According to Lordfer Lalicon, the chef and co-owner of Kaya, “One of the most iconic dishes in the Philippines is adobo, a traditional dish that utilizes garlic, suka (cane vinegar), black pepper and bay leafs as the main components.” But instead of the typical chicken or pork, Kaya uses lion’s mane mushrooms in its adobong kabute and finishes it off with some coconut milk, “to give the dish some fattiness.”Filipino adobo shouldn’t be confused with the Mexican sauce; it’s thinner and slightly sweeter.

Local Flavor is a collaboration between Scott Joseph’s Orlando Restaurant Guide and The Community Paper featuring recipes from area chefs and restaurants.

Francesco Aiello, chef and owner of Francesco’s Ristorante & Pizzeria in Maitland, recently celebrated the popular restaurant’s 10th anniversary. Aiello, a native of Palermo, Sicily, attended the cooking school Istituto Alberghiero there, focusing on Italian preparation of seafood and risotto.

When I recently reviewed Turci Pasta, the College Park Italian restaurant, I noted that one of my favorite things wasn’t the freshly made pastas it’s known for — though they were exceptional — but rather an appetizer: bruschetta with prosciutto and burrata. The owners, Vinicius Turci and his wife, Nathalia Kalil, graciously shared the recipe with me.

Burrata is essentially a ball of mozzarella with curds and cream in the center. It’s the creaminess that really stands out with this dish.

You may use a toaster, toaster oven or conventional oven, but be sure to get the bread nice and crisp.

See the full recipe at YourCommunityPaper.

In this episode of Compliments of the Chef, Peter Cox, chef at Sear + Sea at the JW Marriott Orlando Bonnet Creek, shares his recipe for a favorite side dish he serves at the steak and seafood restaurant: Tallow Cabbage. Cox believes in making good use of all the ingredients in his kitchen and keeping waste low, especially because the JW uses high quality ingredients – make use of it all. 

You probably don’t have the fancy grill contraption that Cox has at Sear + Sea, but he says you’ll do just fine with any type of grill you have.

Watch the video then give the recipe a try. Better yet, head down to Sea + Sea and try it from the pro.

Four Flamingos: A Richard Blais Florida Kitchen, the Michelin Recommended restaurant at the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress, has a new mixologist heading up its beverage program. Kat Gallardo has gotten right down to the business of creating new, innovative and refreshing cocktails to pair with the restaurant’s  inventive cuisine.

In this episode of On the House, Gallardo shares her recipe and technique for the Flamingo Barraquito, a delicious dessert drink that includes the Spanish liqueur Licor 43. This is a layered cocktail and Gallardo says the secret is using the back of a spoon when pouring the liquids into the glass. Four Flamingos makes its own coconut vanilla cream foam and smoked sea salt to top it off, but Gallardo says you may use canned whipped cream and any kind of sea salt.

Watch the video then give it a try. If you want to know how it’s really supposed to taste, visit Gallardo and the staff at Four Flamingos.

Local Flavor is a collaboration between Scott Joseph’s Orlando Restaurant Guide and The Community Paper.

Bites & Bubbles, the contemporary American restaurant at Mills Park in the Mills 50 District, is known for its extensive assortment of tapas and charcuterie boards as well as full entrees. And craft cocktails if you’re not in the mood for bubbles.

With summer upon us, chef and co-owner Eddie Nickell is sharing his recipe for Summer Watermelon Salad, which is a perfectly cool option for a hot day. B&B tosses the salad dressing with mixed greens, blueberries and cherry tomatoes, although you could substitute your favorite salad fixings. But do toss in some cubes of juicy watermelon.

The recipe for the dressing makes one quart, but Nickell says you can easily halve it. See the full recipe at yourcommunitypaper.com.

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Photo: Tap Room Dubsdread

In this month’s issue of The Community Paper, my Local Flavor column features the recipe for Hot Crab Dip from the Tap Room at Dubsdread.

Here in Florida, there really isn’t a crab season — we can pretty much get fresh crab all year. However, right now is when the freshest catches occur, so you’re likely to find some good product at your favorite fishmonger. Or crabmonger, if you will.

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Hamburger Mary’s Mac & Cheese Balls. Photo: John Paonessa

Note: Local Flavor is a collaboration between Scott Joseph’s Orlando Restaurant Guide and The Community Paper.

Hamburger Mary’s Bar & Grille, whose motto is “Eat, Drink, and Be … Mary,” celebrated its 15th year in downtown Orlando in March. From the beginning, its Mac & Cheese Balls have been a popular appetizer. John Paonessa, co-owner of the franchise on Church Street, shared the recipe with us.

The yield on the recipe is 60 balls, scaled down from the usual 300 — I told you they were popular — but Paonessa says they can be kept in the freezer until you’re ready to fry them up.

Click the link below to go to the recipe at yourcommunitypaper.com.

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For this month’s edition of Local Flavor, the recipe column I do in collaboration with The Community Paper, I’m featuring the scotch eggs from Claddagh Cottage in the Curry Ford West District. St. Patrick’s Day is in March, after all, and Claddagh Cottage is one of the area’s most popular Irish pubs.

But why feature something Scottish from an Irish pub? you ask. Well, a scotch egg (notice the lowercase s) is not Scottish (uppercase S). Scotching (an uppercase S only because it’s at the beginning of the sentence, otherwise it would be scotching) is the process of wrapping minced meat around something, in this case an egg. If you were to wrap minced meat or sausage around, say, a strawberry it would be called a scotch strawberry. And it would be a lousy appetizer. And indeed, scotch eggs are very popular appetizers in Irish pubs, at least in American Irish pubs.

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Local Flavor is a montly collaboration between Scott Joseph’s Orlando Restaurant Guide and The Community Paper.

I keep a list of recipes I refer to as my graduate student dishes because they’re quick, easy, often use shortcuts and are generally inexpensive to make. This particular recipe I collected shortly after grad school when I was in my first professional job as a communications media specialist. I worked for a small hospital in Illinois doing videography and photography of the sort best not discussed in a food column.

When I mentioned to one of my co-workers — think Flo, the waitress from the TV show “Alice,” but as a medical transcriptionist — that I wanted to cook more meals at home but didn’t know where to begin, she recommended that I start with this recipe, which she recited to me by memory.

It was just right for a novice, sort of like cooking with training wheels.

It’s also a good dish for anyone who needs to whip up something fast, simple and, for the most part, budget-friendly. And it’s an almost-one-dish recipe. In fact, if you want, you can mix the cream of chicken soup and water in the baking dish before you add the rice and eliminate the mixing bowl — you have my permission.

To save time, you can buy the chicken precut, or you can get a whole fryer and chop it up yourself, which you’ll find is cheaper. You can use the chicken wings — or not — but leave the back out of the dish and save it to make chicken stock. That’s a doctoral candidate-level recipe. See the recipe at The Community Paper.

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