Finally, Tuna Pasta Sauce

WITH Turkish Saffron. Don't exactly know what kind of flavor it added, but the overall taste was nice and a little woody. Good wood, haha. And the sauce looked pretty, with the tiny red stringy bits. I think this is healthy too.
Cut up around 8-10 medium-sized tomatoes and boil them. No need to add water. This will be your very own healthier, homemade tomato sauce. When it's cooking, lower the flame and stir from time to time because it easily burns. Give it about 45 minutes to an hour.

WHEN the tomatoes are just about done stewing, Chop some onions, garlic, a little celery and carrots. Sauté in olive oil, add a can of tuna, stir well, add the tomatoes, stir some more. Pour some mushroom water (soak some shiitake mushroom in hot water and use the water. You can chop up the mushrooms and put it in the sauce too!). Reduce the liquid. Season with ground black pepper, celery salt, fresh basil leaves and Turkish saffron. Keep stirring till the sauce thickens. That's it.

Don't forget to cook some good pasta while doing this.

If you want a stronger basil taste, add it to the tomatoes when you stew them.

Calamansi Fried Chicken

HAD THIS with the beef stew. Just to have something fried. I know, I know, it's bad, but hey...

Rub some celery salt into the chicken (don't know where I got this. Just found it in the kitchen. It's celery-flavored salt granules) till the outside of the chicken feels squishy. When I do this, somehow, the flavor seeps in better. And it fries well. I don't know, maybe it's some kitchen superstition. Sprinkled a bit of ground pepper, a little soy sauce, just for color and some calamansi juice. Massage everything into the chicken and leave for a bit.Then deep fry. Add some toasted sesame seeds and sliced leeks on top when serving (in case you left some unused from the beef stew) to make it purty, haha.

Korean Beef Stew, Light.

Linda Floro shared this recipe to me at one shooting session and since then, this has been one of the family's favorites. I've twisted the recipe a little by not putting too much soy sauce, taking out sugar and adding some pepper.

BOIL some beef ribs in water. A kilo and a half of beef is a good amount. When oil starts collecting above the water, take it out. If you don't care about it, leave it. It adds a lot of flavor and well, a lot of heart disease too. :-) Careful. On the side, soak some dried shiitake mushrooms in very hot water for 30 minutes. Cube some carrots, slice thinly some leeks, crush garlic, cut onions, toast sesame seeds.

Ok, in between putting in the ingredients, give it about 5-1o minutes for each flavor to cook into the meat and the broth:

Add some peppercorns and the garlic.

Pour about a a fourth of a cup soy sauce, use the real, premium kind. Add about 2 tablespoonful of oyster sauce, and a third of a cup of mirin. Use a little of your own judgement here. The soup should not be too dark, but not too light. The amount of each flavoring you put depends on how much water you used. Better to start with a little of each and add gradually till you strike the balance that you prefer. Sip a little of it, do a quick chp chp chp chp chp chp sound, say hmmm when it's right.

Throw in the onions, the sliced shiitake and the water it's soaked in, and the carrots. I add some young corns too.
Add the toasted sesame seeds.

Wait till the carrots and corns are soft. Turn off the heat, sprinkle a little sesame oil (or not, if there's too much oil already.). Add the leeks on top when serving.

I wonder what the Koreans will say about what I did to their stew? O well, it tastes good to me.

CucumberPandan Ice Cream

Special thanks goes out to Paolo Toledo for hating cucumber and giving me the idea to do this! Love you my friend, this is very "delightful" (yes, I just used one of my most-hated words). The ice cream's not perfect yet. It tends to have some crunchy iced cucumber, as it doesn't completely meld with the cream. I'll try to fix that next time. It's probably in the mixing process. Didn't spoil the fun though.

Popped some sliced cucumber in the blender, poured in a can of condensed milk and a small can of evaporated milk. Added a little sugar and a few drops of Pandan extract, and set it on high speed for a few seconds intermittently. Then I poured it into a large bowl where I have the chilled cream ready. Mom used an electric mixer and mixed away. While that's being done, I made a thick mix of Pandan Gulaman and cooled it down a bit and folded (hah! A cooking term I just learned!) it into the cream mix. Sorry, I'm using so many "mix". I have to learn more kitchen words. Blend? Melange? Medley? Hmm, mix is just right.

