Fried Trout

Somebody stole some slices of the tomato before I was able to take a picture of this :-)

All turkeyed-out, I started craving for fish. Trout and Salmon are so much in season these days. I bought two tiny ones supposedly to be steamed. When we got home, I realized we didn’t have onions and the rest of the stuff to cook these the way I normally do so I decided to try frying them instead.

What I used:

1 egg, beaten combined with about ½ tsp of salt
½ cup flour
olive oil for frying

Heat oil in pan. You will know that the pan is ready for frying if the oil produces a crispy boiling sound if you sprinkle water in the heated pan. While heating pan, prepare fish for frying. Dip fish in egg mixture and drench in flour and drop fish in heated oil. Each side should be fried for about 5 minutes or until brown. Serve with tomatoes and onions if desired.

Turkey Fried Rice

Okey, okey, I know you guys are turkeyed-out just by reading my post. Allow me though to post just this one and we’ll call it the end of my turkey story for now. For now because I still got some in the freezer.

The ingredients I used here are all leftovers. I had one, just one piece of chorizo sausage left. Of course I also had the turkey meat. Well, one rainy night last week made me too lazy to think of what to prepare for dinner. The mounting containers of leftovers in the fridge made me feel like getting rid of what’s inside the fridge altogether.

I had lots of small containers of cooked rice. In one corner, I had the chorizo. On the other, a small container of corn and in the freezer is about ¼ cup of green peas. Huh, what about putting them all together and coming up with fried rice? Not bad!

Ingredients:

1 tbsp of olive oil
1 chorizo sausage coarsely chopped
1 cup of turkey meat
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
½ coarsely chopped medium onion
about 4 cups of cooked rice
about ¼ cup of corn
about ¼ cup of green peas
salt to taste

In a pan, heat the oil. Put chorizo and cook until brown. Put chorizo on the side of the pan. Cook garlic for about 1 minute or until garlic turns lightly brown. Add onions and turkey meat. Add rice and cook for about 5 minutes. Add corn and green peas and cook for another 2 minutes. Season wit salt. I used a dash of paprika to add color to it. I had this for lunch the next day.

Turkey Quesadillas

Filling should only be half cooked or only for a short time so that you could feel the crispiness of the peppers and the onion.

Don't forget to spread the shredded mozarella cheese and you'll be fine.

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After that tummy filling turkey dinner we had came the unending saga of how I was going to make the leftovers into useful meals. Left with a few quesadilla wraps from my Shrimp Quesadillas I decided to make Turkey Quesadillas. I deboned the legs and chopped the meat coarsely.

My ingredients

1 tbsp of olive oil
About 1 cup of chopped mushrooms
½ medium red bell pepper chopped coarsely
½ cup medium green bell pepper chopped coarsely
½ medium onion chopped coarsely
1 cup of coarsely chopped turkey legs
1 tbsp of cumin powder
1 tbsp of paprika
1 cup of grated mozzarella cheese
tortilla wraps

In a pan, heat the oil. Add all the first 8 ingredients and cook for 1 minute. Spread the veggies on half side of the wrap, top with grated cheese and fold the wrap.

Bake at 250 in oven toaster for about 8-10 minutes or until cheese is melted.

Serve with sour cream.

Turkey Dinner

Looking for Thanksgiving Day ideas? How about this turkey dinner we just had? Turkey Dinner is definitely an acquired tradition and taste for my family. Not a popular occasion for Filipinos to trade their marvelous foods for. For one thing, the stuffing is something foreign to us. On the other, we find the turkey a little bland compared to chicken which we're used to.

I believe in the saying that “When you’re in Rome, do what the Romans do”. I can experience Filipino dinners anywhere, anytime of the year but not the excitement of celebrating Thanksgiving Day with a Turkey once a year. There are only 8 countries celebrating Thanksgiving Day according to the history book I read and I happen to be in one of them. I'd like to have something to share when my officemates talk about what they had and who they were with on Thanksgiving Day. Their stories are the same over and over, year after year but it must be just the spirit of Thanksgiving that they get so excited about it. I love to celebrate it with the thought of bountiful blessings we've had over the years. Lastly, I would like to make sure my kids are not ignoramus about this when they spend dinners with other people in the future.

I Filipinized my turkey dinner as usual. I modified my stuffing from the usual bread crumbs with sage, rosemary and thyme to rice with sausage. I got the idea from my officemate when we were deciding what to do on our boss’ 50th birthday. A suggestion was stuffing the turkey with rice and sausage. I offered myself to look after it. I first fried the sausage(fresh chorizo preferably), with onions, and garlic and then the rice. I seasoned it with Club House Garlic Plus Seasoning and a tablespoon of herb de provence and lots and lots of dried parsley. Oh, it was heavenly. My officemate was quite surprised that my stuffing turned out to be so good. When she suggested rice with sausages, she meant the raw sausage and cooked rice mixed together and stuffed in without cooking it first. (You can add ham, smokies and other sausages you can think of if you want)

We skipped the Brussel sprouts part. For the life of me, no matter how I will try to change the process of cooking these cabbage looking thingys, (no offense meant to JMom) it’s not going to work out with my not-so-fuzzy family members. I myself hardly like it, I tried. I substituted it of course with canned corn, carrots and spring mix salad.

We had a bit of cheese nibblers and some pickles and boiled sausages for appetizers but when the bird is served right in front of you, would think of having the appetizers?

