Baked Scallops

Baked Scallops

The maddening rush last Valentine’s day discouraged Jake, Sam and I to wriggle our way to the busy streets that lead to the uber packed date places.

So, we decided to just spend the evening at home, in the comforts of our humble dining room where I served some mean minted lamb chops with a siding of french beans and baby carrots and partnered with some rich, creamy and luscious plate of baked scallops.

Baked scallops is one dish that’s a breeze to make and makes for a rockstar viand. This particular recipe is strikingly similar with the baked tahong I always make whenever I want a delish fare pronto.

Looking at my finished product of baked scallops, I suddenly scratch my head in slight dismay. It was one of those moments when I wished I lived in faraway Capiz. Why? I got my frozen scallops from Cold Storage, P180 per dozen. In Capiz, scallops sell for P50 PER SACK!!!

Now, that ‘SACKS’! Lol.

Happy Vday!

Baked Scallops

1 dozen fresh scallops (with shell)

2 heads of garlic, chopped

1/4 cup melted butter

3/4 cup mozzarella cheese

1/2 cup cheddar cheese

3 tbsps parsley, chopped

salt and pepper to taste

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Preheat oven to 300 deg c.

In a baking tray, assemble the scallops and brush each with butter and season with salt and pepper. Top each with a pinch of garlic and smother scallops with the cheeses.

Bake for 30 minutes or until cheeses turn slightly brown and melted. Sprinkle with chopped parsley before serving.

Inadobong Puso Ng Saging

A big smile was plastered on my face as I stepped down from the weighing scale. Why, I just shed off a whopping 19 pounds in a span of 3 months. Silly me, I should have done what I had to do a long time ago to drop the weight.

Okay, can I just say, eating vegetables majorly contributed to the weight loss. Gone were the days when we were kids and how we warded off the hand that served us, what looked like, a boring plate of gulay.

Veggies need not look boring and taste awful. We can actually savor a good serving of veggies while saying, “Ay grabe ang sarap naman nito!” fifty times! I mean, really now, it’s all in the taste and presentation.

Tonight, I did inadobong puso ng saging. US certified- nutrition and diet expert, Nadine Tengco, remarked in one of her seminars, puso ng saging is an excellent source of dietary fiber, calcium, potassium and protein and would be a  perfect “rice extender” to make up for the rice “limit”. According to her, women are only supposed to consume 1/3 cup of rice per meal only. So, what she does, she eats lots of this dish to satiate her appetite.

And, I’ve been doing just that. Yeah, for three months now. This dish for the weight loss– and it’s working for me! Puso ng saging is the way to go!

Inadobong Puso Ng Saging:

1 medium sized puso ng saging (banana heart), thinly sliced

1/2 cup rock salt (for cleansing and rubbing off bitterness from the banana heart)

1 head of garlic, minced

1 onion, sliced

1/4 cup of cane vinegar

3/4 cup water

6 pcs suaje (shrimps)

salt and pepper to taste

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In a bowl, mix  sliced puso ng saging with salt. Rub mixture firmly with your two hands until the bitter taste goes off. Rinse thoroughly with running water.

In a skillet, cook shrimps until they turn pink. Set aside.

In the same skillet, saute onions and garlic. Add sliced puso ng saging, vinegar salt and pepper. Simmer for about 3 minutes. Add water. Simmer for ten more minutes or until liquid has evaporated into half. Top with shrimps. Serve hot.

Stir-Fried White Clams And Broccoli In Oyster Sauce

I had a harried lunch at David’s Tea House along Timog today and my tummy was still begging for more Chinese fares when I left. Why, it just had a single viand of beef ampalaya toppings! So for an encore, I decided to take it upon me to fulfill my tummy’s craving.

For dinner tonight, I made some Chinese dish of Pacific white clams which I bought from SM Hypermarket Centris Station and broccoli stems and flowerettes that I generously smothered with lots of garlic and oyster sauce– now, that was the finale I earlier craved for!

Pacific white clams at SM Hypermarket at Centris Station, Quezon Avenu

Simple, mouthwatering and overloaded with excellent taste. This should find its way to your skillet soon!

