In the course of my adventurous summer with food, when I tried ingredients I’ve never eaten or cooked before, I picked up a rutabaga. Also called swede, yellow turnip, or wax turnip, it is part smooth, part rough/hairy/bumpy, hard and so foreign to me. I laughed when I got home because I absolutely had no idea what it tasted like. I just assumed it can be boiled. Peeling it revealed what looks like a raw sweet yellow potato flesh. Trying to cut into it tested my patience. Be very careful when slicing it raw. Save your hands and fingers. They are tough little buggers that could roll off your cutting board and kitchen counter if you don’t hang on to them.

Ever since I got it, I can only think of cooking it with coconut milk.  No idea why, it just sounded delicious at the time. Then someone from Twitter asked me if I use turmeric in my cooking, and I replied ‘No’, so the next day I decided to remedy that and added the ginger-family spice. It made the rutabaga in this recipe even yellower. In Medieval Europe, turmeric was known as “Indian Saffron” due to its wide use as an alternative to the pricier saffron, and it is a significant ingredient in commercial curry powders, thus the resulting taste and color of a curry dish:

It was just the right blend of subtle flavors, without overpowering the rutabagas. Biting into each chunk of rutabaga feels like biting into a vegetable that is a cross between a turnip and squash, without the latter’s mushiness but a hint of its taste. I love that it holds its shape without easily disintegrating when cooked. The peppers were a nice complement to the rutabaga and coconut milk, and the turmeric added just enough character to the taste of the dish. Having this for dinner one quiet, dreary evening brought a smile to my face. I just love it when my food experimentation works out. Mmmmm….

Pork Cutlets with Rutabagas & Green Peppers in Coconut Milk

Ingredients (serves two)

• 1/2 lb tenderized pork loin cutlets
• 1 rutabaga, peeled and cut into 1- to 1.5-inch chunks
• 1/2 small yellow onion, sliced
• 1 clove garlic, peeled and chopped
• 1/2 cup coconut milk
• 1/2 green bell pepper, sliced
• 1/8 tsp ground turmeric
• sea salt
• fresh ground pepper
• canola oil
• coconut oil

Preparation

1.    In boiling water with a pinch of salt, cook the chunks of rutabaga until tender; about 25 to 30 minutes in medium heat. Strain and set aside.

2.    Heat a large frying pan, with about 1/2-tablespoon canola oil, in medium-to-high heat. Once the oil is hot, cook each side of the pork cutlet till golden brown (not burnt), about 3 to 4 minutes each side.

3.    Lower the heat to medium and add 1/2-teaspoon coconut oil. Saute the onion slices for a few minutes until they become transparent, and then add the chopped garlic and bell pepper slices. Cook for a couple more minutes before adding the rutabaga chunks. Fry until the edges of the rutabaga begin to brown.

4.    Pour coconut milk, turmeric, and a pinch of salt. Stir and wait for it to boil before adding more salt and fresh ground pepper to taste.

Serve over the pork cutlets and enjoy with steamed rice.

I forgot to mention that this is part of my efforts to “Eat Down The Fridge“, which simply means that I try to finish the food that I already have in the fridge and pantry before moving on to buying more. You know how we sometimes just accumulate food? Well, that’s the point of this experiment with Kim O’Donnel of The Washington Post’s A Mighty Appetite.

As a child, my absolute favorite food aside from fried chicken, was fried tilapia. I sure loved my fried stuff. When I didn’t know what to eat or our maids didn’t know what to feed me, they’d cook this because it’s sure to make me eat a lot. See, when I was younger than ten years old, I was so skinny and underweight. It wasn’t that I didn’t eat. I just need to eat more.

Everyone had their own theory as to why I was not gaining weight. My favorite and most remembered was my grandmother’s (mom’s mom) hypothesis that all the nutrients were going to my then very long hair. Ha ha.

Honestly, if I was served fried chicken and fried tilapia, I would just continue to eat until I was fat. Unfortunately (well fortunately!) I didn’t really gain weight until I was in college and that’s the time you don’t really want to gain any weight. Hahaha. I still continue to eat and enjoy tilapia, though.

