What Mica eats and the stories behind them.

Ethical Advertising

We decided to have our dinner today, January 17, 2013, at Karate Kid in SM Megamall as I am a fan of quick Japanese food at a good price. I believe we all understand it that in fast food, or any other dining establishments, we can’t expect the dishes served to us to look exactly the same as the one in their marketing collaterals.

I, myself, make a living out of taking photos of food and designing marketing collaterals. I admit, we fluff the food, give it better lighting and meticulously work on every detail of the product to make it look as good as it can. But we all have to have limits. We cannot cheat the consumers by marketing a dish which looks full and bursting with ingredients but serve something essentially different. It’s like marketing air conditioners but actually selling rectangular fans that you have to put ice in to make it cool.

  As a food photographer, I admit, I do try my best to make the dish look as mouth-watering as possible, but I make sure to discuss with my clients (usually the establishment owners) regarding the size of the serving the consumers actually get. I work with that, the serving size of what you actually order and make the most of that. I guess you can call it ethical marketing.

But here before us sit a dish called “Spam Maki”. Staring at it, I thought “I would never have imagined that it is humanly possible to slice spam that thin. It’s like the cook used a vegetable peeler to make the slices.” I felt cheated, insulted. They marketed a dish to look like something so full and appetizing, and serving you some skin of spam between two slabs of rice, you might have as well served me extra rice instead. I was appalled. I felt like they made a promise and didn’t even try to fulfil it.

Luckily, after discussing with the manager, she nicely offered to take back the order and give us a refund. Yes, I believe we – the consumers – have all the right to be refunded if we find the marketing collaterals excessively misleading. Honestly, I never expect my McDonald burger to look like the one on the poster, I understand that. But at least I know my burger only looks like shit because of the hasty preparation. I’m sure the cook wouldn’t spend 3 meticulous hours on preparing a burger. But this one was just plain cheating. Even If I got the two slices of spam I received and stuck them together, they would be nowhere near what they “showed” it would look like.

I hope this article reach the right people, not just the marketing team of Karate Kid but anyone in the advertising industry. There is nothing wrong with making things look good, it’s our job to sell. Like putting on make-up before going out. But trying to look good and lying about how you really look like is an entirely different thing. We should set boundaries for ourselves. We should be ethical. We should create things we can be proud of. To sell is a challenge; to sell honestly is a greater but more rewarding challenge. 

A simple creamy Carbonara for a lonely dinner. :/

My first attempt at trying to make Arroz Caldo. Apparently I’ve lost all skills in the boiling an egg department. Will be posting the recipe in a while, gotta eat first. :)

Spicy Maple Pork Ribs, Bacon Asparagus Wraps and Home-made Mashed Potatoes. Happy Dinner!

Find the Recipe for the Spicy Maple Pork Ribs below.

Ingredients:

1/2 kilo of pork ribs

Sweet and Spicy ketchup (UFC)

soy sauce

vinegar

1/2 red onion, chopped

4 cloves of garlic, chopped

coarsely ground pepper

rock salt

chili flakes

butter

water

1. rub all dry ingredients (pepper, salt & chili flakes) unto pork.
2. add garlic and onion and rub into pork as well
3. add ketchup, soy sauce and vinegar and massage all ingredients together.
4. marinade for at least 30 minutes.
5. mix 1/2 cup water, 1/3 cup ketchup, 1/4 cup vinegar and 1/4 cup soy sauce in a pan. Add marinated pork and let it simmer. keep marinade aside.
6. turn pork after 15 mins and let it sip in the juices.
7. remove pork from pan.
8. on a different pan add 2 tblsp of butter and fry pork.
9. add left over pork marinade and toss it around the pan for about 5 mins.
10. remove from heat and serve.

Hope you love it as much as we did. yum! although we over ate again, try not to do that. :(

Perfect way to wake up. She prepared breakfast and served it by my bedside. <3

Pan Grilled Pork marinated the best way I know how, the Filipino way.

