Chocolate Cake with Cherry Filling

Sometimes it is the simplest things that are the most elegant. - Ina Garten


Your are free to accuse me of not being creative in coming up with a name for this recipe. It is no "decadent blah blah," or "rich and moist blah blah." I hate pretentious cakes. This is what it is - a simple chocolate cake with a cherry filling. And yes, this is another product of the leftovers and nearly-expired stuff I collected from my freezer and pantry. The Peotraco cocoa powder survived Christmas, New Year and Easter in my pantry, but did not last longer than three days after being made into this cake. (Three days is long for glucophobic people like us.) And you may have guessed also that the cherry pie filling was also plucked out of the bowels of my freezer.


I wanted a 'light' chocolate cake (as if such exists) for this project so I decided on using a Devil's food cake recipe (aka old-fashioned chocolate cupcakes). I removed that extra half-cup of sugar, of course. The cake ended up 'light' (read, not dense) and fluffy, but still moist - perhaps because of the two(!) cups of refined sugar added.

I tweaked the cherry pie filling a bit by heating it with one tablespoon each of lemon juice and brandy. You may want to add some sugar if you find the cherries too sour, but do not omit the lemon juice. Believe me, it will mask the 'canned-taste' (or 'freezer-taste,' in my case).


After cutting the cake in half, I then doused it with more brandy before pouring the filling.

I used a chocolate buttercream to ice the cake. You can search then net for a chocolate buttercream recipe, but i simply used equal amounts of creamed butter and the chocolate condensed milk icing my family typically uses for traditional chocolate cakes. (Scroll down this previous post and the recipe is somewhere there.)

More Vietnamese Food from Le Phi

We were craving for some Vietnamese and Singaporean food, so we decided to drop by last Saturday's Salcedo Market Food Fair. To our disappointemnt, the Singaporean chicken stall was not there, so my parents and I ended up buying some chicken inasal and some Vietnamese goodies.

The Vietnamese lady not only had the usual fresh spring rolls and rice cake, but some salads as well. The shrimp salad on the left is really very tasty. The shrimp were stir-fried in garlic and lemon grass, then laid on a bed of chewy rice noodles, crisp lettuce and lots of fragrant Asian basil. It was an explosion of flavors and textures. Of course, the nuoc cham dressing, made of sugar, garlic, fish sauce and chillies rounded the whole thing up!



It seems as if business is really booming for this lady - she used to sit on her chair rolling up spring rolls herself, but this time she had two slaves (pictured here) doing that for her. Also, she is now selling dried rice noodles and salads (previously, these had to be ordered in advance). [I took this picture by the way with the intention of getting the face of the lady whose elbow could be seen on the right. Quite an annoying Chinese lady - she elbowed me and my mom out of the front without even excusing herself! Hmp!]


Of course, we had to buy several boxes of the fresh Vietnamese spring rolls and the green Vietnamese 'rice cake' (a green and yellow kutsinta/ sapin-sapin made out of rice and yellow mung beans).

Crabs, crabs and more crabs!

A whole box of mud crabs was sent to my dad by one of his friends and we couldn't be happier having them the whole day! Pinoys usually just steam them, with a dipping sauce of vinegar with crushed garlic. I really would not eat it this way as I hate raw vinegar and I really think this does not do justice to the sweetness of the crab.

I really think the Pinoy way of steaming crabs is nothing but "lutong tamad" (lazy cooking). Fresh live crabs are put straight into a steamer or a pot with some boiling salted water. No cleaning. No seasonings. If they crabs then taste fishy, you deserve it! You didn't even bother to scrub off the grit and mud from the shells, at the very least!

And so I normally just pass up the opportunity to eat crabs if they are plain steamed the local way. And I certainly would turn down requests to stir-fry crabs that have been previously cooked. For sure the meat has taken on whatever flavor the mud and dirt had!

