jonettevalenciano.com: Cook It

Showing posts with label Cook It. Show all posts

Ah, seaweed. Your variety, crunchy freshness, and strong sea smell warm the cockles of my heart. You're quite easy to prepare, quite nutritious, and are one usually interesting addition to the menu. The fact that you sometimes raise eyebrows in young and old alike is a big plus in my book. Also, you're quite cheap. Like really cheap. Did I mention cheap? Oh, right.

Now for a bit of education. This type of seaweed is known by a number of names. Scientists will know it as Kappaphycus alvarazii, a very good source of carragean. Carragean is used to help keep things viscous, moist, and gel-like, and can be found in a lot of things -- fire extinguishers, lipstick, shampoos, bread dough, beer, and ham, to name just a few. It's also commercially known as cottonii seaweed. If you find yourself in a local wet market, just ask for Guso. (Remember, say it with a glottal stop on the last syllable.)

Now, I'm not entirely sure if I should even but calling this entry "Cook It!", because, well, there's practically no cooking involved. None whatsoever. (Except maybe for the blanching bit, but you wouldn't call that cooking per se, would you?)

Guso is usually seasoned with a mix of vinegar, chopped red onion, and some green peppers. If you want your seaweed with a nice spicy bite, that's fine. Let me show you my own sweeter version.

Why yes, you read the title right.

About a year and a few weeks ago, Mik and I found ourselves stranded in a whale shark-watching resort in Donsol, no thanks to man-high floods on the main road and terrible weather. The resort staff and tour team kept us mostly-dry and warm, and fed us, educating our palates a bit more.

Everyone, meet dinner.

original picture from superpunch

vintage label from justsomethingimade.com

Well, not really, but you get the idea.

Corn. I love corn.

When I was in college, my trips to the UP Physics Building often meant a chance to sneak out and buy a pack of Japanese Sweet Corn and bring it home. It tore a gaping hole in my backpack for sheer size and bulk, but hey, I was bringing three kilos of wholesome deliciousness home, so there.

Then there's grilled sweet corn at stands that dotted the campus. It seems my dad was one of the blessed few who were privy to their locations and hours.

And there's Hominy, or White Corn.

I love White Corn. It's got body and chewiness to it, and boiled long enough, it pops and puffs up and coagulates into a mushy porridge of deliciousness. Add some sugar and grated coconut, and you have some wonderful form of heaven-in-a-bowl called binatog. (Another wonderful recipe for yet another time.)
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I went out to do my wet market run earlier this week, and went home in sleepy-addled glee with a kilo of the stuff nestled in one of my bags. James and I ate well the morning after, and here's how we did so.

Back to more appetizing things.

A couple of weeks ago, I was lucky to find plump, ripe, and delicious-smelling mangoes from the wet market I frequent. I had been meaning to create a mango-flavored version of the sago-cheese custard recipe, and this was pretty much the biggest GO!-signal for me. I took three of these babies home, just to make sure.

This experiment was meant to follow the same steps and ingredients for the original recipe mentioned above. I only had to substitute the grated cheese for pureed mangoes.

Here's another recipe that's easy, great for entertaining guests, and can be prepared even a day in advance. Originating from Spain, this delightful Tapas works just as well eaten with a side of rice as a meal. One bite will pretty much help you determine whether or not you'll still be up for seconds -- but you'll probably have them, anyway.

The secret is gin. And a lot of patience.

Hi, everyone. Here's one particular recipe I tried my hand at last week, and one I'm raring to experiment with the next chance I get. The ingredients are pretty simple, and this requires no special machinery to work with. (I had to jimmy up my cookware for this, but I'll explain in a bit.)

Plus, I get to work with sago. Fun, tiny, jiggly sago. Heehee.

Yep, you read the title right.

