Frozen Meatballs

So many new blessings have come into our lives lately - Praise God! - and the most life-changing of all, is the fact that I now have an opportunity to go back to work full time.

With that, I've started prepping meals to be frozen so we could easily thaw & cook them later. I've gotten so many ideas from my n@wie friends and I can't wait to try them all :)

First batch - meatballs. I had thought to freeze food in Ziploc freezer bags at first but realized that they might spill and they might not be so easy to stack. Then, I found these takeout containers and tadaa! I knew I was saving them for a good reason.

I also learned a new term yesterday - "Freezer Cooking". There is such a thing pala where people cook large batches of food & freeze them for eating later.

Szechuan Eggplant and Pork

I found a pack of Ajinomoto Szechuan Eggplant mix while cleaning out my food pantry and decided that it was high time we tried this out. The timing was great because I had a pack of ground pork thawing in the refrigerator and we had fresh eggplant and peppers in the refrigerator.

This is another one of those nice & easy meals that can readily be prepared for dinner.

Ingredients:

- 1/2 lb ground pork

- 1 eggplant

- 1 green bell pepper

- 1 carrot

- Ajinomoto Szechuan Minced Pork with Eggplant mix

Deep fried stuffed tofu

This is yet another dish in our "quest for the ultimate tofu dish" series.

The filling came out dry. Need to adjust that some more. If the filling were moist, that would've contrasted nicely with the crispness of the tofu.

Steamed Stuffed Tofu

Hubby and I love tofu in all its shapes and forms so it seemed weird to me when I realized that the only tofu dishes I've been cooking at home are Mapo-Tofu and Deep-fried tofu. With that, I went on a tofu-dish quest with the ultimate goal of finding the ultimate stuffed tofu recipe.

This is dish #1

Ingredients:

Ground pork (around 1/2 lb)

Shiitake mushrooms, rehydrated & chopped

Tofu

~1 tbsp soy sauce

~1 tsbp cooking sherry

~1/2 tbsp sesame oil

Sauce:

1 tbsp oyster sauce

2 tbsp chicken stock

1 tbsp rice wine

Steps:

1. Mix the ground pork, shiitake mushrooms, soy sauce, sherry and sesame oil.

2. Slice tofu into squares.

3. Scoop out a hole in the middle of the tofu squares, keep the scooped out tofu, chop it up and add it to the ground pork mixture.

4. Fill the tofu squares with the ground pork mixture.

5. Steam for around 5 minutes.

6. Drain / throw away the liquid that comes out.

7. Mix the ingredients for the sauce and drizzle it over the stuffed tofu and continue steaming until the pork is cooked.

Verdict: very good, pero parang di bagay as ulam w/ rice. This is better eaten by itself (dimsum style). Also, it might be better to mix in a little cornstarch w/ the sauce to thicken it a bit.

Stir-fried eggplant with ground pork

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Skinless Longganisa

My sister in California buys the yummiest longganisa at her local asian market. Whenever I visit her, Mom would surely prepare some for breakfast one day and serve it with sunny side up eggs and garlic fried rice. I love my longganisa paired with vinegar infused with garlic & chili too.

The Asian food store that we go to sells longganisa by the bulk and since hubby isn't exactly a fan, I hesitate about buying a package.

A few days ago, I was browsing the web for recipes for ground pork and found a recipe for skinless pork longganisa.

Ingredients:

1 kilo ground pork, 10% fat

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 tbsp rock salt (or 1.5 tsp fine salt)

1 tbsp worcestershire sauce

3 tbsp soy sauce

1 tbsp chopped garlic

1/2 tsp ground black pepper

Blend all ingredients together.

Roll a small amount of the mixture in a 4.5 in x 3 in piece of waxed paper

Store in the freezer for 3 hours or until ready to cook.

I have to admit that I did have some doubts as to whether the mixture would stick together while being cooked because there's no egg or cornstarch to serve as a binder for the sausage. But this works.

When ready to cook, heat oil in a wok or frying pan.

Unwrap the sausages and fry in batches until fully cooked.

Drain on paper towels.

These look good, no ? The sausages look so rich and yummy and they were.

Hot & Spicy Pork Chops

We may have converted Mommy and Achi, my older sister, to the wonders of Knorr's Hot & Spicy Bake Mix.

Aliw rin to think of the story of how we found this product. Hubby and I were in our neighborhood Asian grocery store when we remembered this one pork dish that we've been aching to try at home - Spicy Salt and Pepper Pork Chop. It's been a while since we were able to order this dish in Chinatown so we (okay, it was me) were craving for the taste.

Fortunately, hubby (thank goodness that he still remembers his Chinese), knows what spice it is that is used in my fave dish. We asked the cashier, she asked a store clerk, the store clerk asked the manager, and eventually, the manager asked the owner. And yes, we found it.

