Stir-fried eggplant with ground pork

Yakitori

I made chicken yakitori for dinner today, I picked it up from the homecookingrocks.com. I wasn't really skeptical but since the recipe didn't call for marinating the meat, I wasn't 100% sure about the results either.

And I got the ultimate compliment(s) from hubby:

- I cooked the usual amount of meat which, on a normal day, would give us enough for 4 servings so we'll both have our baon for tomorrow. Pag ginanahan, this gives us 3 servings. Tonight, ubos! We polished off the chicken and bitin pa.

- While eating, I heard him mutter under his breath (I don't think I was supposed to hear this) in a very sarcastic tone, "what a day to start dieting". Yun pala, he decided to start dieting na. heehee.

Sago pudding

I was cleaning out a cabinet and found half a package of tiny, small sago - remnants from long ago. I remember buying a pack ages ago but I don't even remember what I used it for.

I suddenly found myself craving for that mango sago dessert that is so popular in Chinese restaurants. We had some almond jelly in the pantry so I prepared that and refrigerated it, I also dropped by our neighborhood Asian store one day and bought a bottle of pureed mangoes.

I cooked the sago this afternoon and they came out overcooked. I wasn't able to pay as much attention as I was supposed to while cooking it because I was on nanny-duty (hubby had gone out for a haircut).

I mixed it up with a little pureed mangoes but my puree turned out a bit on the sour side - this bottle was probably produced with out-of-season mangies, *boo*. So I rummaged on the cabinet some more and came up with a can of coconut cream, "we're in business," I thought.

Steps:

1. Cooked sago - cook according to package instructions. I didn't have the instructions but this was what I did: boil water in a pot, pour raw sago and let boil till they're partially cooked but still have white centers. Turn off the fire and cover the pot and let it cook some more till the centers are clear, this means that they are already fully cooked. Make sure to stir constantly to prevent the sago from clumping together.

2. Pour sago into jelly molds or little ramekins and let chill in the refrigerator for a couple of hours.

3. To serve, pop sago shapes out of the molds onto a plate and drizzle with mango puree and coconut cream. I have a bit of a sweet tooth so I was very very generous with the coconut cream.

Ang sarap!

I can imagine this combination - sweetened mango and coconut - on some malagkit or suman already. Methinks I'm going to look for a suman recipe next.

I also poured the overcooked sago into little ramekins and popped them in the refrigerator. A couple of hours later, they had set into the molds.

To serve, slide out the sago (it will retain its shape) onto plates and drizzle with mango puree and coconut cream.

Chicken Katsu Don

This chicken has been sitting in the refrigerator, already defrosted, since yesterday and I didn't want to keep this till tomorrow. Not having had the chance to do anything beforehand - marinade, etc - I knew that I had to go for a dish that requires little in terms of ingredients and preparation.

I dug through our pantry and found a new bag of panko bread crumbs, so I decided on chicken katsudon.

Ingredients for Chicken Katsu:

boneless skinless chicken thighs

garlic salt

pepper

flour

egg (beaten)

panko bread crumbs

hot oil for deep frying

1. Prepare chicken by pounding or slicing into thin fillets. Season chicken with garlic salt and pepper.

2. Dredge chicken in flour, dip into the egg and then coat with panko bread crumbs

3. Fry chicken in hot oil, note that panko bread crumbs burn easily so do not use too high heat.

4. Slice the chicken pieces.

Sauce for 1 serving (1 bowl of rice) of Katsudon sauce taken from Angelica's food blog.:

1 tbsp soy sauce

1 tbsp cooking wine (I used rice wine)

1 tbsp mirin

2 tsp sugar

1/3 cup chicken/vegetable stock or water (I used water and added some chicken powder)

1 egg, slightly beaten

spring onions

1. Mix soy sauce, cooking wine, mirin, sugar, water and chicken powder together.

2. In a small pan, pour the sauce and let it boil. When boiling, put sliced chicken in the sauce, pour the slightly beaten egg on top of the chicken, sprinkle with spring onions and let it boil till the egg is cooked. It may help to cover the pan.

3. Pour on top of a bowl of rice - chicken, broth and all - and serve.

This turned out great. My chicken was crunchy on the outside and moist and juicy inside. And the sauce ? PERFECT!

Chicken fillets with hoisin sauce

I bought several packages of boneless skinless chicken thighs from Costco today and decided to make a chicken dish for dinner. As I usually do when I'm in the mood to try something new, I drop by my favorite food blog, HomeCookingRocks (formerly pinoycook.net), and chose a dish for which I have the ingredients on hand.

Tonight's choice was a slight variation from chicken fillets with hoisin sauce and Szechuan pepper.

I also had to make slight variations on the seasoning as I had more chicken than the recipe called for, this was what I prepared:

5 boneless chicken thighs

5 tbsp lite soy sauce

cornstarch

cooking oil (for deep frying)

hoisin sauce

toasted sesame seeds

1. Slice chicken thighs into small strips, season with lite soy sauce and let stand in the refrigerator.

2. Coat the chicken fillets with the cornstarch and deep fry. When cooked, let the oil drain on paper towels.

3. In the pan, heat a dollop of hoisin sauce, add toasted sesame seeds and toss the chicken fillets to coat them with the hoisin sauce-sesame seed mixture.

Note that I prepared a small batch for tasting first and purposely did not coat the chicken evenly and completely with the hoisin sauce. Both hubby and I prefer it that way to preserve the crunchiness of the chicken and we preferred not to have that strong of a hoisin sauce taste.

Braised Short Ribs, Korean Style

I had some short ribs which had been sitting in the freezer for a long time now and I wanted to cook it to make baby food. When I took it out, it was then that I realized that beef short ribs wasn't really appropriate for making soup meant for baby food as it was too oily.