Our big bird, between 5 and 6 lbs was baked for 3 hours or a bit longer and basted with its own juice once in a while. Others put bacon on top. I think we only had about 1/4 or 1/3 of it and kept the leftovers in the freezer. I make the leftovers into Sotanghon Soup (have you ever thought about that before?) and Barley Soup. The turkey serving was topped with cranberry sauce. Sounds funny alright because of the cranberries' sweet taste but hey, I tried it with gravy and it wasn't as good. There must be a reason why cranberry was chosen to go with Turkey. My son will make turkey sandwich out of the leftovers for sure.

After our big dinner, we had pumpkin pie with a dollop of whipped cream and English tea. The pie was not homemade. For the amount of work you have to do to make one, I went for the commercialized one. BTW, the pie in the picture is my son's. It was not just a dollop of whipped cream. He actually put tons and tons of it.

Shrimp Quesadillas

Coming home knowing your husband wasn’t going to me home just made me lazy to prepare dinner. I decided to prepare Quesadillas. They were definitely easy to prepare.

1 tbsp of olive oil
About 1 cup of chopped mushrooms
½ medium red bell pepper chopped coarsely
½ cup medium green bell pepper chopped coarsely
½ medium onion chopped coarsely
1 cup of cooked shrimps chopped coarsely
1 tbsp of cumin powder
1 tbsp of paprika
1/4 cup of coarsely chopped cucumber

1 cup of grated mozzarella cheese
tortilla wraps


In a pan, heat the oil. Add all the first 8 ingredients and cook for 1 minute. Spread the veggies on half side of the wrap, top with grated cheese and fold the wrap.

Bake at 250 in oven toaster until cheese is melted. It’s supposed to be grilled but cooking for 3, I was too lazy to turn the grill on. Besides, the grill was outside and of course it was cold.
Serve with sour cream.

Bocconcini Cheese Ball and Vegetable Dips

Entering the store with organic foods, I was so enticed on eating vegetables. Afterall, I was still feeling shitty (pardon me). I am not infanticipating but I must have had something that just turned my tummy upside down and maybe, just maybe the morning headache.

I prepared a few cauliflower florets and broccoli crowns with celery sticks and baby carrots. Oh well, a couple of cherry tomatoes too if they count. Ranch was what I had in mind for the dressing but I only had Thousand Island.

Of course I saw this familiar Bocconcini Cheese Ball. It was introduced by a Swiss officemate who has long gone back to Switzerland. I tried it but it was not as good. I must have loved this cheese because of the company when I first had it.

Balimbing, Mangosteen, Saba and Passion Fruit

My weekend didn't work as planned. We originally planned for a turkey dinner last weekend. Before I knew it, husband was working overtime and was not coming home until 12:00 AM. Besides that, I woke up early Saturday with a terrible headache. My husband kept on blaming me for not using my pair of glasses. He wanted me to wear them on and go back to bed. I haven't heard of anyone sleeping with their glasses on except my Uncle who used to work so hard and would usually fall asleep on the couch while watching TV. Anyway, I went back to bed after drinking aspirin and woke up at 11:00 am refreshed and headache gone or so I thought. Since hubby was working I thought of going shopping. There was a mall newly opened a few minutes away from us. Kids knew what they were going to be into if they went with me so they pretended they had lots of homework. I decided to take it easy and take the bus instead of driving. In the new mall, there was a store selling purely organic foods. Not that I go for purely organic foods but I was quite surprised with what they had. This cost me over $6 but I wanted to show my kids what these were.

Of course when I bought the saba I already had something to try in mind. Sassy had this but she had it fried. I tried brushing the saba with butter and baked them in the oven toaster instead of frying them. I simmered about 6 tbsp of honey and 1/4 homo milk for the topping. It was alright but I will try it with something else when I go to the Filipino store. (I forgot to put the cinnamon)

Fresh Lumpia

Something my daughter cooked. Definitely the pro on "crepe" making and the paalat sauce. Using Let's Cook with Nora, she has modified this according to our taste. She had difficulty in making the wrapper but has finally gotten comfortable in making them herself without my assistance.

Vegetable Filling

3 tbsp. olive oil 3 cup cabbage, shredded
2 cup string bean, julienne ½ cup onions, chopped
2 tbsp. patis ¼ ground pork
1-cup potatoes, julienne 1-cup carrots, julienne

Put oil in frying pan.
Add onions and cook until transparent.
Add ground pork and cook for until lightly brown.
Add potatoes and cook until soft.
Add carrots and cook until soft.
Then add string beans, mix and add cabbage.
Sprinkle patis through out vegetables for taste.

Home-Made Lumpia Wrapper

2 eggs
1 cup water
½ cup flour

Combine all three ingredients in a bowl.
Brush frying pan with a little oil and heat.
Spoon batter into pan and tilt it to spread the batter evenly on pan.
Lift off wrapper when done.

Lumpia Sauce or Paalat

1/2 sugar 1 tsp salt
1 tbsp soy sauce 2 tbsp cornstarch dissolved in ¼ cup water
2 cups broth 4-6 cloves garlic, finely chopped
peanut butter

Blend first 4 ingredients together and bring mixture to a boil.
Add cornstarch to thicken mixture, and then add peanut butter.3. Sprinkle with chopped garlic and serve on top of lumpia.

Wrap fillings adding a piece of lettuce to garnish. Top with Paalat.

Lemon Meringue

My daughter baked this at her Foods Class. Although my kids share the same passion for cooking, my girl is better at baking, my son is better at making our kitchen messy. There is also the "weather-weather" factor here. Depending on the weather, they could be so interested in cooking but most of the time, they prefer to stay in their room. On days they show interest, heck I'll let them. I need a day off afterall. There is just one rule they have to adhere to..clean up after your mess or you get to be the kitchen helper for the day. It's nice to start them early in life. This is lifted from her school's Foods Class recipe book.

