All the dishes and accouterments from Christmas have been cleaned and the kitchen is ready to face another round of cooking for the New Year (not by much as I would like to greet the new year in peace, literally)…we’re slowly getting back to posting.

Ah, New Year! It’s all about beginnings. Good beginnings, I hope.

And to end the year 2008 and start anew for 2009, I’ll introduce you to a beloved Filipino breakfast, called Champorado. I figured that a day that begins with champorado is good, and a year that starts with champorado would be even better. Haha! This comfort food tugs at heartstrings of Filipinos everywhere. Back in the Philippines, being a tropical country, we especially like eating this on rainy mornings. Here in Canada, winter is a darn good time to have it. Warm, filling and very comforting.

Champorado (Chocolate Rice Porridge/Pudding)

I’ve seen it being called Chocolate Rice Pudding and Chocolate Rice Porridge in English, but it’s always going to be Champorado for me. It’s basically glutinous/sticky/sweet rice cooked with a lot of water to make it soupy-gooey (think oatmeal and congee), with chocolate and sugar added, and enjoyed with evaporated milk, powdered milk, milk or cream. As a child I’ve always wanted it with evaporated milk or powdered milk. The chocolate used was a traditional locally-produced chocolate (and us being very regional, the way this is made is different depending on where you go and who makes it). We’re a mishmash of cultures like that.

The day after Christmas I had the yearning to make this for whatever reason. Perhaps because we woke up to 3 feet of snow and that the possibility of our next Christmas celebration with friends for that day was getting slim. I have to admit that we were snowed in for good that day. After a few phone calls between friends, we all decided that it’s better to stay home. And then, I made this for dinner. I needed some comfort food.  This is also Dan’s introduction to this very Filipino (“Pinoy“, as we refer to it) breakfast.

Champorado -- yummy!

So how do you make this super simple concoction?

Ingredients:

1 cup of white glutinous/sticky/sweet rice [What is this?]

3 to 4 cups water, depending on your thickness preference

1/2  cup cocoa powder [this will be very chocolate-y, you can decrease it up to 1/4 cup if you prefer]

1/2 cup sugar (I like to use brown)

Procedure:

Combine rice and water in a pot and wait for it to boil under medium-high heat. Stir regularly. Boil in medium for about 10 to 15 minutes minutes. When the mixture thickens and the rice starts to become translucent (meaning, it’s cooked), mix in the cocoa powder and sugar. Cook to your desired consistency. Serve hot with milk or cream mixed in the porridge.

Yeah, that’s it!

It’s super easy, relatively effortless and definitely delicious!!! And with that we wish you all an easy, relaxing and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! We wish you the very best for 2009!

From our families to yours, we wish you the best and brightest Christmas!

-Joy and Danny

We are in the process of updating our blog theme, so if you see something not working that’s probably why. Thanks for your patience. :)

You might be saying — “Joy, it’s Christmas. Why are you talking about coffee tours?”

Well, friends, if you’re looking out the window and you can see this –

[Note: That sound at the end is not my breathing, it was the gush of wind!]

Wouldn’t you rather be thinking of sunshine, Hawaii and something warm — like coffee? I’ve been so busy here with all the Christmas shopping, work (which, trust me, tends to get really hectic before Christmas…why, whyyyy?), and trying to plan for the Christmas week ahead. I only even got our Christmas menu down pat last night! Now that I looked at the calendar and saw 21, I am starting to panic. Dan is coming here soon, and since then, we are going to be crazy busy with parties, food, and squeezing in time to do some tourist-y things. I’m severely nervous of how everything is going to turn out. I’m an OCD wreck like that!

I can’t leave you all behind though, not after the sudden-hiatus debacle of Fall 2008 when we seemed like we fell off the face of the earth. No, no, I promise. I’ve been cooking and baking a lot, and I even made sugar cookies to satisfy the sweet Christmas tooth. But I see everything Christmas-y in the food blogging world already and I am sure you will find great recipes among our food blogging friends. I will get to writing about cream puffs before Christmas, I hope. Because, that’s a super awesome treat which my mom used to make (she needs to get her baking mojo back!!! Hello, calling mom.).

Ok, for now…where were we? COFFEE! Oh, not just coffee, but Kona coffee.

Last October Dan and I visited the Bay View Farm coffee farm in Honaunau, HI. It was a really hot and bright day as you will notice in the photos below, but we braved it. And Dan The Tea Drinker and Non-Coffee Drinker enjoyed it. Hehe.

