I’ve been officially the cook for a month now. Cean’s yaya is still on holiday, maybe until the end of this month. I’m a full-time mom, chef & maid & a part-time designer. Nice. My folder in our server is now full of pictures of the dishes I cooked everyday but i hav little time to blog. Anyways, here’s another easy dish to prepare – adobong kangkong or river spinach saute.
Before I go on w/ my noodle blogging, i just wanna mention here that im happy to inspire a friend of mine to start his own recipe blog! That’s in spite of my non-pro cooking or what I call edible experiments. Go boy!
I’m the youngest in our family, so cooking pancit or any type of fried noodles (which was a holiday specialty) was never assigned to me back home. The first time I ever tried (w/ the exception of instant noodles, ofcourse) was for the millennium dinner! (that millenium dinner is a story worth-telling in my autobiography.) Anyways, my recipe below is somewhat special because it’s not really pancit canton which is actually wheat noodles & what i really had in mind. Instead I got 2 packs of instant noodles, discard all those preservatives inside & used just the noodles. How we come up w/ the idea? well, it’s a bit difficult to find the right stuff around here.
By the way, this pancit is for some birthday girl out there!
Normally, it’s beef but since I don’t have it inside our ref, pork is as good. This isn’t something like any western steak. I’m not an expert cook & my knowledge w/ regards to the history of our native dish is also limited but I guess this really is an original. Very little outside influence because of its main ingredient… kalamansi or native lemon. But you won’t find one in Beijing so I opted for lemon. I’m not sure if anybody used it before but I got the idea when we went to an English bar w/c serves our native food. I definitely think they used lemon. Anyways, you won’t really know the difference (or just so I think because I have no choice) & the taste is just superb.
Update:
Latest Pork Hamonado Recipe
Hamonado with Apples
This recipe is something that I got from my dad – one of his most famous ones & my favorite. It’s delicious & very easy to cook.
This was our lunch weeks ago I forgot when. Anyway, the recipe is exactly like my menudo but instead of using pork, I used chicken. in my case I used chicken thighs. It’s not a recipe I know by heart but one that I got from a favorite recipe site. Ingredients plus the complete ‘how to do’ stuff are exactly like what I wrote in my previous menudo entry . With regards on the preparation of the chicken, it’s just a little different. Boil the chicken separately w/ salt, pepper, garlic & onion until tender. Cut the meat into pieces … Continue reading Chicken Menudo
This is something that’s very easy to prepare although the one in the picture wasn’t prepared by me. Back home, this is popular during xmas or new year’s day, but abroad, fruit cocktail isn’t as expensive so we can afford … Continue reading Fruit Salad
I didn’t cook this time but the dish is too good not to be shared. Anyway, this is very easy dish to cook. Lunch 2 weeks ago.
These days, as always, my ingredients are incomplete for a really nice menudo. But before we go into details, let me highlight that this recipe isn’t the famous Mexican dish but our native dish – Spanish w/ asian fusion. I would say I know how to cook this dish by heart – a recipe from my dad. As a teenager, I used to cook this dish when we have this small cafeteria back home.By the way, this was lunch last sunday.
My cooking is always a mixture of what I learnt from my parents (that means sure recipes) & tips from friends plus my own research on the net. This one is something that my mom taught me, plus some tips from cean’s yaya (she makes great steamed fish as a result of working 10 years in HK) & my own added flavors as a result of my experimenting. Our dinner – steamed fish in soy sauce. (If there would be leftovers, make some fishballs.)
I took some pics of our 1st ever barbecue at home in Beijing last month. Like I said, forget the diet. this was the first time in Beijing. up on the roof. My recipe is a combination of what I think was the secret of street vendors selling barbecue back home & one recipe I found in the internet. Grilled over burning charcoal and served with home-made sauce. I would really like to have them grilled on bamboo skewers or what we call barbeque sticks but we couldn’t find any in the supermarket.
Always wanna have some vegetables for a balanced diet. Bulanglang is a very simple vegetable soup (just plain boiled vegetables) I learned from mom – some kind of a native dish from her hometown. When you wanna have a fast side dish, this is it. You can do the same recipe & use different vegetables. I always like string beans & mushrooms (those that u can just pluck from anywhere) but too bad no mushrooms today. Ginger is also an important ingredient but i purposely omit it because some guys can’t help to be anti-ginger.
Ofcourse, tocino is actually cured pork (or bacon in spanish) but since it is not available here in Beijing, I made some alterations to my pork asado (originally roasted pork in Spanish) recipe and the end result… the taste of authentic tocino & some guys would probably wonder where I bought it.
I always thought I have some talent in cooking lurking inside of me. Just one of those artistic things I’ve been born w/, I guess. Got some good tips from my dad, a good cook, & I can always follow guides from any cookbook w/o much accidents. I used to cook on a regular basis since I worked abroad & before I had cean. Now it’s like just the weekends when cean’s nanny is off for the day. Normally, I cook for only 2-3 persons during Sundays. Max of 4. Anyways, this blog is some kind of keeping records. Let … Continue reading Edible Experiment