You will need:

1 kilo white clams

2 heads of garlic, minced

1 head of broccoli, stems and flowerettes separated. Stems cut into about 1 inch long, 1/2 inch thick.

1/2 cup oyster sauce

water

salt and pepper to taste

Boil clams in about 3 cups of water or just enough to give steam to the clams. until they open. Be sure to discard clams that did not open or did not open wide enough. It means they are not good for consumption anymore. Clams have to be cooked all the way through. Drain and set aside.

Saute in garlic the broccoli stems. Once stem pieces are cooked, add flowerettes. Season with salt and pepper. Mix in clams and oytser sauce. Mix for the next 3-5 minutes.  Be sure NOT to overcook the clams. Serve hot.

Adobong Pusit

Was happy hearing from a High School friend, Cathee. Thanks my friend for this recipe!

ADOBONG PUSIT: A Promdilayf Special

Dear Caren,

Hi! How are you?  I guess we all got busy jumpstarting our careers and later became preoccupied with starting our own families.  I’m just so glad and thankful for the wonders of modern technology.  I’ve happily reconnected with most of our batchmates and schoolmates through Facebook and from time to time, get a chance to chat with them online.

Maybe I should keep you up to speed with what has happened to me over the last many years or so.  When we graduated from the university, I began my corporate life with what was Aboitiz Shipping then (now known as Aboitiz Transport System Corporation) and built a career in the Training and Development arena.  By 1998, I moved to Cebu to fill in a vacant Training position there.  It was so overwhelming for me as I’ve never been away from my family and comfort zone until then.  Slowly, I got used to independent living and later on, learned to love and appreciate the freedom I had.  It was in Cebu where I met my husband.  I met him in the middle of 1998 and we got married three years later. 

In late 2001, my hubby made a career shift that brought us to General Santos City.  By this time, I had left corporate life to concentrate on building my family life.  With so much time on my hands and my husband busy with out-of-town trips, I busied myself at home by getting reacquainted with cooking.  As a young girl, I’ve always loved to cook and learned so much about it from my Mom and Aunt.  Like them, I took the “ouido” style of cooking…I rarely measured my ingredients and would mostly go by look, feel and taste.  Being away from home, I had to learn old family favorites like Mechado, Adobong Batangas, Sinampalukang Manok and Adobong Pusit so that I wouldn’t miss them so much..Marrying a Cebuano, I was able to stretch my food repertoire to include Visayan fare like Utan Bisaya, Tinolang Isda and Inun-unan,  While the training room or conference room was my kingdom during my corporate days, the kitchen became my dominion beginning early 2002.  Suffice to say, I lord over it until now and have no plans to relinquish it anytime soon.  By the time we got reassigned to Butuan City in early 2007, our family has grown to include my firstborn son, Jarred Andrei, who is now 7 years old and Caitlin Alyssa, 3.5 years old.

When we moved to Butuan City, hubby gifted me with my very own range oven.  With my new cooking buddy, I started to reunite myself with an old love – baking.  Armed with loads of baking recipes from the web, I experimented with all sorts of cookies, pastries and cakes.  Over the Christmas holidays in 2008, I went full swing with baking and used my creations as gifts for family and friends.  I also learned several other recipes that make use of baking.  One of these is your famous Baked Macaroni.  It became the highlight of our Noche Buena feast that year.  Other goodies I’ve learned to prepare using the oven includes Meatloaf (which is my Mom’s specialty), Roast Chicken and Oven Fries.

Last year, we welcomed another addition to our growing family, another girl, Cathleen Janelle.  With hubby and three kids below 10, my hands are full with Mommy duties.  Cooking and baking have become great ways for me to express myself and at the same time please my hungry brood.  My two older kids love to see me in the kitchen all the time and they’re always excited to find out what surprise I’ve concocted for them every meal time.  And so from my promdi kitchen, I share with you a family favorite – ADOBONG PUSIT.  I hope you and your readers enjoy it.  I’m looking forward to more foodie discoveries on your food blog and maybe in the future we can have a cooking marathon webcast through Skype.  Wouldn’t that be something?

Anyway, here’s the recipe and I hope you’ll like it.

Take care and God bless.