A geeky reason to love this recipe: as we all know, Coca-Cola makes for very potent acid. You can practically use it to clean off rust in the inner workings of your car, scrub stains of your bathroom porcelain, clean burnt pans, remove gum in your hair, even clean ancient coins! With so much acid in the drink, why not put it to good use as a meat tenderizer?

A lazy reason to love this recipe: It's only got four ingredients. 'Nuff said.

The best reason to love this recipe: It's goooooooooooooooooood. Deserves every singe extra O in there, yes it does.

You will need:

- 1 whole chicken, about 3 pounds. This will also work if your chicken is cut up into parts, like mine was.

- 1 cup ketchup

- 1 large onion, thinly sliced

- 1 cup cola, Coke, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, etc.

- Salt and Pepper

Let's Get To It!

Wash and pat your chicken dry. Rub salt and pepper onto the chicken meat to taste.

Be sure to keep your cat away from the chicken.

Slice up your onion. Set aside.

Arrange your chicken in a nice, neat pile inside your crockpot.

Add the sliced onion, the one-cup ketchup...

... and the Cola, in all its fizzy glory.

Take sometime to admire Science at work before putting the glass lid back on.

Set it to Low, and let it cook for 6 to 8 hours.

Peeking every now and then is optional. This is what your chicken looks like after an hour.

After merely three or four hours. Look at all that chicken essence. Yum yum.

When the chicken meat is all tender, turn off the crockpot and let it cool for a bit. Once cool, you may wish to transfer the dish onto a bigger container. again, make sure to keep your chicken away from the cat. Above, the chicken sans sauce...

... and the chicken with sauce.

(As taken from About.com)

This serving I cooked up quickly vanished in two days' time, courtesy of James, me, Irl, Ditas, and a number of colleagues. Talk about potent stuff!

I plan to try this dish with pork instead for next time. It certainly sounds like a very promising idea.

UPDATE: the Coca-Cola Pork needed more time to cook to get it to the same tenderness as the chicken. (Can you say overnight?) I decided to dunk in a chopped-up chicken to to the ensemble and let it cook on Low overnight. James and I had it for brekkie the next day, and, in James' words, it was "a world of difference". I reckon it was the additional time and the chicken oil that did it. Voila!

Hope you liked this recipe! If you've tried this out, or made some variations of your own, I'd love to know how it turned out for you in the comments below.

Hi everyone. It's a pleasant early, early Sunday morning.

James and I have had the pleasure of having my good friends Jo, Irl, Ditas, and their twins Jodie and Ronnie for a night of good chili, yummy pasta, and some good-old beat-em-up games on the PS2 last weekend. It was fun watching the boys go at their combos and super-moves and us cheering them on to "Go get 'em, go get 'em, that's him! You can do it! Beat that Boss up! YEAAAAAH!"

Beat-em-up games. Always makes for awesome stress relief. (We presently recommend Warriors Orochi 2 for the witty, funny dialog and fantastic character design, and Dynasty Warriors: Gundam for the Mecha fans out there. Both make for great, straight-forward gameplay, and are pretty easy to understand once you've got the controller in your hands. they can get very challenging and addicting -- one scenario might not be enough!) Of course, bashing virtual bad guys coupled with good food and great company makes for a winning weekend in my book.

The chili, as with most of my lunch and dinner dishes now, was made by crockpot. It's a simple affair of half a kilo of ground pork and half a kilo of ground round, set to brown over a high setting for about an hour and a half or so. I next put in a large packet of tomato sauce and a small can of tomato paste, let it simmer for a bit, then added about three medium-sized cubed potatoes, and two large peeled, cubed carrots, and set the crockpot to Low. I let the veggies cook while I puttered about cooking the rice. After about half an hour, the chili was ready, and we all ate rather heartily that night. (And voila! A covert recipe in this post!)

