Salt and Pepper Pork Chops

I've been on a quest to get good Salt and Pepper Pork Chops. We've been getting them from our Chinese restaurant on Sundays but I haven't found one that's perfect. 

N.C.'s is fatty.

Q.D.'s is sometimes too spicy for the husband. 

Husband also does not like the bones that are all over the meat pieces.

and last night, I finally made MadeWithLau's Daddy Lau's Salt and Pepper Pork Chops and I am still in awe because I have not made anything *this* good in a long long time.

I prepped this dish in the exact same way that they showed in their video, making sure to pound the pork pieces with the back of my knife. The pork came out really nice and tender. 

The taste and seasoning was perfect. 

Ma Chang (Zong Zi)

 

Finally got to making Ma-Chang over the weekend. 

I've had the glutinous rice for months, a gift from friends, and I always meant to make ma chang but obviously, it took me a few months before I actually got down to making it. 

Katamad kasi because it takes so long! One starts prepping the day before and the work continues all throughout the next day.

Day 1: Soak the Glutinous rice, marinade the pork belly and soak the bamboo leaves.

Day 2: Start soaking the other ingredients (beans, peanuts, dried scallops, dried shrimp, prep the salted egg yolks, slice the chinese sausages) and start cleaning the bamboo leaves by wiping both sides with a soft cloth and rinsing with clean water.

Start wrapping the ma-chang, cook in the pressure cooker for 90 minutes.

Chicken Barbeque

I have to say that I'm getting pretty good at making chicken barbeque.

Feeling ko, it tastes like Aristocrat's but I haven't been to that restaurant in more than a decade so I really wouldn't know.

It was made doubly-amazing when we discovered that yellow (Spanish) rice tastes similar to the java rice that I remember from my childhood.

Food Saver Vacuum

I have a new toy.

My practical side is telling me that getting a food vacuum seems a bit silly considering how little I cook these days but my non-practical side has a louder voice ;-)

I justified this purchase by telling myself that:
(1) I buy in bulk - this is true!
(2) Sometimes, our meat does get freezer burns - true rin!
(3) I've wanted this for the longest time but refrained myself from getting it because the vacuum rolls are expensive.
(4) I've been packing both raw and cooked food portions in ziploc freezer bags and then vacuuming the air out before sealing. We through a lot of these and the vacuuming and the seals aren't even that good.


Imagine my delight, while browsing through the wonder that is Amazon, when I came across these generic food vacuum rolls - affordable na lang and they have good reviews that seem legit.

Having decided to take the plunge, I did some research and decided to get the GameSaver model for the following reasons:

(1) It's compact enough to fit in a kitchen drawer, my house is cluttered enough and I didn't want to add more clutter on the counters
(2) It's a simple model, less moving parts
(3) It can do up to 40 consecutive seals - the other models, I hear, need to be cooled (or let cool ?) in between seals.

My ever-supportive husband and I had fun vacuuming stuff last night. We cut up pieces from the roll and made custom-sized bags for single-servings of pistachios, I brought them to the office for emergency snacks.

This came at the right time because I'm due for a Costco run this weekend.

Ayos.

Parmesan Crusted Salmon

This is yet another winner - both in taste and ease to prepare.

Picked up this recipe from Hellman's.

• 1/3 cup Mayonnaise
• 2 Tbsp. grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 tsp. finely chopped flat-leaf parsley (used dried parsley instead)
• 1 tsp. grated lemon peel (omitted)
• 4 pieces salmon fillet (about 4 oz. each) - (used 1 fillet slab picked up from costco)
• 1 Tbsp. Italian seasoned dry bread crumbs - (used seasoned whole wheat breadcrumbs)

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 450°.
2. Combine Mayonnaise, cheese, parsley in bowl. Arrange salmon on baking sheet. Evenly top with Mayonnaise mixture, then sprinkle with bread crumbs.
3. Bake until salmon flakes with a fork and topping is lightly browned, about 12 minutes.

Chicken Marsala

This is a super simple dish to prepare.

• Boneless / skinless chicken
• garlic salt
• butter
• mushrooms (I used the white mushrooms), cut into quarters

1) Season the chicken with garlic salt
2) Dredge the chicken in flour.
3) In the pan, put a little oil and brown the chicken, around 3 minutes each side. Set aside.
4) heat butter in pan, brown the mushrooms (mushrooms may produce water, if it does cook until the water is dried up)
5) when mushrooms are brown, add 3/4 cup marsala wine
6) let the marsala wine boil
7) add 1 cup chicken stock, let boil
8) put the chicken pieces back into the pan & turn the heat down to medium. Let it boil till the sauce gets reduced / thickens.

Stuffed Porkchop with Bacon & Mushrooms

Hubby came home last Thursday night and asked me about stuffed porkchops - specifically, do I know what they are and can I make them ?

I confessed that I have not heard of stuffed porkchops before but that I didn't think they'd be overly complicated. I was also thinking of that new knife we have that's very sharp, it would be so simple to cut a pocket into a pork chop.

I looked up "stuffed pork chops recipes" online and a lot of hits came up with a lot of variations on the stuffing. It looked like it was just a matter of choosing which ones will work best for us.

And so for round 1, I decided to go with a no-brainer - bacon and mushrooms. We love bacon, we love mushrooms, what can go wrong ?

1. Saute the bacon and mushrooms. I just sauteed them till the bacon was cooked.
2. Seasoned the porkchop and cut a pocket into it.
3. Stuffed the filling inside the porkchops and sealed the cut with a toothpick
4. Browned the sides on a pan.
5. turned the heat to low, covered the pan and sort of baked the pork chops till they're cooked.

They turned out juicy and tasty :)