One Glorious Morning On One Plate

So, my daughter’s class for today got called off. That means extra three  hours for me to just stay home and take a respite from the horrendous traffic going to her school and the 3 hours waiting time I have before I pick her up. Yay, this calls for a celebration. Bring it on!

Okay, this morning saw me hitting the ref for my grilled eggplant spread and grilled some  few slices of crusty Raf whole wheat bread with   parsley pesto  sauce that I made and bottled up a few days ago.

The combination of the spread and the bread spelled HEALTHY and YUMMY, both in font 99! Yeah, one glorious morning on one big plate!

Parsley Pesto

My school co-parent/good friend, Annette Alberto,  had us dine at their place sometime last year for a playdate with the kids and some good evening of chat with us, parents. Her spread of salpicao, pasta and salad left me bewitched big time as we left their crib. I specifically took fancy on the pasta (of red sauced spaghetti) siding that perfectly blended with her spaghetti. She said it was to add a new dimension to the taste of the spaghetti. And what dimension it was!

I held back my peace and never asked EXACTLY what went into the sauce but the most I gathered from her was that she put parsley, olive oil and garlic.  Okay, the parsley was to be the sauce’s lead star.

Fast forward to today, I readied the chopping board for some tedious chopping of parsley, garlic and to be swigged into a good kind of olive oil. Yes, I made pesto, alright, although I had second thoughts calling it “pesto” in the strictest sense of what it means.

Pesto is a traditional  Italian sauce, made up of basil leaves, olive oil, garlic, parmesan cheese and a handful of pine nuts. It is usually incorporated into pasta noodles, brushed onto crusty breads or used in flavoring grains, meats and other dish staples.

The sauce I made defied a coupla things–  First, the basil was replaced by pasrley, it used LOTS of chopped garlic, did  away with pine nuts (or any nuts for that matter) and used parsley leaves instead of basil leaves. Hand made and not blender-produced, ha! But lemme tell you– THIS WAS  SO GOOD!

The unique characteristic of parsley is in its subtle “fresh” taste. It was  a welcome departure from the usual strong and sometimes overpowering taste of say, basil or rosemary.

Bottle it up, use it the way you use basil pesto– you’re good!

Thanks Annette for the inspiration. Parsley is my new basil! Mabuhay ka!

3 cups parsley leaves (curly or flat), finely chopped

1 1/2 cups olive oil

2 heads of garlic, finely chopped

1/2 cup parmesan cheese

salt and pepper to taste

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Combine all ingredients. Do not use food processor. You may store for future use.

Roasted Eggplant In Apple Cider Vinegar

I woke up this morning with a definite meal in mind for breakfast. Crispy dilis, scrambled eggs, red rice and my precious siding of roasted eggplant smothered with all the healthy goodness of apple cider vinegar and heaps and heaps of crushed garlic.

The original version of this eggplant ensemble comes from the siding that I make for my pochero. That’s eggplant and squash combined, plus spices to boot. Pochero is not pochero to me without this killer siding that loads the pochero with all the sumptiousness it should have. Okay, it was not pochero that I had for breakfast today, alright.

Just the same, I made a version of that siding to go with my crispy dilis, hence:

I roasted 6 medium-sized eggplants. Scraped and mashed the flesh, seasoned it with salt and pepper and about 3 tbsps of apple cider vinegar. Loaded it with about 1 head of coarsely chopped garlic and meeehn, can I just say, it went perfect with the dilis ‘barkada’.

Short and sweet. I love mornings:)

Lentejas Castellana Soup

I had 30 minutes to kill before I hit Sam’s school to pick her up. Top of mind last minute stop would be whizzing down to Terry Selection at The Podium for some quick check on what interesting stuff I might find there.

Fast, alert  and wide-eyed, I managed to score a pack of black pasta, a nice claypot, lentils and chorizos in all of 20 minutes. Ah, I was like a 5 year old taking home a brand-new Barbie scooter! Cheap thrill ba?

At home, as I dashed in my kitchen after a long day, I decided to ‘sentence’ the Salamanca chorizos and Castellana lentils that same night. I made a thick soup and peppered it with all the goodness of the chorizos. Ahh, I could almost imagine my husband, Jake, gobbling up the soup with his Chillean wine to match and my day’s stories on the side.

Harvested from Castilla and Andalucia, Castellana lentils are the most used lentils in Spain. It’s greenish-brown in color, larger and a bit more easy to make tender as opposed to the other varieties.