We were greeted by a really nice fellow who also happens to be a musician. Them talented people. Anyway, so he took us around the area and facilities for a better understanding of this beloved coffee that has wowed coffee lovers from all over.

It all begins with this, the hand-picked coffee cherries:

And for the curious, this is what a coffee plant (tree?) looks like, looking so lush and happy (hard not be if you live in Hawaii):

Their Kona coffee cherries are harvested from different small local farms. It is locally owned and operated.  Farmers leave their harvest here:

We witnessed the guy who dropped off these two sacks, as our tour guide nodded to him. Everybody knows everybody. There’s nothing here that resembles a big manufacturer or factory:

At the end of the day after all the cherries have been delivered, it will go through chute for a soaking process called wet milling.

The beans will be separated from the coffee cherry pulp.

The husks that have been separated are sent here right outside the building:

They are later taken back to the fields to be used as a fertilizer. The wet-milled, soaked green coffee beans are then brought to this drying deck for sun-drying. They are raked every hour for a week for them to fully dry. A week!

Once dry, they bring the beans to the next processing facility where the green beans are removed from the parchment [manly hands courtesy of Dan]:

The coffee beans are then sorted according to size, weight, and defects. Apparently, those with defects are sent to those who make “Kona coffee blend”. The primary Kona coffee grades are the Peaberry, Extra Fancy, Fancy, #1, and Prime.

After all that long process these sorted beans are packed for inspection, and sale or roasting at the farm’s own facilities:

And that’s the tour! Thereafter we enjoyed our own cups of coffee and bought bags to take home.

I hope you enjoyed this coffee tour via Gourmeted. Have a cup of hot coffee this afternoon and relax in the midst of the busy holiday week. Now I have to go back to reality and do some chores. :-) Aloha!

Gourmeted is one today!!! Joy and I would like to thank you all for visiting us on our culinary journey so far and we hope that you stay for more!!

-D

It’s not too late to sign up for the Christmas Snail Mail. Go clickety-click!

I think I should start by saying that these are all gone. I baked them the previous night and between me and my brother, we finished all 8 of them in less than 24 hours. I thought 8 was too many and enough to share outside of the house. Either we were hungry or these were really good. Hah!

Most of you know by now that I love tinkering with a good recipe. It doesn’t matter what you tell me, I just will. I blame it really on my university “training” where we were not spoon-fed at all and we basically had to live by the “find your own creative means” mantra to get the end results. In the beginning this was something I detested because hey, I just got out of a sheltered private Catholic high school life and I’m being thrown into the lion’s den. I eventually loved it…thrived in it. And now here we are. Unless there’s no leeway (e.g. following instructions for a camera), I will tweak to my heart’s content. It does not satisfy me to just do what’s been done. I like to play, especially with food. Cooking has satisfied my creative hunger (pun hehe) like no other. And I get fed, too. :-)

SOOO… (good lord I babble a lot), when I saw Elle’s corn muffins, there was no question that when I make them I will mess with them. [Sorry, hun.] She used Gale Gand’s Featherlight Muffins recipe. I noticed that that the tops looked soft, and I would like them a bit harder, but not too hard that it will scrape the roof of my mouth. When I checked the ingredient list I got a bit worried about the mere half cup of sugar for a cup of flour. I didn’t think that was enough sweetness for me, so I added honey to add a little more. Plus I increased the temperature to 400°F to hopefully give that little crisp at the top which I just love about muffins.

I wanted to make ones like the Kenny Rogers corn muffins, which I really, really love, but we didn’t have corn nibblets. Hmph. To remedy this need for another ingredient and to further experiment, I added crumbled aged creamy cheddar cheese to just four of the muffins.

You’ll see melted cheese peeking on the right muffin, which has it. The left one is ‘plain’.

The ones with cheese are so incredibly good!!! And you know what? I would like to have more and bigger chunks of cheese next time. Yum, yum. Stick with good cheese, though.

I waited for the muffins to bake until it started to brown on the sides, which took about 17 minutes and 30 seconds [no really!]:

The brown part that you see? I always eat that the last. Yummers!

Here’s my army of eight that have dutifully served their duty to feed and be delicious:

I used tart shells because I didn’t realize that there are no muffin pans at my parents’ house. Hrmm.

