Spaghetti Meatballs

Inspired by a spaghetti song..no, not the sphaghetti pababa at pataas but on "top of spaghetti", I cooked this recipe . While humming to the tune of the song, I merrily baked the meatballs out of these:

Meatballs Ingredients:

1 lb of medium ground pork
1/2 finely chopped onions
soy to taste
dash of ground pepper
2 tbsp of flour

Mix the ingredients in a bowl. Form the misture into small balls. Arrange them in a coolie sheet and bake at 350 for 20 minutes.

In a pan, put the cooked meatballs and add 1 250 ml tomato sauce. Add herbs if you want.

Cook the pasta according to packaging instructions.

Mix meatballs sauce with pasta and there you go..hum away while you enjoy.

Chicken Mami

I was hunting for recipes in my directory for my Lasang Pinoy 15 entry when I came across this one. Not the kind of leftover from a sumptous dinner but does fit the definition of "recycling". What I recall was I was cutting bite pieces for my Malaysian Chicken Curry one day and I didn't need the bony parts. I therefore set them aside and boiled them for soup stock. Flesh and soup stock in a container and discarding the bones, I literally threw the container into the freezer for a rainy day.

Autumn is upon us and the weather is tricky. I had wilting carrots and wombok in my fridge and when it's cold, you hardly want to even get your feet wet. Luckily, I had garlic and chicken boullion in my pantry and a few eggs in the fridge. Voila..chicken mami cook extraordinaire I was!

Mao Po Tofu

Before you say Filipino Food are yucky, let me first inform you that this is actually a chinese recipe and the recipe is not yucky at all. This time of the year, I'm busy at work so I count on packaged seasonings to lighten my "end of the day". Together with sweet and sour seasoning, and a jar of black bean sauce, I bought a package of the Mao Po Tofu. The instructions were simple and did not call very much for a lot of ingredients. I'd say it was healthy as well. Tofu and ground pork. Try it if you're busy like me and you might want to get used to it (except that these seasonings might be loaded with MSG of course).

Oh, the spiciness too just makes you have it one more time next week.

Lasang Pinoy X1-Coco juice time!

Well, on this other part of the world, it's summertime. I don't intend to make our friends from down under jealous but that's how they will feel actually when I show them my coco juice and processed cantaloupe.

DYARAN......

The coconut juice is not that hard to make, that is if you have the gadget and the skill to open the coconut shell in such a way that there'd be at least a glass of the buko juice left. Also, granting that you were lucky in making sure that you chose just the right one, that is. The flesh could be mature and you're forced to just grate it for guinataan. Hey, that's another thought for something to have during summer.

Well, I am lucky in a different way. I chose a hubby who has the skill and the right tools to cut one up for me. In my hubby's hometown, buko is one of their main products. In front of their house are two "million-bearing" buko trees (???). Reachable ones. Everytime we go home, the folks make sure that they reserve the fruits for my children. My mother-in-law exactly knows when they are ready to be consumed.

I do have a problem with buko though. Because of its creaminess, sometimes my tummy acts up when I eat the flesh not cooked. They say the juice is a very good diuretic. I remember when I was suffering from a urinary tract infection when I was a kid. My mother had me drink tonnes and tonnes of this juice. I'd say it did help but it's best you consult your physician first if you're planning to have some because of UTI.

Anyway, aside from buko juice, I do enjoy grated cantaloupe with fresh milk and lotsa of ice in it. I don't put sugar in mine since the cantaloupe is already sweet. Others do however. I have yet to find this grater we use in the Philippines to make the cantaloupe flesh long but thin. For now, I just used the fork.

As for the buko, I just bought them from the Filipino store grated already. I just had to add milk in it.

Thanks JMom for hosting.

Spicy Spaghetti with Prawns

Here's one I should not forget to post for future reference. Only when I try to look for a recipe that I keep telling myself I should be more consistent.

Ingredients:

1 lb of prawns, shell on
oil to saute
1 finely chopped medium onion
1 can of 680 ml tomato sauce
lotsa finely chopped garlic
1/2 tsp of dried oregano
2 tsp of chili sauce (according to how hot you want your dish to be)
salt to taste

cooked spaghetti noodles

In a pan, saute onions until translucent. Add Prawns and cook until prawns are cooked. Add garlic, oregano and tomato sauce. Simmer for about 10 minutes on slow fire. Add chili sauce and salt. Pour sauce over cooked noodles and serve.