Graham Cracker Crust

1-cup crumbs (250 ml)
1/3 cup melted butter (75ml)
¼ cup sugar

Press into greased 8” or 9” or into smaller foil pie plates.
Then chill for 5 minutes.

Filling(the recipe calls for 2/3 cup sugar but she's learning from me)

1/2 cup sugar (150 ml) 3 egg yolks
¼ cup cornstarch (60 ml) 75 ml lemon juice
¾ cup warm water (200 ml) 2 tsp. margarine (10 ml)
Zest of lemon

Mix sugar and cornstarch in top of the double boiler with a wooden spoon. Gradually add warm water and cook over boiling water stirring constantly until mixture thickens, and almost boils. Remove from heat. Beat egg yolks, lemon juice and zest of lemon in a small bowl. Slowly add yolk mixture to cornstarch mixture, stirring constantly. Return top of double boiler to heat, stir until thick. Remove from heat and blend in margarine. Pour into baked pie shell.

Meringue

3 egg whites
Pinch of cream of tartar
3 tbsp. sugar (45 ml)

Beat egg whites with cream of tartar until frothy. Gradually beat in 2 tbsp. sugar and continue beating until stiff and glossy. Pile meringue onto pie filling. Be careful to seal meringue to the crust all around the edge to prevent shrinking and weeping. Swirl or pull up point for decorative top. Bake 8-10 minutes at 350 or until delicately browned.

Puto

Yes, Puto. They were home-made alright but out of a pre-mixed box. I also used my egg poacher which wasn't a bad idea. I will tell you how I made them just the same.

Shrimp Wonton Soup

This is what my kids are going to have for tonight. I am going to visit a cousin who is suffering from CA and my kids find it morbid to even think about the fact. In short, they don’t want to go with me. Dad is on afternoon shift so it will be just the two rugrats left to fend for themselves. My daughter said she can just cook wonton with shrimps and vegetables. I trained them well, can you tell?

This is one picture I took a while ago. With frozen wontons, I could come up with a lot of ideas. I incorporate a lot of vegetables. I can also add some shrimps or when I get too fancy, I put barbecued tenderloin. But the basic how to is here.

1 lb of ground pork3 pieces of Pilipino longanisa(skinless)-optional

1 onion chopped finely

dash of ground pepper

1 clove of finely chopped garlic

4 tbsp of soy sauce

1 egg

1 tbsp of sesame oil

wanton wrappers

vegetables of your choice

a block of knorr seasoning or 1 tbsp of oxo shrimp seasoning

green onions, finely chopped

Mix the first 7 ingredients, except the wanton wrappers. Stuff the wrappers with about 1 tbsp of the mixture. Freeze extras for rainy days.

Boil about 2 cups of water. Put frozen wontons in. Let boil. Season with concentrated stock of your choice. Add Shrimps. Let boil until shrimps turn pink. Turn off stove and add vegetables if you them crisp. Let stand for about 5 minutes. Serve topped with chopped green onions and ground pepper if you wish.

Of course they have the adobong pusit and the guinataang pusit but I will hear about it later when I get home tonight..I have a feeling that I will have to finish everything myself.

Adobong Pusit

I know, I will never hear the end of this. The smallest portion I could buy was 1 kilo in ice block. I had to thaw the whole thing. I can not put the other half in the freezer because the quality will deteriorate for one thing or it will eventually get freezer dried on the other. I decided I’d cook half into guinatang pusit and the other as adobo instead. We can’t take this for lunch. I could just imagine how my officemates will give me a bad time because of the smell if I did bring this so we’ll see how my family is going to deal with these two recipes in the coming days. You’ll find out.

3 tbsp of olive oil
½ kilo of fresh pusit (well cleaned)
½ coarsely chopped medium onion
½ coarsely chopped tomato
Dash of ground pepper
2 cloves of finely chopped garlic
10 tbsp of soy sauce
10 tbsp of vinegar
1 tbsp of sugar

Put everything in a pan. Let boil and then simmer for about 15 minutes. It’s that simple. If you know how to cook any kind of adobo, pork or chicken, you can do this too. It wasn’t spicy. I should have put some but it’s too late now.

Spicy Guinataang Pusit

Intrigued by Tito Rolly's message on my other blog, I attempted to cook this. Another First Time, First Served. How spicy can you get? Well, our ears were burning hot! The recipe tomorrow.

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I’ve never tried cooking guinataang pusit before so as soon as I read Tito Rolly’s comment, I got curios. He mentioned “spicy adobong pusit and foods with gata” and so I thought of a good combination. Spicy Adobong Pusit? I cook adobong pusit but not spicy.. and then another idea..what if I cooked it with coconut milk and make it spicy? I tried "goggling Guinataang Pusit recipe I could follow but couldn't find one, so here I am, posting my experiment. Believe me, it worked.

Ingredients

1 cup of coconut milk
½ kilo of squid, drained and cleaned (including the ink or your guinataang squid will be black)
½ medium onion, finely chopped
½ tomato, coarsely chopped
about 5 green sili (spicy ones)
2 dried red sili (chopped, depending on how brave you are)
1 cup of coconut milk
salt to taste

When I cook something with coconut milk, I always turn the creamiest part of the coconut milk into oil, where you let the cream boil until it is reduced to gravy like thickness and consistency, and rendering a bit of oil in the process (I’ll call this semi-oil muna).

Once it has turned into “semi-oil”, add the onions and sauté for about 1 minute. Add the tomato and the green and red sili. Cook for about 1 minute. Add the squid, stir and cover the pan. Simmer for about 10 to 15 minutes. Cooking it longer will make your squid tough.

