Sambal is an Indonesian relish served usually as a side dish. It's a chili-based condiment enjoyed by us Tausugs as an appetizer often paired with sliced cucumber. 

Ingredients used:

8 pieces red tomatoes in medium size (the kind that's red and really firm).

1 heaping tablespoon of freshly ground dried red chili. 

3 pieces of small onions, finely chopped

1 head of garlic, chopped (I like this chopped so finely that I can taste it and not feel it in my mouth)

1/4 cup of peanut butter

1/3-1/2 cup of coconut milk powder (undiluted)

salt

sugar

NOTE: The taste is totally up to you. It can be as hot or as salty, as nutty or as creamy as you want.

STEPS:

1. Boil the tomatoes over medium heat until you start to see the skin peel off.

 Once skins peel off, they are soft enough to be chopped easily.

2. Remove from heat, and cut in really small pieces until you have a soft mushy texture. 

 3. Heat enough oil to saute garlic, onion and tomatoes. Then add seasonings.

 It doesn't matter which one you add first, as long as you can handle the amount that you use. I may have added a little too much chili powder here, used up all that I have ground. Wrong move.

Remember to sprinkle a little at a time and add more as tolerated. Mix everything well so flavor is distributed evenly.

 4. Now add the coconut milk powder and 1-2 tablespoons of sugar.

Tausugs may have a high tolerance for spicy food but we are also Filipinos :-). Adding that much sugar doesn't make it sweet. It just gives balance between the penetrating power of chili and the biting taste of salt.

 6. Lastly, add the peanut butter. When well blended, your Sambal will have a rich orange color and will thicken even more. Lumps of tomatoes and onions will appear.

 Remove from heat before it gets too thick. Once it has cooled down a bit, it should look like this:

Personally I like to pair it with flat bread like the one you see below. It if had not been too hot for my taste, it would have been perfect. It contains coconut milk and tomatoes, so it spoils when left in a warm environment. Refrigerate leftover Sambal and enjoy before two weeks pass.

Hantak is a native biscuit made and served mostly for special occasions e.g. weddings. It resembles a pretzel and is glazed with sugar. It can be made sweet or salty depending on one's preference. My neighbor was kind enough to show me how it's done so you can see for yourselves. This recipe yields around 250 pieces of Hantak. The name, by the way, means something like "dumped" in the Tausug dialect because the dough is dumped onto the table as a kneading method. If you don't want to make this many biscuits, simply divide the ingredients to the desired measurements. For example, if you want to make just half of the recipe, divide all the ingredients into half. 

Ingredients:

1 kilo flour (you can use all-purpose but here, 3rd-class flour was used)

1/2 cup sugar

100g STAR margarine (the regular kind)

3 eggs

3/4 cup water

Oil for frying

Procedure:

1. Mix all the ingredients in a large bowl until well integrated. The color will be yellow and will form into a ball.

2. Knead the dough in a push-away motion. Fold the farther end of the dough over and knead again. Do this until the dough looks like on the picture below when cut. Today, you can use an electric appliance to make the dough. The length of time to make it depends on the amount of your ingredients. This recipe takes more than 10 minutes for the dough to look like this:

                       

                               

3. Once the dough is ready, cut it into slices above and flatten each with a pasta maker or a rolling pin. It should be this thick only:

4. Slice the flattened dough into half-inch thick strips that are 2.5 to 3 inches long. (see above pic).

5. This is the fun part: twist each strip like so:

and join the ends together to form a teardrop-shaped pretzel:

Do this with the rest of the dough to make twice this many:

6. Deep fry in oil on medium high. You don't want your biscuits to brown too soon and have a "burnt" taste.

Deep fry until golden brown.

7. Now it's time to glaze. In a clean pan, heat the (white) sugar until completely melted. Add the biscuits and quickly cover with melted sugar because the sugar dries up pretty quickly.

When finished, it should look like this. This cooks for about 5-7 minutes. Be sure not to leave it cooking when you glaze. Constantly mix the the mixture to evenly coat the biscuits.

This is how it looks like when you're done glazing.

 What you need:

 6 bananas, preferably overripe ones (I was just lucky I found these babies in a nearby store tonight)

1 1/2 tsp baking powder (if you're making as much as what I made, you'd need that much)

 2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup white fine sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract (I used the powder kind for this, either will do)

Have you noticed we don't need water? Yep, no water needed coz we have enough bananas to make a really moist batter.

STEPS:

1. Mash bananas until you have a soft mass like in this pic below.

2. Add the sugar. Mix it well. You don't need more sugar because the sweetness of the bananas make up half of the sweetness we need.

3. Add the baking powder. Mix well.

4. Now add the flour and mix thoroughly.

5. Using a fork, mix the flour with the banana mixture until well blended.

7. Fill the pan with enough oil to deep fry Pali’ kambing balls. Place the fire on medium heat. Low heat yields oily result and high heat will burn the balls fast.

8. Using two spoons, scoop a spoonful of batter with one and drop it into the oil by sliding the mixture down with another like so. Do this until you have enough balls to fill the pan. Just make sure you have space for them to move around in.

9. Flip the balls over once you see the bottoms begin to brown.

Fritters are ready when they are crispy on the outside and have a brown color but not burned.

10. The key is to keep flipping them over to avoid overcooking.

11. When cooked, strain them for a minute and they are ready to serve.

The inside should be moist and soft but solid. Hope you give this a try!