I'm glad I took Irl & Ditas' advice to get a crockpot. With a crockpot, you can pretty much put in all the ingredients your dish needs, set it to cook on Low for a number of hours (say, 6 to 12? Long enough for you?) go to work, sleep, or do your thing, and come back with your dish ready to serve. What's more, your meats will stay moist and juicy, since the moisture just circulates within the ceramic interior and glass cover of the appliance. Oh, and sauce-y dishes are best prepared with crockpots.

I'd say this is a big help for me, specially with weekends. This now means I can start cooking Lunch early in the morning when I come home from work while I bustle about and clean around the house.

Breakfast is not a problem for me, really. I can whip up rice-omelette-hotdogs-tocino in an hour and a half, bam, done.

It's Lunch, however, that can get freaky.

Picture this: you and your boyfriend get some shut-eye late-morning Saturday after a long evening work shift. You both wake up mid-afternoon, both groggy and hungry. Very hungry. It doesn't help either that your boyfriend's tummy is hyper-acidic, and must be filled before the acid gets the better of him. You yourself have just woken up, and you barely remember what the contents of your pantry and fridge are.

Time's tick-tocking. Your boyfriend's on the brink of a hunger crisis, your brain is post-sleep slush, and you have no food ready.

Did I mention the crockpot's our saving grace? ^_^"

Another plus I've encountered with crockpot-cooking is a return to packed lunches. With the recipes I've been experimenting with, I find they yield more than James and I need for a day. Even two days! The sauce is also a major bonus, I think. So, why not pack a lunch for myself to bring to work? It's a great way to save money. I've also noticed that I've begun to eat rather well ever since I started bringing packed lunches to work. Most definitely beats fast food very often. :)

I'm really excited to keep trying more recipes with this baby. I've next set my sights on this Mac-n-cheese recipe, and maybe, just maybe, make an attempt with home-made yoghurt. Think of it: lassi to go with curries like Rogan Josh, right in the comfort of your own kitchen.

What about you? Do you also cook with a crockpot? What are your favorite recipes?

Hello, everyone. First off, I'd like to introduce you to Cook It!, a new section of the blog. Every now and then, I'll be writing about recipes I've tried and loved.

Let's start off with Adobong Puti!

I owe all my thanks to the vivacious Ditas for teaching me this recipe.

Early morning Saturdays (and thus, end-of-shift-and-work-week late-night Fridays) always spell house-keeping for me. This is when I strip off the working-girl role I play for most of the week, and put on my Rosie-Riveter housewife face. From then on, it's laundry-duty, dusting, sweeping, scrubbing, and wiping down corners, and by the gods, all that makes me feel alive.

In between chores, I usually try to plan the day's meals, figure out what I'll need to buy from the corner green grocer and butcher, and maybe, just maybe (if I don't feel up to cooking or am simply too tired to do so), what the nearby eateries have to offer.

Last Saturday found me unusually energized -- I'd lasted long into 9am, sweeping the front porch and waiting for the sun to dry the washing. I thought to myself, if I still have enough energy to do this, I might as well head over and pick up some ingredients.

The beauty of adobong puti -- or any kind of adobo, for that matter -- is that you can leave it to marinade for half a day, and it will taste just as great. Cook it, enjoy it, tuck away your leftovers for another meal, and you will find the dish even more savory than the last time. The secret is in the sauce, or rather, that it seeps in deeper and deeper into the meat.

Its sweet and savory aroma is comes from its blend of garlic, white vinegar, sugar and salt.

Hello, everyone. Alas, dust has collected on my poor blog, and it deserves a good shaking-out and new posts. I had to delete a few drafts in the process. To be honest, right now I'm creating so many things faster than my blogging can really catch up to. As I mentioned in Twitter, I'll give my sewing a sabbatical of sorts and focus on cooking, baking, and updating the blog. Hmm... speaking of which, if you see a number of posts in the future talking about certain sewing projects, please don't be surprised. It's just bringing the blog up to speed is all. :)

Whew.

With that said and done, on to the food!