Similar to the fry-baked chicken, I cooked this with the same methods but with different flavors. I went for something very (cliche?) Asian: ginger and green onions.

Somebody told me that people don’t like looking at fish heads at the market and/or when cooking or eating. Uhm, do some people really think that the fish they eat are headless?

The tilapia was so darn good! Trust me, I’m a tilapia connoisseur from many years of first hand taste tests. ;-)

Fry-Bake Tilapia

Ingredients
•    1 med-large tilapia
•    1 onion (halved, sliced)
•    3 stalks of green onion
•    3 thin slices of ginger
•    1/2 cup chicken broth
•    1/2 cup dry white wine
•    1/2 tsp salt
•    3 cloves of garlic, mashed
•    olive oil

Preparation
1.    In med-high heat, heat olive oil and wait for it to ‘ripple’ in a frying pan. Fry the  fish about 2-3 minutes each side until golden brown. Here’s the cooking test I use as a guide: It’s good to flip once the skin doesn’t stick to the frying pan anymore.
2.    Transfer the fish into a rectangular glass baking dish. Preheat oven to 375°F.
3.    In the same pan, saute the sliced onions until they become dark brown on the edges, then add on top of the fish.
4.    Still using the same pan, pour the wine and allow to boil until it’s reduced to half. Add ginger slices and chicken broth cook for a couple of minutes. Turn off the heat and transfer everything in the pan to the tilapia in the baking dish. Put fresh ground pepper on top of fish. Cover the glass dish with aluminum foil with 2 edges opposite each other is open (i.e. there is a vent).
5.    Place in the preheated oven and bake for 15 minutes. Remove foil, put green oonion, and cover again for 5 minutes before transfering on serving plate.

Could it be that my brain is now part-rhubarb? I wouldn’t doubt it really. I have to admit that although I’ve made many dishes with rhubarb by now, they are all savory. I can’t help it if that sour stalk is so good.

Had I been more prepared, I really would have loved to make the filling with pork and shrimp, but I wasn’t. In fact, I was late for the Daring Cooks’ Challenge deadline last Sunday. After all the talk about it online, I built up a gargantuan craving for it, hence, this:

I’ve made potstickers before but failed miserably with the pleating. Now…thanks to Jen’s recipe with detailed photos, they now closely resemble the real thing! I love it! I couldn’t help but admire my handiwork. Haha.

I did follow our challenge’s dough recipe proportions and the rest are all mine. It was very, very good. If you don’t have rhubarb, just add a little more meat and 1 tbsp lemon juice.

I’ll post a more organized recipe tomorrow, including the PDF download. I just wanted to share this quickly for those of you who have been waiting for it since I posted a mobile photo. :-)

Potsticker Wrappers

Ingredients:

• 250 g all purpose flour (I used unbleached)
• 113 g warm water

Preparation (How I made it)

1. In a medium bowl, place the flour and add half of the water. Stir with a spoon. Continue to add the remaining water little by little, probably by teaspoons.
2. Continue to mix into a cohesive ball by hand. Place on your clean counter that’s been sprinkled with flour to prevent sticking, and knead for 10 minutes.
3. Place back inside the bowl and cover with a damp cloth for 15 minutes.
4. After 15 minutes, shape dough into a shallow dome and cut into 1 1/2-inch thick slices. Leave one slice on the counter and place the others back into the bowl and cover with the damp towel. Slice the strip into 3/4 inch pieces and shape and flatten down with your palm into small discs. Place each disk on the counter and flatten further with your rolling pin. Continue with the rest of the dough. Be careful about putting the dough on top of each other. I made the time-consuming mistake of not putting enough flour between wrappers and my hard work went back to square one of being one big dough.