Cathee
http://promdi2010.blogspot.com

ADOBONG PUSIT

1 kg pusit, washed and drained (be careful not to wash out the squid ink sac)
1 thumb-size ginger, sliced
1 head of garlic, crushed
1 medium onion, sliced
2 bay leaves
2 tbsp canola oil
3-4 medium tomatoes, sliced
1/4 cup vinegar
1 – 1.5 tsp coarse salt
1 cup water or 1 cup coconut milk (optional)
pepper to taste

In a casserole, place the ginger, bay leaves and half of the garlic at the bottom.  Put the squid over this layer, add in the salt and vinegar.  Cook over medium heat until it comes to a boil.  Add a little water if it gets a bit dry.  Remove squid and sauce from the casserole.  In the same casserole, heat some oil, then saute the onion, remaining garlic and tomatoes until wilted.  Add the squid pieces first and simmer for 5 minutes.  Put in the rest of the sauce and dash of pepper to taste.  If you want some flair, you may add in a cup of coconut milk (if you decide to go for the coconut milk, do not add any water at all during the entire cooking process) towards the end and simmer for a couple of minutes before turning off heat.

Serve hot with rice.

Vongole Pasta

I was gawking at these live white clams when I chanced upon them at SM Hypermarket at The Block in SM City yesterday. They were contained in an aquarium-like casing along with the other great seafood finds when I saw them. I was silently raving and enjoying the site of live seafoods like catfish, suaje, etc. right smack in the middle of an air-conditioned grocery! Why, you can hardly find live clams sold even in wet markets!

So goes my excitement that I immediately grabed a kilo or so. Now what to do? Almost instantly, I remembered Ginny Roces-de Guzman’s rendition of Vongole pasta (Vongole means ‘clams’ in Italian).

I tried my hand in whipping up this Italian dish today and savored every morsel of this pasta. Meatless, healthy and uber tasty, Jake and I finished the whole pan!

I like any dish that’s been infused with wine. With this pasta, I used a South African white wine called Kamala Chardonnay Semillon that Jake and I bought from Wine Depot last Saturday. The wine just put everything together, I mean, the dish rocked because of it. And, together with the clam broth and the flavors of garlic and onion it just spelled– BANG! Ahhh, super good!

The recipe was lifted from Ginny’s family cookbook called, ‘Celebrations’. I’ve been crazy hooked browsing this book. The recipes just make me drool, page after page, picture after picture.

I’ve drawn out my next projects from that book, the cold tomato and sour cream soup, crispy fritters, oriental glazed duck with wild rice pilaf, pao de queijo, mackintosh pie, etc. Can’t wait to try them!

*The book and the story behind the ‘Celebrations’ cookbook will be featured in the May issue of FOOD magazine.

Easy Paella

History says that paella was once a laborers’ meal. A story closely similar to the origin of  kare-kare which, according to food historians, was a dish eaten by peasants who made a dish out of the leftover parts (bituka, twalya, buntot at tuhod ng baka, etc).

Paella, in its early beginnings in Valencia, Spain (where paella was said to have originated), was cooked over an open fire and was eaten directly from the skillet using wooden spoons. The most common ingredients used were chicken, rabbit, duck and snails. Seafood was kind of scarce in Valencia.

Ahh, I must’ve been one of those laborers who devoured paella in my past life! I love, love the many exciting ways that paella is prepared. It simply makes a great dining experience when paella is seated prettily on my plate!

Paella

2 cups risotto rice

4 pcs prawns

3 pcs chicken thighs, chopped

1 stick chorizo, sliced

5 cups chicken stock

1 red bell pepper, julienned

1/2 cup green peas

4 cloves of garlic, minced

1 onion, minced

olive oil

1 tsp turmeric powder

salt and pepper to taste

5 threads saffron

4 pcs lemon wedges

1 tsp chopped parsley

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In a skillet, brown chicken until half cooked. Remove chicken and set aside.

In the same pan, saute garlic, onion, bell pepper, green peas and chorizos. Add chicken and rice. Throw in turmeric and saffron.

Mix well until rice is well coated. Add stock. Simmer until rice is cooked.

Meantime, stir fry prawns until it turns pink in color. Set aside.