I sent a box over to Mom and Achi in California (each box has 4 packets and cost around $2.50) and sent some pictures of how we prepared our pork chops.

Basically, I get a huge piece of pork - usually, pork loin because it's tender and cut it up into smaller slices. Smaller slices mean that more of the spice gets into the meat and thus, tastier. Mix in 1 packet of the spice for every 2 lbs of meat, massage the spice into the meat and let it stand in the refrigerator for an hour.

Just before frying, I coat the pork pieces with camote powder (because I like the texture, but you can use cornstarch so that it becomes crispy) and deep fry the pork pieces.

The outcome is delish, I tell ya.

And yes, the pic on the left shows that I have no patience for cutting / chopping whatsoever and don't care about uniformity at all. But, however my pork chops look like, they do taste good and contrary to what the label on the spice package says, these aren't spicy at all.

Pork Menudo

For two weeks now, hubby and I have been having our Friday date night at a Filipino carinderia style restaurant in Jersey City. We actually love the food at another Filipino restaurant more - Mama Fina's - but they have been closed for a few months now and we have no idea where and when they will be in operation again.

So anyway, we've been to the Pinoy restaurant in Jersey City twice now and while we find the lechon kawali quite good, hubby (not a pinoy food fan to start with) has been disappointed with their Menudo and Bistek Tagalog. He claims that they didn't taste authentic - I'm not sure where he got his authentic pinoy food taste ideas from because they surely don't prepare that at home.

This menudo dish I prepared is an attempt to try and see what he expected Menudo to be, the original recipe is from Pinoy Menudo in Visual Recipes.

Ingredients:
1 kilo pork loin (orig recipe calls for pork liempo, I didn't want fatty meat)
1/2 kilo pork liver (we did not add liver)
3 medium sized potatoes, diced
3 medium sized carrots, diced
1 medium sized onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic
1.5 cups of tomato sauce
1 cup water
2 dried bay leaves
2 tbsp sugar (orig recipe calls for 1 tsp only but we adjusted to suit our taste)

1. Saute garlic and onion in a pan.
2. Add the meat and saute until meat is no longer pink.
3. Add the bay leaves, tomato sauce and water. Mix it around and let simmer.
4. When pork is cooked (in took me 30 to 45 minutes to get to this stage), add the carrots and potatoes and let it cook.
5. Season with salt and pepper (to taste).

Verdict: Masarap :) Though hubby says that this is not the menudo taste that he knows - syempre, walang liver. And in retrospect, we just realized that the menudo from home also has green peas and garbanzos (?).

Roast Pork in Soy Sauce

It's been a while since I last posted a new recipe. I've tried a few recipes but those didn't make it to this blog because frankly.. uh, they didn't turn out too well and I didn't really want to bother posting if it wasn't good enough to share.

We got a huge piece of pork loin on sale from the grocery store last week and figured that this was a good time to try out this recipe from my cookbook that I've been eyeing for a long time.

Ingredients:

• 1 lb lean pork fillets

Marinade:

• 6 tablespoons dark soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons dry sherry
• 1 teaspoon five-spice powder
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1 inch piece fresh ginger, finely chopped

Glaze:

• 4 tablespoons superfine sugar
• 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

1. Mix together the ingredients for the marinade. Spoon over the pork, cover and marinate in the refrigerator for at least an hour.


2. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Drain the pork, reserve the marinade.


3. Place the pork on a roasting rack over a roasting pan. Cook in the oven, occasionally basting with the marinade for 1 hour or until cooked through.


4. Place the superfine sugar and vinegar in a saucepan and heat gently until the sugar dissolves. Bring to a boil and simmer for 3-4 minutes, until syrupy.


5. When the pork is cooked, remove from the oven and brush with the sugar syrup. Leave for about 5 minutes, then slice.

Verdict: This recipe turned out quite good - not exactly like how my Ama used to make it, but close enough. Next time, I would use a different kind of dark soy sauce. For this recipe, I used Mushroom flavored dark soy sauce and the roast pork turned out too dark. I would use Silver Swan soy sauce next time.

Steamed Spareribs

We currently have a whole freezer fully stocked with meat - thanks to the Shoprite coupons that we were able to use last week. One of the meat packages that we got was pork spare ribs. I was planning to make some "Salt and Pepper pork ribs" but I didn't want to do more frying because of the lingering smell that always permeates the kitchen and living area after deep frying anything.

I decided to prepare our ribs ala dimsum style - steamed - and after some searching, I found this recipe by Weldon Russell posted on Cooking.com that I liked. I found myself missing a few ingredients so I ended up doing some substitutions and eliminating some altogether (I've noted those changes down in the recipe below).