Of course Filipinos do have different ways of cooking the same dishes depending on which region you’re from. And I do have learned that most Filipino cooking is largely dependent on just estimating the amount of each ingredient by taste. There’s no exact measurement for any certain dish, it really depends on the cook. Now that explains all me other recipes, why I keep saying “put as much as you’d like”. That’s really how I do it, sorry! 

Now of to the roughly measured recipe.

Ingredients

2 Thin long slices of pork belly. 

Crushed pepper

Rock Salt

3 calamansi

For the Marinade:

Half a cup of Soy sauce, I believe Silver Swan brand really works for this. 

Coarsely chopped onion and garlic

A couple of Siling Labuyo (or depends on how spicy you want it)

1/3 cup of Vinegar

1/3 cup of Water 

A tbps of brown sugar

Rub pork with salt and pepper. Squeeze calamansi directly on the pork.

Mix all the marinade ingredients together in a bowl and massage the pork in. Leave it for at least 30 mins-1hr.

Heat pan to med-high heat and brush with a little oil. (oh and im using a thick teflon pan)

Place pieces of pork in the pan and let it cook for 2-3 mins depending on how done you want your pork. Brush the top part of the pork with a little marinade and turn. Cook for another 2-3 mins. 

Serve with a dipping sauce with the same ingredients as the marinade minus the water and sugar, plus calamansi.

Another good dipping sauce is just vinegar with chopped garlic.

Enjoy! :)

My Special Meatball Pasta

I must say I did make this a while back and it was a huge success. Everybody loved it. Now, let me scavenge through my brain on how I did this.

Ingredients: (Thank god I made a grocery list of this on my phone!)

• 1/2 kilo of ground beef
• Fresh parsley
• tomatoes
• garlic
• onion
• salt, pepper and chili flakes
• mushrooms
• tomato sauce
• cheese
• olive oil
• penne pasta

1) Cook pasta according to instructions on the pack. Cook as much as you’d like. I would measure one handful of uncooked pasta is good for one person.

2) Kneed the ground beef together with a bit of salt, pepper, finely diced onions and half a cup of fresh chopped parsley.

3) Heat enough olive oil to cover half the meatballs and place the meatballs in, browning each side on high heat and lowering the heat a bit to cook the insides as well. Cook all the meatballs.

4) Remove meatballs from the oil. Also remove most of the olive oil from the pan and place it aside, leaving only about 3 tables spoons of oil in the pan. Enough for sauteing

5) Saute about 4 cloves of finely chopped garlic, a small finely chopped onion and the mushrooms. Add the sliced tomatoes on top and lower heat to let the juices out. Cover the pan and let it simmer. 

6) Place the meatballs back into the pan to let it sip all the juices.

7) Slowly add tomato sauce, as much as you want. I used a pouch (500g) I believe.

8) Add a cup of freshly chopped parsley.

9) Add salt, pepper and chili flakes to taste (we like it a bit spicy).

10) Pour sauce over pasta and top with cheese.

Enjoy!

Do you know how I like my eggs? Medyo basag ang pula.

Creamy Pesto Pasta with slow cooked Garlic Chicken.

This dish brings back memories of when I first started to learn how to cook. It’s fairly easy to do and full of flavor. 

Ingredients: (Good for 2)

For the Garlic Chicken

2 pcs of quarter cut chicken. Preferably the thigh-leg part, but any part would do.

Soy sauce

Black pepper

Salt

3 garlic cloves, diced

1. Coat the chicken pieces in pepper, salt, garlic and soy sauce. Rub them in, yes rub it in. Massage your chicken with love and lotsa garlic.
2. Put them in a thick pan, over really low heat. If you’re using an electric stove, 80° celsius would be right.
3. Cover your chicken and leave it for about 1 hour.
4. After an hour, flip your chicken and leave it for another hour. (You can cook your chicken in a turbo broiler too, I just dont have one)
5. And done! Enjoy. ;)

pork tonkatsu, yasai itame and steamed rice