler, in that it uses one egg yolk per cup of flour for fat. Gelle uses egg yolks and butter for the fat in his recipes. The only way I can adjudicate between the two is that Gelle's recipe is much closer to the classic Spanish recipe, as presented by Penelope Casas in `The Foods and Wines of Spain'. So, in the light of other evidence of greater fidelity to his sources, I am inclined to believe Gelle's recipe is closer to the way this dish is done in Manila. In any case, Gelle's description of the procedure for making empanadas is much more detailed than in Alejandro's book, and Gelle gives alternate procedures for deep-frying or baking the empanadas. Gelle also gives recommendations on how long uncooked empanadas can be held in the freezer.

A third evidence of Gelle's superior recipes is in a comparison of their recipes for spring roll (lumpia) wrappers. Alejandro gives a quick simple three ingredient recipe while Gelle gives two different recipes, both of which are much richer and more detailed in presentation than Alejandro's book.

Only in the number of pancit recipes does Alejandro give us more than Gelle. Also, Alejandro's recipes for pancit seem just a bit more interesting, as in his recipe for my favorite Pancit Luglug which has something of a French air about it in that it creates a broth from shrimp shells to add to the sauce while Gelle relies on canned cream of mushroom soup to finish off the sauce.

If you are really fond of Filipino cooking, you may want both books, but you will certainly be better off with more accurate, more detailed, and more interesting recipes if you have only Gelle's book.