Lasang Pinoy 10 : Food Memories From Your Childhood--It's all in the milk!

We all know that Baguio is known for its luscious strawberries. I knew a man who owned a strawberry stall right in the heart of the city market. He would usually bring us day-old strawberries for us to eat. Well, we're from Baguio and we're not so much crazy about them unlike the "bakasyonistas" during Holy Week (when all produce prices go up sometimes twice or even thrice their normal--and watch me roll my eyes).

Watching all these "bakasyonistas" eat strawberries straight from the baskets made me wonder whether they were shocked that strawberries are not really that good? They only looked good in pictures, that's what I think. I'm sour-graping of course because I never had the luxury to eat those bigger, pricier ones. I only got to taste the day-old ones, remember?

Okey, so how do I eat mine? Mashed! Yes, mashed with my own hands. Did I hear you say eeewwwee? And then I add condensed milk to it. Believe me, that's how I used to eat my strawberries when I was young and that's still how I eat them today. And yes, it's something I have handed down to my kids.

Now, eating avocadoes is another childhood food story I have. In my parents backyard a long, long time ago stood an avocado tree which bear fruit unselfishly. And the fruits are huge(twice as my fists put together)unlike the avocadoes we get here imported from Mexico. They were creamy as well. Just so you know, there are avocadoes which are stale-tasting. Because they were so creamy, my parents just added sugar to theirs and they were happy.

Guacamoles were never heard off in our "barangay" that's why I was so shocked when we once had a caucasian guest and she was so excited to make a concoction out of our huge avocadoes. She started asking for mayonnaise, etc and she went to the city to look for nacho chips. You could just imagine how big the question mark was in my eyes. Mayonnaise? Jalapeno? etc? Yuck! Well, imagine me rolling my eyes again. She tried to educate me a bit by saying it was called guacamole.

In my shock, I showed her how I ate my avocado. With condensed milk of course. Well, this time, it was her rolling her eyes and I thought I heard her say "double yuck!". Well, Becky still remembers me with my mashed avocadoes with condensed milk. That's how she remembers me.."the kid who ate mashed avocado with condensed milk".

Lasang Pinoy: Lamang-Loob; Odd Cuts and Guts -Bopis

Hey I am not totally giving up on LP yet. I was lucky to get a snap shot of this pack just before my son tried to make it disappear. Dinuguan and Bopis are two recipes akin to every Filipino's menu whenever there is a party.

Bopis (right) is made out of intestines, lungs, kidneys and liver. Don't shudder if you are not familiar with this dish. Not everyone is expected to like this, even if you are a full-blooded Filipino. The pungent smell prevents me from cooking at home. The smell does stick to the carpet so I'd rather just swing by Manang's little nook and have an occasional taste of it. Manang's is not so dry, the way my father used to cook it. Father cooks it in oil until it is almost burnt. The process is long and let me relate it to you.

You see, we only have lechon once a year when I was young and that happens at Christmas time. It's a carefully planned one where mother buys a piglet about six months (maybe shorter; maybe longer I cannot recall) before then. Father and mother put a lot of work in raising the pig sometimes I wondered whether it was more economical to buy the lechon from the city market on Christmas day itself. The work was so enormous. Mother planting vegetables to feed the pig, father buying "feeds" from the store and us washing the pen or helping mother in cooking the "binugbog" were only a few.

When Christmas comes, father is not ready to give up all the odd cuts that do not become part of a lechon. Think about all the hard work we've put into that pig. After Christmas, we'd all be ready to smell the day-long process of cooking bopis. First he has to boil the innards for easy slicing, cut them into tiny pieces, boiling this time with the seasoning, and finally cooking in oil. It is all worth the wait at the end of the day. The aroma of a cooked bopis is heavenly. I do not know what makes this dish delectable. It's either we were "lechoned-out" or Papa simply cooked it in a different way.

I told you Manang's was not dry. In fact it had other ingredients that I have never seen in my Papa's. Manang put some kamias apparently to get rid of the smell. My father puts soy, vinegar, peppercorns, garlic and bay leaves in his. If you ask me whether I know how to cook this, I will honestly say I don't but I am willing to learn how to should the need arise. For now, I would just like to keep my neighbors happy!

About the dinuguan, hmmm, I am almost tempted to ask my kids to write their thoughts about it. One day..soon!