Ready To Party

Had to wake up early to go to the supermarket to buy ingredients for the  birthday celebration we are planning for Mom tomorrow. SM East Ortigas Supermarket opens early at 7am every day. So convenient for early shopping. When it comes to a simple celebration, we always prefer home-cooked meals.  Sirloin steak, chicken lollipop, barbecue, baked potato marble and Filipino style spaghetti.  When we celebrate birthdays at home, there is always Chines bihon  (pansit) or spaghetti on the side. Yesterday, I cooked pansit  for mom, for the two of us actually, had it for lunch and merienda.

I wanted to bake some cookies since I have those M & M baking bits given by a friend last week but I feel so lazy to jot down what to buy, maybe when Mom goes home, I will.  We’ll just have store-bought cake for dessert.  I haven’t done any baking lately, trying to avoid sugar and too much carb. I have been to my internist for my month follow-up check-up the other day. No more lab tests, thank God but my medicine for BP was changed to a higher dose. Though the doctor’s fee is free because of my JP Morgan health card, the cost of medicines is sky-high.  I have to take four kinds of medications every day for I don’t know how long but I feel good.  Gone are the earlier days of always making a mistake when I am in front of the computer blogging. My fingers are quite steady now.

I talked to Nate last night. He was shouting that we will see them again soon. Yes, they are coming over for lunch tomorrow. Nissa offered to cook spaghetti.  When we cook spaghetti, it is not just from a can, we make sure that we buy fresh ingredients to go with it.

Looking forward to another family bonding.

 

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A Special Request

Yesterday, we had our twice a month visit to the wet market.  Sometimes I let Josef choose which kind of fish to buy. Usually, he likes milkfish (our local bangus) which could be cooked grilled, sinigang, daing, relleno or even as main ingredient in spring rolls. When he saw  a small pagi being cleaned and sliced by our favorite vendor, he requested  that we buy a kilo and cook it in coconut cream with lots of chili, his favorite.  You have to boil it first with ginger, onions and a little salt then dice it when it is cooked. We discard the water when it is done.

I’ve never been good at taking photos of food but this is how it looks,  a yummy dish of pagi sa gata.  I have a recipe of this in an earlier post.  All  you need would be lots of chilis, diced onion and ginger, salt to taste and fresh coconut cream.

Pagi is I think is  stingray in English.

Pagi sa Gata

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Ampalaya Frittata, Anyone?

What a lazy, lazy Sunday! I braved the drizzle early this morning to attend the 5am mass  at Our Lady of Light Parish in our town. Since my son works on Sundays, I usually wake up early too and we left the house together. I don’t normally go to mass this early but  mom can’t make it (she’s not feeling well yet) and opted to hear mass on TV. Despite the rain (and the cold), the church was full.  I dropped by the nearby wet market on my way home and bought Saba bananas.  Catching fresh produce early, how nice!

I am sure most of you don’t eat ampalaya or bitter melon  for the simple reason that yes, it tastes bitter. Most of us know too  that it is a healthy vegetable that has now been proven to be an effective herbal medicine for many aliments. I won’t go into details  as to its rich nutrients but I want to share with you another experiment that I did in the kitchen. A friend was supposed to come over yesterday to get some  but didn’t show up so I have to harvest more than a kilo of ampalaya this morning and cooked some for lunch. This is the bonito variety, a hybrid and  every three days, I make a harvest. There are so many ways to cook ampalaya, you can make ampalaya con carne, pinakbet,  mixed with eggs, fresh ampalaya salad or you can mix it with some other vegetables like monggo, the possibilities are endless. Anyway, sauteing it but presenting it differently made mom think that it is a small plate of pizza. Can you imagine? I was laughing when I put a slice on her plate and she tasted the mild flavor of bitterness there.  Mom sometimes could be funny

That’s right, I call it ampalaya frittata. As we all know frittata is an egg-based recipe that you can cook on top of a stove or bake in an oven. It’s perfect for any vegetable or meat that you happen to have around. I put cheese in it for that extra flavor and mom likes  it.  Paired with some left-over longganisa (our local version of sausage), it’s a perfect lunch on a rainy Sunday.

It’s that kind of rain  that would make you want to go back to bed and just idle your time reading or listening to some old music that they usually play on the radio during Sundays. Life is simple. And it feels good.

Gosh, the rain hasn’t let up. It’s a downpour. I hope it won’t last long to create flash floods.

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Fun Way To Cook Okoy

Okoy or Ukoy is a traditional Filipino dish. It is usually made of different ingredients common of which is shrimp or vegetables. It is the way that it is cooked that makes a little difference. It is usually eaten as a side dish or appetizer.

Ingredients:
4 or 5 cups of fresh squash, cut into strips
1 medium size onion, diced
1 beaten egg
batter of cornstarch or flour to coat the squash
wanton or molo wrapper
dash of salt to taste
dash of fine ground pepper
oil for frying

Directions:
Cut the squash into thin, small strips, add a dash of salt and pepper then add diced onion. Set aside.Make the batter mixture, add one beaten egg.Coat the squash with the batter and put on top of each molo wrapper. Fry in hot oil, reduce heat while frying. You could add small shrimp on top but it is optional. The molo wrapper also serve as a binder and it makes the okoy crispy.

Serve hot with your favorite dish.

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Tilapia Fillet In Lemon Butter Sauce

I asked  Josef what he wanted for our main meal yesterday  and he said anything would be okay. We’ve been on fish and vegetable diet since the start of the Holy Week, and I mean everyday and every meal. This was one of those recipes featured in the recent PinoyMasterchef  episode. Since I didn’t have pestle and mortar to grind the nuts big enough for topping, I just sprinkled them on top before frying. The nutty taste of peanuts and the creamy flavor of  butter mixed with the tartness(I substituted kalamansi) of lime made it more flavorful. Try it, it’s yummy.

