A Hot Pot of fresh Filipino flavours

Serving fresh food and a range of traditional delicacies hot from the pot is a restaurant that has been drawing Philipines natives from across the island for nearly two years.

Situated in a comfortable corner in Hoora, the Hot Pot offers both Filipino and Chinese cuisines in a lunch buffet which has made the venue famous..

Owner Nader A Aziz said: "Our buffet offers a range of Filipino delicacies and it has turned out to be quite popular. We host the buffet everyday from 10.30am to 3.30pm with a special buffet on Friday."

Aside from the menu which features all the common favourites, the outlet also sells snacks, desserts, fruits and balot - a fertilised duck or chicken egg with a nearly-developed embryo inside which is boiled and eaten in the shell.

The restaurant has two sections with Chef Wency Jacutina taking care of the Filipino food and Chef Ding Chao for the Chinese. Both have been with the restaurant since it opened.

Chef Wency comes to the island with 12 years of experience in the kitchen. He began working as a chef after graduating from the TESDA culinary school in the Philippines.

After completing several stints in Chinese restaurants, Chef Wency joined the Barrio Fiesta restaurant for two years and the well-known Max's restaurant for five years before taking up the offer to move to Bahrain.

Chef Wency says the most important ingredients in his kitchen are onion, ginger and garlic, a very important flavour in Filipino cuisine.

In the future, he hopes to open a restaurant in Manila offering Filipino and Mexican delicacies but for the moment he is concentrating on putting his children through school and encouraging his older son, who wants to follow in his father's footsteps, to take a hotel management course.

Here he shares a family favourite, well-known Filipino dish, Kare Kare.

Kare Kare (Oxtail in rich peanut sauce)

Ingredients:

Cut pieces of oxtail 3 cups

Crushed garlic 1 tsp

Sliced onions 1

Eggplant 1

Long green beans 1 cup

Mama Sita's Kare Kare peanut sauce mix 1 pouch

Pechay Bok Choy (Chinese cabbage) 1 bundle

Cooking oil 1 tbsp

SautŽed shrimp fry 1/2 cup

Direction:

Boil oxtail in eight cups of waterand simmer until meat is tender leaving about 1 1/2 cups stock. Set aside. SautŽ garlic and onion. Add oxtail and the peanut sauce dissolved in one cup of water. Add remaining stock. Stir and simmer for two minutes. Add eggplant (Cut in to diagonal pieces) and string beans (Cut in to two pieces). Simmer for three minutes. Stir once in a while to prevent sauce from sticking to the pan.

Add bok choy and simmer for two minutes or until vegetables are done. Serve with sautŽed shrimp fry. Variation: Pressure cook 1/2 kg Oxtail for 45 minutes to one hour with three to four cups water. Instead of Oxtail, you can also use beef cubes.