Filling the wrappers

1. Put a wrapper on the palm of your hand and drop a tablespoon of filling at the center. Fold the wrapper in half and press firmly to attach the top-center portion.
2. From the center, start pleating the single side of the wrapper (not both) but scrunching farther side on top of the previous pleat. Continue until you almost reach the end and you get a small teardrop-shaped hole. Simply tuck in the bottom of the ‘teardrop’ into the pointed top end of the teardrop. Each dumpling will look like the semi-circular women’s purses.

Beef Rhubarb Filling

• 200 g ground beef (or other meat/s of your choice)
• 1/3 cup yellow onion, chopped
• 1/3 cup rhubarb, chopped
• 1/3 cup button mushrooms, chopped (sauted in med heat for 2 mins to let the juices out
• 1/3 cup celery, chopped
• 1/3 cup carrot, chopped
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1/4 tsp fresh ground pepper
• 4 stalks of green onion, chopped

Preparation

In a small saucepan, saute onion, rhubarb and celery for 3 minutes in medium-high heat. Set aside and let it cool before mixing with all the other ingredients.

Pan-Frying

On a frying pan with vegetable oil in high heat, cook the dumplings until the bottoms are golden brown in color. Add 1/2 cup water and cover. Let it cook until the water is almost gone. Remove the lid and let it cook for another 2 minutes.

Optional Dip: You can mix soy sauce, white vinegar with a smashed garlic. Very simple.

Even before the show, “Chopped“, was conceived in the offices of the Food Network, millions of us all over the world were already facing and battling own versions of the show–right in our own kitchens–you, me, and all the other home cooks in the world. Unless you’re a complete meal planner, making each homemade meal is like a Chopped episode. It’s all up to us to make the most of what’s available and rock it, right?

I had  fresh flank steak one evening that I didn’t want to freeze and ginger roots that begged to be saved before they go to waste, so it just makes sense to use them both. I was inspired to make a beef steak with the flavors of the beef and broccoli dish I love to order at Chinese restaurants. We always make steaks with wine and some herb as a combination, but I’ve never tried it with ginger …so why not?

Oh…and how my experiment delivered! The ginger-garlic flavor seeped into the meat in 30 minutes. It was so good! At first I wanted to make sauce from the drippings, but the flavors in the meat were already intense so I didn’t find the need to.

The photo above is left over from dinner. I didn’t want to take photos at night and waited the next day to get decent daylight photos. It still looked good the 2nd day, huh? :) It still tasted amazing, too.

I like using flank steaks. They’re easy to find and they’re cheap. And with dishes like the one I made, it’s easy to create something nice without breaking the bank. The other ingredients I used are wallet-friendly as well and what’s more, the whole recipe is just made of 6 ingredients. I like simple. I like tasty. I like dishes that look like they took a lot of effort and worth a lot more than they do. Recessionista extraordinaire dish right there.

Asian Ginger Garlic Steak

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp oyster sauce
• 1.5 tbsp ginger, chopped
• 1 tbsp garlic, chopped
• 2 tbsp canola oil
• 400 g flank steak

Preparation

1. Mix the oil and sauces with the chopped ingredients. Soak meat in this mixture and marinate for 30 minutes in the fridge. You can marinate it in a small bowl covered with plastic wrap or in a ziploc bag. If in a bowl, turn meat after 15 minutes.
2. Preheat your oven to 350°F then take the meat from the fridge.
3. Roll the steak lengthwise, as if rolling like a log cake, with ends meeting at the bottom. Place on an oven-safe wire rack on a cookie sheet to catch the drippings. Bake for 20-30 minutes depending on your preferred doneness.
4. Take the meat out of the oven and tent it with aluminum foil for about 10 minutes. Slice and serve warm with rice and steamed broccoli.

Is it really February? Last Monday I thought it was Friday. Time is warped; I could be talking to you from 2010 and I’ll be conscious of the correct year in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… But you do understand what I mean, right? Time zoomed forward.

