Chilly nights call for something warm…

Another chilly Chicago night and so we opted for some soul-warming arroz caldo. I’ve made it earlier in the year but this time I added some mushrooms for a more earthy flavor.My arroz caldo with mushrooms recipe:

12-16 cups of homemade chicken stock
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 onion, chopped
1 cup white mushrooms, sliced
1 1/2 tablespoons minced ginger
oil for sauteeing
1 tablespoon black pepper
2 chicken bullion cubes
1 rotisserie chicken deboned
1 1/2 cups rice – sushi, jasmine or long grain
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 handful sliced green onion

— In large dutch oven, saute garlic, onions, mushrooms and ginger in cooking oil. Cook until onions are softened.
— Add chicken to pot and heat through.
— Add rice and stir to coat with oil.
— Add black pepper and bullion cubes.
— Add homemade chicken stock and stir.
— Let it cook over low to medium heat for about 30-40 minutes, stirring occassionally.
— Add lemon juice and sliced green onion about 5 minutes before serving.

Care for Tamarind Soup?

Okay, my apologies to those that were grossed out with the previous post on balut. But please don’t say I didn’t warn you! 🙂 Moving on to daily eats, here’s a filipino dish that’s true comfort food for us, sinigang. We made this for dinner since we were feeling lazy with the heat wave coming through Chicago.

Sinigang is a filipno dish famous for the variety of ingredients one can use as well as for its taste. Sinigang is typically sour and is most often likened to Thailand’s tom yum.

Sinigang often incorporates stewed fish, pork, chicken, shrimp, or beef. Sinigang’s characteristic taste is attributed to the ingredient that gives its sour taste, not to the meat’s flavor.

Pork sinigang, the most common variety, is usually prepared with tamarind, tomato, leek, taro, and onion. Other vegetables cooked in sinigang may include cabbage, okra, spinach, radish, green pepper and string beans. Naturally, vegetarians would love this dish since various vegetables lends itself nicely with the flavor of tamarind.

Another variety is prepared with guava and is less sour than those with tamarind. Raw mango, calamansi and kamias can also be utilized. Surprisingly, that sour flavor is not because of vinegar, which many people may confuse it as. Powdered soup base or bouillon cubes cubes for sinigang are also used in place of natural fruits.

Most filipinos here in the US don’t have the time to gather those exotic fruits to create that sour flavor that sinigang is used for. Instead, most people use the powdered soup base such as that above.This is not a hard dish to make – even for those who aren’t familiar with filipino food. Here’s a common recipe for Sinigang, which is even found on the back of the powdered soup base package…

1-2 lbs pork (or beef)
8 cups of water
your choice of green veggies – cabbage, asparagus, green beans, spinach
1 large tomato, chopped
3 cloves garlic
1 medium onion chopped

In a dutch oven or pot, add pork.
Cover with water and let boil until cooked.
Drain pork and run through cold water to rid of the “residue”.
Place pork back in clean pot and cover with water.
Add 1 package of sinigang soup base.
Add tomatoes, garlic & onions.
Let it come to a boil.
Depending on which vegetables you use, add the veggies that take longer to cook first.
Reduce heat and allow veggies to cook through.
Remove from heat and add other veggies on top.
Cover and let steam to cook.
Stir before serving over rice or eat as a soup.

This can be made vegetarian my omitting the meats and cooking up the veggies in the soup base.

WARNING: Explicit Pics!

Part of the enjoyment of tonight’s Pinoy Peyesta was the gathering of some brave souls who tried balut for the first time.

Balut is a fertilized duck egg with a nearly-developed embryo inside that is boiled and eaten in the shell. They are considered delicacies of Asia and especially the Philippines, Cambodia and Vietnam. Popularly believed to be an aprodisiac and considered a high-protein, hearty snack, baluts are mostly sold by street vendors at night in the regions where they are available. They are often served with beer.

Here is a pictoral of eating balut. My husband was kind enough to walk through the steps in shelling and eating balut. Warning – this is not for the faint and these men really ate these eggs! There are 4 parts to eating balut…

1. initial “broth” upon cracking the top, which is sucked out or taken like a shot
2. hardened calcium, which has a plastic like texture
3. yolk, which is full of veins and tastes like a giant egg yolk

4. underdeveloped duck, as seen in the last photos (not for those with weak stomachs)

Pinoy Peyesta!