This was another dish I picked up from good pal and Poppa Paul Lazo (the very same guy who brought us Baked Eggplants in Tomato Sauce.) . It's a good dish when you want no-fuss meatballs and sauce to set aside, ready for customization for other recipes.

We've lately been enjoying homemade pizza lunches and dinners on weekends for a good number of reasons. They're easy to put together, quick to cook, you can let your imagination run wild. We love how know what goes into our food, which makes it a lot healthier than dialed-and-delivered variety.

The first sausage-studded experiment was a success for lunch, true, but we found ourselves needing something lighter yet satisfying for dinner. (Not to mention we ran out of sausages to begin with.

) So, in times like this, it pays to use your imagination... and turn to the Japanese for some veritable inspiration.

Ok, I know that their idea of the Italian dish doesn't exactly jive with the rest of the Western world (or with a number of sensitive stomachs), but there's got to be a reason why these flavors were so sale-able on their islands. So, we experiment.

(Or rather, in this case: Bake It!)

Hello everyone. Finally, a real-time post in Blogger! Yay! I'd want to apologize for the long wait. Work can be quite demanding at times -- specially when you feel the undeniable urge to scamper off and play every now and then. :P

A couple of weeks ago, I set out to try my hand at my first pie. I had voices in my head duking it out for superiority: one side was saying, "Are you nuts? that's a real pie, fer chrissakes! And you've got crusts and fillings to think of, and the presentation and all that stuff." The other side was going, "Come on. That's just Five. Freaking. Ingredients. You just can't go wrong." A few hours later and a few grocery bags full, guess which side won.

Hello, everyone. I know that Holy Week came and went, but do indulge me. It was a week of intense cookery, and I feel it would be great to document the entrees I experimented on.

This particular baby I made on Easter Monday (Holidays! Horray for working for the French!), and I have an Italian-born Poppa of a co-worker to thank for. Paul Lazo is one hecuva comedian at work, and knows how to whip up a hearty, healthy meal for his family from scratch. (Believe you me, it takes a lot of talent to to raise and feed four growing daughters well.) Meet him once, and you won't think twice why his family is a happy one. ;)

I was once looking for simple recipes that were quick and easy on the budget. Bitter melon (ampalaya) and okra were out of the question, since James had sworn off eating the stuff. So, what do we resort to? What's left in the veggie crisper, of course: eggplants.

Far as I knew, the simplest dish I knew to cook them with was Tortang/ Relyenong Talong. (Translation: Grilled, skinned eggplants -- in that order --, coated in sugared beaten eggs and panfried.Ground pork optional.) Thankfully, Paul obliged me and shared with me this easy Italian dish. Fire up your ovens.

Weekends have always been designated cooking days for me. Why? That's when the boyfriend comes home to crash at my pad after a night of hard tech support labor, and well, it's the only time throughout the week I get to relish learning how to cook a new dish. For some reason, I decided that it would be a good time to make dinner extra special. (It was also a good excuse to finally bring out the foot-long and six-inch-wide fish fillets I stocked up for Holy Week to good use.)

To add to that, I wanted to introduce my boyfriend to a style of rice I enjoyed as a child with my dad. As a sitar teacher, my father took the family and I once to an eclectic concert for the benefit of an Eastern Philosophy institution. I can't recall anymore if he was one of the acts, but what I do remember singing along to a lively Hare Krishna Hare Rama chant. (You can just imagine how amazingly fan-tas-tic and mind-blowing this all was to an eight year old.)

By Intermission, each member of the audience was handed a styrofoam pack containing a full vegetarian meal -- soy meat a la barbecue, sauteed vegetables, rice, and Laddu. Each entree was pretty much a source of fascination for me, but the rice was especially familiar: it was slightly buttery to the taste, and was mixed in with assorted nuts. My mother successfully duplicated the dish when we arrived home, and usually served it for my dad's birthday. I wanted to see now how well I could bring it back. Call it reminiscing.