A couple of weeks ago my ol’ friend visited Vancouver. We go back as far as our Geology freshmen days in 1995. It’s been a good 8 or 9 years since we last saw each other when we were fresh graduates and newly-licensed professionals. Now, we are old(er), relocated in North America, and cook and share recipes. I gave him the recipe for Food For The Gods, and he taught me how to make this Filipino dish called “Igado” (pronounced as ee-ga-DOH, as if you’re saying fa-la-LAH).

Igado is a regional Filipino delicacy with fatty pork loin meat and pork liver cooked with red bell pepper and peas, in a salty-sour sauce. I love this dish but never had the gumption to make it until my friend indulged me with their family’s Ilocano recipe. The Ilocanos are people from the northern part of the Philippines. In my home country, different regions have different traditional dishes with distinct tastes, but there’s one common characteristic about Filipino dishes — they try to make as much use of what’s available from the ingredients. Call it the Third-World Factor™, not Fodder For Fear Factor™. Take igado, for example, instead of throwing out the skin with fat, it is cubed and fried until crispy; and except for the excess oil, the whole pork loin is used.

Check out the crispy browned fat with skin:

I know it sounds absolutely horrible and will send nutritionists and dietitians screaming out the door, but these are SO good to eat even on their own [disclaimer: Enjoy at your own risk. Don't even think about eating the fried fat if you have heart, high blood, cholesterol or other health-related problems]. It’s used to flavor a lot of dishes, including boiled green mung beans. Eat in moderation, I always say.

Igado is an excellent make-head viand, just like Adobo. It tastes even better the day after, just make sure to keep it cold in the fridge and re-heat before serving. If you’re not into offal, you can skip the liver, but it wouldn’t taste the same. Perhaps you’ve been on the fence about finally trying liver and you’re just waiting for the recipe, consider making this.

The following recipe is not according to my friend’s specifications because he just estimated the amounts in his head when he made it. I took it upon myself, in the spirit of accuracy (whatever excuse I can make to cook this!), to re-create the dish while measuring everything for you and for our future reference. Enjoy! Continue Reading

Just a couple of things first:

• Please take a second to glance at our banner up there ^. I hope this will put to rest the confusion over the pronunciation of our website’s name. It’s goo r-meyd.
• A poll regarding the step-by-step photos. We need your feedback!
  

  n

  {democracy:9}

  Thank you!

Here is a vegetable that goes by several name variations: kai-lan, gai-lan, Chinese broccoli, Chinese kale. This is the same leafy greens that I had kept asking my friend Alice for its name about but she didn’t know what it was in English. It’s kind of sad that I only found out about it when I went to the Chinese supermarket. I’m so good at this food-thing, you know? [grins]

According to Wikipedia, Gai-lan (English) is a “slightly bitter leaf vegetable featuring thick, flat, glossy blue-green leaves with thick stems and a small number of tiny, almost vestigial flower heads similar to those of broccoli”, as seen here in Exhibit A:

It is of the same species as broccoli and kale, hence it’s either Chinese broccoli OR kale. Its flavor is very similar to that of broccoli, but a bit sweeter. Gai-lan is widely eaten in Chinese cuisine — stir-fried with ginger and garlic or boiled served with oyster sauce, both of which I’ve tried. Unlike broccoli, where only the flowering parts are normally eaten,  the leaves and stems of the Chinese broccoli are eaten. For us Asians, the lesser the amount that needs to be thrown away, the better. We are, after all, from a culture where parents are bound to finish their kids leftovers because it would be such a waste not to.

When I cooked Gai-lan, I opted to experiment as usual, instead. Around the time that I made this, I felt like I was on the Iron Chef (for Dummies, mind you) with the “secret ingredient”: shiitake mushrooms. I bought a big bag of it and they ended up being cooked with : soy bean sprouts, chow mein (a concoction which will never make it to this site because if recipes were comedies, this would be the really bad slaptstick version), and with gai-lan and ground beef:

A la cuisine! Haha…sorry. I get carried away.

I really loved how this last-minute concoction turned out. The slight bitterness of the Chinese broccoli was counteracted by the ginger-y ground beef and soft mushrooms. Rice topped with this is perfection. Here is a simple balanced meal that is tasty and offers a lot of different textures, without an overpowering taste.

