Beef Salpicao

I had defrosted this ribeye steak in the refrigerator earlier but I didn't really feel like having steak for dinner tonight and while thinking about alternative beef dishes, salpicao came to mind.

So I googled and looked for Salpicao recipes and decided to make up my own combination based on the different recipes I've seen and the reviews of those recipes I've read.

Amazingly, this turned out very very very good.

Ingredients:

1 lb beef, sliced into cubes

6 cloves garlic, minced

Olive oil (a few tbsps, just enough to coat the beef)

2 tsp knorr seasoning

2 tsp Lea & Perrins worcestershire sauce

freshly ground pepper, to taste

3 tbsp oyster sauce (dilute in 1/4 cup water)

1 tbsp butter

sliced mushrooms

1. Mix garlic, olive oil, seasoning, worcestershire sauce and pepper. Marinate beef in this mixture for at least a few hours.
2. Cook beef quickly in very hot oil. Mix till cooked - around 5 minutes, do not overcook as the meat will get tough.
3. When beef is cooked, pour the oyster sauce mixture.
4. Add the butter and mix it around.
5. Take out the beef, saute the mushrooms in the remaining sauce and add beef back in again when done.

Serve.

Chicken Parmesan

We were supposed to have lemon chicken for dinner tonight but when I realized that it was deep-fried and that I needed to avoid fatty & heaty foods, I decided to look for something else that I could make with the boneless, skinless chicken thighs that we were having for dinner. After checking out what we had in the refrigerator, I decided on baked chicken parmesan.

Checked the internet for recipes and looks like there are a lot of variations out there. I threw caution to the wind and picked & chose what I wanted to do. Hubby helped with this dish as well :D

Ingredients:

Boneless chicken thighs, sliced thinly (or use cutlets)

1 egg

1/4 cup breadcrumbs

1/4 cup parmesan cheese

2 tbsp chopped parsley

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Prepare the parmesan coating for the chicken by mixing equal parts of parmesan cheese & breadcrumbs (more parmesan cheese = better). Mix in the parsley.
3. Season chicken thighs with freshly ground sea salt.
4. Dip seasoned chicken thighs in egg.
5. Coat chicken with the parmesan - breadcrumb mixture.
6. Arrange chicken on a baking rack and bake until done - around 20 minutes.

We just used bottled marinara for the sauce and made some whole wheat pasta to go with the chicken.

Crab Cakes

I wanted to finish up a leftover bag of mushroom & wild rice that Ahya left behind from his visit last year. I couldn't think of any dish that would go well with this - though I'm sure there's tons! - so I decided to just prepare some crab cakes, I still had some leftover green bell peppers that I needed to use up, after all.

For this, I used a recipe that I picked up from a Chicken of the Sea advertisement long ago but had to tweak a little because - typical me - I ran out of ingredients.

Ingredients:

1/4 cup finely chopped red bell pepper (used green bell pepper instead)

1/4 cup finely chopped green onions

1/4 cup mayonnaise (only had around 2/3 of this amount so I lessened the bread crumbs)

1/4 tsp seasoned salt

1/2 tsp garlic powder

dash cayenne pepper (did not add, hubby does not like spicy food)

2 6-oz cans crab meat

1 medium egg, beaten

1/3 cup breadcrumbs (for crab cake mixture)

2/3 cup breadcrumbs (for coating, I skipped this)

3 tbsp melted butter (for frying crab cakes)

1. In a bowl, combine pepper, green onions, mayonnaise, lemon juice, seasoned salt, garlic powder and cayenne pepper.
2. Stir in crab, egg and 1/3 cup breadcrumbs
3. Divide and form mixture into balls.
4. Roll crab balls in remaining breadcrumbs; flatten into cakes about 1/2 inch thick. (skipped the breadcrumb coating).
5. In skillet, pan fry crab cakes in butter 3 to 4 minutes per side until golden brown.

This turned out very very good. :D

Broiled Scallops

The first time we made broiled scallops was Thanksgiving 2007 and if you would care to check the pictures I posted for that meal, you'll notice a big difference between then and now.

