Persia Grill and Banoffee during lunch out...

Lets take a break from my usual culinary school stories... I just wanted to share my experience in Persian Grill and Banoffee in Makati...

Persia Grill
Having a friend at the office who loves Persian dishes we tried out the little Persian restaurant called  Persia Grill along Valero St. Makati. The restaurant itself was cute and has its little Persian flair. I have ordered Baba Ganoush (Freshly roasted eggplant with garlic, tahini, fresh lemon and olive oil and pita bread) for starters and Chelo Kebab Kobideh (charbroiled ground beef prepared with Persian spices, fresh grilled tomato and steamed cooked long grain rice.) Overall the food was good and we had our fill. We used up a lot of the garlic sauce and hot sauces by the way.

Would I recommend it to a friend? Well its a so-so for me as I would probably recommend Cafe Medeteranian or Cyma instead. Also my friend swears that we should try Mr. Kabab next time.

Banapple
I have learned of Banapple from another office friend who brought assorted slices of Banapple's pies and cakes in the office. I really love their cakes and boy was I glad that they opened up a branch in Ayala Triangle. But contrary to their best selling banoffe pie, my favorite is the old fashioned chocolate cake. Recently I tried their holiday offering called "Banana starry-berry custard cheesecake" the cake is worthy of its tongue twisting name. Its a perfect balance of the sweetness of banana and custard with the tartness of the berries and cream cheese. Banapple also offers dishes such as hickory baby back ribs and baked fish to name a few.

Would I recommend it to a friend? Yes I will. I already visited Banapple 3x this week, if that is not proof enough of how good they are... too bad for my diet though.

Cookie Monster

 After the success of our first stint at the kitchen, last week we made cookies. We made, choco chip cookies, double choco chip cookies, chocolate crinkles, Chirstmas cookies, oatmeal and raisin cookies and tulip cookies. But before I tell you guys about the baking and making part we first had to finish our lecture in the morning. In the middle of the lecture our instructor asked who consumes more cookies than anybody? Me and my big mouth blurted out "Cookie Monster" hence the laughter inside the class. But the correct answer was the Americans. We were told that USA consumes more cookies than any other country in the world.

After the lecture we had our lunch break followed by our hands on. My group was assigned to make chocolate crinkles and tulip cookies. (For those who do not know what a tulip cookie is, this cookie is similar to the a delicate wafer cone or a krumkake) I was surprised that we finished faster in making cookies than our previous stint making muffins and banana loaf. We even have enough time to help other teams in making Christmas cookies and gingerbreads. Tomorrow we are scheduled to make bars and when they say "bars" in the baker's linggo this means brownies, blondies, food for the gods and fruit cakes to name a few. And as always I will keep you guys...(if there are people reading this) posted...  =o)