The taste improves if left in the fridge overnight.

Chicken Sandwich

Well, I have a guest blogger, my son and he's claiming 100 % propriety on this one. He made the sandwich and he wrote the recipe. He wants to be a chef one day. (Hmmm, I don't know about that). His elective is Home Ec or specifically Foods. His first recipe was bruschetta.

Ingredients:

Baked Chicken
Mashed Potatoes
Tomatoes, Sliced
Lettuce Leaf
Mayonnaise
Dijon Mustard
Two Slices of Bread
Pickles

Spread mayonnaise on the bread slices. Spread the mashed potatoes. Strip the chicken and lay on top of the potatoes.

Slice tomatoes into round slices. Slice the pickles lengthwise. Lay tomatoes and lettuce and pickles on the other slice of bread.

This is good for lunch after a big party with lots of leftovers.

Manong Ken's Carinderia and a Little Bit of Nostalgia

In search of authentic Filipino dishes? You might find this helpful. He describes in detail how Filipinos toiled to make a fiesta succesful. I am so glad that he's kept this over the years. This is the closest authentic description of how Filipino cuisine is that I found from binayong saging to the early history of how Filipino dishes are prepared. You will appreciate what he's been saying on his site if you grew up in the Philippines during my time.

My kids would probably not appreciate this because they've only been to my mother's hometown once and that was when they were 2 & 3 y/o (over ten years ago). The rice paddies are probably non-existent anymore. I heard the creek that runs through my lola's house has dried up a long time ago because of irresponsible fishing and all sorts by the townfolks. Fishing was something I always looked forward to as a young kid. Any fish caught was simply cooked as pinangat. Hito was always broiled and cooked as either sinigang or "pesa" style. Now, I heard people fished with the aid of dynamites.

Making kakanin took my relatives overnight to do. It was always fun though. People cannot probably imagine how it is to prepare food without electricity now but fifteen some years ago, my relatives would be pounding yams, boiled bananas and cassavas in the dark (well with the aid of lamps we called Petromax). Refrigerator was not heard off so I kinda wonder now how kakanin never went bad for about 2 days then.

I do not know but it was not always the food that mattered. We always looked forward to the long trip, the stop over for lunch, fruits bought by the highway, seaside scenery, the carabao ride, fruits direct from the tree, things I never experienced in the city. Being a city kid, everyone would like to invite me for dinner. I would expect the same dish over and over--boiled eggs and chicken for as long as I was there. I had an Uncle who as soon as he learns that we are on our way to the province, he would right away go fishing for us. He would come and fetch us from the bus stop(a little modern term for lack of a better word) next town or about 2 hours by kariton. I probably wouldn't like to be on a kariton again for fear of backaches but my kids might love to.

My lola has grown old. She's been brought to Manila so my Uncle could look after her. She however went back to the province now. According to her, she wants to die there. She's turning a hundred in June next year. The roads of course have improved. There is electricity now and they don't pump water by hand anymore. And so I end this with a note of nostalgia.

Spaghetti Meatballs

This is one of my favorite stuff to freeze. The kids can just cook the pasta if they need to, thaw the frozen sauce, heat it in the microwave and I wont have to worry about them. I had to work last weekend and so this came in handy.

Whenever I can avoid frying, I try to. My meatballs were not fried. I cooked them in the toaster oven.

Ingredients

About 2 lbs of lean ground beef
1 medium onion, finely chopped,
5 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
2 eggs
4 tbsp of flour
¼ or less soy sauce
1 tbsp of dried parsley
1 tbsp of dried oregano
2 tbsp of olive oil
½ medium onions, coarsely chopped
2 cans of 400 ml tomato sauce
salt to taste
Cooked spaghetti pasta per packaging instructions
Parmesan Cheese
Garlic Bread


Mix the 8 ingredients together. Form meatballs into about a jackstone ball size or smaller. Arrange in a cookie sheet if you are baking them in the oven, otherwise in the pan that came with the toaster if you are using the toaster. You might have to do two batches if you are using the toaster. Bake for about 20 minutes or until cooked.

In a pan, heat the olive oil. Saute onions until translucent. Add the cooked meatballs. Season to taste. Add the Tomato sauce and simmer for about 20 minutes on low heat. Sometimes, I add green and red pepper but I had none when I cooked this. Whenever I go vegetable freak, I add brocolli and carrots but it isn’t a popular one for my loyal tasters.

Serve hot on top of pasta. Top with parmesan cheese. Serve with Garlic Bread and salad.

Mushrooms, Tomato and Onion Omelette (Omelet)

I grew up to have known only the following omelets: Potato, Tomato and Onion, Tortang Talong until I got out of the Philippines and have widened my cooking horizon. (Naks!). Oopps, I forgot the sardines omelet.

I always try to incorporate vegetables in my recipes whenever I can and this is one way of doing it. I got this idea from a Caucasian friend of mine.


Ingredients:


2 tbsp of olive oil to sauté vegetables, 4 tbsp to fry eggs
½ onion, chopped
½ tomato, sliced
about 6 pcs of medium mushrooms, quartered
about 2 tbsp of finely chopped green onions
4 eggs scrambled
salt to taste

Heat oil in a pan and add onions. Cook until translucent. Add tomatoes and cook for about 1 minute. Add mushrooms and green onions. Season. Set aside.

Using a Teflon pan or the same pan (cleaning it first), heat oil. Spread ½ of the scrambled eggs and cook for about half a minute. Add half of the cooked vegetables in the middle. Cook for another half a minute. Fold one side towards the other. Cook each side for about 1 minute. I prefer the stove to be on medium heat to make sure the inside of the omelet is cooked.