2 years has made a huge difference, obviously. Aside from experimenting on the seasoning & flavoring, now, I know enough to: (1) use an entire strip of bacon to wrap around the scallop to allow for shrinkage of the bacon and (2) to lift the scallops so that they don't get submerged in the juices that come out during the broiling.

Preparation:

1. Season scallops with lemon juice

2. Wrap scallops with bacon strips, secure the ends of the bacon with a toothpick.

3. Season the tops & bottoms of the scallops with a tiny bit of paprika and seasoned salt.

4. Heat the broiler and pop the scallops in when hot.

5. After 2 to 3 minutes, the bacon will have browned a bit, sprinkle a bit of brown sugar on the scallops and let brown a little.

6. Turn the scallops over on the other side and repeat step 5.

Pork & Kuchay Dumplings

Whenever I think about preparing a quick snack or think about instant ulam, dumplings are usually one of my top choices because:

(1) they're easy to prepare - boiled, pan fried, and;

(2) they're versatile - can be eaten with rice, noodles, soup, or even just eaten alone.

My favorite dumplings will always be the vegetable dumplings that Mom used to buy from a small restaurant called Mien San along Gilmore Ave. It's been a while since I had them so I cannot really recall what's inside and it wasn't until recently that I found out that Kuchay (Chinese Chives or Korean Chives) is one of the main ingredients.

With that, I decided to experiment. This came out good - not the same as Mien San's, but tasty nevertheless - and the best part is that since it's home made (except for the wrappers), it's not riddled with preservatives.

1 lb ground pork

4 pcs dried mushrooms, rehydrated and chopped

12 pcs chives (full stalks), chopped - could add more

1 egg

1 tbsp sesame oil

pepper to taste

2 tsp salt

dimsum wrapper (used Cantonese style)

To seal the dumplings - mixture of 1 tsp cornstarch, 2 tbsp water

Mix the ingredients together and form into dumplings. Dumplings could be steamed or pan fried. You could also store leftover dumplings in the freezer. Arrange them in a plate or container such that they do not touch each other, put the in the freezer - do not put them in a freezer bag or let them touch each other until they are frozen so that they do not stick together.

*This recipe made 46 dumplings.

Chinese Steamed Spareribs

Tonight's dinner was supposed to be pork chops but I was craving some spare ribs so I went off to the store at the last minute to pick up some ribs. It's been more than a year since the first time that I prepared this dish, I used a different recipe then but I don't remember how it tasted.

This time, I found a recipe from SteamyKitchen that had fewer ingredients, was easier to prepare and hopefully, will be more memorable as hubby has already forgotten about the first steamed spareribs that I made but this, we love! I even scooped out the meat juices from the bowl and drenched my rice with it.

1-1/2 lbs pork sparerib (rib tips)
2 tablespoons black bean sauce (I used canned salted black beans)
1 tablespoon Chinese rice wine
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon grated ginger
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon cooking oil
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon sugar

Preparation:

1. Cut the spareribs crosswise into 1″ – 2″ sections.
2. Combine the rest of the ingredients.
3. Transfer spareribs and sauce into a shallow, heatproof pan that will fit inside your wok (a pie plate or 9” cake pan works great.)
4. Let marinate at room temperature for 30 minutes.

Steaming:

1. Set steaming rack inside of wok and fill with water almost up to height of rack.
2. Turn heat to high and when water is boiling, turn heat to medium-high.
3. Set pan with spareribs on top of a steaming rack in wok.
4. Steam on med-high heat for 18-20 minutes until ribs are no longer pink.
5. Make sure that when you are steaming that you don’t run out of water in the wok. Replenish with additional water, if needed.

Eggplant Parmigiana with Alfredo Sauce

Today's lunch is brought to you by the letter "L". L for leftovers.

So we still had some leftover eggplant parmigiana from the last time and I did mention that I ran out of tomato sauce, didn't I ? I rummaged around the refrigerator and found some leftover Alfredo sauce.

Guess what I did next ?

Yep, I made some rotini pasta (not leftovers, haha!) and poured the rest of the Alfredo sauce on it. Poured a little sauce on the eggplant parmigiana too and I liked how it turned out. Somehow, the tartness of the tomato sauce got balanced out by the cream sauce.

