Easy Karioka Recipe

If you love eating Banana cue, Kamote cue and Maruya, you gotta love Karioka as well. Karioka is made of glutinous rice flour, deep-fried and coated with plain sugar or coconut- sugar mixture. Personally, anything made of glutinous rice flour is my favorite. These Filipino snacks including Karioka are prepared and cooked in almost every Filipino household. Just today, I decided to make some for the family as an afternoon snack.

The recipe I've prepared is easy. It's simple just by mixing the glutinous rice flour with water, make some balls out of it, coat each with sugar then fry.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/8 cups Glutinous Rice Flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• oil for frying

Tip: Prepackaged glutinous rice flour is now available in the market.

Procedure:

• In a bowl mix glutinous rice and baking powder.
• Slowly add water until a "sticky- but not too wet" consistency is achieved. Add glutinous rice if it becomes too sticky.
• Heat oil in pan.
• While heating oil, make rice flour balls and coat each with brown sugar.
• Deep or pan- fry balls until light- golden brown.

Tip: Flour hands to avoid sticking.

The over-all result was delicious. The Kariokas were soft, chewy, it's not messy to eat because of the sugar coating and it doesn't harden even if refrigerated and eaten the following day.

Food Trip Friday: Shirazi Salad

It's been a long time since I last joined FTF.  It feels great to be back. Though there's no assurance if I can join on a regular basis like before, I'm just excited and very happy that among the food blogs I came across with in my years as a blogger, Food Trip Friday has remained active. Kudos!

I became familiar with this dish not too long ago. I was surprised with the extraordinary taste this simple salad have. It all started with lunch at Kebab Korner. I just randomly picked something off the menu to match my Special Kebab mix. Though there was an image of this in the menu, still the name Shirazi got me curious.

Shirazi salad is a Persian dish composed of diced cucumber, tomatoes and onions mixed in lemon juice and olive oil.

This week, I made a bowl for our eating pleasures. Of course, I made an improved version of what I had at Kebab Korner. My recipe followed the basic, only, I added a little cilantro and served it with mayonnaise.

Servings: 3-4

Ingredients:

• 2 medium cucumber (diced)
• 3 medium red tomatoes (seeds removed and diced)
• 1 red or white onion (diced)
• 1/4 tsp chopped or dried cilantro
• 1 1/2 tablespoon of lemon juice
• 1/2 tsp olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste

Procedure:

• Just mix everything together then refrigerate.
• Serve with mayonnaise or just plain Shirazi.

It's a refreshing take on salads. Most of the time we go for lettuce, mixed greens and fruits combined. Shirazi is made of 3 main ingredients that can be found anywhere. Simple vegetables but if mixed together, it comes out with "that distinct" taste I can't explain. It's delicious. It matched not only my kebab perfectly but also the Lumpiang Shanghai I cooked. It can be paired with any grilled, steamed, fried dish.