Meantime, Salamanca chorizos are made from pork loin and is spiced up by thick chunks of parika. I was eating and eating them while I readied them for the soup. Ahhh, sarap!

1 cup lentils

3 cups water

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1 cup chorizos, sliced

5 cloves of garlic

1 onion, finely minced

2-3 cups chicken stock

1 cup spinach leaves

salt and pepper to taste

olive oil

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Cook lentils until tender. Drain and set aside.

Meantime in a skillet, saute garlic, onion and chorizos. Season with salt and pepper. Add chicken stock and lentils. Bring to a boil and add spinach leaves. Serve hot.

Smoked Fish With Feta On Whole Wheat Pasta

My intense liking for smoked bangus started about six years ago when a friend had me taste what was to be my ultimate bottle of happiness that was made up of smoked bangus flakes in olive oil and powered by a number of spices that rocked my world since. The brand of that smoked bangus: Santwaryo. I believe they sell it in their resto branch somewhere in Metro Walk.

Am such a ‘groupie’ of smoked bangus. In whatever form or dish it’s mixed in, whether in pasta, pate or simply when you eat it fried (oh, yeah with a mean dish of scrambled eggs! ), the flavor just gets me going for seconds.

Last weekend saw me doing pasta using smoked bangus (packed, not the bottled). Still on the diet trail, I, of course, made sure that all ingredients I used never added up to my caloric intake (Yee, feeling! Lol). Of course! I’ve been sweating it out spinning at the gym for months now and do I just gobble up ‘cardiac delights’ at the mere presence of it? NO WAY. Well, forgive me for the cheeses though. Hee.

Okay, so what went with the pasta? Read on:

300 grams whole wheat pasta (spaghetti)

1 medium sized smoked bangus, skin, head and tail removed

2 heads of garlic, finely minced

1/2 cup chopped flat parsley

3/4 cup olive oil

1/2 cup parmesan cheese

1/2 cup feta cheese, crumbled or cubed

salt and pepper to taste

Cook pasta according to package directions.

Loosely crumble/flake smoked bangus meat. Set aside.

In a skillet, pour two rounds of olive oil. Saute garlic, smoked bangus and 1/4 cup  parsley. Season with salt and pepper. Add remaining oil.

Toss in pasta. Top with feta and parmesan cheese. Sprinkle with the remaining chopped parsley. Serve with your favorite toast.

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.

Baked Bangus Belly

Wrapped in our backyard banana leaves, stuffed with onions and tomatoes, slightly charred from the flame grilling, inihaw na bangus has got to be one of the flagship dishes of my childhood. It usually went with Dad’s ginisang munggo with a few pieces of suaje shrimps and a coupla bunches of dahon ng ampalaya for the final add on.

Fast forward to today, I usually do a spin off of my childhood’s inihaw na bangus except that I bake it, makes use of the belly part only and fired up by some few additional spices. Oh, and the price for living in a building? No banana leaves around!!!! So I usually settle for the next best thing– aluminum foil!

Healthy, totally scrumptious and easy to make, Jake and I can gobble this up (even without rice) in all of 3 minutes!

Baked Bangus Belly

2 pcs bangus belly

1 red onion, sliced

1 tomato, sliced

4 cloves of garlic, minced

2 tbsps fresh basil, chopped (optional)

1 tsp, fresh spring onions (dahon ng sibuyas)

1 stalk of lemon grass, pounded (optional)

1/4 tsp paprika

salt and pepper to taste

aluminum foil

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Preheat oven to 300 degrees c.

Season bangus belly with salt and pepper

On a piece of bangus belly (skin down), place all ingredients. Top with the remaining slice of bangus belly. Wrap in foil.

Bake for 30 minutes. Serve warm.

Dressing:

4 tbps cane vinegar

1 tbsp soy sauce

2 tbsps  chopped onion

1 red sili

1 clove chopped garlic

Mix everything together and pour in a small bowl. Serve with the baked bangus.

 

Oriental Chicken With Sliced Eggplants

I almost ended up eating at Little Asia yesterday except that the majority of my friends opted to train our sights on this tea place called Bubble Tea. And since my palate still was looking for the kung pao chicken this morning, I decided to cook the next best thing, oriental chicken with sliced eggplants.

It was to be my hubby, Jake’s, baon and breakfast for me. Okay, how did I do it?

I made 5 strips of chicken crispers , cut it 1 inch long and set it aside. Sliced native eggplants the size of the chicken crispers, too.

