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Siomai usually means filling, pleating, and standing each piece upright in a steamer. This version skips all of that. You drop the filling straight into a pan, lay a wrapper on top, then brown, steam, and crisp everything in the same pan. Cooking it upside down also gives you something regular siomai doesn't have: a seared, crisp base where the filling meets the pan, the same idea as a potsticker. Mix the filling in one direction until it turns sticky.

Pinoy carbonara and Italian carbonara share a name and not much else. The latter gets its sauce from eggs, pecorino, and rendered guanciale, with no cream added. The Pinoy version is built on all-purpose cream and milk, usually with bacon and mushrooms. This version keeps that cream base and adds roasted garlic. Roasting turns garlic soft, a little sweet, and more mellow, so it mashes right into the sauce and gives it body without a sharp bite.

You can make a cake with no butter. This recipe for Rose Levy Beranbaum’s Whipped Cream Cake, which we found on ZoëBakes, is proof: using heavy cream instead of butter provides enough butterfat (if not more!) to make a rich, tender cake. But what happens when you substitute the heavy cream for all-purpose cream? All-purpose cream is spiritually Filipino – it’s the home cook’s go-to for mango float, fruit salad, and Pinoy a la king sauces, thanks to its price point and shelf-stability.

Pinakbet seasoned with patis instead of bagoong, for a cleaner, lighter take on the classic. Pinakbet is a vegetable dish cooked with pork until tender. The name comes from the Ilocano word pinakebbet, meaning shriveled, after the way the vegetables cook down in the pot. Use whatever vegetables are in season or in your fridge. It's usually seasoned with bagoong, but this version uses patis.

Tokwa and mushrooms stand in for meat in this lumpia, with freezing and dry-cooking doing the real work on texture. Servings Makes 30-35 pieces I set out to make a gulay version of lumpiang shanghai, and it turns out that makes it vegan too. No meat substitutes, no fuss — just vegetables, tokwa, and mushrooms doing the work. The tokwa is the key step here.

This is the adobo I grew up with — the one that made every other version, restaurant or otherwise, taste like it was missing something. My dad made it in big batches on purpose; pork adobong puti actually gets better after a few days in the fridge, and it reheats clean without breaking. Before he passed, he walked me through exactly how he made it, but for years I couldn't get it to taste right. The fix turned out to be more vinegar than most recipes call for — that's what finally got it close.

Kare kare is usually a labor of love — oxtail and beef tripe simmered low and slow until tender, in a peanut sauce that takes time to build. This version trades the long braise for ground beef, so you get that same rich, nutty sauce in a fraction of the time, without sacrificing the flavor that makes kare kare kare kare.

Pininyahang manok is a Filipino chicken stew built on the sweet-savory-tangy combo that pineapple brings to Filipino cooking — usually finished with evaporated milk for a light creaminess. This version swaps that for coconut milk instead, which trades the mild sweetness of evaporated milk for a richer, more coconutty base that holds up better against the caramelized pineapple and calamansi at the end.

Cabbage rolls show up in a lot of cuisines — Eastern European, Middle Eastern, Chinese — each with its own filling and sauce. This version leans Filipino, using flavors already familiar here instead of the usual tomato sauce or sweet-sour dip. For the wrapper, use pechay baguio — the pale green, tightly-headed cabbage (what Western recipes call Napa cabbage), not pechay Tagalog.

This orange tokwa started as a way to get that craveable orange-chicken hit without buying chicken—tofu takes the sauce just as well, and it costs a fraction of the price. Extra firm tofu holds its shape once torn and fried; anything softer falls apart before it has a chance to crisp up. For an even chewier bite, freeze the tofu block whole, thaw it, then press out the water—the ice crystals break down the structure and get you closer to a meaty texture.