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This is the first pumpkin recipe I’ve ever made. Shocking for some of you, but growing up in the Philippines where pumpkins weren’t easily available, it’s not for me. I’ve never had the urge to buy them or even carve them, but I wanted to change that this year. I’ve inadvertently snubbed it in the the kitchen for far too long.

I picked some a common Asian ingredient combination: onions, tomatoes, celery, carrots and cilantro.

Sautéed them…

Then I threw in some ground chicken in there.

And all these lovely flavors when into these pre-baked ‘bowls’:

And voila, a very satisfying dinner:

I must admit that even though I didn’t grow up with this kind of dish, it did taste like comfort food. The chicken was a tasty complement to the natural flavors of the pumpkin. And the chicken ’stuffing’? Boy, that’s surely a winner. I’d make that and mix it with rice anytime!

STUFFED BABY PUMPKINS
Ingredients

• 3 baby pumpkins

• 2 medium (2 to 3 1⁄4” in diameter) yellow onions, chopped

• 1 celery, sliced perpendicular to the length thinly (2-3mm thick)

• 5 garlic cloves, chopped (about 5 teaspoons chopped)

• 1 ripe tomato, chopped

• 1 medium (7-8” long) carrot, peeled and chopped

• 1-1/4 pounds ground chicken

• 4 stalks of fresh marjoram, stems removed, leaves chopped

• 4 stalks of fresh cilantro, chopped; and extra for garnish

• 1 lime, sliced

• vegetable oil

• salt

• pepper

• cayenne pepper

Equipment

• Any size baking sheet

• Large pan

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F with the rack in the upper middle part of the oven.

2. Wash pumpkins and place upright on a baking sheet. Bake for 15 minutes. Cool on  the counter for 10 minutes.

3. Increase the oven temperature to 400°F.

4. Slice the top portion of the pumpkin perpendicular to, and around, the stem using a serrated knife. Cut into the pumpkin to remove the stem. Take out the seeds and pulp with a spoon to clean out the insides of the pumpkins. Smooth the surface of the insides by leveling carefully with your paring knife.

5. Place pumpkins upright on the baking sheet and bake in the oven for 10 minutes. Set aside.

6. Heat a tablespoon of vegetable oil on a large pan over medium to high heat. Sauté yellow onions until they become translucent. Add and sauté the following ingredients, for 30 seconds each according, to this order: celery, garlic, tomato, 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt and 1/4 teaspoon ground pepper, carrots and chicken. Mix the chicken with the vegetables for 2 minutes and cover for 10 minutes. Stir in 1⁄4-teaspoon cayenne pepper and cover again for another 5 minutes. Taste and add salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper as needed. I tend to like it spicy.

7. Turn off the heat and sprinkle meat mixture with marjoram, cilantro and juice of one lime. Give it a good stir before placing into individual pumpkin bowls.

8. Lightly put and press down stuffing into the pumpkin bowls. Distribute the juice of half the lime among the 3 pumpkins.  Bake in the oven for 10 minutes. Cool on the counter for 5 minutes before serving. Garnish with a cut stem of fresh cilantro.

I rarely make lists as posts, so consider this a treat.I didn’t even make one for Canada Day! Shame shame. Anyway, if you’re still looking for ideas for the weekend, here are some easy peasy suggestions, ye American neighbors.

• Summer Strawberry Fro-Yo or Honey Peach Fro-Yo will beat the heat, the ice cream craving and that stupid weight-loss diet. Eat with little guilt. Savor it.
• Baked Garlic Rhubarb Wings features the season’s rhubarb. Plus it’s baked! I have no doubt this will be a surprise hit at your party.
• If you do not care about having greasy, fatty wings (didn’t I just make it the most appetizing thing in the world?!), say hello to our Homestyle Buffalo Wild Wings. Yes, that B-W-W. I guarantee it’s that good.
• For something that looks a little fancier — and still healthy — try the Tuna-Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms.
• What about some Baked Potato Beet Salad?
• For a good dip for your chips or crispy breads, make this Spinach and Artichoke Dip. I can still remember how good it was. Mmm.

Here are recipes for dessert (or snack) that require a little more work, but you will get a lot of love from the people who will enjoy it:

• Bailey’s Cafe Mocha Cheesecake
• Caramel Cinnamon Rolls with Cream Cheese Glaze

Or if you want to bake something that’s easy and still be good, try these Eggless Chocolate Cupcakes or Honey-Cheese Corn Muffins.

Yes, it’s true, when you come to my party you won’t see the usual fares. :p

Happy Independence Day weekend, friends!