Do the same for the other half. Serve hot with salt and pepper.

Need some dinner ideas?

1. Sinigang na Baka 2.Malaysian Chicken Curry 3.Shrimps, Peas & Cashews

1.Thai Chicken Curry 2.Stir Fry 3.Seafood Combination

1.Fried Chow Mien 2.Guinisang Upo 3.Beef Mami

Stuffed Pork Tenderloin with Asparagus, Mushrooms and Snow Peas

Stuffed Pork Tenderloin

For the Pork Tenderloin

pork tenderloin2 cloves of garlic, chopped finely
dash of ground pepper
¼ cup of soy
lemon juice

Using a paring knife, starting in the middle, shave meat lenghtwise down the tenderloin keeping 1/4 inch thickness at all times until meat lays flat. Others call the process “butterflying”. Marinate with the 4 ingredients above for about 30 minutes.

For the stuffing:

2 tbsp of olive oil2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
½ onion, finely chopped1/4 red bell pepper, diced
1/4 yellow bell pepper, diced3 Tablespoons - celery, diced1 1/2 packed cups of cooked rice 1 tbsp dried parsley3 Tablespoons - green onion tops, minced
1 tbsp of Club House Garlic Plus Seasoning

Heat oil in a pan. Add garlic and cook until fragrant. Add onions. Saute for about 1 minute. Add the peppers and the celery. Add the rice and mix well. Season. Turn off stove and add the parsley and green onions. Let cool for about 10 minutes.

Spread the rice stuffing over pork and roll up to create a pinwheel. I do not secure it with toothpicks of strings. Rather, I wrap the tenderloin in a tin foil to keep the tenderloin from drying. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes. Remove tin foil and brush tenderloin with your favorite barbecue sauce and bake for another 5 minutes. Remove from oven and let stand for about 5 minutes. If tenderloin is not cooled, the tendency is that the stuffing will crumble. Slice pork and serve with your favorite sauce.
Some tips: Sometimes I add sausages in my stuffing. Others use apples. Others also use bread crumbs. I prefer rice. In fact when I bake turkey, I use the same stuffing but I add more ingredients to my stuffing.

Asparagus, Mushrooms and Snowpeas

There’s actually more than asparagus, mushrooms and snow peas in this recipe.

Here’s what is in my recipe:

1 tbsp of olive oil
½ sliced onions
1 bundle of asparagus, cut into about 1 ½ inches long, discarding the tough part
200 gms of mushrooms, quartered
½ red pepper, diced
¼ yellow pepper, diced
1 cup of bean sprouts
200 gms of snow peas, stringed
Salt to taste

Heat oil in a pan. Add onions and sauté until onion is translucent. Add mushrooms and asparagus and cook for about 1 minutes. Add red and yellow peppers and cook for about 1 minute. Season with salt. Add snow peas and bean sprouts and turn oven off. Cover pan and let it stand for about 5 minutes.

Chunky Seafood-Potato Soup

Autumn is here! Bring out your soup recipes. Here's mine! This is a modification of a recipe one of my officemates made. If I followed the actual recipe, it would have been so thick, rich and creamy because she used cheddar cheese and whole cream milk. I’ve improved on the kind of milk I use in cooking. I have kept to a minimum the use of Campbell’s Cream of whatevers to enhance the taste of my food. In the past, I thought I could never live without Campbell’s soup.

Well, I have also substituted ham with mixed seafood and imitated crabmeat. I plan to have the richer version though for Thanksgiving.

What you need:

2 tbsp of olive oil
1 small onion, coarsely chopped
3 medium new potatoes peeled and diced.
1 stalk of celery cut in about ¼ inch long
½ cup of mixed seafood
½ cup of imitated crab meat
1 cup of water
3 cups of skim milk
Salt to season

In a deep saucepan, heat oil. Add onion and cook until translucent. Add potatoes and cook until tender adding a bit of water if necessary. Add celery and cook for about 1 minute. Add the seafood.

Gradually add water and skim milk making sure that milk does not burn at the bottom of pan. Season. Simmer over low heat for about 15 minutes stirring frequently. Serve hot.Preview of what's coming!

Tuna Melts

Here's a quick fix when you have no leftovers for lunch the next day.

When there are no leftovers, these tuna melts will definitely look like you’ve taken your time to prepare them. Not really. As I said, these are quick fixes. All you need are slices of bread, a can of tuna, a dab of mayonnaise, finely chopped celery, finely chopped green onions, dash of salt and pepper. Mix all the ingredients together except for the bread. Spread over slice of bread. Top with grated cheese. Put in oven toaster and bake until cheese melts. Tadaa!! Delicious

Beef Ampalaya

I am not sure how many of you are really looking forward to this recipe. Ampalaya or bitter melon is not one that is pleasant to eat for some. I am fortunate that my kids do not complain or whine when I serve them this one. When I had this first, I had doubts that it was even going to be an acceptable dish so I prepared something else just in case. Lo and behold, my son ate it like it was an ordinary dish and never made a big fuzz out of it. If there’s one thing that my son would not swallow, it is the ocra. It is the opposite for my daughter. She loves ocra. I think between my daughter and my son, they both can live under one roof when I’m not there to cook for them anymore.

For some, they blanch the ampalaya first before they incorporate it with the beef. I cook the ampalaya directly.


