Katuray with Bagoong and Tomatoes

Pardon me but I do not know the English name of this vegetable (??). I just know that they come from well, not so tall trees. My parents-in-law grow this at their backyard and everytime I go home to the Philippines, I always have this for breakfast. Weird huh! Well, breakfast to them is between 10:00 and 12:00. Okay, okay..it's brunch.

Nothing extra-ordinary in preparing this. I only make sure that I clean the flowers(??) first before I cook them in the pan with nothing but maybe about 1 tbsp of water. Not even. I only cook it for a short period of time making sure they don't shrink a lot. Once they're cooked, I mix about 1/2 of sliced tomatoes, about 1 tsp of sliced red onion, 1/2 tsp of bagoong sauce and 1 tsp of calamansi.

They say that it's good in bringing down your blood pressure if you have a hypertension, but with the bagoong, I am actually wondering how. You can't skip adding bagoong. Believe me, it's not as good without it.

Seafood Pan Soup

Food for a recovering blogger. That's me. I just recently had a surgery. Now I can say it was nothing serious, really! It slowed me down a bit. Now I have a lot of catching up to do. Please be patient. This is really so simple.

Ingredients:

2 tbsp of olive oil
1/4 cup of shelled shrimp meat
1/4 cup of steamed salmon
1/2 medium onion, coarsely chopped
1 medium zucchini, coarsely chopped
1 medium carrot, coarsely chopped
1 can of Campbell's tomato soup
1 cup of Tomato Clam Juice
2 cups of water
salt to taste
1/2 tsp of dried basil

In a saucepan, heat oil. Add onions and cook until onion becomes translucent. Add carrots and cook for about a minute. Add zucchini and stir for about 30 seconds. Add shrimp meat. Add the can of tomato soup, Tomato clam Juice and water and let boil. Simmer for about 5 minutes. Season with salt and add dried basil. Add the salmon last and cook only for about 1 more minute. Stir the soup occassionaly to make sure that the soup does not stick at the bottom of the pan.

Serve hot in a bowl and top with steamed rice.

Vegetables with Imitated Crab Meat

Probably, you think that vegetables are not part of my diet because of all the dishes I prepare. The truth is, they always are part of my every meal. 'got to have vegetables all the time. Lately, I have been working for 12 hours a day in preparation for something that I need to undergo in a few days. I will be out of the office for quite a while and since it's our busiest season, 'gotta get myself make up for the days I would be missing. Paying in advance, huh? Well, I am taking a month or so off from work in December for our trip to the Philippines that's why.

Back to cooking, meat is always something I need to add to my stir fry but these days, they're getting scarce in my freezer. I have bought quite a few seafood because I want them in my chowder. Well, no time to make chowder but i've got lots of imitated crab meat and somehow I need to have vegetables so this is what I made out of it. Sauteed vegetables with imitated crab meat.

Chocolate Dipped Strawberries for Valentine's Day

Yes, this is what I got for Valentine's Day. My boss' wife was quite health conscious and thought that we can enjoy Valentine's Day without indulging in pure chocolates. If you look closely, the fruits were dipped in Dark and Milk chocolate. I did not notice that until my children were fighting over the dark chocolate ones. These might have cost our boss' wife a fortune considering that these were bought from a very elegant chocolate house. But hey, she gave me an idea for next year.

Maui Ribs

If it was not for Lance' question, I would have saved this again for future posting. I know, I've got a few to be posted but because I am so preoccupied with so many things these days, I kept on saving them in one disk. You can call it procrastination too.

Anyway, to answer Lance's question, yes this is Maui as in Maui, Hawaii. I am not sure though if this originated in Hawaii. The sauce was given to me as a gift by a client. A little tangy and sweet. I just marinated a few side ribs. The side ribs were also described as sliced the maui style. I haven't been to Maui so I don't really know. Anyway, as I said earlier, the ribs were quite tough. For one reason, we baked them first and then flame broiled. I also think that my husband left them in the broiler longer than he should have had.

Spinach with Dried Cranberries and Sliced Orange

Kraft has lately been introducing various fruit-flavoured dressings in the market but this particular dressing has made it to my all-time weekend checklist.

The dressing went well with this: 200 gms of baby spinach, 1tbsp of coarsely chopped red onions, 1/4 cup of dried cranberries and a an orange sliced in bite-sized pieces. I only used about 1/4 or lesser dressing.

My family couldn't agree more especially that we had maui ribs to go with it. It was quite a bout though because the maui ribs were tough.

Schatzli and Grace

A Pinay from Greece...I've read a lot of Pinay blogs from the Philippines, the States, Asia but not from Greece. Here's her Food and Travel Blog and her Diary...very interesting...and very intriguing..

How about another one married to a Frenchman but is currently living in Angola? Visit Grace' site and find out how inviting her main courses, appetizers and desserts are.

Banana Split

Banana Split anyone? Just 2 scoops of vanilla-flavoured ice cream topped with chocolate fudge and ground nuts and a couple slices of bananas to make it into a truly banana split. Yummy!

Will Brown Cow do? mmmm...aybeee.