I forgot about this recipe that should have been posted over a month ago. Today’s a lazy Sunday for me and what better way to commemorate such a fabulous day, I’m going to post a really easy recipe with a really short intro. Hope you’re enjoying your Sunday!

Baked Butter Chicken Fillets

Ingredients

• .85 lb (about .4 kg) of chicken fillet (chicken tenders sliced crosswise in half for thinner meat)
• 1/4 tsp salt, plus additional salt for sprinkling
• 1/4 tsp fresh ground pepper
• juice of a quarter of a lime
• 3 tbsps unsalted butter, softened enough to spread with a brush or spoon over meat
• 1 sprig of rosemary, remove the leaves and chop

Preparation

1.  Mix 1/4 tsp salt, pepper and lime in a medium bowl. Mix chicken in the mixture, cover with plastic wrap and marinate for half an hour in the fridge.

2. Pre-heat oven to 350°F. Take out chicken from your marinade and lay the pieces flat (smooth/pretty side up) on an oven-safe glass dish. From about a foot above the dish, lightly sprinkle the fillets with salt. Turn over, and sprinkle again.

3. Brush the top of each chicken fillet with softened butter.

4. Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes. Turn off the oven and take out the baking dish. Sprinkle the chicken with rosemary and cover with aluminum foil. Place it back in the oven (still turned off) for 10 minutes. Serve with vegetables and/or rice. The chicken is tasty enough to be eaten without the need for gravy.

Up until a week ago, I was a Rhubarb Virgin: the kind who’s never cooked with rhubarb, let alone taste it.

…

Now that the collective pause, dropped jaw, raised eyebrow, and “No way!” has been released into the ether…yes, it’s very well true and possible. I didn’t grow up here or anywhere near North America and only celebrated my 10th year in the pacific northwest and the mere mention of rhubarb 5 years ago won’t even incite any mental image. Is it a root? A fruit? You could smack me with a stalk and I wouldn’t recognize my first meeting with a rhubarb.

So I finally decided to try it.

I ordered a couple of stalks from Spud.ca with my fresh harvest box when I tried their service, then I got four more at Granville Island after seeing how incredibly cheap they were. For a few days I was well-stocked with rhubarb with no idea what to do with them. I didn’t even know what they tasted like. I read they were sour. Having no reference of the taste, I cut up a slice and tasted it raw. Indeed. Who needs sour candy?

Here were the few things I knew about rhubarb before experimenting with them:

• eye-squinting sour when raw.
• apparently good made as a compote
• popularly combined with strawberries for pie (although it was unimaginable to me at the time)

After initially cooking it in simple syrup, I’ve found them incredibly good to use as a substitute for pineapple in salads, and they easily become mushy when cooked even further. I strained it out to use in my tuna-beet-rhubarb salad and saved the rosy pink for later use, I was sure something will come out of it!

That rhubarb syrup and more rhubarb made it into this chicken wing experiment and I must say that it yielded the best results out of all my exploits with this once-foreign-to-me sour stem. I was hankering for a good “treat” after yoga last night and thought of Hawaiian-inspired (i.e. with pineapple) chicken wings, but I didn’t have pineapple, so I used rhubarb instead. And here it is:

It’s quite possibly the tastiest and most delicious wings I’ve ever made! I’m stunned at the results, to be honest with you.

Thank you rhubarb! Thank you adventurous self! Don’t you just love it when you risk making something completely new and it ends up being one of your best dishes? :-) I was a very tired but very happy and well-fed yoga bum.

Here’s the recipe:

Baked Garlic Rhubarb Wings with Sweet & Sour Sauce

Ingredients for the Wings

•    1.8 lbs chicken wings
•    2 tbsp smashed and finely chopped garlic
•    1/3 cup ketchup
•    1 tsp hot sauce (tweak to your taste)
•    2 tbsp soy sauce
•    1 tbsp coconut oil (you can substitute with another oil of your choice)
•    3 tbsp finely chopped rhubarb
•    3 tbsp rhubarb syrup (from cooking rhubarb in simple syrup, or just use 1 tbsp brown sugar, honey, or agave nectar)
•    ¼ tsp salt
•    ½ tsp fresh ground pepper

Ingredients for the Sauce
•    2 tbsp brown sugar
•    2 tbsp water
•    ½ tbsp lemon juice
•    3 ½ tbsp chopped rhubarb
•    4 tsp soy sauce
•    1 tbsp honey
•    1 tbsp ketchup
•    1/8 tsp salt
•    1/8 tsp pepper
•    3 tsp whole milk
•    1 tsp cornstarch mixed in 3 tsp water