I’m not one to advocate deprivation, only moderation: a little meat, some veggies, and rice. That’s my eating logic, and I’m sticking to it. :)

If you’d like to try this, here is the recipe with step-by-step photo slideshow. Nom, nom,nom… Continue Reading

I’m up so late because I have too much excess energy today, plus I can’t wait for Obama’s inauguration. I’m not American [Dan is, so we have a healthy dose of jokes between us about our countries], but I still share the excitement, hope, and pride in this moment — as I’m sure a lot of my fellow Canadians do. Today marks a day that inspires the rest of the world, as we all witness and celebrate a momentous occasion.

Back to the food…”Bistek” is a Filipino bastardized word of a concoction for “Beef Steak”. I’m not kidding, even though it sounds so silly. It’s made from thin and flat beef strips that’s cooked in soy sauce, calamansi (or lemon) and onions. It is another favorite of mine. It conjures up such good memories.

I still remember the first time I cooked this after watching and bugging our household help on how to cook it. I’m serious, it was memorable. It was a magical moment because I know this oh so well, I can taste it right now.

As with all simple dishes from childhood, it holds a special place in my heart. *sniff, sniff*

As an option, you can also add fried potato slices or chunks, or other veggies. I cooked mung bean sprouts in the same pan so you get the flavor without needing more salt or pepper.

Every little addition of healthy counts, right?
E
If you want to give this dish a try, here’s the recipe with step-by-step photos. Let us know how it goes. Enjoy!

Continue Reading

Going to the Chinese supermarket is like invading an assorted box of chocolates — you never know what you’re going to get. When I go to the regular grocery store, I know what to expect. That’s not the case when I go to T & T. My trip there is almost like a trip to a mall, I not only go there to get what I need but also to find something new — whether it be a snack in those attractive packages, a cute cake, a home gadget that I never thought of before, or a new vegetable (to me). Years ago I had kept asking my friend, who cooks a lot of veggies, the name of the dark green vegetable with garlic and oyster sauce and she kept saying the Chinese name because she doesn’t know the English name. I finally found it at the store — it’s called gai lan. Whew. Things like this hurt my head sometimes. Haha.

I like bean sprouts because they are a part of the Filipino cuisine. What I haven’t tried before were soy bean sprouts.  I know it sounds surprising given that I have gone all the way to a North American country to discover a really Asian ingredient.

At T & T, they put mung bean sprouts and soy bean sprouts side by side in the vegetable section that it confused me at first. After a quick look the former is twice the size as the latter but half the price and with a more attractive color — yellow and bright yellow green. I’m easily distracted and persuaded like that. I bought an equivalent of 4 generous handfuls of them and cooked it the other day with fresh shiitake mushrooms.

I like shiitake mushrooms but I detest the rubbery texture and extra pungent smell and taste of it when it’s cooked from the dried variety. However, I found fresh ones from the Chinese place and tried it. Oh, it was so good! Soft and meaty, but not too overpowering for the soy bean sprouts. It’s quite perfect with subtle bean flavor. I love the extra crunchiness of the sprouts with the bigger beans compared to the mung bean sprouts. Very good buys. Did I mention that this is such a cheap dish to make and very healthy, too?** I never considered buying groceries on a regular basis from the Chinese supermarket before, but I just might. I only spent around $50 for a week’s grocery including meats and fish. In this economy (and I really notice it with the empty malls!), it doesn’t hurt to save where you can. I love that they have a huge variety of seafood and meats, too, including all the ones that I miss about Filipino dishes.

I’ll be going back there to see what’s in store for the Chinese New Year that’s coming up in a week. We’re kind of like that here — those that are not really Chinese start to celebrate it as if it’s our own. Don’t laugh now. :p

[** I've read somewhere that shiitake mushrooms are expensive. I really didn't notice or it would have jumped out at me at the checkout counter. I think the big bag that I had was less than $3.]

