Christmas Eve Dinner

I know it's already late, but anyhoo...Merry Christmas and Happy new year everyone!


Again, I've been very busy and I finally found a little time from my super hectic schedule to update my blog. Nothing special happened during those days, and I barely touched anything in the kitchen...well except for the utensils that I'm using to eat hehehe!


So, to rekindle my love affair with food, I volunteered to cook for our Christmas eve dinner! Tiring but happy! Coz I literally was the only one who prepared the food, no help period!


But it was worth it...really. 

Here are the pictures of our food. I prepared the lasagna (click here for recipe), which is now my official choice of pasta, the herb roasted chicken which I got from here with gravy from chicken drippings, and the cheesy vegetable, my family's all time veggie favorite!


The dessert, buko salad, not included in the picture was prepared by my mommy (oh yes, she helped pala). The sandwich, also not in the picture, with ham (that i preferred fried rather than just sliced straightly from the big circle of ham) went with the bread, some lettuce, tomato and a little mayo...simple but yummy!

Cheesy vegetables, (fried) ham slices, lasagna, roast chicken

a little of everything...

Of course, I enjoyed the night because I ate and spent time with my family. That's the most important thing right! The family that eats together, gets fat together! heheheh...


Again, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year Everyone! I wish you all the best and happiness in life!!! 


Cheers to the wonderful year ahead!!!

Pork Binagoongan (Pork in Shrimp Paste)

Hello!!! I'm back...! I am sorry for being absent for more than a month. As much as I wanted to post, I didn't have extra time to do it. Christmas planning at work, deadlines, etc...haaay! 


But anyway, I want to share to you one of my favorite dish. The pork binagoongan (pork in shrimp paste). Well, there's nothing so hard in cooking this dish but what I like the most is how well it goes with rice. The saltiness and sweetness of the shrimp paste is so good, that every time I eat this, the 1 cup of rice promise is being broken. I consider this as one of my comfort food.


Shrimp paste or bagoong alamang is a type of condiment. It is a common ingredient used in Southeast Asian countries. Made from minute shrimp, we love this as a dipping partner for green mangoes, condiment for kare-kare, salting agent for pinakbet and the key ingredient for binagoongan. 


Here's the recipe for Pork Binagoongan. You will only need few ingredients for this dish.

Ingredients


3/4 of a 250g bottle of shrimp paste. (I used the barrio fiesta brand)
250g pork belly, sliced into bite size pieces
1 small onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tomato, diced. 


Procedure


1. Fry the pork belly until golden brown. Set aside.
2. Saute onion and garlic. Add the tomato. 
3. Put back the pork in the pan, and stir in the shrimp paste until all pork has been covered. Cook for 5 minutes.


Served with hot, steaming rice...

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!

Shrimp in Coconut Milk (Ginataang Hipon)

My mom bought shrimps for dinner and she ask me to cook buttered shrimps, because it is my boy's favorite. But then I changed my mind and decided to introduce my little boy to ginataang hipon (shrimps cooked in coconut milk).

And good thing I did...my son loved it!

Originally, we are adding kamias to this dish. The sour taste of the fruit goes well with the taste of the coconut milk. But since it is not in season, I used an alternative, the pineapple chunks. The ginataang hipon was on the sweet side because of the pineapple chunks but it was A-OK! And ooops I used the canned pineapple by the way!

So, should I changed the name of the dish to "Hawaiian Shrimps in Coconut Milk"? 

hahahah!

This is actually a one pot dish, and can easily be prepared by busy moms. Here's the recipe.

Ingredients

1/2 kg shrimps
1 1/2 cups coconut milk
1/2 cup water
1 can (234g) of pineapple chunks or tidbits or kamias (if available)
salt and pepper to taste

Procedure

1. Put coconut milk, water and pineapple in a pan and boil.
2. Once the liquid has been reduced to half, add the shrimps.
3. Season with salt and pepper.
4. Simmer until little oil, from the coconut milk, appears.

Serve Hot!

Menudo Mania

I love my mom's menudo. And for me, it's the best menudo ever. The meat is so tender, and the sauce is so tasty. That's the reason why I really made an effort to learn this dish.

She was in the States, when I first cooked this. I YMed her just to dictate the recipe to me. After i read the recipe, I found out that there was nothing so special about the ingredients. In fact, she did not include the other ingredients found in other Menudo, just the potatoes and carrot. It might be in the process of cooking? ...maybe?

Again, this is the shortcut version of the popular Filipino stew.

Here's the recipe.

Ingredients
1/2 kgs pork, menudo cut
4 tbsp Soy sauce
Juice from 3 pcs of small calamansi
3 cloves garlic
1 small sized onion
1 cup water
1 medium sized potato, cut into cubes
1 medium sized carrot, cut into cubes
1 red bell pepper, cut into strips
 1/2 cup tomato sauce
Salt and pepper to taste.