Through another Chicago foodie community I’m active with, LTHForum.com, had a Filipino Dinner event provided by a fellow member. Being Filipino myself, I wanted to attended… nothing beats home cooked Filipino food!

Sharon & Dan, the hosts of the event, prepared a bountiful feast that included the following Filipino dishes:

Pinakbet
salty vegetable dish of bittermelon, calabasa squash,
tomatoes, garlic, onions, eggplant, green beans,
okra, pork and shrimp paste (alamang)

Dinuguan

pork blood stew of pork, frozen pork blood and jalepeno peppers
Mango & Tomato “Salsa”
with shrimp paste (alamang) & onions
Chicharron
fried pork rinds with a
sawsawan of vinegar, chopped garlic and black pepper Lumpia
Filipino eggroll filled with shrimp, ground pork,
water chestnuts, green beans, bean sprouts, and carrots
Lechon Kawali
deep fried pork belly with a liver sauce
Shrimp Chips
shrimp flavors wheat flour chips
Kare Kare
peanut butter based stew with oxtails, long beans, eggplants, tripe
Chicken Adobo
~ which I made and brought to the party ~
(this was not pictured because it was eaten up before I had a chance to take a pic!)

Familiarity Brings Us Home

My husband grew up in the Philippines and moved to the United States when he was about 7 years old. Despite having lived a majority of his life in the US, he keeps his culture and heritage very close. Tonight’s dinner was one that brought him back to his childhood days in the Philippines, as “tocilog” filled our bellies.

Tocino is a cured meat product native to the Philippines. It is usually made out of pork and is similar to ham and bacon. It’s often reddish in color and has a sweet taste. Tocino is often eaten with rice and a fried egg. This meal is often called “Tosilog” or “tocino, sinangag at itlog“, which literally means tocino, fried rice and egg.

I cheated and used a tocino seasoning packet for my pork, and despite the easy way out, it as pretty good. Next time I’ll attempt to do it from scratch.

Jolly for Jollibee!

Jollibee is a fast food restuarant chain based in the Philippines and also has locations in the United States (California), Hong Kong, Vietnam, Indonesia, Dubai and Brunei. Jollibee is also the name of Jollibee’s mascot, a large bee in a blazer, shirt and chef’s hat. It is an American style fast-food restaurant with Filipino-influenced dishes. It specializes in chicken, burgers, and spaghetti.

I haven’t had Jollibee since I was in the Philippines a few years ago… such fond memories! And since there isn’t a Jollibee anywhere close to Chicago, I had to take advantage of having my fix while in Daly City! Here’s what we had for dinner:

Palabok Fiesta ~ a meal of pancit palabok, which is rice noodles
smothered with a thick, golden shrimp sauce or other flavored sauce,
and topped with shrimp, ground pork, green onions and egg. Chicken Joy ~ a fried chicken meal served
with steamed jasmine rice and gravy.

Pretty Pancit Palabok

In light of my asian cooking trend, I made Pancit Palabok for dinner. Its a favorite Filipino rice noodle dish of ours that I made with the help of some help of palabok sauce packets.

Pancit Palabok is also known as Pancit Luglug and are essentially the same dish, with the difference being primarily in the type of the sauce used. Both types of pancit use a round rice noodle smothered with a thick, golden shrimp sauce or other flavored sauce, and topped with:

– Shrimp, (the size and shell-on or shell-off depending on preference)
– Crushed or ground pork rind (chicharron) for toppings
– Hard-boiled egg (sliced into disc or quartered lengthwise or chopped)
– Freshly minced green onion

Palabok is a communal comfort food, and can be found at nearly all Filipino potluck parties. They are best made and eaten in batches for they are easily consumed.

Here is my recipe for a simplified Pancit Palabok:1 package pancit luglug noodles

1 pancit palabok sauce packet
water as directed on sauce packet
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 large onion, sliced
1 lb roasted pork, diced
1/2 lb frozen seafood mix (includes shrimp, mussels, calamari, crab, scallops)
2 stalks green onion, sliced
1/2 cup chicharon
hard boiled eggs, sliced
lime wedges

Cook the pancit luglug noodles in boiling water until softened.

Drain noodles and set aside.
In a pan, heat oil and add garlic & onions.
When softened, add pork and seafood mix.
Cook thoroughly.
Add sauce packet & water as directed on package.
Let pan come to a boil and add noodles.
To serve, top with sliced green onion, chicharon, egg and lime.

Filipino Fiesta!