Alright, if you made it till here, here’s the recipe:

Soy Bean Sprouts with Shiitake Mushrooms

Ingredients:

• soy bean sprouts (or mung bean sprouts if you can’t find them); I’d say do a 4:1 ratio of sprouts and mushrooms
• 6 shiitake mushrooms, sliced about 1/4″ in thickness (about 1.5 packed cups when sliced)
• 1 cup water
• 1/4 cup yellow onion
• 1 tsp minced garlic
• 1 tbsp oyster sauce
• 1/2 tsp ground pepper
• salt to taste
• olive oil

Preparation:

1. Saute onion with ground pepper and a pinch of salt in a medium pot (big enough for the sprouts) with oil heated in medium-low heat. Do that for about 2 minutes. Then add the garlic and saute for another minute.
2. Add oyster sauce and sliced mushrooms, saute for a minute then add water. Turn heat up to medium and wait to boil, and allow it to do so for 2 minutes to let the mushrooms cook.
3. Once it boils, pour in the washed soy bean sprouts. Mix it with the rest of the boiling ingredients. Toss it regularly and cook until the stems start to become translucent. You can grab a sprout and taste it for your desired crunchiness. Add salt to taste.
4. Serve on its on or with rice.

Aloha! We’re back from our vacation and we’re slowly easing into reality. The luggage bags are half-unpacked. That in itself, is a great feat. It’s hard to wake up again in hot Arizona, staring at the ceiling and doing rock-paper-scissors to see who needs to get up first (just kidding!!!). We were so spoiled with homemade meals from morning till evening by our friends in Hawaii. In fact, not only have we expanded our food selection (steamed artichokes with mayo, papaya with lemon juice, strawberries with agave nectar, etc.) but also our waistlines! Hahaha.

When I found my cooking mojo again, I made this chicken stew-ish dish that I grew up with in the Philippines. I would ask for “tinola” and stake my claim on the chicken legs with the skin. I was not concerned about extra weight then, obviously. These days we’re trying to be healthy. So instead of chicken with all the delicious skin, I cooked chicken tenders. I used soy sauce in place of fish sauce, but I would always recommend using the latter when you have it in your kitchen. All in all, it was close to the real thing and Dan liked our evening viand:

It’s a nice combination of the texture of chicken and that of chayote, and this is perfect with rice. Dan has never eaten chayote before this and I’m glad he liked it. :-)

Here’s the step-by-step cooking photos:

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

It’s really a super simple dish to make so please, help yourself to the recipe!

Continue Reading

Do you have those moments when you think you should know (how to do) something by default as a result of your ethnicity (or perhaps last name, family, affiliation, etc.)? And then you refuse to seek guidance because “it’s in you”. It’s like assuming that as an Asian I should know how to cook rice perfectly without any measuring tools or timer.

That’s exactly what was going on in my mind when I embarked on this Pot Sticker Adventure. I was pretty confident I could pull this off by channeling my inner 1/minisculeth Chinese. A book I’m reading says this is what artists are prone to do — Wing It. Did I ever wing it. I just wanted to use what we had in the kitchen, including kale.

I think I added shredded kale, chopped carrots, green onions, salt, pepper to the ground pork. I can’t remember. I wrote down the ingredients but I could not find that piece of paper anymore.

I made the wrapper with equal parts boiling water and flour. [Please don't ask me what got into my head.] The sealing/folding left something to be desired, but it still resembled what it should look like. Somewhat.

In the end, my first pot sticker experiment tasted REALLY good for something that’s based out of nothing. Dan and I were more surprised than anything. The wrapper was not so good, so I’ll stick to pre-made ones next time. Other than that…yummy!

The dipping sauce, if you’re curious, was a mixture of light soy sauce, white vinegar and smashed whole clove of garlic. It’s a Filipino dip that’s normally used for roasted pig but I tried it with the pot stickers to balance the saltiness. Dan loved it. :)

What have you experimented/concocted lately? Share your links if you blogged about them.