Puto Cheese: Steamed Filipino Rice Cakes
A square of cheese turns a lightly sweet steamed cake into a small savory-sweet snack. These puto use rice flour alongside all-purpose flour, with milk, egg, and butter in the batter and the cheese added near the end of steaming.
Pumpkin Pie Hopia: Filipino-American Holiday Pastry
Pumpkin pie hopia brings spiced pumpkin filling into a small, sealed pastry. Brown sugar and coconut milk soften the filling's earthy flavor, while an egg-washed shell supplies contrast. These are hopia-inspired holiday pastries, with the pumpkin filling doing the borrowing from pie.
Pork Sisig: Sizzling Filipino Pork with Calamansi
Pork belly supplies the rich edges and shoulder supplies the meaty bite in this sisig. After simmering and browning, both are chopped small and finished with red onion, chiles, and calamansi, then pressed into hot cast iron for a crisp underside.
Pinakbet: Filipino Vegetables with Bagoong
Squash needs a head start in this pinakbet. Once it is partly tender, eggplant, beans, okra, and optional bitter melon can steam in the tomato-bagoong juices, giving you a vegetable dish with substance rather than a pot of softened odds and ends.
Pandesal: Soft Filipino Bread Rolls
Fine breadcrumbs give these pandesal their familiar sandy coating, with a soft, lightly sweet roll underneath. Milk, egg, and butter enrich the dough, while a mixture of bread flour and all-purpose flour gives it structure for shaping into sixteen rolls.
Pandesal Bread Pudding with Coconut Caramel
Pandesal takes on a second life here as bread pudding, with coconut milk soaking into the cut rolls and brown sugar caramel spooned over the top. The aim is soft, custardy bread with enough structure to serve in generous portions.
Pancit Guide: Bihon, Canton, Palabok, Sotanghon, and More
The noodles decide much of a pancit dish before the pan is hot. This guide starts with a bihon-canton base recipe, combining two noodle textures with chicken, shrimp, cabbage, and carrot rather than treating every pancit name as the same stir-fry.
Palitaw: Filipino Rice Cakes with Coconut and Sesame
Palitaw turns a soft rice-flour dough into chewy little ovals with coconut clinging to their surfaces. Toasted sesame and sugar finish the cakes with fragrance and a little crunch. Even shaping matters more here than an elaborate ingredient list.
Nilagang Baka: Filipino Beef Soup with Cabbage and Potatoes
Beef shank or chuck, onion, and whole peppercorns make a broth worth keeping simple. Potatoes give nilagang baka substance, cabbage brings a little sweetness, and fish sauce with calamansi on the side lets the meat take a sharper turn at the table.
Lumpia Bowl: Lumpiang Hubad Rice Bowls
Browned pork, narrow-cut vegetables, and a spoonful of sweet chili sauce make this wrapperless lumpia bowl substantial enough for dinner. Cabbage goes in late so it keeps some texture, while fried garlic supplies the crunch that a bowl of soft rice needs.