Btw, the ribs were yummy! I really should stage my dishes nicely before taking any photographs. The photo above doesn't do this dish any justice.

Ingredients:

2 tbsp peanut oil (substituted olive oil)

2 tbsp fermented black beans, rinsed under cold water, drained and roughly chopped

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp sugar

2 tbsp chicken broth

2 tsp rice wine or dry sherry (used cooking sherry)

1 lb pork spareribs, chopped through in sections between the ribs

2 tbsp cornstarch

2 fresh red chili peppers, chopped (did not use)

2 cloves garlic, chopped

2 tbsp chopped cilantro (did not use)

1. Heat the oil in a hot wok. Add the black beans, salt and sugar, and saute gently for 10 seconds. Add the chicken broth, rice wine and light soy sauce. Simmer together for 30 seconds. Remove the sauce to a mixing bowl. Add the spareribs and set aside to marinate for at least 30 minutes.

2. Add the cornstarch and mix well to coat the spareribs. Place the ribs on a plate ready for steaming. Sprinkle on the red chili peppers, garlic and cilantro. Steam over boiling water for 45 minutes.

Baby back ribs and Mushrooms ala Teriyaki (by PinoyCook)

Pinoy Cook's picture of this dish on her Baby back ribs and mushrooms ala Teriyaki post looked so yummy that it made me want to try this recipe out

Given that I have poor planning practices when it comes to food preparation (cooking), I didn't realize that I didn't have all of the ingredients until it was too late.

Instead of gin (in Pinoycook's recipe), I had planned to use mirin which I thought I had. Turned out that I didn't have enough so I added the 1/4 cup remaining mirin that I had and added 3/4 cup of cooking sherry (which was sweet too).

The dish turned out great! I probably should have held off on this (I did this last 12/21) and prepared this for Noche Buena instead. Now, am looking forward to getting invited to the next pot luck party, hubby and I are bringing this :)

Lechon Kawali

I've seen a lot of different recipes, the most common way of preparation calls for pre-boiling the pork belly in broth - some recipes even recommend using beer - and then freezing the meat before frying or broiling.

My aunt does hers differently, she skips the boiling altogether and just seasons her meat with salt, pepper and a little sugar and broils it - skin side down first.

Personally, I've found that pre-boiling the meat in broth ensures that the meat is cooked all the way through so when I'm broiling the meat I only have to worry about the browning of the meat and crisping of the skin and not about whether or not it's still raw.

1. Boil the pork liempo in broth - any broth that you have on hand will do but I find that canned chicken broth is very convenient to use for this. I also reuse my broth a couple of times so after boiling, I let the remaining broth cool down and transfer it to the freezer in an airtight container.
2. It usually takes a few hours, depending on the thickness of the meat, before the pork liempo is cooked through.
3. When done, take out the meat and let it drip dry. You can place it on a colander, strainer, or a wire rack with a dish underneath to catch the drippings. Use a fork to poke holes through the skin, this will create the "bubbles" in the skin when you broil it.
4. Freeze the pork belly.
5. When you're ready to broil the pork belly, just take it straight from the freezer to the turbo broiler. Broil for around 50 minutes at 350 degrees, cooking time depends on the size of your pork. Start cooking your meat skin side down and then turn it to the other side halfway through the process.

You can serve your lechon kawali with Mang Tomas All Purpose Sauce but my personal favorite is the all time pinoy mix of chopped onions, soy sauce and vinegar.

Pork with Bell Peppers

(recipe from Shelby)

This dish was prepared and shown to me by an officemate during a project stint in NJ. Thanks Shelby!



Ingredients:

• Pork shoulder, cubed
• Bell pepper, diced
  
• Oyster sauce
• cornstarch
• salt
• soy sauce
• chopped garlic
  

Steps:

1. In a plastic container, mix cornstarch and a dash of salt. Place a few pieces of cubed pork, cover and shake to coat the pork pieces evenly. Do this until all the meat is evenly coated with the cornstarch mixture. Set aside
   
2. In a wok / saucepan, heat some oil (put enough oil to deep fry the pork pieces).
3. Deep fry the pork cubes and set aside to drain. If possible, drain the oil from the meat by using a metal mesh strainer rather than paper towels. This will help keep the meat crunchy. Set aside.
   
4. In a small bowl, mix oyster sauce with a dash of soy sauce (to taste) . Mix just enough to coat the pieces of meat. Add a little water if the mixture is too thick.
   
5. Saute garlic in a wok/saucepan, add the bell pepper. When bell pepper is cooked, add the deep fried pork and mix.
   
6. Pour in the oyster sauce mixture and mix.
7. Serve