Top rice mixture with prawns. Garnish with lemon wedges and parsley.

Fish and Oysters

Parmesan-crusted lapu-lapu fillet with garlic-mayo dip

 Wet markets have always awed me. The sight of freshly-delivered fishes jumping in ‘balde’ -fresh water majorly amuses me. The seafoods and veggies– fresh and obviously spelling quality never fail to get my attention.

A few days ago, my mom rang me up to ask what I wanted from Farmer’s Market. Almost instantly and instinctly, I pleaded for fish and oysters. Ahh, who needs to go outside the city for some fresh catch? It’s right in Cubao!

And so, the moment I got hold of them, the cooking began. The lunch ‘project’? Some parmesan-crusted lapu-lapu fillets!

 

Ready to be deep fried

I sliced two whole fillets of lapu-lapu (finger size) and seasoned them with salt and pepper. 

In a bowl, I beat 1 egg and mixed in a tablespoon of flour to make a batter.

Dipped the fish fingers one by one onto the batter then coated them with Japanese breadcrumbs mixture (1 and 1/2 cup Japanese breadcrumbs, 1/2 cup parmesan cheese and  1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper and mixed everything together. Then I was ready to deep fry.

Ahh, how I devoured the crunchy crust and moist flesh inside!

 The fish went with some garlic-mayo dip. I mixed 1/2 cup mayo with 3 cloves of minced garlic and 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, seasoned with salt and pepper too!

The second dish was made up of creamy cheese and oysters. Ahh, this was the bomb. I boiled 1 and 1/2 kilos of oysters until shells opened. Them I arranged the oysters on a baking plate, then topped each with a pinch of garlic, 1/4 teaspoon butter and 1 spoonfull of quick-melting cheese. Baked for 15-20 minutes at 275 c. Now, how easy was that?

Don’t forget to squeeze in some swig of lemon before eating!

Baked cheesy oysters

 

 

 

 

 

Dampa Forever!

My sister turned a year wiser very recently and decided to mark her natal day by grabbing some great eats made up of baked oysters, crabs, shrimps, etc.

Dampa was to be her ‘party place’. Fantastic!

Dampa destinations have flourished around the metro in the last few years that it made sensation. If my memory serves me right, these dampa places have been around as early as in the 80’s and Roxas boulevard (then Dewey boulevard) has been the original hub since it all began and grew big time.

The concept of dampa or sometimes referred to as a paluto eatery, is that you go to a particular resto (in our case, we went to ChaCha at Julia Vargas Avenue), and will have the option to either personally scour for fresh eats (meat, vegetables or seafoods) at a nearby palengke or ask the restaurant runners to do it for you.

They then cook what has been freshly bought. Next, you are handed a menu that contains plenty of options as to how you want your food cooked  (ihaw, sigang, kilaw, etc). Ahhh, it’s the coolest.

And, FRESH is the operative word here.  I can’t overemphasize how satiating it is to  eat at these dampa places that serve everything fresh and great. Yeah, nothing beats eating anything F-R-E-S-H!

Now, I’m hungry again. Anyway, here goes what we had:

The ‘hot front act’ dish was made of halaan soup with onion leeks.

My family is a crab-loving family. These crabs got amputated in the first ten seconds that it landed on our table!

These shrimps were dipped in a special sauce by the resto. Sweet, nutty and malinamnam, the sauce was a hit.

Baked oyters in garlic and cheese.

Grilled tuna belly. Fat, juicy and smoky, I love this!

Baked scallops. A must-try!

Meet my FOODIE mom, Baby. My nephew, Marty, and my daughter, Sam.

My celebrant-sister, Tina and her hubby, Oliver.

My sis-in-law, Michelle with my brother, Jerome and their son, Marty.

The family!

My husband, Jake.

And me looking very, very stuffed by this time!

Garlic Shrimp Kebabs On Red pasta

 

A kebab refers to any grilled or broiled meat that is skewered or put on a stick. Extremely popular in places like the  Middle East, the Mediterranean nations, Africa, Central Asia and South Asia, these kebabs are instant crowd pleasers in any occasion.

The known kebabs include lamb and beef. Ahh, kebab meats always get me giddy. I just love its smoky, spicy and juicy feel! Wonderful.