Hubby, on the other hand, is still not convinced. He prefers this the classic way - with tomato sauce - rather than my way.

Eggplant Parmigiana

Tonight's dinner was eggplant parmigiana. I've been looking forward to this for a few reasons:

a) because as much as I dislike veggies, eggplant just happens to be one of the ones that I love!

b) because my friend Kay, a very good chef/cook, had recently prepared this for her family and her pictures made me crave this. She kindly shared the recipe in her FB site.

And as a disclaimer, I would like to point out that I did deviate from the original recipe a little because the eggplant has been sitting in our refrigerator for a week now and I was still missing some ingredients. I also wasn't in the mood to fry because we didn't have enough cooking oil. And I had some frozen chopped spinach leaves in the freezer that I wanted to use up.

Ingredients:

- Eggplant

- 2 eggs

- bread crumbs (orig recipe called for flour)

- Traditional pasta sauce (bottled)

- chopped spinach

- parmesan cheese

- mozzarella cheese

Steps:

1. Peel and slice the eggplants, 1/2 cm thick. Sprinkle side with salt and layer it in between paper towels. Leave in the refrigerator overnight. Kay says that this will draw out the excess moisture and will draw out the bitterness of the eggplant.

2. Dip the eggplant slices in beaten egg and dip in breadcrumbs.

3. Oil a baking sheet and arrange the eggplant slices in a single layer. Bake in a 350 degree F oven till tender.

4. In a baking dish, pour a thin layer of tomato sauce on the bottom of the dish. Arrange a layer of eggplant slices, pour another thin layer of sauce, top with the chopped spinach leaves, parmesan and mozzarella.

Repeat step 4 (sauce, eggplant, sauce, spinach, cheeses) until all the eggplant slices are used up.

5. Pop into the oven and bake until the cheeses melt and begin to brown.

Oh, I would've paired this with pasta but I ran out of pasta sauce as well so we paired this with some freshly baked garlic bread instead. Yummy!

This post just reminded me to stock up our pantry again.

Pork Afritada

I found some leftover pork shoulder in the freezer and decided to cook this for dinner with some tomato sauce. Did some searching on the net and found a lot of recipes for Pork Menudo and Pork Afritada, the ingredients differed. Eventually, I just picked the one recipe that had the least amount of ingredients from AllFavoriteRecipe.

I started off from that recipe and tweaked a few measurements, this was what I did:

• 1 lb pork, cubed
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 onion, sliced
• 1 tbsp fish sauce (patis)
• 2 potatoes (Russet), peeled and quartered
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 cup tomato sauce
• 1 green bell pepper, sliced

1. Season the diced pork with salt and pepper and set aside in the refrigerator for 20 minutes.
2. In a saucepan, heat oil and saute pork until no longer pink. If juices come out, spoon them out and throw away.
3. Add the garlic and onion, saute till onions are clear.
4. Season the pork with the fish sauce.
5. Add the potatoes (NOTE: if using Russet potatoes, do not add them at this time as they cook easily and will fall apart before your pork becomes tender).
6. Add the tomato sauce and water
7. Bring to a boil and simmer on low heat for 25 to 30 minutes until pork is soft.
8. Add the bell pepper and let simmer.

This turned out quite good, the only issue we have is that we used Russet potatoes and they cooked too quickly. Will have to add them into the pot a bit later (maybe 10 to 15 minutes later) so they don't get too soft.

Taste wise, this turned out good.

Fried Tofu

Tofu has always been a favorite in our kitchen but we don't get to try a lot of different dishes, mostly because we do not know how to prepare them and we usually stick with what we know.

Recently, Mom brought a vegetarian cookbook and left it with me because she says that we might make more use of it than she did. True to her words, I went through the book immediately and found a recipe for this simple fried tofu dish.