I really should name this dish "Short Ribs Surprise" as the ingredients and seasoning was really more of a "taste & see" [translated: tantiyahan] so I won't be able to post measurements here for now.

Ingredients:

Beef short ribs

water

spring onions

sugar

soy sauce

salt

ginger

garlic

Stuffed Fuzzy Squash

This is one of the dishes I learned from my mother-in-law when they came to visit us last month. The steps and ingredients are pretty simple but it becomes complicated because no recipe exists. Everything is a mixture of little bit of this and that - as my mother-in-law puts it, "konti toyo, konti asukal, konti asin, masarap na!"

I did exactly as that and seasoned the pork mixture as per my taste & imagination. I figured, we could always adjust the measurements later. This turned out great!

Ingredients:
ground pork
carrots
corn starch
sugar
salt
soy sauce

fuzzy squash



1. Peel the fuzzy squash and cut into disks.

2. Mix ground pork with carrots and corn starch and season with soy sauce, sugar, and salt


3. Pan-fry and sear / brown the fuzzy squash. When a little bit browned, brush with a little bit of cornstarch on the surface and put a dollop of the ground pork mixture on top. Pour some water in the pan, just at the level of the fuzzy squash, cover and let it steam.

Pork with Peppers

This is a dish that my former officemate, S, used to prepare at the company apartment during our NJ stints years ago. I seem to be on a bell pepper binge lately (I've been preparing a lot of dishes with bell peppers) and this seemed like the dish to have tonight.

I tried to recreate the dish as best I could and it turned out well.

Ingredients:

Pork, cubed or sliced

Cornstarch

Seasoned salt

oyster sauce

Bell Peppers, sliced

Minced garlic

soy sauce (optional)

1. Prepare pork by slicing into strips or cubes.

2. In a small container, mix the cornstarch and a little salt (do not overseason, we can always add more salt / soy sauce later). Coat the pork pieces with this cornstarch mixture.

3. Heat oil in a saucepan, deep fry the pork. Put the pork on paper towels to drain the oil. Taste the cooked pork.

4. Take out the excess oil in the saucepan, leave just enough to saute the garlic and peppers.

5. Add the cooked pork.

6. Mix a little water with around 2 tbsp of oyster sauce, add to the pork & pepper and mix. If the cooked pork still needs salt, add some soy sauce at this point.

Stir Fried Chicken with Pineapple and Peppers

This is a quick and easy to prepare recipe that I found on AllRecipes.com. The only deviation that I made from the recipe is that I used regular vinegar instead of white wine vinegar and I did not put any almonds in.

This turned out so good and so easy to prepare that I have made this dish twice in the past two weeks already.

Ingredients:

1/4 cup reduced-salt soy sauce

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

2 tablespoons mirin (sweetened Asian wine)

1 teaspoon grated ginger root

2 crushed garlic cloves

1 tablespoon cornstarch

2 tablespoons oil, preferably sesame oil

1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut in 1-inch pieces

6 large green onions, cut in 1-inch pieces

2 cups fresh or frozen pepper strips

1 (20 ounce) can chunk pineapple in juice

1/4 cup sliced almonds (optional)

Combine first six ingredients; stir well.

Heat oil in a large skillet and stir-fry chicken until brown and done, about 5 minutes. Remove. Add green onions, peppers and pineapple to the skillet; heat through. Pour in sauce and stir until thickened. Return chicken to skillet; heat through. Serve with brown rice; top with optional almonds.

Chicken in Peanut Sauce

It's been a while since I tried out new recipes and I claim the "new mommy" excuse for that. We recently had a new addition to the family, a baby boy, and our time has been taken up by our baby and we've decided to stick to the more familiar dishes in the meantime as they are easier and faster to make (because we have them often).

Today's meal was supposed to be chicken but I wanted something different as I was already getting tired of lemon chicken and fried chicken cutlets. I set out for a recipe and dropped by my favorite food blog - www.pinoycook.net - and found this recipe for chicken in spicy peanut butter sauce.

Now, I do believe that I may have strayed far away from the original recipe as I had to substitute white vinegar for rice wine vinegar and I eliminated the chili as hubby isn't really fond of spicy foods. I also don't have access to Lily's peanut butter described in the recipe and I had to substitute Skippy's Chunky Peanut butter (we still have 2 huge jars that we got from Costco). Lastly, I also have to confess that where it says "season to taste", I didn't really have an idea of what it was supposed to taste like so I just seasoned till it tasted okay to me.

With that, here is my version (I halved the amounts, except for the peanut butter):
5 skinless boneless chicken thighs
1 onion, roughly chopped
2 cloves of garlic, crushed and chopped
1 tbsp of grated ginger (couldn't slice my ginger as it was still frozen)
2 tbsps. of light soy sauce (I used Kikkoman)
2 tbsps. of white vinegar
about 1/4 c. of sweetened peanut butter (I went overboard with the peanut butter because I wanted to finish the jar)
patis (fish sauce), to taste
cracked black pepper
finely sliced onion leaves, to garnish

- Brown the chicken pieces in a pan.
- Add the garlic, onion, ginger, soy sauce, fish sauce and vinegar
- Boil and let simmer till chicken is cooked
- seasoned with fish sauce to taste, added pepper
- add the peanut butter and mix till sauce is thick
- garnish with green onions and serve

Verdict: Hubby says that this turned out not-bad - "pwede na" was his term - but it didn't have the wow factor. He also wasn't sure about wanting to bring this for his lunch tomorrow to the office.

As for me, I agree with the "not-bad" or "pwede na" verdict at first and was a bit iffy because I am used to having peanut butter with bread but not with rice. Later, I realized that it tastes better and better with every bite and I even had a second serving. Ayaw ni hubby, akin na lang to bukas.