Eggplant Chips

I didn't start eating vegetables until I was in my 20s and that was when my love affair with eggplant started. I have not met an eggplant dish that I do not like yet.

These crispy eggplant chips are one of the easiest to prepare. At home (in the Philippines), our cook usually cuts the eggplant up in nice little rectangles - I have never been able to do that so I just slice diagonally and it works just as well.

I don't have an official batter recipe, it's mostly just tantya-tantya but so far, it's always tasted good.

Batter:

- egg

- cornstarch

- little water

- season w/ pepper and fish sauce (patis)

Slice eggplant into thin chips.

Dip into batter.

Deep-fry till cooked.

I didn't realize how much I missed this until we went to CA for Christmas and Mom made these for dinner one day. Ang sarap!

It's oil-overload though, major umay afterwards due to the oil :)

Spinach Pork Soup

I've been trying to expand our list of soup dishes (or dishes with sauces, for that matter) because I'm getting tired of preparing the same soups over and over for Swe-cha. He hasn't complained, but it's about time that we expand his palate.

Tonight's new dish was spinach-tofu-pork soup and he loved it! Hubby says that this turned out good too.

I wasn't exactly sure how to go about it but I did find a recipe for Vietnamese Spinach soup here. I did tweak it a little bit, particularly with the seasonings, until I came up with a taste that I liked.

Ingredients

1 lb ground pork (orig recipe calls for 1/2 lb finely minced pork belly)

1 package extra firm tofu

5 cups water

1 lb malabar (I used 1 pack of chopped frozen spinach)

1 tbsp olive oil

1 to 1.5 tbsp sugar

salt and pepper to taste

Knorr seasoning (not part of the original recipe)

some fish sauce (not part of the original recipe)

some chicken powder (not part of the original recipe)

Sauteed Spinach with Feta Cheese

Jazz up your regular sauteed spinach with some feta cheese - this was something I learned when we ate at a Greek restaurant ages ago. Sun dried tomatoes also goes well with this dish.

- Saute some garlic in olive oil

- Add the spinach and toss until spinach is cooked / wilted

- Put on serving plate and sprinkle some crumbled feta cheese on top just before serving.

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

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.

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.

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)

Bacon-wrapped Asparagus

We prepared this dish last Sunday lunch, the recipe is from my friend Irene.

Sammie did a great job wrapping up the asparagus stalks with bacon, they were all firmly wrapped and don't fall apart even if you cut it across the middle.

We're still a bit off with the oven settings and as you can see, the asparagus tips are overcooked. Nevertheless, these were yummy!

Link to Irene's Original Recipe:

Ingredients:

• Green Asparagus Slices of Bacon
• Pepper
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• Teriyaki Sauce (Kikkoman)

Steps:

1. Hold 1 asparagus on both ends and bend gently until it snaps. Throw away the bottom portion, and use the remaining one as a guide to cut the rest of the asparagus bundle.



2. Take 3-4 asparagus together, wrap 1 slice of bacon around it in a spiral manner until it covers 3/4 of your asparagus. Do it for the remaining asparagus.



3. Line bacon wrapped asparagus on a baking pan. Drizzle with olive oil, season with salt and pepper. Brush with teriyaki sauce (optional).



4. Bake at 375F for 10-15 minutes, or until bacon is brown and crispy.

Chopsuey

I know that veggies are good for the body and still, I am a carnivore 98% of the time. The only veggies that I eat are salads and the occasional ones that would stray onto my spoon because they're too small to weed out.

Hubby and I were shopping for groceries at our neighborhood Asian store when I saw a pack of Ginisa Mix (from Manila) on a shelf. The picture looked so yummy that I decided to try and cook some for dinner that night.

This is the first time that we've cooked this dish and frankly, I don't even know if this is supposed to look this way. Leave me a message and let me know if there's anything we missed or did wrong.

Ingredients:

• 1/4 lb Shrimp


• 1 small bunch of Broccoli


• Straw mushrooms (half can)


• Quail Eggs (half can)


• Baby Corn (half can)


• Snow peas


• chopped garlic


• sliced onions


• olive oil

Cornstarch mixture:

• 1 tbsp cornstarch mixed w/ 1 cup water


• 1 tbsp soy sauce (to taste)


• 1/2 tsp chicken powder (for flavor)

Steps:

1. Blanch shrimp in salted boiling water for 1 minute, drain.


2. Blanch broccoli in boiling water


3. In a skillet / wok, saute garlic in a little oil.


4. Add the onions


5. When the onions are caramelized, add all the other ingredients.


6. Stir the veggies around a little and add the cornstarch mixture.


7. Cook until the sauce thickens, do not overcook the vegetables.