In a skillet, I poured 1/4 cup of canola oil and 2 tbsps sesame oil (optional). Sauted 4 round slices of ginger and mixed in 1/4 cup of hoisin sauce. With the sauce heated up and ready, I just tossed in the chicken crispers and eggplants into the skillet  until they were well coated and eggplants half cooked and tender.

Classic Baked Macaroni

It was my daughter Sam’s Christmas party and parents were asked to dish out something for the buffet spread. Swamped with yuletide chores, I flexed some muscles, mustered energy to whip up a great dish of pasta. Classic baked mac was to be. Scrumptious, relatively easy to make and a universal favorite, I knew I cooked the right thing.

Baked Macaroni

Cheesy Baked Mac

1 pack elbow macaroni  noodles

1 box quickmelt cheese, grated

3/4 cup parmesan cheese, grated

1/2 cup mozzarela cheese, grated (optional)

Meat Sauce:

1/2 kilo ground beef

4 cloves of garlic, minced

1 medium-sized onion, minced

1 tomato, chopped

salt and pepper to taste

750 grams tomato sauce, Italian blend

1 can chorizos, cut lengthwise and sliced horizontally (optional)

Bechamel Sauce:

2 boxes  all purpose cream

1 cup milk

1 box cheddar cheese, grated

1/4 cup  butter

1/4 cup curly parsley, chopped

salt and pepper to taste

3/4 cup  flour

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1. Cook pasta according to package directions.

2. In a separate pan, saute garlic, onion and tomato. Add beef. Season with salt and pepper. Simmer until cooked. Add tomato sauce and chorizos. Continue stirring for the next ten minutes. Remove from fire then add cooked pasta in the beef mixture. Set aside.

3. In a skillet, heat  butter then add all-purpose  cream and milk. Mix well. Add cheddar cheese. Slowly add flour to thicken the sauce (the thicker the better!). Season with salt and pepper. Set aside.

4. In a baking dish, assemble the pasta. Scoop up some beef mixture that would be the first layer. Smother with a generous amount of bechamel sauce on top of the beef mixture. repeat the layering twice.

5. Top the dish with the remaining cheeses.

6. Preheat the oven to 350c and bake for 15 minutes or  until cheeses are turned into golden brown. Once cooked, let stand for 15 minutes. Sprinkled with chopped parsley. Serve with you favorite toast.

Chicken Adobo Flakes (Ilonggo Version)

My favorite version of chicken adobo, I stack up on this when I do it in big batches. I use it making a crusty pannini, fried rice, canape topping or simply to papak like chippy! Lol. The crunch, savory appeal of this adobo just breaks my diet(?) everytime.

One of the many heirloom recipes from my Ilongga grandmother who had the most intense affair with the pots and pans, this Ilonggo adobo version uses ONLY vinegar as the the prime acid minus the soy sauce. Of course, slathered with LOTS of garlic and LOTS of LOVE! Lol.

Chicken adobo

1 and 1/2 kilo chicken breasts

3/4 cup cane vinegar

2 heads of garlic, minced

2 laurel leaves

1 tsp pamintang buo

salt and pepper to taste

1 cup canola oil

water

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Season chicken with salt and pepper.

In a frying pan, combine chicken, garlic, pamintang buo, laurel leaves, vinegar and cover with water.

Cook until chicken is cooked, crumbled and flaked. Once totally flaked, add about 3/4 to a cup of oil and fry some more until chicken becomes golden brown and crunchy.

Buttered Spareribs Stew

Slow cooking makes sure you get the maximum taste of your meat. Flavors become richer, concentrated and harmoniously blended. This stew is a favorite in my Mom’s crib.  She usually uses babyback ribs but I kinda thought spareribs would be as good and was I right!

Best eaten with steamed rice, I guarantee you 50 burps after you eat this!

Buttered Spareribs Stew

1  kilo pork spareribs, chopped into cubes

5 medium-sized tomatoes

2 heads of garlic

1 oinion, sliced

1 cup green peas

3/4 cup butter (reserve half for final flavoring)

1 tsp soy sauce

canola oil

1 tsp cayenne pepper

salt and pepper to taste

water

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Season pork with salt and pepper.

Saute onion, garlic, tomatoes, soy sauce and half the butter. Add Pork and cover with water. Set in low-medium heat and bring to a boil until meat is done or you may add water until desired tenderness is achieved (about 1 cup only everytime needed).

When sauce has been reduced to half:

Add green peas, cayenne pepper, 1/2 cup canola oil and the remaining half of the butter about 15 minutes before turning off the heat. Serve hot.