1/4 cup of soy sauce
dash of ground black pepper
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 lb of round steak beef, sliced thinly
4 tbsp of olive oil
½ onions, coarsely chopped
2 pcs of ampalaya ring sliced
1 tsp of corn starch dissolved in about ¼ cup of water

Mix the first 4 ingredients together and use it to marinate the beef for about 15 minutes.

Heat 3 tbsp of oil in a pan. Saute marinated beef (more like frying) for about 3 minutes on each side. Set aside.

In the same pan, use the remaining oil to sauté the onions. Once onion is crystallized, add the ampalaya and cook for about 4 minutes or until cooked. Add the beef and the dissolved cornstarch. Stir until cornstarch is mixed consistently with the beef and ampalaya. Season and serve hot.

Wonton Soup

Sometimes known as wanton, I think this is just not enjoyed by Chinese. The Vietnamese serve this too. This is one of the easiest to cook that’s surely going to please any kind of crowd. With just over a pound of ground pork, you can make siomai, lumpia and wonton soup for a group of four anyway.

What I usually do is make the stuffing, wrap them accordingly(siomai, lumpia or wonton), pack them tightly and freeze them. Rush hours abound at home and they make good emergency responses to hungry tummies or tired mommies.

Here’s what you need:

1 lb of ground pork

3 pieces of Pilipino longanisa(skinless)or chinese sausage(finely chopped)-optional

1 onion chopped finely

dash of ground pepper

1 clove of finely chopped garlic

4 tbsp of soy sauce

1 egg1 tbsp of sesame oil

wanton wrappers

vegetables(your choice)

a block of knorr seasoning or 1 tbsp of oxo shrimp seasoning
green onions, finely chopped

Mix the first 8 ingredients. Stuff the wonton wrapper with about 1 tbsp of the meat mixture. I wrap the whole mixture and freeze some.

Boil about 4 cups of water. Drop the wontons in boiling water and let boil for about 5 minutes. Add vegetables and cook for about 4 minutes or until vegetables are cooked. Season. Serve hot. Garnish with green onions and ground black pepper.

I personally use carrots, cauliflower and brocolli. Others use green leafy vegetables. I serve about 4 pieces per person and I find it that it is a meal in itself. I often add coarsely chopped shrimp meat.

Never thaw frozen wontons. Boil them frozen because the texture of the wrapper deteriorates once thawed.

Gai Lan with Oyster Sauce

Gai Lan or in my receipt it was Gailon belongs to the variety of brocolli. I have not actually seen anything like this in the Philippines. It must be grown in China because we’ve come to know about this at a Chinese Restaurant. They are being sold in most grocery stores except that you wouldn’t buy it if you do not know how to handle it. Noticing that this was a familiar order by a lot of Chinese at our favorite restaurant, we asked the waitress and so she gave us a short background about this and how it was being cooked.

My family is a family of inquisitive and daring people. We try anything and everything except for the snake blood that BongK is talking about. Believe me, my kids have tried adobong palaka already. Well, there are other exotic foods out there that we are saving for daring days.

There is nothing extra ordinary about cooking this. If you know how to boil kamote tops, you will know how to cook this too. No, this is not boiled. This is cooked in its own juice, if you may.

All you need:

1tbsp of olive oil
1 bunch of Gai Lan,
2 cloves of finely chopped garlic
5 tbsp of oyster sauce

Trim the Gai Lan like you would with camote tops, separating the stalk from the leaves and discarding the tougher stalks.

Heat the pan and oil. Put the Gai Lan, stalks first then the leaves and cover the pan. Cook for about 5 to seven minutes checking occasionally to make sure that ypu are not overcooking one side of the leaves and undercooking the other. Add the oyster sauce and garlic. Serve hot.

I believe that this is a good source of Folic Acid, helpful in carrying iron to your red blood cells.

Palabok

I cooked this last weekend. It's been a slack Sunday for me. Maybe not, but I have been meaning to cook this for a long time so I tried to pick a good time. Back in the Philippines, I would patiently pound the shrimp heads and shells with pestle and mortar to extract the needed taste for my sauce. I would also extract the color off the atsuete seeds, never mind if the colors stuck to my fingernails for a week even if I washed them ten times.

Now, I could hardly find atsuete here. The shrimps come deveined or shelled and Mama Sita's Palabok Mix come in boxes. The instructions on how to cook palabok of course are found at the back of the packet. If you followed the instructions, sure you will come up with a palabok but not as good as mine (**wink**). I do more than what is at the back of the packet.

For four people, these is what you need:

1 pack (250 gms) of Palabok Noodles
2 tbsp of olive oil
½ to 1 lb of lean ground pork
1 cup of coarsely chopped shrimps
1 pack Mama Sita Palabok Mix
1 pack of Chicharon, finely crushed
4 boiled eggs, sliced
1 (about 200 gms) pack of flaked tinapa
8 calamansi
Patis to taste
1/8 cup of finely chopped garlic
Green onions sliced finely

Boil the Palabok Noodles in six cups of water for about 15 minutes. I want my noodles really cooked. Drain noodles and set aside.

Heat 1 tbsp. of oil in a pan and brown the ground pork. Set aside. In the same pan, add the remaining oil and sauté the garlic until brown. Set aside. In the same pan, cook the tinapa flakes for about 3 minutes. I have a feeling that the tinapa was not cooked so I want to be safe. I do not put oil on this because the flakes absorb a lot of oil. If you wish, you might want to add a bit. I set it aside in a separate bowl. In the same pan, roast the chicharon for a few minutes to give your palabok a crunch. Set aside.

