Kaffir and Kefir

They are two different things. One is a flavoring element and the other is milk. Both come from exotic sources.

Don’t get confused, as we were in the beginning. They are two different things. One is a flavoring element and the other is milk. Both come from exotic sources. Kaffir is a lime, used by some Southeast Asian countries, especially Thailand, and Hawaii. The fruit is like a small pear in shape, with yellow-green skin that is a bit wrinkled. The leaves are normally sold dried. We first encountered them in an Asian specialty store in San Juan when we were sourcing ingredients for a Thai dish. Dried lime rind and leaves emit a floral-citrus scent. This is the counterpart of our calamansi.

On the other hand, kefir is originally made from camel’s milk in the mountain range between the Caspian and Black seas. However, today cow’s milk is used to produce this. It is a sour brew of fermented milk with two percent alcohol. It combines the taste and texture of liquid yogurt. This is a potent beverage with some medicinal attributes from a company called Goody.

Kefir is available at Healthy Choices housed in Sugarleaf, which has concocted a line that includes smoothies, cheese cake, wraps and vegan ice cream. Perhaps we will try using it in our recipes that require cream. They have two outlets – on the ground floor of Medical Lifestyle Center on Paseo de Roxas (tel. 812-7323) and Health Cube building on Wilson, Greenhills, San Juan,.  

Now, for comfort food. We are creatures of habit. It is such that, while dining out, our adventurous mind is, in some instances, taken over by our preference for home-cooked meals. These are our comfort food. When that happens we, especially the little one in the family, would almost instinctively head for Pancake House in the Ayala Town Center (ATC). Through the years that we have been going there, the quality of food has been maintained. This is the reason why they are often full and table turn-over is quick.

Aside from pancakes, Pancake House serves meals, like daing na bangus, fried chicken (so crispy and flavorful), fish fillet on rice and our four-year-old’s favorite, spaghetti with ground beef and tomato-based sauce. These have always delighted us. Lately we tried their potato salad, done not with mayo but cream. Now, if you order coffee to cap your meal, better follow up, or the server would likely forget about it, as he did with ours. But he had a smile when he brought it to us.

For quite sometime now, the chicken supply in the market consisted mostly of small fowls, weighing between less than a kilo to 1.3 kilos. But on our last visit to Makati Supermarket, we found the bigger ones, from 1.4 kilos to almost 1.8 kilos. We actually prefer the bigger ones, especially for our roast chicken and dishes like caldereta and pastel. Even for nilaga and tinola, the big ones are more flavorful and the meat is much more firm, it does not disintegrate after one boiling.

What are you cooking now?

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