1. Dice tofu and scald with boiling water for 1 minute (to half-cook the tofu).

2. Drain the tofu on paper towels.

3. Dip the tofu in egg and then coat with flour.

4. Deep fry in hot oil.

For the sauce:

3 tbsp lite soy sauce

2 cloves of garlic, chopped finely

1 tsp sugar

2 tsp sesame oil (did not put this much)

Pizza Day

Saturday night last weekend was pizza day for hubby and me. We made the crust (using the same recipe as before) - he wanted to knead and thought it was fun - together and we divided it up and formed and topped our own pizzas since we wanted different toppings.

Hubby's pizza had a tomato-based sauce ( tomato sauce + tomato paste and seasoned with oregano, onion powder and garlic powder). He topped it with mozzarella cheese, ham, meatball pieces (Ikea swedish meatballs), bacon, pepperoni and more mozzarella.


My pizza sauce was cream-based, I used plain creamy Alfredo sauce from a bottle. I topped mine with spinach, ham, meatball pieces, bacon and mozzarella cheese.

We dropped by the supermarket to get some fresh mushrooms but I forgot to take them out when we were preparing the pizzas.

The crust is still not as nice as I would like them to be. It's okay to eat while it is fresh out of the oven but it gets harder when it cools. Konting experiment pa and we can probably invite friends over for a make-your-own pizza dinner sometime.

Pork Giniling

I've been a fan of Eating Club Vancouver's dishes ever since I found an Aristocrat-style-chicken-bbq recipe on their site a year ago.



I've been trying out more and more of their dishes and this time, it's their Mom's classic Pork Giniling dish (ground pork). Check out their site which is very helpful because they posted pictures of each step in the cooking process.


Ingredients:
2 lbs ground pork
1 tsp vinegar (optional)
pepper
chopped garlic
1 cup of diced carrots
1 cup of diced potato
1 tbsp shao xing wine (I substituted cooking sherry instead)
1 tbsp oyster sauce
4 tbsp soy sauce
2 cups water (approximate)


This is a short-cut version of the recipe, check out the original post for more detailed descriptions:

1. Brown the ground pork, add the vinegar and drain / scoop out the fluids that will come out from the pork.
2. season with pepper and mix around
3. add the chopped garlic, carrots and potato
4. add the cooking wine and oyster sauce and mix around
5. add the soy sauce and water, let boil & simmer till cooked.

Marinated Chicken Kebabs & Herbed Potato Slices

A good friend shared a recipe that she saw on TV (a Filipino channel), when she was describing the dish to me, I did a google search and found the exact same recipe posted on Epicurious.com.

Marinated Chicken Kebabs with Lemon-Pepper Yoghurt Sauce

Admittedly, this was my first time cooking with Rosemary and I was a bit too enthusiastic and generous with this herb. The chicken (thankfully) turned out well and hubby gives his seal of approval although he did request that I make it with bigger chicken chunks next time.

Marinade:
2 cups extra virgin olive oil
juice of 3 lemons
2 tbsp chopped garlic
3/4 tbsp chopped fresh rosemary leaves (I used dried rosemary leaves)
3/4 tbsp fresh thyme leaves (did not use these)
6 single boneless, skinless chicken breasts ( I used boneless, skinless thighs instead)
salt and pepper to taste

1. Slice the chicken in to smaller chunks (cubes).
2. Combine the ingredients and toss with the chicken chunks and leave this in the refrigerator overnight.
3. Instead of grilling, I popped this in a 400F oven for 30 minutes (until cooked).

The chicken turned out wonderful. I did try to make the Yoghurt sauce as described but it didn't go too well with us and we ended up throwing most of it away.


While thinking about what would best accompany the chicken as a side dish, I remembered a post from my favorite food blogger - PinoyCook's Grilled herbed liempo and potatoes. Inspired, I decided to slice up some potatoes, season them with rosemary, oregano, salt and pepper and arrange them underneath the chicken slices ala Pinoy cook.

When done, the potatoes absorbed the flavor from the chicken drippings and herbs and tasted wonderful!

Salted Fish Fried Rice

Did I ever tell you that I'm a friend rice fiend? I love rice, all kinds of rice. This salted-fish fried rice is one of my absolute favorites whenever we go out to a Chinese restaurant.