Chicken Afritada

Can't get to Sassy Lawyer's site? Her server is down and so she created a temporary site. Here's the link:

One familiar Filipino dish I love cooking. I'd like to call this a chicken stew because cooking this is like cooking a beef stew sans tomato sauce. Instead, I used the Mama Sita Caldereta Mix to make it more appealing. You don't need a lot to prepare this.

Ingredients:

2 tbsp of olive oil
6 pieces of nugget potatoes, peeled and cut in quarters
1 lb of chicken breast cut in small pieces
1 medium onion, quartered
1 medium carrot peeled and cut into about 2 cm thick
1/4 cup of water
1/2 red pepper
1/2 green pepper
1 pack of caldereta mix

In a deep saucepan, heat oil. Add potatoes and cover pan. Cook for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionaly. Add chicken. cover pan for another 5 minutes or until chicken is tender. Add carrots and onions and cook for about 2 minutes. Add water and let boil.

Season with caldereta mix. Add the red and green pepper and the frozen green peas. Cover pan for another 5 minutes. Turn off oven and let stand for about 5 minutes. Serve.

Guinataang Gulay

I need a Bicolana to please tell me the name of this recipe. This is the equivalence of the Ilocanos' Pinakbet. The ingredients are the same except that with Pinakbet, your sauce is bagoong and with this, your sauce is coconut milk.

I was thinking it was called "balaw" but my sister said balaw is actually alamang to them. When I was going to college in the Philippines, I was associated with some people from Bicol. I am not talking about just 2 or 3 people. They were like ten and I worked with them everyday. This was almost their daily lunch. My association with them made me start to like food cooked in coconut milk. In fact I learned how to cook a few of their recipes. This was my favorite though amongst all their recipes.

Ingredients:

1 onion coarsely chopped
4 tbsps of alamang
1 can of coconut milk
1/2 cup of shredded tinapa
1/2 lb of pork, thinly sliced
1 bunch of string beans, cleaned and cut into about 1.5 inches in length
2 eggplants, cut in circular or oblong like sizes
1 bitter melon cut in 1 cm think
5 pcs of green long chilies, preferably the hot variety
1 cup of cleaned malunggay leaves

In a pan, cook about a/4 cup of the creamiest part of the coconut milk for about 10 minutes or until the cream becomes almost like an oil. Saute the alamang and onion in it. Add the pork and cook for about 1 minute. Add the Tinapa. Pour the remaining coconut milk until it boils. Add the vegetables, except the malunggay leaves, stir and cover pan. Simmer for about 15 minutes or until vegetables are cooked. Stir the malunggay leaves in and cook for about a minute. Serve.

Ususally, the taste improves if left overnight in the fridge.

Imbaliktad

As soon as I saw this recipe at Manong Mannurat's blog, I knew my husband would be pleased if I prepared this for him. When he was still working in one of the cement plants in Luzon, his officemates and he would go out for drinking sprees occasionally and this was one of his favorite pulutans.

My mother used to cook this when I was little but did not dare let us, the younger ones even to taste it for fear that because it was cooked rare, we might be catching some bugs that will make us sick.

Well, i had second thoughts myself for fear of Ecoli but my rationale was that if I can cook my steak medium rare, why can't I cook my imbaliktad this way. Well, it worked and I cooked some more the next day.

Ingredients:

2 tbsp of olive oil
1 lb of beef tenderloin, thinly chopped
1/4 cup of coarsely chopped shallots
1/8 cup of vinegar
1 tbsp of coarsely chopped chilies (the spicy ones are preferred)
2 tbsps of finely chopped ginger
salt to taste

In a pan, heat oil. Add ginger and saute for about 1 minute. Add shallots and beef and cook for about 2 minutes, enough to brown the beef. Season with vinegar and salt. Turn off oven and add chilies.

Ceasar Salad with Prawns

(Ceasar's Salad with Prawns)

Easy and delectable. I learned this from a Pinay married to a German.

All you need:
About two hearts of Romaine Lettuce
1/4 cup Croutons1 cup of Cooked Prawns
1/4 cup of Renee's Ceasar Salad Dressing
2 tbps of Parmesan Cheese1 Tsp of Lemon Juice

Toss salad in a big bowl a couple of minutes before dinner. Yup, it's that simple.

Fried Smelts

Dipped in eggs and dredged in flour seasoned with salt and then deep fried is just one way of cooking this variety of fish commonly found in North American waters. That's just how our friend prepared it in one of our occasional gatherings. I usually buy the gutted ones and cook them in salt and vinegar (paksiw style) before frying them. My friend does not bother gutting them anymore believing the water is clean. He fished these himself. Usually, there is a season when we can go fishing and it's not just Filipinos who fish this variety. I might have an idea how the Vietnamese cook theirs..same way as the Filipinos do but I am curious how the Italians cook them. Any idea?

Yes, in summertime, the Italians go to our shores with pails and wine to dine and fish.

Bulalo

I wasn't particularly ill the day my husband cooked this for us. I just wasn't feeling fine. I could tell he was itching to cook these shanks. He's a person who loves to have soupy dishes. In fact it was him who bought this when we went grocery shopping. I slept on the couch while watching a show and he didn't bother waking me up. He turned on the stove, prepared the pressure cooker and kept it going. It was the whistling sound of the pressure cooker that made me drift in and out of my sleep.