Today, I whipped out my pack of shrimps from the fridge. Got about 8 pcs. Deveined all of them then seasoned them with salt and fresh pepper. Marinated them for 30 minutes in 3/4 cup melted butter (expect the butter to solidify a bit once you put it in the ref, you might want to melt it about ten minutes before grilling) , 1/4 cup of lemon juice and  8 cloves of minced garlic. Afterwhich I grilled them on low fire.

Meantime, I cooked my whole wheat spaghetti pasta according to package instructions. Set aside and had it wait for the sauce.

For the pasta sauce, I heated the shrimp marinade and mixed with my bottled oven-dried tomatoes onto the pasta. Sprinkled with my  favorite parmesan cheese on top. The richness of the butter, the flavors of herbs and the acid taste of the tomato chunks just revved up the whole pasta dish.

(For the oven-dried tomato recipe, please click: https://theeatingroom.wordpress.com/2009/04/25/the-oven-dried…ato-experience/ )

The last touch would be plating the shrimp kebabs over the pasta ensemble. Serve with your favorite toast.

Baked Garlic N’ Cheese Tahong

about to be baked tahong

Tahong can’t be more mouthwatering than this.

The sight of melted cheese just blows me away. The mega tandem of garlic and cheese topped on most dishes where it is suitable always gets me going for seconds each and every time they are served. Ahh, don’t we all?

Tahong is more popularly known in Mindanao as ‘green shell’, it’s actually the species that’s more commercial. It has the green shell, of course, with deep brown streaks on it. The other species of tahong is the brown mussel. As the name suggests, the shell is brown, but the meat is the same as the meat of green shell. In certain areas in the Visayas, like in the town of my lola in Negros Occidental, these brown mussels are called ‘tabahong’.

Today, we had this lovely dish of tahong. It’s baked garlic and cheese tahong. I just put 1 kilo of tahong in a casserole with no water, no salt and pepper, nada! Set the heat on medium and let it cook for about twenty minutes or until the shells broke open. The tahong excreted its own liquid after it cooked. Once cooked, I removed the top cover to expose the meat of the shell for baking.  

I arranged them on my baking pan topping each shell meat with butter, a pinch of minced garlic and quickmelt cheese. In the end I gave it a quick dash of salt and pepper. Cheese and butter were already quite salty that’s why the additional salt wasn’t too much. The pre-baked tahong looked something like this:

Once cooked, you have the option to take your tahong  to another level and top some more with chopped tomatoes and chives. Something like:

baked tahong with cheese, garlic, chopped tomatoes and chives

Not bad, eh?

Or, you may settle with the default recipe which is…

baked garlic and cheese tahong

Parmesan Crusted Calamari

parmesan crusted calamari

 ‘Calamari’ or squid in Italian belongs to the mollusk family along with cuttlefish and octopus. Among the three, the fried calamari, by far, is the most loved and sought after by foodies from all over the world.

A staple in most menus, this dish yields the crunchy and addicting taste in every bite. In this version, the parmesan cheese seals the deal– crunchy, soft in the inside and cheesy. In the final stage, you throw a dash of fresh oregano thyme for that woodsy and earthy flavor.

Now, how awesome is that?

Parmesan Crusted Calamari

1 cup japanese bread crumbs

1/2 cup parmesan cheese

6 large squid, cleaned and sliced into rings.

1 egg, slightly beaten

1/2 cup flour

salt and pepper to taste

1 tsp fresh oregano thyme

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1. Season squid rings with salt and pepper.

2. Dredge one by one in flour.

Note: Anything you decide to bread is best when there is less moisture before you dip in egg. That is the reason why you dredge it in flour first.

3. Dip in egg.

4. Meantime, mix bread crumbs and parmesan cheese. Coat squid rings with the mixture.  Let stand for 3 minutes.

5. Deep fry until golden brown. Sprinkle with oregano thyme.

6. Serve with garlic-mayo dip  (half cup mayo, juice of 1/2 lemon, 3 finely-minced garlic cloves, salt n pepper to taste—then mix everything together).

