The Asian market is complete with raw produce, from vegetables, seafood and meat, and dry products exported from Asian countries. If you follow me via twitter and instagram (follow @ibyang in instagram if you want), you may have probably seen photographs of Filipino food that my Husband and I sometimes indulge in. It is in this Asian market that we get our Filipino food fix.
When I shop for raw produce at the Asian market, I buy in bulk so I can prepare, marinate and store them in bulk too. This is part of organizing and preparing the food that I will cook for the household in the coming weeks. I store the raw produce we bought in plastic containers and label them so it’s easier for me to figure out what to cook on a daily or weekly basis.
I buy a big slab of beef (1-2 kilos) and cut it to different cuts: cubes, strips, for steak. My choice of beef varies so we try different parts from time to time. So far, I’ve tried silverside, topside, rump and scotch fillet. It’s usual that markets already cut the beef for you but I don’t really mind cutting the beef myself. With a 1-2 kilo slab of beef, I get to maximize the meat we bought. I make my own marinades for Bulgogi and Steaks.
I also do a bit of cutting of chicken for my food preps, too. My usual chicken marinades are Garlic Salt, Soy Sauce and Lemon and BBQ.
For Seafood, I ask the market to clean the fishes for me but before storing them, I still clean them the second time around. I also take out the fish scales also. For squids, I clean them myself. I usually lather some salt or garlic salt to the fishes before I store them inside the freezer.
On weekends, I’m most busy in the kitchen as it is during this time that I make time to do some bulk preparations.
One of the things that my friends in Manila asked me when I was there in April was “Do you really cook the food we see in your blog?” And the answer to that has always been, “Unless stated that I bought it, yes!”. When I was single and lived in the Philippines, I never really talked about cooking much so it was a bit of a surprise for even my closest friends to see photos of food in my blog and in facebook. But the truth is, I’ve always had a love for food and I’ve always loved eating. Only it has been magnified now with the gift of technology and social networking.
Not only do I love to eat food, I also truly love preparing and cooking food. It’s tedious and may be time consuming to some but I find comfort and grateful that I know that what I put on the table for our family is something healthy and created with love.
