Cooking

One of the things I've been trying to do -- at least when Shelly is home -- is to stretch my culinary skills.

Shelly bought me a Filipino cook book for my birthday last year, and I've been making something new out of it every other week or so. I've made caldereta, adobo, menudo and a fish soup that I love, but that Shelly is kind of, shall we say, lukewarm about. Here's a version I made with zucchini a couple of weeks ago:

Trust me when I tell you that it tastes better than it looks, at least in this picture. To make this soup, I use rice water, a term I had never heard before. All you do is rinse some rice with some water -- since you're in the Philippines, you'll presumably cook the rice for dinner, to go with the soup -- and use the water in the soup. I'm not sure what function it serves, but it does make the broth turn to jelly when the leftovers are refrigerated.

The paella that I've been working on for the past couple of weeks has its roots in Spanish cooking, I believe, but it's been part of Filipino cooking since the Philippines was a colony of Spain in the 1800s and before.

I've been experimenting with food that's more familiar, too. Shelly and I recently made pizzas, and tacos are a recurring theme.

Yes, that's asparagus, corn and chicken. Nobody said it was like calling Domino's.

Last week, I made my first-ever homemade baked macaroni and cheese. It tasted fine, but it wasn't gooey enough, so I'm going to have to try it again, maybe with some mozarella added to the mix next time.