Mustard-Mayo Tuna Sandwich Spread

Great-tasting sandwiches do make me giddy every after bite. ‘Great-tasting’, to me, would mean chunky tuna, creamy mayo and a dash of mustard, all in between two slices of freshly grilled whole-wheat bread!

I keep a jar of sandwich spreads in my ref handy for ’emergency’ purposes. There are times when Jake and I would experience some pangs of hunger in the middle of the night and would automatically turn to these bottled spreads to stuff our famished tummies. One of my favorite spreads would be this mustard-mayo tuna sandwich spread. It’s  got the merry mix of creaminess, chunkiness, yumminess and HAPPINESS in every bite! Ahh, it’s so good that I even convert it into a salad topping when there’s extra. The crunch factor is made possible  by the onion, cucumber and celery, while the zing from the mustard and boy, do they rock!

Mayo-Mustard Tuna Sandwich

1 can tuna (solid in brine or hot and spicy)

3/4 cup mayo

3 tbsp mustard

1 medium-sized onion, minced

1/4 cup cucumber, chopped

1/4 cup celery, chopped (optional)

lettuce

2 slices of cheddar cheese

a slice of tomato

salt and pepper to taste

2 slices whole wheat bread

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1. Drain tuna from all the liquid. To take off the ‘lansa’ factor, soak tuna chunks in 3 cups drinking water and drain.

2. Mix tuna, onion, cucumber, celery, mayo and mustard together. Season with salt and pepper.

3. On a slice of grilled bread, put lettuce, cheese, tuna spread and a slice of tomato on top. Seal with the remaining grilled slice. Serve.

TOUCHDOWN!

Coming up next….

Chicken Galantina

Chinese-Style Steamed Dory

I can’t be luckier to have a Chinese neighbor whom I frequently exchange goodies with. Her Chinese cooking is very reminiscent of those fares typically sold in a lot of good Chinese restaurants in Binondo. It’s authentic, hardcore and real Chinese! Nothing adjusted to the Filipino palate. It’s genuine Chinese cooking, period.

Steamed Dory. Two of my favorite things, combined. I love anything steamed and I love Dory. This dish is best for those who avert red meat or those who are battling with the bulges. It’s light, tasty and healthy.

There is a minor tweaking in steaming this dish from the usual method that yields major difference in taste. Ahhh, love this! Indeed, thou shall always love thy neighbor!

Chinese-Style Steamed Dory

2 large fillets of cream dory

salt and pepper to taste

1/2 teaspoon light soy for each fillet

2 tbsp grated ginger for each fillet

1/2 tsp chili flakes or chopped fresh chili

1. After washing the fillets, lather them with grated ginger. Steam for ten minutes.

(Note: Don’t season your dory with salt and pepper at this point. You would want to extract all the excess juices from the fillets first before you season it.)

2. Remove excess juice from the fish.

3. Season with salt, pepper and light soy. Steam for another ten minutes.

4. Garnish with chili flakes or chopped fresh chili on top. Serve hot.

Shrimps In Lemon Butter Sauce

shrimps in lemon butter sauce

My thoughts were astray as we were hearing the 7pm mass awhile ago (bad!). I was thinking of what food to cook for dinner that was  fast and yummy. I scoured the freezer and found my dinner hotshot– my pack of shrimps. Believe it or not, this meal cooks for under  fifteen minutes!

Shrimps in Lemon Butter Sauce

15 pcs medium-sized shrimps, deveined and shelled

1/4 cup butter

6 cloves of garlic, minced

1 tbsp lemon or 1 pc calamansi

salt and pepper to taste

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1. Season shrimps with salt and pepper.

2. Saute garlic in butter then add shrimps and lemon. Cook until shrimps turn pinkish in color.

3. Serve with basil rice (recipe below).

4. Assemble in a saucer as shown above. Pour in extra sauce into the saucer. Ahhh, love that sauce!

5. Sprinkle with chopped flat parsley (optional)

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 Basil Rice

 2 cups white rice

1/4 cup butter

salt and pepper  to taste

1 tbsp chopped fresh basil

turmeric powder

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1. Fry white rice in butter.

2. Season with salt and pepper

3. Add turmeric powder until desired “yellowness” is achieved.

4. Add chopped fresh basil. Mix well.