 Procedure
1. Marinate meat in soy sauce and calamansi juice for about half an hour. I think this is the secret. The soymansi mixture will be absorbed by the meat.
2. Saute onion and garlic, add the marinated meat, set aside the soymansi mixture. Saute until the meat is half cooked. Add the bell pepper, water and the soysauce mixture. Cover and cook until the meat is tender.
3. Add the potatoes and carrots, simmer again until half cooked.
4. Add the tomato sauce, and mix until well incorporated. Season with salt and pepper. Simmer again for 3 minutes.
5. Serve with steamed rice!

Buttered Shrimp

I used to post the recipes in my flickr account (oh by the way, I am also trying photography), but now I'm importing them one by one so I can have a big compilation of the recipes I've tried! Yay!

This one is my hubby's and my son's favorite, the buttered shrimp. Before, i used to put extra butter to make it saucy, because they like to put the sauce in their rice. But to lessen the cholesterol intake, I add olive oil instead of butter. Aside from the benefit that you get from this oil, it also adds flavor to the dish. The garlicky-buttery taste of the shrimp will make you ask for more rice.

This dish is actually yummy...and very easy to make.

Ingredients:

12 pcs or about 250grams of shrimp, preferably suahe (Greasyback shrimp)

6 cloves of garlic
1/2 stick butter
about 2 tbsp olive oil
1tbsp banana catsup (for color)
Salt and pepper

Procedure:
1. Over medium heat, put butter and olive oil in a pan.
2. Once the butter has melted, add the garlic and sauté until light brown.
3. Add the shrimps, catsup, salt and pepper. Cook until the shrimps turned pink or orange.

Serves 3.

Chicken with Pickles (Manok sa Pickles)

Mom brought out the chicken from the ref and asked me to cook tinola. But we just ate tinola 2 days ago! I asked her if we have pickle relish in the ref, she said yes..."OK teach me how to cook manok sa pickles!" 


It's official, I can now add this to my "I know how to cook that" list! heheheh!

It's like cooking pineapple chicken, but instead of using pineapple, we used pickles (of course!)

Best serve with hot rice! Here's the recipe.

Serves four.


Ingredients:
1/2 kilo chicken
50g sweet pickle relish (yes, I weighed it!)
1 medium sized onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
half of a carrot, chopped (optional)
fish sauce / patis (adjust according to taste)
pepper
small amount of oil


Instruction:
1. Heat oil, saute onion and garlic. Add carrot, chicken meat. Season with fish sauce and pepper.
2. Add the pickles. Stir fry for about 3 minutes. The meat will absorb the flavor of the pickles.
3. Add a cup of water, and then simmer until the meat is tender and the sauce is reduced to half. 
4. You can adjust the saltiness according to your taste by adding fish sauce or salt.


Bon Appetit!

Crispy Bacon Cut Pork Belly (Liempo)

I saw this bacon-thin liempo (pork belly) last week and I asked hubby if he'll eat it. He said yes but as a palaman (sandwich filling)...huh as palaman? But it's not the processed bacon...

I still bought it while dreaming of a wonderful breakfast for the next day. I kept it in the freezer.

A week later, yes, I forgot about this, I took the poor liempo from the freezer, thawed and marinated it with my favorite fried liempo marinade...very easy to make, you only need 10 minutes of your time to prepare the marinade. The marinade was fully absorbed by the thin meat, and the taste was divine...i love crispy liempos and all its cholesterols hihihi!!!

Served with fried egg, steamed rice, and vinegar for dipping, i had a very filling breakfast.

....but I'm still thinking for other ways to cook this meat aside from frying it.

For those who want to try this yummy liempo, here's the recipe.

Serves 2.

Ingredients
250g bacon cut liempo (pork belly)
1/4 cup vinegar
5 cloves garlic, crushed
Salt and Pepper

1. Combine vinegar, garlic, salt and pepper. Marinate the meat for at least 30-40 minutes
2. Fry until crispy.
3. Serve with egg and hot rice

Enjoy!

Chicken Pineapple (Pininyahang Manok)

My betterhalf wants anything with pineapple...period. That's the reason why I made an effort to learn this dish. The main ingredient, pineapple, made this dish sweet but not cloyingly sweet. You can use the fresh fruit, but to cut the prep time, i used the canned pineapple. Traditional pininyahang manok includes potatoes, carrots, and some bell peppers. And since I'm a (feeling) purist (read: tamad), i decided to not include those veggies anymore.

Here's my version of the popular pinoy dish.

Serves 3.

1/4 kg chicken (adobo cut)
1 medium size onion, quartered
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 small can of pineapple chunks or tidbits (syrup included)
fish sauce (patis), adjust according to taste
dash of pepper
about 4 tbsp of evaporated milk
2 tbsp canola oil

Procedure:
1. Heat oil. Saute onion and garlic. Add chicken and stir fry (sangkutsa) for a minute or two. Add a tablespoon of fish sauce and stirfry the meat until they're are no longer pink.
2. Add 1 1/2 cups water and the juice of the canned pineapple. Simmer for about 10 minutes. Season with fish sauce and pepper.
3. Add the pineapple chunks and simmer until the meat is tender.
4. Add the milk and boil for another minute.
Serve hot.

Enjoy!!!