In the same pan, put the browned ground pork and the shrimps. Cook for about 1 minute. Mix the palabok mix per packaging instruction and add to the ground pork. Let it boil gently and stirring constantly to avoid the mix from forming into lumps. Your sauce should be smooth. Turn off your stove and add half of all the ingredients you set aside earlier. The rest are saved for garnishing. Mix the sauce with the noodles and pour in a serving platter. Top with the saved garnishing and green onions. Add a zing to it with calamansi. Sarap!

What you should know about why I had my certain way of preparing this dish: Others use sliced pork but you know the people who get from the serving bowl first pick the sahog and if you happen to be the last one to be served, you will be left only with the noodles. It doesn’t happen in our family but because I love bringing this in potlucks where it usually happens, I got used to using ground pork. Also, I mix the noodles with the sauce because of the same reason I mentioned earlier. Some do not want the fat that goes with the Chicharon. In my case I separate a bowl for me without the Chicharon.

Buffalo Wings

We’ve tried banishing fried chicken on our list for a few months now, including Kentucky Fried Chicken and Chicken Nuggets from McDonald’s. No offense meant to those who love fried chicken. I'm sure you guys know what I mean. We’ve also had a lot of success in skinning our chicken before cooking it or baking it. However, there are days I have to admit that we give in to our self-imposed discipline. The lady boss(I call her that) said the Oriental Salad goes well with Chicken Wings. Well, who am I to disagree. If I'd been a health conscious person now, she is 5 times more. If she can have chicken wings with skin, why can’t I?

I just used the “Bag ‘n Season” buffalo wings seasoning. I’m no Gourmet Chef when it comes to concocting dips for this or seasoning for that. But this was nearly comparable to the chicken wings of Pizza Hut and a lot cheaper, way, way cheaper. It was just a shake and bake thing. I followed the instruction at the back of the packaging and baked it at 350 for 40 minutes. PRONTO!!

Oriental Salad

I love this one. I learned how to prepare this from the wife of my boss when she came over to the office one day. The wife dropped off his lunch while my boss went out for an unscheduled lunch meeting. Instead of going home, she decided to eat the packed lunch thinking she was going to be stuck in traffic anyway. Besides, she had other things she was thinking of doing in between.

She had chicken wings and oriental salad. She gave me the recipe. She thought I knew how to do this, being an oriental (actually, an Asian). I haven’t heard of this in the Philippines, mind you.

The ingredients:

Savoy Cabbage, sliced thinly(You can use the regular cabbage)
Ramen Noodles, uncooked
Cabbage, really thinly sliced
Green onions, thinly sliced
¼ cup of roasted slivered almonds (she said she uses peanuts sometimes)

The dressing:

1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp brown sugar
¼ cup vinegar
½ of the seasoning that came with the ramen noodles

Mix the dressing in a shaker and then toss the salad.

Nilasing na Hipon

This is the recipe for a nilasing na hipon I have come to know. When I was young, my cousin would marinate shrimps with a cup of gin before cooking it ala halabos. He was a drunkard but man, does he ever cook. He also added well about ¼ cup of 7-up (I guess measuring cups were never invented yet then) to it. As a kid, I thought the gin and the 7-up was just because he so dearly loved to drink and he wanted even his food to be with gin.

As I started cooking myself, I have come to realize that wine actually enhanced the taste of your food. Away from the Philippines, our prawns are not live here. (Well, not quite true because you could actually buy them somewhere else but who would like to do that when the sun is out and you have one bag that you recently bought when prawns were on sale?) More so, they are imported either from China, Thailand or the Philippines. What is good is they’re dressed already although I still miss the heads to add flavor to my palabok

We are not regular hard drinkers so when I cooked this, I only had red cooking wine in my cupboard. I also stopped drinking softdrinks so I had to think of something else to sweeten my dish. How about Mirin?

So without much ado, I marinated about 1 lb of deveined,but not shelled prawns in ½ cup of red cooking wine and ½ cup mirin for about 15 minutes. It might have been longer.

In the meantime, I prepared the following:

2 tbsp of olive oil
5 cloves of garlic finely chopped
about ½ inch of ginger, finely chopped
½ onions, finely chopped
¼ cup of finely sliced green onions
salt to taste

And here's the suggested method of cooking this dish.

In a pan, heat oil and sauté the garlic, ginger and onions for about 2 minutes or until the garlic turns light brown. Drain the prawns and add to the sautéed garlic, ginger and onions. Cook until prawns turn red or cooked. Season with salt. Turn stove off and add the green onions in. It's that simple.

Guinisang Mungo

There are days that I really crave for aunthentic Filipino dishes like this one. I grew up to be a skinny kid (yeah, right, what happened to me?). This is actually why I am very thankful that “Kodak” was discovered even before I was born..I have a proof that I was a “ting-ting” then. I was not a big eater but when my mother cooked this, I’d be the last person to leave the table. I liked it when my mother would sauté it in onions, garlic and tomatoes.

One thing I like when cooking mung beans is I like the pork belly fat cooked with the beans at the same time. (BELLY FAT??? Shhh). There is just something to it I cannot understand. Just set it aside when you don’t want it..okey?

Anyway, here’s what you need when you want to cook one yourself.

¾ cup of mung beans
¼ lb of pork belly
2 tbsp of olive oil
1 medium tomato, sliced
1 onion, sliced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
bundle of spinach
Fish sauce (Patis) to taste

In a deep saucepan, boil about six cups of water. Add the beans and the unsliced pork belly.

Once the mung beans is cooked, slice the pork into pieces. In a pan, heat the oil. Add the garlic and sauté until it turns into light brown. Add the onions and cook until onions become translucent. Add the tomatoes and cook for about 1 to 2 minutes. Saute the pork for about half a minute. Add the mung beans. Let boil. Season. Turn off stove and add the spinach. Cover pan and let it sit for about 5 minutes. Serve in a deep bowl. I had this with bagoong, sili and calamansi.

