Happily Green: Camote Tops Salad

I've been trying to experiment with different kinds of local vegetables each week. One of the ingredients I've come to love is camote.

Here is something quick and green which can be done with just 4 ingredients:

1. Camote (sweet potato) tops
2. Tomatoes
3. Patis (fish sauce)
4. Calamansi (native lemon)

Wash, drain and blanch the camote tops. Set aside. Dice tomatoes. Throw everything together in a bowl. In a separate saucer, squeeze 2 large calamansis and add a 3/4 - 1 tsp of patis, depending on your preferred taste. I prefer mine sour more than salty. Drizzle over the vegetables just enough to season it, and enjoy a fuss-free salad.

This makes for a hearty component for any meal, with its antioxidative properties from the sweet potato tops, blood purifying properties and lycopene from tomatoes and vitamin C from calamansi.

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The Music In His Head: Michael Jackson

Watching creative minds at work and hearing them explain what goes on in their heads just never fail to fascinate me. Seeing this makes me appreciate Michael Jackson more than ever.

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Creating The Story of Cinemanila 2009

I'm not exactly good at drawing people. Proportions and perspective are off and my version of drawn hands, according to a friend, look like potholders. So when the director breathed life on something I haphazardly mapped out on scratch paper, it took my breath away.

Two weeks ago, my director-friend asked me to come up with a script for the Cinemanila AVP.

When I asked when he needed the script, he said "Two days."

With complete liberty to conceptualize it, I let the wheels of creativity churn something a little off-beat.

I was more than happy to be entrusted to start something from the ground.

What started as a copy-oriented project became a semi-animated video totally replete of words, if not for the captions.

It was hard to put my ideas in a worded script so I doodled a hasty storyboard on scratch paper so he and I could see the vision together.

Imagination comes to life.

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Sweet Potato With Nori Dimsum and Tomato Bisque

In our attempt to green the home, my husband and I have been experimenting with sweet potatoes lately starting with tabasco-marinaded camote fries. Yesterday's experiment was making dimsum for the first time in more than ten years. And this time, I attempted to make it vegetable-based.



SWEET POTATO WITH NORI DIMSUM

1. Boil 1 large sweet potato in water with salt. When done, remove peel and mash.

2. Sautee mashed camote in garlic and red onions. Mix evenly and throw in spring onions and nori shreds.

3. Adjust with salt and pepper.

4. Scoop a small dollop of mixture onto a dimsum wrapper. Dab some water on the wrapper to seal dumpling properly.

5. Put in a steamer for 5-10 minutes.

6. Serve with plum sauce or hoisin-based sauce.

For a healthy meal, I served the dimsum with brown rice and tomato bisque.


TOMATO BISQUE

*I didn't have enough tomatoes to make a pot of soup so I had to settle for canned Molinera Diced Tomatoes.

1. Sautee red onion in butter. Add 1 can of diced tomatoes.

2. Adjust with salt and pepper.

3. Add milk and cream to make it heavy and rich.

4. Some recipes call for cornstarch but I opted not to use it in mine. Also, I used a little bit of chicken stock for more flavor instead of adding more milk.

5. The bisque should be slightly thick. The stewing time of around 15 minutes should be enough time to soften the tomato chunks for a smoother consistency.

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