I know the thought of scrubbing and shelling live crabs sound bloody, but there is a way around it. Throw in the crabs in a deep pot of ice water and weigh down for about an hour or so. The crabs will go to 'sleep' and will be immobile (and dead) by the time you are ready to scrub them. This will not only appease whoever will be cleaning the crabs but the tree-huggers and animal lovers as well.

Scrub all the mud off the shell of the crabs, especially those in the joints. Lift the flap on the belly of the crab, then insert a knife into the cavity at the base to remove the top shell. Reserve all the fat/ tamales that falls off. Remove the gills/ dead man's fingers, and scrub at the part as it is likely to have plenty of mud and dirt. remove the mouth area as well. Cut the crab in half, then each into three segments. You can find a step-by-step instruction on how to clean and prepare crabs here, which is more or less similar to what I had enumerated.


Sprinkle the crab pieces with some salt and pepper (and some chicken powder, if you like), then with about a tablespoon or two of cornstarch (preferrably sweet potato flour) for every whole crab. Fry in oil until lightly browned. The crabs will continue cooking in the sauce later on.






The crabs we got were a bit fatty, so i scooped out all the tamales, dredged them in cornstarch and fried them lightly as well. This will become the thickener for the sauce.





The crab pictured above is the Vietnamese Tamarind Crabs (Cua Rang Voi Sot Me). Think sweet and sour sauce, only that tamarind was used to sour the sauce.

It is important to mix and taste the sauce ahead of the stri fry. For two pieces of medium crabs, mix together one tablespoon of tamarind paste, three tablespoons fish sauce, 1/4 cup rice wine and about one teaspoon each of brown sugar and crushed white pepper. Adjust the proportions according to your taste. You may need to add more sugar, depending on how sour the tamarind is. Again, this should taste sweet and sour, with the fruity acidity of the tamarind being a bit more predominant. Set aside the mixture.

In a hot wok with about three tablespoons of oil, saute three spring onions cut into segments, four cloves crushed garlic and one thumb-size piece of sliced ginger. You may add in about four lemon grass roots as well, as I did. Add in the crabs as the mixture becomes fragrant. Pour in the sauce and the fried crab fat pieces. You may need to add an additional 1/4 cup water and increase the heat to high to boil off the excess liquid as the crabs stew.

Serve with rice.


I had a few more prepared fried crabs left and decided to do a Malaysian-style dish. I saw it prepared on Discover Travel and Living. I did not have any ginger torch, so I used plain ginger root. I did not have sambal as well, so I made use of the regular chili garlic sauce.

This Ketam Sri Wangi is much more flavorful than the tamarind crabs, but less fruity. I still prefer the Vietnamese version, but I like this one as well.

Roast Tenderloin of Pork

I've been making roast porkloin for quite some time now and I really could not get the seasonings and cooking time right. The "pork roast" or "pork loin" available at local supermarkets are always end up rubbery and bland after coming out of my oven. Things have improved, but I'm not there yet.

Just the other day, I decided to try the more expensive cut of meat - pork tenderloin. With just a few hours of marination, my roast came out juicy, tender and really flavorful. I don't think I want to do roast pork with other cuts of meat ever again!

First, I marinated the two pieces of tenderloin in a mixture of chopped garlic (four cloves), a bunch of fresh thyme, half a teaspoon of salt, black pepper and extra virgin olive oil. I left it for about three hours in the ref, then I wrapped them with bacon and tied it with kitchen string to even out the shape. I know, bacon and pork! It actually sounds worse than it actually is. Tenderloin is very lean and will undoubtedly become rubbery and dry when cooked. Bacon helps keep it moist. Further, I only use thick cuts of lean bacon. I set the roast on a pan with about two chopped onions, two garlic cloves and one chopped Granny Smith apple. I tucked in a few bay leaves as well.


I baked the pork in a 400 degree preheated oven for about 20-25 minutes (well done). Fifteen minutes cooking time would have yielded a medium-rare to medium well pork. I let this rest a good 30 minutes before cutting.