Okay, so here’s the verdict on my little experiment:

Good things about these muffins: A delicious muffin top that’s worth the last bite for and it’s not too hard either, I’d say they were crunchy/chewy. Soft, dense (but not too much that you get full with one muffin), creamy and I could almost say “cushion-y” muffin body that is so, so nice to bite into, you won’t feel like you’re eating it just to get to the “top” — ‘know what I mean? They are GOOD. I like the sweetness of this — it’s perfect for me. The cheese is a really nice touch and I won’t make them without next time. Make this as a breakfast treat and people will be running to the kitchen to wait — no, DEMAND — for them, because not only are they so divine to the olfactory senses plus they live up to the aromatic hype. I can still remember how they smelled right out of the oven!  MMMMMM….yummm. Can’t wait to make the next batch tonight!

Bad thing about these muffins: You’ll be able to finish them in a wink. I could have easily eaten ALL of them by myself.

Ok, on to the almost step-by-step photos and recipe.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

I’ll post the PDF recipe tomorrow done!, which is going to be our blog’s FIRST YEAR. I still can’t believe it’s that old.

Continue Reading

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…

Yes, it’s true, it’s my favorite holiday of the year. I have the absolute fondest memories of Christmas, and some of them have to do with snail mail. I think I started sending holiday cards on my own when I was 8. It fascinated me to no end. Even in the age of anything-electronic, I still hang on to this personal and slow-paced tradition. I’ve sent holiday cards to anyone online who signs up since Christmas of ’01, when I started blogging, if my faulty memory serves me right.

Yes, you can sign up and there are no strings attached — you don’t have to send one back. If you’d like to exchange cards, let me know! And if you notice the stamp I made above, I’ll be mailing it from Canada. :-) [Photo was taken on the road trip to Whistler, BC with Dan and my parents in January 2007]

Y’know, I have to say, I have great timing sometimes. (I’m typing that out with a load of sarcasm. :D) And I’ll tell you why: not only did I miss the Canadian elections (for which I tried to vote via fax, btw) in October, I also missed Thanksgiving here because I was in the US. Come November, I’m in Vancouver and where’s Thankgiving? In the US. Brilliant. Needless to say, I was in turkey-envy delirousness. In spite of the fact that the American Turkey Day coincided with the worst day in my weeklong saga of sickness, I forced myself to get out of bed and make this. I shall not be deprived and will take matters into my own hands.

My brother, who’s also in Vancouver with me right now, bought turkey legs the weekend before. I thought he was thinking of Thanksgiving when he got that; but in reality he picked it over the chicken because they were a lot cheaper. He is learning the ropes –haha. What he wasn’t prepared for was finding out that they take longer to cook. He thought he can just fry it quickly like chicken. Uhm.

I was craving for bbq turkey legs from the fair. But we don’t have a grill here, and even if we did, I wouldn’t use it because it’s cold outside. So I thought I’d just cook them in the oven. Next hurdle? There was no barbecue sauce. I just made something by thinking of the taste in my mouth and tried to figure out what would give that flavor and what was available in the kitchen: ketchup, soy sauce, honey, chicken broth powder, cayenne pepper, salt. Don’t ask me how that came about. Heh. All I know was that it tasted good before I put it on the legs. It’s just like when making ice cream: if it doesn’t taste good while it’s in liquid form, it won’t taste any better after it’s churned.

I was very afraid of under cooking it (I’ve battled with learning to cook bone-in chicken legs) so I actually fried the turkey legs before roasting ‘em for fear of feeding my brother something raw.

They sat in the oven for an hour and a half here’s what they looked like after I took them out and I put the last breathe of the soy sauce mixture on them. I swear these are real, but they look like those fake food in the Japanese takeout window/counter.

They came out SO lovely:

Please don’t misconstrue this as me trying to toot my own horn — but it really was SO GOOD. It surpassed all my expectations. It was the perfect taste for me and the extra kick from the cayenne was perfecto. I made homemade mashed potato with a couple of potatoes, butter, heavy cream, salt and pepper to eat with it. The bread is a Filipino bread called “Pandesal” Or “Pan de sal” from the Chinese supermarket.

Not bad for a flu-induced make-shift thanksgiving dinner eh? Sometimes, experimenting with cooking from scratch produces positive results. And so, that is one other thing I can be thankful for.

Make this. You won’t be disappointed. They’re so flavorful and tender and make for leftovers — if there were — you can look forward to. The one leg left was even better the next day!

Here’s the recipe: Continue Reading