Preparation for the Wings

1.    In a big bowl, mix all the ingredients except for the wings. Taste and add more salt, pepper and hot sauce as you wish until you are satisfied with it.
2.    Toss the chicken wings in the big bowl, cover and let it sit in the fridge for 15 minutes as you pre-heat the oven to 425°F with the tray on the upper third portion.
3.    Line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil for easier cleaning later on.
4.    Once your oven is preheated, place the chicken wings on the lined cookie sheet, but keep the remaining mixture in the bowl. Bake for 20 minutes. Make the sauce.
5.    Take the cookie sheet out of the oven and turn the wings over using a pair of tongs. Using a spoon or a brush, put on the remaining mixture on the wings. Bake for another 13 to 18 minutes depending on how ‘dry’ you want the wings to be. 13 minutes is best if you want a lot more juicy meat to eat with rice, for example. 18 minutes would make it really nice and brown.
6.    Take out of the oven, turn the wings to prevent the top from drying up, and let it cool for 5 minutes before transferring on your serving plate. Enjoy!

Preparation for the Sauce

1.    In small saucepan, heat water and sugar in low-med heat until the sugar is completely dissolved. There’s no need to stir.
2.    Add lemon juice and chopped rhubarb and cook until rhubarb softens. With a heat-safe spatula, press the rhubarb against the bottom of the pan until you get a paste.
3.    Add the soy sauce, ketchup, honey, milk, salt and pepper. Let it simmer for a five minutes and turn off the heat. Stirring the cornstarch-water mixture to make sure the cornstarch hasn’t settled at the bottom of your small bowl, pour to the hot sauce and stir. You can keep it on the stove (turned off) while the wings are cooking.
4.    Serve with the wings.

It’s been a busy week and I tried to keep everything simple for meals. I can’t say the same for the my late night baking marathons last week (I’ll post about them soon), but hey, something’s gotta give when you try to fit everything in 24 hours each day.

I just realized that I rarely post pork recipes here and it’s because I rarely buy it, so I’ll post one that I just cooked. It’s nothing complicated, but it’s not so humble in flavors either. The sauce is semi-sweet and spicy, thanks to the cayenne pepper. Yummy over all and always good on steamed rice.

It’s definitely one of my better experiments that made it to our site. Please enjoy!

Pork and Peppers with Wine Tomato Sauce

Ingredients:

• 1 kilo pork shank, cut in 1 1/2″ cubes
• 1 orange pepper, sliced into thin strips
• 1 yellow pepper, sliced into thin strips
• 4 roma tomatoes, seeds removed and chopped
• 1/3 cup dry white wine
• dash of cayenne pepper
• salt
• pepper
• vegetable oil

Preparation

1. Coat the bottom of a large frying pan with oil and place in medium-high heat. Put the pork and sprinkle with salt and pepper, brown in 2 batches and transfer on a plate.

2. Lower the heat to medium and saute the orange and yellow peppers in the same pan for a few minutes until they start to pick up the brown bits. Don’t overcook the peppers. Put in a small plate for later use.

3. Pour white wine on the pan and let it simmer until it is reduced to half, and scrape off the brown bits while simmering. Add the chopped tomatoes and wait for them to soften. When the skin begins to peel off, press the tomato pieces against the pan to create a paste. Add 1/8 tsp salt and a dash of cayenne pepper.

4. Mix in the pork meat. Cover and simmer for 5 minutes and turn off the heat. Add the peppers and serve with steamed rice.

Variation: You can definitely replace pork with chicken tenders if you like.

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!

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I could use a bowl of this right now:

It shifts from cold to hot here in Vancouver. “Would you like the cold for breakfast? Sweltering heat for lunch? No problem!” That kind of thing.

I made this a couple of months ago when Dan and I found some super sweet corn from Whole Foods. I think I even cooked this on a hot day in Arizona. Whether it’s a hot day, or cold day…this is good. I love corn soup! It’s basically just chopped onions sauteed with chicken, fresh crushed pepper and salt. Then fresh sweet corn and spinach leaves added right after you turn off the heat. Easy-peasy!

In Manila, our helpers used to cook this at my request. Instead of chicken chicken bits, they actually shred the chicken. They didn’t use spinach leaves, but some slightly bitter leaves (I think they were chili plant leaves). And it was a nice contrast to the sweet corn. It was delicious. I could eat it for days!

I have a bag of leeks and potatoes here waiting to be made into potato leek soup tonight. That’s another easy and tasty soup to make.

Now that it’s starting to cool up, I’m ready to make more soup! Do you have any (easy) soup recipes? Let me know!