Cooking experiments

As everybody knows that aside from reading and writing, I also love to cook. But I don't just cook, I experiment. The idea came about from watching too much of Gordon Elliot's Door Knock Dinners when I was young. In his show, he would go to a chosen house, have a guest chef ( like Paula Deen and Masaharu Moshimoto etc) go thru the fridge and pantry, and cook something fancy out of it. Back then, I became fascinated with cooking experiments. I would watch my mother cook and try to recreate the dish from memory. I love being in the kitchen and would often offer to cook our dinner.

When I moved here in the States, cooking Filipino dishes became a challenge. Not all the ingredients are readily available, even at Filipino stores. If I don't have the ingredients, I have to substitute it with something similar that is available locally. I would try to recreate the dish, or put a twist on it and make it an entirely different version. My main goal is, to come up with a dish that tastes different. A dish that only I can make. Back home, I only cook simple dishes, but here in the States I have taught myself to cook dishes that I wanted to eat. I'm not claiming to be a good cook. But I can say that if I want to eat a Filipino dish that I miss, then i would try to cook it, instead of buying it. I would experiment on cooking, until I reach the desired taste of the dish.

There are many Filipino dishes that I haven't experimented on, mainly because I don't eat them, or don't miss them. But if it's one of my favorites then it would be on my list. Some of the dishes that I have experimented on countless of times are dinuguan, embotido, leche flan, cassava cake, steamed puto, bibingka, maja blanca, turon, ginataang bilo bilo, pastillas de leche, lumpiang Shanghai, Spanish bread and more recently, my own version of coconut macaroons.

Sometimes my experiment would be successful in one try, if I'm lucky. Sometimes I would get it after a second try. But I would learn from my mistakes, and would do better the next time I cook it. There is no dish that I have given up, maybe the buchi that I experimented on a few weeks ago. It was a disaster, I had to throw the whole thing.  But knowing myself, I would experiment on it again. Maybe one of these days.

And I'm not done with my cooking experiments. For sure, I will keep on trying to re-create dishes. It's fun and exciting. Right now I'm thinking of what food to experiment on. Any suggestions?