Brocolli in Garlic and Olive Oil

This one is a great side dish and very very easy to make. Aside from the brocolli, this involves 4 ingredients only...garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper. The ingredients will bring out the natural flavor of the vegetable.

I served this last night together with the tempura.

Here's the recipe;

Ingredients

1 medium head brocolli, cut and sliced in florettes
5 cloves garlic
5 tbsps olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Instruction
1. Wash the brocolli thoroughly. I've got a tip from my mom that to make sure that the vegetables will be bug-free, you can soak the vegetable in water with a tablespoon of vinegar for 10 minutes. After that, wash again with running water.
2. Cut the brocolli in small florettes.

fresh brocolli florettes

3. Heat the pan, add the olive oil and garlic.
4. Add the brocolli, stir fry until you reach the desired doneness of the vegetable. I like mine to be half cooked.

5. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve hot!!!

Easy Tempura

We bought shrimps (...again! we really love shrimps) and instead of cooking the buttered shrimps and the ginataan hipon, I tried the tempura.

Tempura is deepfried dish of vegetables or seafoods. To make them crispy, each will be dipped in batter - a mixture of water, egg, flour and salt,  before deep frying. What makes the tempura delicious is the dipping sauce. The original dipping sauce includes dashi and mirin, but since Japanese stores are nowhere to be found in my area, my Nora Daza cookbook saved my day!

If you want to maintain the crispiness of the tempura, try rolling them in japanese breadcrumbs, called panko. That's what I did and it really did make the tempura more crispy.

So here's the recipe, try it!

Ingredients
For the tempura
15 pcs shrimps (suahe type)
salt and pepper

Batter
3/4 cup flour
3/4 cup water
1 egg
salt and pepper to taste

1 cup of panko for coating the shrimps

Procedure
Shrimp
1. Shell, devein and wash the shrimps. I butterfly cut the shrimps by making a slit at the back. Do not take off the tails. Season with salt and pepper, then prepare the batter.

deveined and butterfly-ed shrimps 

2. For the batter, combine all the ingredients and mix well.

Batter


3. Heat oil in the frying pan or deep fryer. The shrimps must be submerged in hot oil to achieve an even golden brown crust. Aside from that, we want soft and juicy shrimps and if you have insufficient oil, tendency is to have a longer cooking time resulting to dry and tough shrimps.

Anyway, once the cooking oil is hot, cooked the tempura until golden brown.

4. To remove the excess oil, place them in a kitchen paper towel.

Dipping Sauce
Ingredients
1 cup hot water
1 chicken boullion cube
2 tbsps soy sauce
1 tsp grated ginger
2 tbsps grated radish

Just mix everything and that's it!!

Hope you'll like it!

Blogging thru iPod touch

Yay! I can update my blog thru iPod! I am testing if its working! i cannot upload picture with the lite version though!

Baking 101: Double Chocolate Muffins

Note: I pulled the picture and recipe from my flickr account.

This is my second try of Nigella Lawson's Chocolate Chocolate-chip muffins. The first one was a failure. I followed the recipe religiously, but wondered why the muffins were bland.

So after checking the video of her's, found out that she actually used 1 and 3/4 cups of sugar. In food network's site, it was written there that she used only 3/4 cup of sugar.

I wonder what's written on her book...hmmmn...

check the video below.



So after a week of  eating those not so yummy muffins, because I don't want to just put them to trash, I then again found the guts to bake them. I used a good quality cocoa powder and chocolate chips, followed the correct recipe and yes, I finally found heaven in those muffins...

Before baking them, I made sure to research on how to achieve those high and mighty dome shape that a perfect muffin should have. So I found out that instead of setting the temperature to the usual 350-375 degrees F, you will have to set it to 400degrees F to "shock" the batter. You have to keep the high temperature for 10 minutes. The batter will rise rapidly and will create the dome. After that, temperature must be dropped to 350 degrees F until you pull them out of the oven.

And the result? The lovely crusted but moist muffins.

Another tip which I will try next time, because I just found that after I baked them, is to completely fill the muffin cups with the batter. Usually, in baking cupcakes, the cups must be 3/4 full so it won't spill. But for muffins, you should fill them up. And it will make your muffins mushroom shaped. Gorgeous!

So here again is the link to the recipe. Please make sure add 1 more cup of sugar! 

Enjoy your freshly baked muffin!

Soda...Anyone?

I totally forgot that I have this genius little machine! My soda maker!!! I immediately pulled out the machine from tralala (cabinet) and started making mmm, well...soda!

If you are a soda drinker, it is wise for you to buy this. It is a bit pricey, but think of the empty bottles that you are throwing...where will they go? Additional trash?

I am trying to be an environmentalist here...heheh! But seriously, if you have this machine, you will not be throwing bottles again. You will also be saving a lot of money in the near future. A liter only costs P20.00 ($0.44 approx), and you can have carbonated drinks anytime you want.

I cannot remember the price of this, since it was only a gift last christmas. More or less, it is around P3,000 ($67).

The kit comes with the following:
1. 2 reusable bottles, you can use them
 for 3 years before you replace them.
2. 3 trial flavors: lemon lime for sprite, cola for coke, and orange for royal. But now, i heard that it comes with 1 bottle of flavoring of your choice.
3. The carbonator cylinder, which can carbonate 60 liters of water. By the way, an empty cylinder can be refilled, and its a lot cheaper than buying a new cylinder.
4. And of course the Machine, mine is Jet.

It is very easy to make your own soda using this. Here's the procedure...
1. Fill the bottle with water until you reached the line.
2. Attach the bottle in the machine. That small white tube should be inside the bottle. The air that will make the water fizz will pass there.

                                         
                                               Here's the carbonator at the back of the machine.

3. Press the button 3 times until you hear a loud buzz.

4. The water is already carbonated by this time. You can now put a cap full of the flavoring. Pour it slowly, coz the carbonated water will sizzle out of the bottle if you pour it fast.

Here's my flavoring...

5. Cover and carefully shake the bottle to mix the flavoring into the water. Chill before serving.

Here's the soda...see those bubblets?

When I poured the flavoring, my son said that I was trying to make a potion...heheheh!