Chicken satay
We were supposed to host a barbecue yesterday but our intended guests begged off at the last minute leaving us with a lot of chicken, pork and cocktail drink mixers. No problem. We mixed the drinks anyway, had our fill of Margaritas in our new Margarita glasses last night, and then we grilled the pork teriyaki and chicken satay for dinner tonight. In short, we cooked everything that we intended for the barbecue, including a large bowl of chicken and potato salad.
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Adobo eggs
Ever since I saw all those tea eggs in Taiwan, I have been obsessed with doing my version… Thinking I should perfect the hue of the marbling first before attempting to perfect the part about infusing flavors, I practiced using food color. I came up with two red-veined eggs and two green-veined eggs… But they tasted like ordinary hard-boiled eggs. So, one time, I was cooking adobo and I was worried that I didn’t have enough pork to satisfy everyone. It isn’t uncommon to add hard-boiled eggs to extend the adobo and that was when the inspiration hit me…
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Peaches and cream
Unlike the older mango royale recipe, I have found a way to make the cream filling firm without freezing. My husband prefers this dessert frozen but it loses its light and airy texture and instead acquires the texture of ice cream with ice crystals which I really do not enjoy. I prefer the cream filling to be custard-like, similar to the cream-cheese filling of tiramisu. The trick? Well-chilled cream and sweetened condensed milk.
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Chocolate mint coffee
If there is one noche buena tradition in my husband’s family that I never really got the hang of, it’s drinking chocolate. If the noche buena meal consisted of bibingka and puto bumbong only, then an accompanying chocolate drink would be marvelous. But when the dishes in the meal are quite heavy — ham, chicken, fruit salad — drinking chocolate is simply too much for me. Besides, I’m a coffee drinker and I drink coffee for the caffeine. A few days ago, I discovered a great way to combine chocolate with coffee.
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Steamed litid ng baka (beef ligaments)
One of my guilty pleasures: steamed litid ng baka. Until recently, I only get to enjoy them from the dimsum cart of bigger Chinese restaurants. Then, I bought this tray of beef litid from Unimart, used some to make my beef and hofan noodle soup and, the rest, I cut into bite size pieces, arranged the pieces on small plates, garnished them with toasted garlic and chopped onion leaves, seasoned with a little light soy sauce mixed with grated ginger and steamed everything for 20 minutes. I served the steamed beef litid as an extra dish for lunch yesterday.
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Pizza pan de sal
In the Glad bakeware entry, I mentioned that I made some baked macaroni which my daughter brought to the class Christmas party. What I didn’t mention was that I stayed up all night to make sure that the baked mac would be ready when she left for school yesterday morning. More importantly, I wanted the baked mac to have cooled a bit before fitting the cover on the baking dish. As a result, by the time the sauce was done, I felt famished. So, there I was at 3.30 a.m. feasting on pizza pan de sal.
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Oven-proof plastic bakeware by Glad
My own children are not immune from the charms of my baked mac and my younger daughter, Alex, requested that I prepare a tray of baked mac for her class’ Christmas party today. I did. But since I preferred not to send the baked mac in any of my Anchor Hocking glass baking dishes, my intention was to use one of those disposable aluminum trays. I found something better last night in the supermarket — oven-proof plastic bakeware by Glad which comes with transparent covers.
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Beef and hofan soup
If only people would read and read well, they would know how useless it is to ask me to e-mail them recipes. If only people would read and read well, they would stop asking where the recipes are since the pagination links are very plain to see. I’m taking my own advice too. If only I read and read well, I wouldn’t have messed up all the dishes with hofan noodles that I have cooked in the past. Hofan noodles are not cooked. They are soaked in cold water for about half an hour, placed in a bowl and boiling broth is poured over them…
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