For the sauce, I poured in a half a cup of orange juice, half a cup of fresh mango puree and one tablespoon balsamic vinegar and reduced it on the stove. Then I pureed and strained it.

Bacon and Seafood Pasta

I wouldn't really credit the Italians for this one. (My previous pasta blog isn't Italian anyway.) As far as I know, bacon and seafood isn't a classic combination, at least by European standards. (And the 'bacon' Italians use - pancetta - is not smoked!) Yes, the Italians are quirky about their seafood - 'cheese and seafood do NOT go together,' 'only white wine can be used,' 'smokiness of the bacon masks the flavor,' etc. I quite agree, and this is probably the first time I am making a pasta with both bacon and seafood combined. Well, blame my freezer. I was only trying to dispose of the bits I found while cleaning it.

On a hot pan, add in about a handful of chopped bacon, around 200g (nowadays you can just buy bacon bits, so no need for chopping). Render the fat until the bacon bits have become crispy. Push them to one side of the pan then add in one chopped onion and about three to four cloves of chopped garlic, more if you like.

Then toss in about 200g each (about a handful) of shelled and deveined shrimp, and scallops. Make sure the seafood are really fresh, and should not smell fishy at all. Also, the meat should be firm. If they're spongy, then they've probably been in and out of the freezer too many times, and you'll notice them shrink to the size of raisins as they get sauteed. Toss the seafood around the pan just until most of the shrimp are pink. Quickly, scoop all of the shrimps and scallops with a slotted spoon and set aside. We only want them to be slightly cooked at this point.

Then, deglaze the pan with a cup of white wine and reduce by at least half. Make sure to scrape the bits sticking at the bottom. Add in about one teaspoon of fresh thyme. After the reduction, pour in two cups of cream (or two cups half and half). Add in the seafood, then adjust the seasonings. As the sauce comes to a simmer, dump in the pasta (I prefer linguine) and toss until all strands are coated. Finally, sprinkle with a handful of chopped Italian parsley. Serve with garlic bread. NO cheese!

Quick Chorizo Pasta

This one is really quick and simple. On a hot pan set on medium heat, dump in around 200g of chopped chorizo. I prefer the fresh ones that you buy from delis, not the ones that come canned. The fresh ones tend to crisp up during cooking, and tastes better.

The pan has to be set on medium heat in order to render the golden fat out fo the chopped sausages slowly. A pan that is too hot would have just burned the outside of the chorizo bits while the inside is still rubbery. This takes around five minutes - just until the sizzle has died down a bit.

Next throw in one chopped onion, and cook until tender. Then dump in two cloves of chopped garlic and two large (or four small) chopped fresh tomatoes. Cook until tender, which takes absolutely no time at all (about a minute). If the pan gets a little too dry, pour in half a cup of white wine or water.

Dump in the pasta and cook one minute. Dish up.

Nigella's Crab Pasta

I just love everything Nigella! I love the simplicity of all her recipes. And they are quite flavorful, too!

A friend of my dad's recently sent us a shipment of mud crabs from his farm. I made several batches of stir-fried crabs - one a Vietnamese-style tamarind crab then the Malaysian Ketam Sri Wangi. (will post the recipes when I have the time).

The small crabs left after we sorted out the large ones for the stir-fry were steamed for later use. I was pondering what to do with them as I almost never cook with already-steamed crabs. I decided to make some pasta with the meat.

I just followed Nigella's recipe, but left out the watercress which is rather hard to find locally, and I am a bit squeamish of raw greens grown on freshwater plots (but I do eat a LOT of veggies).

I used up two medium-sized crabs, although I think I should have used more. There were only two crabs left, so I used crab sticks as extenders. However, I do caution against using too much of it as it has a different flavor versus the real crab meat. This "sauce" tastes better if you leave it to marinade about a day in the refrigerator before tossing it with the freshly-cooked pasta.