Anyway, that's it! Freeze the thing for about half a day or till the kids'patience wear out, and enjoy! Might be nice to add a few mint leaves to complete the coolness, as another friend suggested. I mean coolness literally ok? :-)

This is one of the things we had at Fontana.

Hey!

091909 A weekend at Fontana. Missed having my brothers around. But we still had a good time. My first time to join the family at the pool. Relaxing. But of course, an out of town getaway is a nice excuse to experiment with cooking, hehehe. Just brought a few, easy-to-carry ingredients and we had some excellent food, if I may say so myself.

FIRE & ORDER

MOST OF THE TIME, it's not about the recipe or the pinch or gram or kilo that you stir into the cooking that makes or breaks it. It's how much heat you use, and in which order you put in the ingredients. Genereally, if it's something that starts with sautéeing, I use medium heat first, gradually setting it to high as i mix in the rest of the ingredients, and then gradually lowering the flame when it's almost done.

Use your flame wisely. :-)

Corned Beef Cake

Was lazy to prepare anything, so I grabbed a can of corned beef, some tomatoes, onions and garlic and an egg, and made a fried "cake" out of it.

There's too much salt in the corned beef so I put it in a strainer and ran water through it. Sautéed the onions and garlic and tomatoes (in that order) in high heat. Don't stop stirring, or it'll burn.When the tomatoes are soggy and look "melted", mix in the corned beef. Stir for around 2 minutes and take it out of the pan. Cool a little then mix one egg. Pour back into the pan and fry on low heat till it's brown and a little crispy.

That's it! Have it with catsup and some garlic fried rice!

RosemaryThyme Chicken and Potatoes&Basil Fried in Olive Oil

MMMm, I usually prepare this when I want the meal to look a little professional. Or pseudo-gourmet, hehe. The thing is, it's very easy to prepare. And not too expensive. Again, just use your own taste to adjust how much of each ingredient you wanna use. Sorry for the photo though. I took this on my mom's birthday in January. I wasn't thinking of blogging yet.

Get a fresh chicken, cut in half, so you'll have 2 cross-sectioned chickens. Massage a small amount of soy sauce into the meat. Sprinkle some dried rosemary and thyme. For more flavor, add a little dried basil and marjoram. Don't put too much, or the chicken's gonna taste bitter. Sometimes, if I can get fresh herbs, that's what I use.

Put some quartered onions in a baking tray and set the chicken on it. Add some freshly crushed garlic (or a lot). You can leave this in the ref for a little bit or if the room's not too hot, just cover it. Helps to let the flavors set.

Sprinkle the chicken with olive oil before putting it in the oven set at 180˚C. Cook for about an hour.

Now for the potatoes.

While preparing the chicken, Boil the small potatoes already. Add salt in the water. When it's soft, fry them in olive oil. Just use medium flame. Keep tossing around the potatoes so the skin browns all around. Stir in some crushed garlic (including the garlic skin. It adds "character") until it browns too. Before turning off the flame, get a few fresh basil leaves and toss it in until it turns soft and fragrant.

That's it. I just put them in a nice dish so it'll look more professional, haha.

When I get to cook this again, I'll replace the pic. Just trust me, it looks and tastes good.

Hey!

Over-posted today. Been collecting photos of what I cook. Adds more fun to the process. And it forces me to remember what I cook. The next time I prepare the other few recipes I've twisted, I'll post them -- Korean Beef stew in light soup, Strawberry Pistachio Ice Cream, Boiled (not steamed) Pork Shrimp Meat Loaf (learned this from the Battads. But I changed it a bit also).

SoyGarlic Chicken

Was thinking of something to pair with the squid so I made this quick chicken recipe.

All you need are a few chicken thighs. Flavor with a little premium soy sauce, garlic powder (used this so it'll stick better to the chicken), and celery salt. Throw it in the oven and grill for an hour. Don't forget to turn them to cook brown both sides. I set them on the oven grill and only turned on the top heating elements. I let the juice drip down to the catch tray so the skin will turn crispy and the inside tender.

That's it! Boil some camote tops, or any edible dark green leaves and eat it with the chicken!

Pork-Stuffed Squid

This is cooked twice. First in the oven, then fried (in a little olive oil. Haha, my feeble attempt at being healthy). Not sure if there are recipes out there like this one, but hey, it tasted good in my head, so might as well try it in real life.

