Meatballs with Misua Soup (Filipino Almondigas)

Filipino Almondigas is another term for Filipino Meatballs in Misua Soup. Misua, according to Wikipedia, is a very thin variety of salted Chinese noodles made from wheat flour. The dish is composed of a combination of ground pork, breadcrumbs, egg, salt, pepper and onion. They are formed into bite-size meatballs and simmered into misua soup base. It is best eaten hot on a cold weather or just eat as a viand along with plain rice.

Ingredients:
25 grams misua, pencil-length
1 tbsp chopped garlic
1 tbsp chopped onion
1 cup celery stalk, chopped
1 kilo ground pork
salt and pepper
1 cup breadcrumbs
1 large egg, beaten
1 tbsp flour
2 cups water
2 medium red tomatoes, chopped


Procedure:
1. In a mixing bowl, combine ground pork, breadcrumbs, onions, egg, flour, salt and pepper. Scoop about 15-20 tablespoons and roll into bite-sized balls. Pan-fry until golden brown. Set aside and let cool.
2. Saute garlic, onion, celery and tomato on the same pan. Pour water to use as stock base when the onions become translucent and the juices from tomato comes out. Stir water gently and let it boil.
3. Add misua noodles and let it cook for 3 minutes. Put the cooked meatballs into soup stock. Simmer for for 5 minutes. Remember to adjust taste according to your preference.
4. Transfer meatballs with misua soup on a serving bowl. Serve hot.

Bangus Bistek Tagalog

Have you heard of bangus or milk fish?  If you’re familiar with it, you already know how delicious it tastes when cooked. I’ve come up with a recipe that I can use the fish to braise with using soy sauce and lemon. This is a perfect viand for those who are not into eating meat.

Ingredients:
3 tbsp cooking oil
3 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp water
3 tbsp lemon juice
1/4 tsp pepper
1 large milkfish or bangus, cut into steaks
1 large size onion, cut into rings


Procedures:
1. Marinate the fish steaks into half of lemon juice and half of soy sauce for about 25 – 30 minutes. Omit the marinade and fry the fish slices in a pan of 3 tablespoon of cooking oil with medium heat. Be careful of the oil splatter, it hurts and it’s ugly. Transfer on a plate and let it cool. Set aside.
2. On the same pan, discard some oil and saute onion rings until the color becomes translucent. Set aside on a plate and let it cool.
3. To make the “bistek” sauce, pour over the remaining soy sauce, lemon and water on the same pan and let it boil for about 5 minutes. Add ground pepper. When the sauce is reduced to half, transfer the fried fish steaks on the pan and cook for 5 minutes. Transfer on a serving bowl and garnish with onion rings. Serve hot with plain rice.

Marinated Fried Milkfish with Tomatoes and Onions

Here’s another recipe for fish lovers out there and it’s a milkfish. The fish is cut open on sides and deboned, scales, guts and innards removed. It is then marinated on a generous amount of vinegar, crushed garlic, pepper and salt overnight. Then it is fried to golden brown.
Expect the oil splattering when you’re cooking the fish so be sure have a pan lid ready to protect yourself. If you hate the splatter, you can sprinkle or coat some flour on the fish before frying.

Ingredients:
1 large size milk fish, cleaned, sliced on one side and de-boned
1 cup white vinegar
1/4 tsp. pepper
1/3 tsp. salt
4 cloves garlic, crushed
cooking oil
2 tbsp flour

For garnish:
1 medium hard-boiled egg, chopped
1 medium red tomato, chopped
1 small onion, chopped

Procedures:
1. After the overnight marinating, remove the fish and coat with flour and fry until golden brown on both sides.
2. Transfer on a serving plate and garnish with tomato, onion and hard boiled egg.
3. Serve hot with plain or Java rice.

Kimch Fried Rice with Tocino

This dish is very easy. If you love Kimchi (traditional fermented Korean side dish made of vegetables with a variety of seasonings according to Wikipedia), I’m sure you will love it even more when there are a lot of ways to create dishes with it. Rice for example, can be mixed with Kimchi and it will instantly turn into Kimchi Fried Rice. The dish starts with chopped kimchi, onions, olive oil, Kimchi juice and seasoning (optional) of your choice and lastly, cooked/leftover rice. You can garnish your Kimchi rice dish with spring onions or pork tocino (sweet cured pork as shown in the  image) or any meat of your choice.

Ingredients:
1/3 cup Kimchi, chopped
2 tbsp Kimchi juice
1 tbsp seasoning (your choice)
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cups rice, cooked
1 tbsp olive oil
Garnish - your choice of garnish may either be sweet cured pork strips, scrambled egg, garlic flakes, spring onions or whatever you prefer.


Procedures:
1. Heat olive oil in a wok. Saute onion and kimchi until the color becomes translucent and the kimchi juice appears.
2. Add you choice of seasoning (optional) and Kimchi juice (from the Kimchi container). Saute well until coated.
3. Add cooked rice and mix well until evenly coated with kimchi juice and chopped kimchi.
4. Garnish with your favorite toppings – meat, fried garlic flakes, spring onions or whatever you prefer. Serve hot.

Pork Meatballs with Sweet & Sour Sauce

If you’re already familiar with the recipe of making meatballs, then it’s the same with these meatballs on the dish. The difference is that they are coated with sweet and sour sauce. The dish is perfect to serve for lunch or dinner. Even kids love eating it.