He only woke me up when it was time to eat. Guess what? He took this picture too. I must admit that it was good. More patis and kalamansi please...and back to the couch again.

That day, I could say my kids and my husband were very excited to have a command in the kitchen. They had fun slicing the veggies and guessing what to put in the dish. I heard my husband asking my son to turn on the computer and look for bulalo recipes. The aftermath was left for me to deal with the next day.

Baked Spare Ribs

I cooked these spare ribs in the slow cooker for about 3 hours or until they were tender with the left-over salad dressings in the fridge. Yes, Raspberry, Golden Italian, Catalina and Ketchup. The lefover dressings were approximately 1 - 1 1/2 tbsps each. I threw in a couple of finely chopped garlic cloves, a dash of ground pepper, 2 bay leaves and about 2 tbsps of soy sauce. I used about 1/2 cup of water.

Half an hour before our dinner, I drained and arranged the sliced ribs in a platter, topped the slices with barbecue sauce and baked them at 350 for about 10 minutes.

Who would know I almost do not have time to cook anymore?

Sloppy Joes

Chili con carne on buns with cheese for winter. Cook it this way but make it a little sweeter by adding 2 tablespoons of sugar. Just before serving, spoon about 3 heaping tablespoons or more of the chili con carne on top of a bun, spread cheese on top and cook in toaster at 350 for about 10 minutes or until cheese is melted. Serve with salad.

I'm on a time crunch here so I will make my posts shorter. Busy months are here as far as my work is concerned. Things will normalize in May. Did I tell you our office is moving in May after our busy season? Yes, our company is no longer going to be renting a space. We just bought our own space and officially ours in March but we can't move in March because that's when our office makes the most hay.

Copenhagen and lemon Squares

Did you know that these are my favorite desserts? Lemon Squares and Copenhagen. My favorites because I don't make them. They're baked by our favorite Danish Bakery for the Copenhagen and Chinese Bakery for the lemon squares.

Shaky Baky Chicken Thighs

When you're down and lonely and you need a helping hand, Shake and Bake is always there for you. You don't need to look high and low. It's just right in front of you, right when you need it most. Just make sure to replenish your cupboard so it's there when you need it most.

The weather's not been very friendly for the last 7 days. We had snow for a week. It's a record actually. The weather wore me out emotionally. I cannot walk to work. Neither can I drive. I tried driving in snowy conditions last year and ended leaving my car where I got stuck and waited until the snow melted. I'm left at my hubby's mercy so I'd better be nice to him.

Well, we can have vegetables when the weather get's better. In the meantime, I can live with this. Oh, did I tell you that tomorrow is going to be 6 below? 'glad I have chicken legs in the freezer. Guess what were going to have for tomorrow night?

Sisig

More leftover stories! So this is another Filipino pulutan. It could also be an appetizer. I have tried avoiding foods like this but my friend gave half of a pig's head to me before Christmas. She wanted to have the whole but had no faith that she was going to give justice to it.

My husband's eyeballs were of course popping with excitement. In his mind we were lucky to have even just half of it. We haven't had this for a long time. Mind you, I was so guilty at the end for being a devil's advocate. Every bite I had scared me to death. Time to hit those exercise machines I guess.

2/3 cup of coarsely chopped shallots
1/3 cup of vinegar
salt to taste
1/2 cup of green onions finely sliced
pinch of sugar
1/2 tsp of ground pepper
2 tsps of finely chopped green hot chilies

I boiled the pig's head in a big saucepan for about 30 minutes or until I could literally separate the skin and flesh from the skull. I sliced the meat into small pieces, the way you'd normally slice carrots for soup. Oh well, not that clear but get the idea from the picture, okey?

In a pan, heat the oil and saute the shallots until shallots are transparent. Add the meat and cook for about 10 minutes. Add the rest of the ingredients except for the green onions which should be added after the stove is turned off and the meat just about ready to be served.

Eat with guilt!

Fruit Salad

You will find this dessert in almost all Filipino parties. I do not know why, but this seems to be a must have in every occasion in our family anyway.

In my daughter’s class when she was still in elementary, each student was asked to bring to school a dish native to their country of origin one day. My daughter did not have a hard time coming up with the idea. She right away came up with the fruit salad idea. And she also prepared it herself. What was neat was her teacher compiled the recipes and they all had a copy of the compilation including our Filipino Fruit Salad.

Ingredients:

1 can of Fiesta Fruit Cocktail
1 jar of sweet kaong (any color)
1 jar of nata de coco
2 tbsp of mayonnaise
1 cup of whipped cream
raisins (optional)
fresh fruits (like grapes and apples)

Drain fruit cocktail, sweet kaong and nata de coco and pour in a big mixing bowl. Add the rest of the ingredients mix everything. Cool in the fridge preferably overnight.

Others, add condensed milk in theirs but I find the nata de coco and the kaong sweet already. Also, others add cheese. I substituted cheese with mayonnaise in mine.