Turkey Breast Fillet With Blueberry Preserves And Herbed Cheese Sandwich

It was in 1863 when Thanksgiving was declared a national holiday in the United States. The Americans then started to use turkey as their dish centerpiece for Thanksgiving. The focal dish that it has become, its popularity in America and Europe has been immeasurable since.

The rich, juicy and taste -loaded leftover turkey breasts were sitting on the ref when I decided to make it into a sandwich. I thought a see-saw of flavors, salty and sweet would be perfect to go with the turkey.

So, here was how I did it.

To make it you will need:

500 grams tukey breast fillet leftover

4 slices of herbed or smokey dutch cheese (or any cheese you want)

3/4 cup bluberry chunky preserves

4 slices of bread

parsley for garnishing

Assemble the ingredients on top of a slice of bread. The blueberry preserves then about 250 gms of turkey breasts for each sandwich and cheese. Cover with another slice. You may heat sandwich if you wish.

Top with a sprig of parsley for garnishing.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Recipe: Summer mango-Philly maki rolls | ABS-CBN News | Latest Philippine Headlines, Breaking News, Video, Analysis, Features

Recipe: Summer mango-Philly maki rolls | ABS-CBN News | Latest Philippine Headlines, Breaking News, Video, Analysis, Features.

Classic Puttanesca

Twirling the puttanesca onto my fork, I was reminded of my date nights with hubby, Jake, when we  used to troop over to our favorite Italian resto, Cosa Nostra in Malate when it was still abuzz with the gimmick peeps.

We would order  plates of light-coated pasta that were peppered with sauces that tasted fresh, light and very Italian. The ingredients they used were nothing but top quality, authentic and flavor loaded. Am totally clueless now, though, how they are today, 10:29 PM of November 16, 2010!

Fast forward to today, I decided to dish out some puttanesca to go with the chardonnay that begged to team up with the pasta. Awesome, I knew we were in for a great dining chitchat with the yummy food at the backdrop.

Just a sidebar– puttanesca is always best with mashed anchovies. It binds the flavors together and defines its flagship taste. Easy to make and delightful to eat!

Puttanesca

1/4 kilo spaghetti noodles

1 can Del Monte tomato sauce (petite cut)

3/4 cup olive oil

1 head of garlic, minced

3 pcs anchovy fillets, mashed

1/2 cup black olives, sliced

1/2 cup capers

1/2 tsps chilli flakes

1/2 cup grated parmesan or romano cheese

salt and pepper to taste

1 tbsp chopped parsley for garnishing

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Cook spaghetti according to package directions. Drain and set aside.

In a skillet, saute garlic, anchovies, capers, chilli flakes and olives. Add tomato sauce. Simmer for about ten minutes.

Toss in cooked spaghetti and  sprinkle with cheese. Top with chopped parsley for garnishing.

Korean Noodles With Pork And Mushrooms

Lately, I have been drawn to Korean grocery stores for their cooking must haves. My penchant for anything Korean was ignited once again after my friend and I trooped over to Ye Dang very recently to sample the most talked about Korean restaurant in the metro.

Cruising the aisles of my newly found favorite Korean grocery somewhere in QC, I saw a huge pack of glass noodles that I would make into some spicy noodle dish. A toss up of noodles, shiitake mushrooms, diced pork and coated with hoisin, pork broth and sesame oil, this dish was the welcome nightcap I looked forward to after a long day.

The dish may appear to have a close semblance with another favorite Korean dish, the chap chae. However, this one  didn’t include spinach, beef and soy sauce in its list of ingredients.

Spicy Noodles With Pork And Mushrooms

1/2 kilo glass noodles

5 pcs fresh shiitake mushrooms, sliced

3/4 cup hoisin sauce

3 tbsps brown sugar

3 slices of pork spare ribs

1 cup cabbage, finely chopped

5 cloves of garlic, minced

1 white onion, minced

2 tsps chili flakes

salt and pepper to taste

sesame oil

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Season pork with salt and pepper. Boil until pork becomes tender (keep the broth!). Slice and discard the bones. Set aside.

In a skillet, saute onion and garlic. Add mushrooms, cabbage and pork. Stir in hoisin sauce ang sugar. Season with salt and pepper.

Pour about 4 cups of the pork broth and bring to a boil.

Add glass noodles and reduce heat  to a medium simmer.

Cook until noodles are tender and soupiness is gone. Add chili flakes. Serve hot.