Ingredients:
For meatballs:
1kg ground pork
1 medium onion, chopped
1 medium carrot, chopped
1 cup breadcrumbs
1 medium egg
4 pcs spring onion, chopped
salt & pepper
cooking oil

For sweet and sour sauce:
2 tbsp. ginger strips
1/4 cup red bell pepper, sliced
1/4 cup carrots, sliced
1/4 cup pineapple syrup
2 tbsp. cornstarch dissolved in 2 tbsp water
2 tbsp. ketchup
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup pineapple tidbits

Procedure:

For meatballs:
1. In a bowl, mix ground pork,  egg, breadcrumbs, onion, spring onion, carrots, salt and pepper.
2. Make batches of meat mixture by scooping each mixture on a tablespoon and form into balls.
3. Fry until they are brown on all sides. Transfer on a serving plate and set aside.

For sweet and sour sauce:
1. Saute onion, red bell pepper, carrot, pineapple tidbits and ginger on a sauce pan.
2. Add banana ketchup, water, pineapple syrup, soy sauce and cornstarch on the sauce pan. Mix well.
3. Bring to boil until the sauce thickens.
4. Pour the sauce over the meatballs and serve.

Brown Rice Cheesy Roll

Inspired from an ordinary sushi platter, I used brown rice as a base filling along with cooked ham strips and cheese. The seaweed (laver) wrapper is replaced with flattened whole wheat bread (or any bread of your choice).

Obviously, the breading stage is easy. You could use flour, bread crumbs and egg. On the dish above, I use evaporated milk, egg and breadcrumbs. The rolls are then deep-fried to golden brown.

How to cook brown rice? It's simple. 1 cup of brown rice is proportional to 1 - 3/4 cup of water. You can add up to 2 cup water to get a sticky brown rice consistency.  Before turning it to heat, allow the brown rice to soak for 25 minutes to soften its grains.

Ingredients:
1 medium egg, beaten
1 cup evaporated milk
1 cup breadcrumbs
5 slices of bread
6-10 cooked ham strips
6-10 cheddar cheese
cooking oil for frying.

Procedure:
1. Flatten the slices of bread with rolling pin. Trim the edges of each bread slices to resemble a perfect square.
2. Spread a tablespoon of brown rice on each bread slice. Arrange cooked ham strips and cheese strips on one side and roll them together with the bread.
3.  On a separate bowl, mix egg and evaporated milk. Dip each bread roll into the milk mixture and coat with breadcrumbs.
4. Deep fry each roll into golden brown. Start with the seam at the bottom to prevent each bread roll from opening up. Drain on paper towels and serve.

Homemade Pork Dumplings

You probably have eaten a lot of dumplings in your favorite restaurant or fast food. If you run out of dumplings to eat, you can always make them at the comfort of your home. The process of making dumplings is tedious because it involves chopping some of the ingredients for filling and placing a teaspoon of ground meat mixture in each dumpling wrapper. Then the final stage is to steam them in batches until they are done cooked.

Here's a closer look of a dumpling I've made:

And here's how it looks inside:

They can be served as appetizers or just a simple viand for rice or salad.

Ingredients:
1/2 kg ground pork
1 medium carrot, chopped
1 small turnip, chopped
2 fresh egg, medium and beaten (separately)
4 spring onions, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
50 pieces medium dumpling wrappers
1/4 cup cooking wine
3 tbsp. sesame oil
A dash of salt and pepper


Procedure:
1. Combine ground pork, egg, onion, spring onion, carrot, cooking wine, sesame oil, salt and pepper in a bowl. Mix well.
2. Scoop a teaspoon of ground pork mixture in each dumpling wrappers and fold each into half-moon shape. Seal the edges using the beaten egg and fork.
3. Steam each batches in a steamer for 20-30 minutes.
4. Serve with soy sauce with chili-garlic twist.




                                            

   

Pininyahang Manok (Chicken Stew in Creamy Pineapple Sauce)

I love experimenting on making dishes from chicken and pineapple. Hence, I cooked Pininyahang Manok or Chicken Stew in Creamy Pineapple Sauce for the first time. The taste is just right! Just the right ingredients are blended using the recipe step by step, cooked together and you get a delicious Pininyahang Manok for lunch.

It's my first time to cook this dish so the food does not look attractive when presented on a square bowl. The ingredients I've used are ginger strips, pineapple tidbits with syrup included, crushed garlic, sliced onions, cubed potatoes, cubed bell peppers, peppercorns and a can of 154ml evaporated milk. Optional is 2/3 cup of coconut milk if evaporated milk is not available.

It's easy to cook this dish as it includes sauteing and simmering for half an hour. The procedure starts with sauteing garlic, onions and ginger strips on a medium pan with 2 tbsp cooking oil. Add chicken pieces and fish sauce (patis) and saute for 5-6 minutes. Add peppercorns/ground black pepper and pineapple syrup. Simmer and cover for another 5 minutes. Then add bell pepper, potatoes, pineapple tidbits and milk. Simmer without lid for another 5 minutes. Serve hot with plain rice.

Cordon Bleu Rolls

This dish simply came from 3 pieces of Cordon Bleu logs cut into bite-sized rolls. It's super easy to make - all I did was pound three chicken breast fillets with meat hammer, put a slice of cheese and ham over the fillet and roll them together. I secured them with  two pieces of toothpick on both edges before coating them with flour, egg and breadcrumbs and deep-fried them until golden brown. After each log has cooled off, cut each into bite-size rolls about an inch.

I'm back!

Hello everyone!

I'm back again. Things have been busy for me lately so I haven't updated this blog for a long time. Right now I'm going to post pictures of foods I've tasted recently and will look back just in case I crave for those foods that I missed eating.  Enjoy!

~ Capri