Teriyaki Pork

I was going through my posts and I forgot to post this recipe as promised. So here it is. The procedure is entirely the same as when I did my Teriyaki Beef Donburi only this time, it wasn’t a donburi dish. It was park of brunch.


For the sauce

¼ cup teriyaki sauce
4 tbsp of mirin

For the pork

2 tbsp of olive oil
1 lb of “shaved” pork
1/8 or a little bit more of teriyaki soy

For the vegetables

2 medium carrots, julienne cut
¼ cabbage, shaved
200 grams of bean sprouts
1 small onion, sliced thinly

Simmer the teriyaki sauce and the mirin on slow fire for about 15 minutes. Marinate pork for about 15 minutes.

Once the two procedures above have been done, prepare the pan for cooking the pork.

In a very hot pan, put in the marinated pork, discarding the marinating sauce. Add oil. Do not cover the pan and it should be hot enough to allow whatever liquid is left in the pork to evaporate. Stir occasionally. Cook for about 5 minutes and set aside.

In the same pan, put all the vegetables in and cover the pan. Cook for about 4 minutes stirring occasionally. When vegetables are cooked, turn off the stove and add the sauce and the green onions. Serve on top of rice.

Halo-halo

Halo-halo is a common dessert, treat or just something to keep you cool when the temperature is damn boiling in the Philippines. I do not need to tell you anything more about this except that we had this after dinner tonight. I know what you’re thinking about. We must be crazy having halo-halo in fall. Actually, a Malaysian I know one day approached and asked me if I knew anything about the sweetened beans (kidney, white, red --all beans sweet). I told her that it was not something new to me because this had a lot of uses in the Philippines like the halo-halo. She got curious of course. Apparently, they also have something similar to our halo-halo and they call it the “Ice Kacang” pronounced as Ais Kachang. Out of curiosity, I googled it and there it was..Ice Kacang, exactly like our halo-halo.

Another Saturday Brunch

You could tell we had a blast today..yes, we had another Saturday Brunch. We had nilasing na hipon, pork chop, shanghai lumpia, sotanghon soup and fried rice. My daughter had a toast on the side. She’s not a big breakfast eater and so she thought she’d have a slice of bread. However, as soon as she tasted my nilasing na hipon, she had 2 servings of fried rice and forgot about the toast. After all, it was past noon when we had our brunch. I bet you, we are going to have the same for dinner tonight. We had a lot of left overs.

The lumpia was part of our dinner one night and you could find the recipe here. For the nilasing na hipon and fried rice, they’re coming

For my sotanghon soup, I had the chicken back from chicken curry I cooked for the office. I boiled this for about ½ hour and I used this as my stock.

My ingredients:

1 tbsp of olive oil
Lost of chopped ginger (about 1 tsp)
Lots of chopped garlic (about 1 tsp)
½ onions, coarsely chopped

Minced chicken meat (about ¾ cup)
1 medium carrot thinly sliced
1 stalk of celery, chopped
1 tsp of chicken stock seasoning (Knorr)
about 50 gms of sotanghon, soaked in lukewarm water

I sautéed the garlic, onion and ginger for about 1 minute. I added the chicken meat. I stirred it a bit and then added the carrots and the celery. After about a minute I added the chicken stock (about 4 cups) in. I let it boil. Once it boiled, I seasoned the soup with the knorr chicken stock seasoning and then added the sotanghon noodles in. I cooked for another 2 minutes. I served it hot in a bowl. Sotanghon Soup is always a hit with my family.

Pork Sukiyaki

A choice between Chinese and Japanese dishes, my kids prefer Japanese. Not only are they easy to cook, I think they require lesser use of cooking oil. I have a friend I ask cooking instructions from occasionally and she suggested that I should try pork sukiyaki. She’s taught me how to make Inari and other sushis before. According to her, it’s really simple to make. Just get the right pork slice, get some vegetables she suggested (tofu, bean sprouts, carrots, and cabbage). She told me to cook the pork separately from the vegetables. I used sukiyaki sauce which was lighter than teriyaki to marinate the pork. I then put all the vegetables at the same time, covered the pan and stirred occasionally until done. I did not get the proper direction from her because she had difficulty expressing herself but this is how I came up with this recipe. Asking her how long should I cook the pork and the vegetables, she said she doesn’t know but she learned how to tell when it’s done by the number of years she’s been cooking it. Need I say more? Well, here’s the outcome. When I showed her the picture, she said I did just fine.

Apple Raisin Scones

Remember my blueberry scones? The ingredients I used are no different than the ingredients I used in making these scones except for the apples and raisins. Apples are in abundance now. We bought apples from the market for a $.89 per lb. Since the harvest season has started, we’ve been using apples in our salads. We’ve also been having them as snacks. When I looked at our fruit basket, I found out that some of the apples were actually starting to rot so I had to cook the good ones. When my kids were younger, I used to make the apples into applesauce but now that they've grown, it seems unimaginable to them that I have been feeding them applesauce. I have tried making apple pies before but I never perfected the dough. Well, the scones were my next choice.

Using the ingredients for my blueberry scone, I used apples and raisins instead of blueberries. I used about ¾ cup of cooked apples and ¼ cup of raisins.

I first peeled about 3 apples, wedged them and put them in a deep saucepan. I cooked the apples for about 10 minutes adding 2 tbsp of brown sugar and 1 tbsp of cinnamon powder. I let it cool for about an hour.