This past week has been uneventful in terms of dinner. We’ve now resorted to eating out and cheap since we don’t want to buy any more groceries before our move this coming weekend. However we ended the week on a festive note by hosting a Filipino Fiesta for Cinco de Mayo! Here are pics from the event:

Recipes for the dishes I made
can be found at my group’s
online cookbook.

Talong at Kamatis

(Roasted Eggplant & Tomato Salad)

Kamatis at Manga
(Tomato & Fresh Mango Salad)
Lumpiang Shanghai

(Pork Eggrolls)

Fried Garlic Brown RiceSinigang ng Hipon
(Tamarind Shrimp Soup)

Beef Mitsado
(Beef & Tomato Stew)

Chicken Adobo
(Soy Sauce Chicken)

Pineapple Dessert Mold

Ube Cupcakes
(Sweet Purple Yam Cupcakes)

Buko Pandan Cupcakes
(Sweet Coconut & Green Leaf Cupcakes)

Porking It

After a very productive shopping trip, I landed myself a big 6lb pork roast begging me to take it home. I didn’t have to the heart to refuse since it was only $.99/lb! So I decided to make use of it in a two ways. The first way was to make one of my husband’s favorite comfort foods ~ pork adobo.

Adobo is also a term used as the name for a common dish in the Philippines, typically made from pork or chicken or a combination of both. It is slow-cooked in soy sauce, vinegar, crushed garlic, bay leaf and black peppercorns, and often browned in the oven or pan-fried afterwards to get the desirable crisped edges. This dish originates from the northern region of the Philippines.

It is one of the first dishes Filipinos learn to cook as it is simple and requires just a handful of ingredients. In good-tasting adobo, none of the spice flavors dominates but rather the taste is a delicate balance of all the ingredients. As with most dishes, there will be slight variations in the ratios of the ingredients or the cooking process, and the cook’s unique touch is impressed upon the final outcome. Adobo is a very common packed food for Filipino mountaineers and travellers because of its relatively longer shelf-life. This stems from the vinegar content which inhibits the growth of bacteria.
Here’s my recipe for pork adobo:

1-2 tablespoons minced garlic
1 onion, chopped
1 tablespoon oil for cooking
1 lb pork, cubed
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
1/2 cup rice wine vinegar
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup water

In pan, saute garlic & onion in oil.
Add pork and brown slightly.
Add remaining ingredients and let cook for 25-30 minutes.

The other way I used the remaining pork was to roast it with a premade rub of citrus grill seasoning. It consists of salt, sugar, lemon peel, ill, garlic, onion, red bell pepper, and a touch of paprika.
I really enjoy using various seasonings in my recipes for added depth of flavor and for the simple convenience of it all. This particular seasoning is wonderful with shrimp and chicken as well.
Here’s my recipe for citrus pork roast:
olive oil
1/4 citrus grill seasoning – or any preferred seasoning

Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Rub pork roast with olive oil
Coat pork roast with grill seasoning
Bake pork roast in preheated oven to 1.5-2 hours or until internal temp reaches 145-150 degrees.
Allow pork roast to rest and so juices can be redistributed and for residual heat to continue cooking the roast.

I plan on using this roast in a few dishes in the future to really stretch the $6 I paid for it… stay tuned to see how!

Chicken Adobo

Chicken Adobo
(Filipino soy sauce chicken)

Chicken drummettes or any cut of chicken
2-3 cloves chopped garlic
1 medium to large chopped onion
1 cube chicken buillion
garlic salt
black pepper
1-2 bay leaves
white distilled vinegar or rice vinegar
soy sauce

1. In large pot or dutch oven, heat pan with about 2-3 tablespoons of cooking oil (veggie, corn, canola will do)
2. Add chopped garlic and onions to the pot – cook til translucent.
3. Add chicken to the pot – cook til you can’t see any raw-ness on the outside.
4. Season chicken with garlic salt, black pepper, chicken buillion cube and bay leaf.
5. Add soy sauce – I start pouring and count to 5, then stop.
6. Add vinegar – I start pouring and count to 5, then stop.
7. Stir and let it simmer away for about 20 minutes.
8. Depending on the cut of chicken you use, you may have to skim any fat that have risen up from cooking.
9. You can also continue cooking it until all the liquid is gone, and then it naturally fries itself in the oils left in the pan.
10. Serve over hot steamed rice, preferable Jasmine.

** We find that adobo tastes better a day or so after, when the chicken has completely absorbed all the flavors. This recipe can also be used for pork (preferably pork belly) and beef.