Stuffed Shells

Sometime last year (or was it the year before ?), my friend Ayie brought us some frozen home-made lasagna rollups. She thought it would make us a good instant meal for when I get too busy or preoccupied w/ taking care of Swe-cha & was not able to prepare dinner.

Needless to say, the lasagna rollups were an instant hit. So much so that hubby requested that I try and make some myself. I did try to make some myself but it wasn't as easy as it looks. Things got messy as rolled & stuffed the lasagna sheets so I wasn't really gung-ho about doing it again.

Last week, I saw these jumbo shells in the grocery's pasta aisle and an idea hit my head. Since people were stuffing these shells anyway - usually, with cheese - why not stuff it w/ the filling similar to the lasagna rollups ?

and so... this dish was born.

Filling:

start with your standard bechamel sauce, flavor with cheddar cheese & mozzarella cheese (just keep adding cheese until it tastes right). Add chopped spinach (optional).

Shells: Prepare pasta shells according to package instructions

Meat sauce: Just prep your usual meat sauce. I made mine w/ ground beef & instant (traditional) spaghetti sauce from the jar.

To assemble, stuff the jumbo shells w/ the filling, arrange on a plate, top with sauce & cheese. Cover with foil & bake until the cheese topping is melted.

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

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.

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.