Get a few squid. Clean well -- set aside the head, remove all traces of ink, pull out the plastic-looking "skeleton".

Mix together some ground pork (how much you get depends on how many squids you'll have to stuff), finely chopped spring onions and bell pepper, about a tablespoon or more of garlic powder (was too lazy to crush and chop fresh garlic), a little salt and pepper. Oh, you can throw in a spoonful of pickle relish to twist the flavor. Chop the squid head and throw it into the mix. Leave it for a few minutes for the flavor to come together.

Stuff the mix in the squid, lock the open end with toothpick and bake (280˚C) for 30 minutes or until a lot of juice has seeped out of the squid. I set the oven to high setting so I'm like grilling the squid more than baking it.

When that's done, I just fry them in a little oil to brown the skin a bit so they look good.

That's it! Just slice and serve. Dip it in sweet chili sauce or tomato catsup.

BlueberryLime Cheesecake

Hah! First bake. I just used a small, tabletop electric oven. I''l take a picture of it one day.

I only made a 9"x 9" cake. Didn't know how it'll turn out so I wanted to make sure I'll only mess up a little, expensive ingredients. Yeah, cheese is not cheap now.

The only reason I tried this is because I bought, for no reason at all, a can of blueberries a month ago.

I just took 2 recipes from the net and combined them. I made the cake from one recipe, and the glaze from the other (I just got the blueberry syrup from the can plus a few berries, stirred in some corn starch, put it in the blender, and cooked in low heat till it's like jam) . Just search for blueberry cheesecake.

Saw some leftover lime from a mojito drinking night and used them in the cheesecake. This is my twist for this recipe.

Didn't fail this first time. :-)

Meat&Mushroom Pasta Sauce

Wanted to eat some "party spaghetti" one day, but I don't like the sweet kind. I just want it with some ready-made spaghetti sauce.

Got some ground beef, opened a can of button mushrooms or shiitake (i prefer this, it gives the sauce a little twist) and chopped them into small pieces.

Next, I chopped up some tomatoes, onions, garlic, carrots and celery.

Ok, sauté time. Heat some olive oil in a pan, throw in the onions, stir until they're slightly clear, then throw in the celery, and garlic. Give it a few seconds, then mix in the tomatoes. Keep stirring till the tomatoes become soggy. Then mix in the beef and the mushrooms, cook for a few minutes. Pour in the spaghetti sauce and just keep stirring. Add a little salt and pepper and a pinch of dried basil leaves. I let it simmer for around 15 minutes or longer to make the sauce naturally sweet.

Cook the spaghetti with a little salt and a lot of dried oregano.

*I'm ok using dried herbs and canned vegetables. They're fine. :-)

Still getting used to this

Here's a photo of the dumplings. Was trying to attach it to the post but I fucked up. :-)

Pork Shiitake Dumplings

Haha, didn't realize how fucked up this dish's name is. Oh well. Twisted it is then.

You'll need a steamer for this.

Prepare about a kilo and a half of lean Ground Pork and about 2 cups of chopped shrimp or prawn meat.

Get 2 or 3 carrots, a large bell pepper, onion, and cut them up into small pieces. Or stuff them in a food processor give it a few clicks, and you're done! Chopped veggies!

Chop up some shiitake mushrooms into very small pieces. A cup and a half is probably how much you'll need.

You'll also need a cup of chopped spring onions.

Just mix everything in a large bowl, sprinkle with a little sesame oil, soy sauce and salt (a sprinkle of brown sugar will bring out the umami taste too.)

That's it! Wrap them in wanton wrappers, steam for about 20-25 minutes and eat! If you want, dip it in some light soy sauce mixed with a little bit of Chiu Chow Chili Oil.

Hey!

I've been cooking since I was 10. Learned by watching. By experimenting. Now, I cook to relax. And I still like experimenting. Sometimes I take someone's recipe and add a few twists and substitutes, or sometimes I open the fridge door and see what I can mix together in the pot or pan. I have a habit of smelling a few ingredients together so I'd know what it'll possibly taste like. Luckily, I get succesful at most times.

So, I'd like to share with you what I've twisted around. I don't measure ingredients. Just take a look at what you need, then experiment. Use a little of this or a lot of that. Depends which taste you want to enhance.