Creating new dishes and recreating family favorites
MILLIE: I’m a great Knorr fan! And not only because I love Switzerland, from where it originated. Knorr is such an excellent product and a great secret ingredient to many happy meals.
When I cook, I’m old-fashioned and usually do everything from scratch. But my hectic lifestyle warrants some convenience to somehow ease the burden.
When I go to the supermarket, I plan and formulate menus in my head. I see ingredients and concoct or create dishes, but rarely have time to execute. Lucky for me, Karla has taken over the kitchen chores.
KARLA: I am definitely a Knorr baby. Ever since I can remember, we would always have a bottle of Knorr seasoning around the kitchen. It’s one of the items we must never run out of. If not, the whole household would go berserk. As a kid, I was happy with just Knorr and rice. Of course that’s not all I ate, but somehow, everything tasted better with a dash of Knorr seasoning. At an early age, my Lolo Joe taught me how to cook steaks. Before a family dinner, while everyone was gathering, I would be outside in the lanai with him cooking steaks on the griddle. To go with this, he would also ask to make fried rice to go with the steak. He taught me how he liked his rice, which I picked up through the years and have been cooking it ever since. So every time we have steaks at home, I always make fried rice by using the same griddle or pan where the steaks were cooked and steak fat left on it to sauté chopped garlic. I then add in the rice, which is exactly how you make garlic rice. And finally, in comes the secret ingredient, Knorr seasoning.
MILLIE: Like me, my adorable Yaya Beth cooks everything from scratch. She swears she never knew how to cook when she first came to our home. Through time, we’ve had some awesome and unforgettable meals. Her first specialty was her beef sinigang, which my entire family adores. Since she had learned to conveniently cook with Knorr’s instant sinigang mix, her sinigang is just as delicious. It’s funny because there have been less trips to the grocery for this and that ingredient so Karla and I would tease her whenever she would say she had to go to the nearby grocery. This time the excuse is to get cellphone load.
Recently, I promised my dear friend Rene Alcala a pork sparerib sinigang dinner at home. I figured we couldn’t just have sinigang and asked what else he wanted to have for dinner. He was too shy to say but, knowing Rene, lamb was on his mind. Behold! Lamb kaldereta appeared on the table, prepared with Knorr kaldereta mix. Such convenience! Rene was as meek as a lamb to say the least, and brought leftovers home!
KARLA: While attending a recent Knorr event, I was asked by a TV crew what my favorite lutong nanay is. And I panicked for a couple of seconds before answering, “chicken and pork adobo.” The reason I panicked is because there are so many family favorite dishes I grew up with that use Knorr products like sinigang and nilaga. Every Sunday we would have family lunch and the food would always either be sinigang or nilaga. I would wake up early on Sunday mornings to watch our old cook, Lola Moding, whip up meals for the whole family. Sometimes she would let me put in the vegetables or sauté garlic and onions in a large wok.
Growing up, the common Knorr products I would see in our kitchen were the cubes and seasoning. I was not familiar with using the Knorr premix packets until the time I joined an Adobolympics cooking contest at the Legazpi Sunday Market four years ago. I made adobo-breaded lamb with adobo mayo and adobo risotto. I used Knorr adobo mix for the breading of the lamb, together with breadcrumbs. Although I used real adobo sauce for my adobo mayo, you can also use the Knorr adobo mix dissolved in water and mixed with mayonnaise for your adobo mayo. And when you’re under time pressure, it’s impossible to make a good stock for the risotto in such a short period, plus we were only working with two burners.
During the recent Knorr event, the brand ambassadors talked about what kind of meals they make for their family using the Knorr mixes. Although they seemed like interesting dishes, Mom and I both agree that since we’re always eating out for work and events, nothing beats coming home to a simple, home-cooked meal. We definitely look forward to eating at home on the weekends, especially during Sundays. Aside from our Sunday staples of sinigang and nilaga, we also recreated the grilled pork chops with Knorr seasoning that Lola Moding used to make so well.
MILLIE: I remembered my family’s yaya and cook of 50 years, Aling Moding, who has since passed on. She made this dish she called menudo, which my sister Marijo loved. Her menudo was made of minced beef with potatoes, garbanzos and raisins and we would top our rice bowls with it. My mom used to eat it with fried banana and I believe it’s called arroz a la cubana, but to us, it was simply called menudo.
Since Karla and I were each given a basket filled with Knorr products, we couldn’t wait to try them out and recreate home-cooked dishes. Immediately, we asked yaya Beth to try out the menudo mix for our Saturday lunch. Beth prepared it using the Knorr menudo mix and adding pork, potatoes and carrots. It was good and tasted just like it should. Karla and I told yaya to add some garbanzos next time and we laughed because she didn’t know what it was, so Karla said the ingredient she uses to make hummus and she quickly understood.
Karla and I realize there are many other concoctions we can create using Knorr’s instant mixes and we look forward to making these valuable discoveries together and share with our readers, as this is a more convenient option for busy people like us. Nothing like going home to home-cooked meals.
* * *
Send e-mail to milliereyes.foodforthought@gmail.com or find us on Facebook and read articles you might have missed: Food for Thought by Millie and Karla Reyes.
A Sunday staple and family favorite: Nilagang bulalo using Knorr beef cubes for the broth with cabbage, potatoes, carrots, saba and corn.