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Yummy Puto Pao

Puto is simply steamed  rice cake which is prepared using a round mold  or muffin cups or several small plastic molds, whichever suits you is okay. There are varied ways to make puto one of which is puto pao –  it’s a puto recipe with filling. I used a puto mix here so it is pretty easy to prepare it.

Ingredients:

200 g White King Puto Mix

1 cup water

1/2 cup sugar

5 tsp. cooking oil

1 can corned beef (I used the Delimondo brand)

Cook corned beef until it is dry. Set aside.

Boil water in a steamer and grease puto molder. Since I used the smallest puto molds, there was no need to grease them since the mixture comes off easily once it’s done.

Combine puto mix and water until well blended. Add sugar gradually and mix. Gradually add cooking oil and continue mixing until smooth.

Pour batter up to 1/4 of the puto molder, add a half teaspoon of corned beef then continue pouring the batter until the molder is 3/4 full. You can put cheese strips before steaming but this is optional and since you are preparing bite-size puto pao, it becomes salty if you put too much cheese so a thin strip will do. Put a clean cloth between the steamer and the cover so water won’t mix with the puto while cooking.

Arrange puto molders inside steamer and steam for about 25 to 30 minutes or until the surface is shiny and bounces back when pressed.

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Cheese Puffs Made Easy

The whole morning, I searched the net for some menu/recipe to prepare for Noche Buena. I told my son that I won’t make embutido  nor siomai  this year. It is always part of our Christmas tradition to have them on the table, but it  would be nice to have other recipes for a change. Nor would I prepare fruit salad,( it’s not really a favorite for us except for mom). I prefer fresh fruits sliced into bites or just eaten without any heavy cream or syrup, besides, canned varieties of fruits are not that healthy. My son said that   I should at least serve fried chicken (his all-time favorite), lechong kawali  and Filipino style pasta (in his dictionary, that means something sweet). I prefer Italian, I like pesto, he doesn’t so I guess we have to compromise.  Would love to try carbonara  and lemon chicken or maybe stir fry tenderloin in pineapple sauce.  I came across this site  featuring  mostly Filipino food complete with video and I saw this simple recipe on making cheese puffs. It looked so yummy so I searched the cupboard if I had ingredients to make  some and I came up with this.

And here’s how it’s done. It came out yummy, I was surprised because the ingredients were so simple and was quite easy to prepare.  The good thing about it is, it has no sugar, just perfect finger food for a hot cup of coffee or green tea. I was able to make ten pieces out of the recipe.

I wonder if I could mix some nuts to have that crunchy feel, will definitely try it on the next batch that I will make. Have some, they’re still hot from the oven.

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Garlic Meatballs In Sweet And Sour Sauce

I love garlic. I actually used one whole head for this half-kilo of ground pork adding up a cup of corn starch, one egg and a chopped white onion. Garlic, aside for being an anti-oxidant is good for lowering blood pressure and a proven natural antibiotics. We’re having this for dinner.

Garlic meatballs, anyone?

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Adobong Labong

Description:

Between July and September each year, bamboo shoots are in season in our place in Pangasinan. In our local dialect, it is also called labong. It is considered a vegetarian dish and it is cooked in various ways depending on what region or province you come from. One such popular way to cook it is mixing it with gata or coconut milk and we simply call it adobong labong. You have to remove the outer casing first and the white , fleshy inner portion is what is eaten. Unlike the way it is cooked in other areas which they still sauté, ours is just mixed together with the ingredients until it is cooked and dry enough. I don’t normally measure how much of each ingredient goes into the pan, it all depends on how you want it, you can put enough chili just like what you do with laing or just enough pepper to taste. It is best when labong is fresh and not the canned variety we see in supermarkets or the boiled ones we buy in wet markets.

Ingredients:

1/2 kilo boiled labong
1 cup pork giniling (ground pork) or any toppings that you want
1 tbsp. diced ginger
1 tbsp. diced garlic
1 small head onion
2 pcs. green pepper
a dash of ground pepper
salt to taste

Directions:
Place all ingredients in a deep wok or pan except the labong. Add a little water and let it simmer until the coconut milk curdles. Put the labong strips and simmer until it is cooked.  (It is always best to boil the labong first  then drained well before mixing it with coconut milk. Put salt and ground pepper according to desired taste. In our province, fish sauce  is usually used instead of salt and it has that different taste from bagoong alamang.

This morning, Mom brought home  four small shoots and I cooked it for dinner….yummy!

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Ginisang Tokwa With Kinchay

Category:		Side Dishes & Condiments
Special Consideration:		Vegetarian

Description:

Tofu, also known as Soya Bean Curd is called the “cheese of Asia”. It is high in protein, low in saturated fats, a good source of calcium and vitamin E. Recent studies have shown that soya beans and products derived from them may play a role in preventing certain types of cancer, particularly breast cancer.One drawback though is that, tofu easily absorbs cooking fat and soya is also known as a common cause of food allergy. My kids love tokwa as we call it in Tagalog and their favorite is simply ginisa with kinchay. It is best served with daing na bangus or any kind of fried fish.

Ingredients:
10 cubes of fresh tokwa, cut in half
2 medium size tomatoes
canola oil for frying
2 tbsp. soy sauce
garlic and onion
ground pepper
small bunch of kinchay

Directions:
Cut the tokwa in half, fry in canola oil until golden brown or when it turns crispy on the outside, drain in paper towels then cut into cubes.Sauté  garlic, onion and tomatoes. Add tokwa and about half a cup of water. Let it simmer for a minute or two. Add kinchay last and serve immediately while it is hot.

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