Ingredients:
- garlic
- rice
- egg
- salted fish (Salted Threadfin)
- sliced chicken
- spring onions

1. cut / shred the Salted Threadfin into little pieces - you could probably use other types of salted fish but this is the real deal. This fish comes in dried form but we just this because you're not supposed to use a lot anyway.

My hands and fingers hurt after making himay this fish because the flesh was so hard! I use 2 slices for the 2 serving fried rice that I usually make.


2. Saute the garlic and sliced chicken in oil (I use a little bit of the oil from the Salted Threadfin). When the chicken is cooked, add the shredded fish and saute a bit more.

3. Add the rice and egg.

4. Garnish with egg slices and spring onions.

Sotanghon with Pork Leg

I don't even remember how I prepared this but it was mostly a lot of cutting up the ingredients and stir-frying.

ingredients:
- 1 can stewed pork leg
- carrots, julienned
- scallions
- green veggies (cabbage, perhaps ?) - did not add
- sliced mushrooms

Salted Pork and Century Egg Congee

Hubby and I have been craving for congee since the weather started getting colder last fall. I only used to be able to prepare good-'ol arrozcaldo but hubby had other (and better) ideas.

He preferred to have a different kind of lugaw and wanted me to try making salted pork congee. So I googled a few recipes and we called up MIL for some tips and instructions and this was what we came up with.

Ingredients:
- pork cubes
- salt
- century egg
- salted duck egg
- a couple of thin slices of ginger
- rice
- dried scallops (optional)
- sesame oil (to coat the rice grains)
- chicken boullion powder (for flavoring)

Steps:
1. Cut the pork into cubes, rub with salt and keep them in the refrigerator overnight.
2. To start cooking, rinse the pork and boil in a pot of water.
3. Prepare the rice by coating it with sesame oil.
4. When the pork has been boiling for a few hours (I like my salted pork so soft that they are falling apart when I bite into them), add the dried scallops and then, the rice.
5. Stir and continue cooking until the rice is cooked and you have congee.

6. Taste and flavor with chicken boullion powder.

7. If the congee is bland, use some salted dug eggs (cut up into small pieces or mashed) to flavor the congee. I've prepared this dish a few times and sometimes I had to add the duck egg and sometimes, the congee came out salty from the pork already.

8. Slice up some century egg and mix into the congee. The pic below shows the congee with bits of salted duck egg (the white stuff) and century egg slices.

This is good, we prepared this for Mom/Dad during our visit to California, they loved it and finished the whole pot.

Lunar New Year Celebration

This was what we had for our hot pot dinner:
1) broth made from pork broth boiled and simmered for hours, this was later flavored with Sate sauce
2) spicy broth was from #1, but with some Chiu Chow spices

and the dippers:
1) sliced rib eye (shabu shabu beef)
2) vegetables - Sweet pea & Baby bokchoy
3) shrimp

4) shrimp balls
5) cuttlefish balls
6) fish cake - balls and sheets
7) kani - crab sticks
8) Enoki mushrooms
9) sweet corn

We also had 2 kinds of noodles - sotanghon and soba.

Kalbi

Kalbi or Korean BBQ is one of my favorite dishes because:

(a) it's beef - all meat!
(b) it has bones (we all know that the meat near the bones is the tastiest) but the cut makes it easy to separate the meat from the bones if you don't want to gnaw on the latter
(c) the marinade, once you get it right, is easy to prepare
(d) you can marinade the short ribs before hand and have it ready for cooking any time
(e) you can pan fry it, bbq or grill it - perfect for any season

I first got the recipe for the marinade from my Aunt last June and we have prepared several batches since then and have refined / modified the recipe to our taste (hubby's tastes, mostly). Hubby has a keener sense of taste than me because I didn't have any complaints for all those times that we were experimenting with the measurements of the ingredients.

Marinade Ingredients:
1 cup sugar
1 cup soy sauce (we used lite soy sauce)
1/2 bulb garlic (original recipe calls for 1 big bulb)
1 red onion
pepper to taste
water

Toss ingredients in blender, add just enough water to get the blender going (not thick).
When done, marinate the sliced short ribs in the mixture.