Food articles posted in Mar 2008

Steamed fish fillets, 2 versions

Two steamed fish dishes for dinner last Monday. They cooked at the same time in two separate steamer racks. It’s an experiment on how much different two dishes can taste with the addition/omission of an ingredient or two.

Rice wine was added to the first and omitted in the second. The first was garnished with onion leaves, the second with cilantro. Personally, I like the second version better but that might be because I am partial to cilantro.

Tequila Pork Loin

Yesterday, Sunday, like every Sunday, was my husband’s turn to cook. After much heckling, he finally decided we deserved more than fried Spam and eggs. He finally decided too that it was about time he tried a recipe from a cookbook that I bought for him last year. He had the book in the car for the past week so that at any time he could sneak in a trip to the supermarket, he could check the ingredients he would need.

Tequila Pork Loin is from Tucker Shaw’s Gentlemen, Start Your Ovens: Killer Recipes for Guys.

Gindara fillets in coconut cream

I intended to grill the gindara over the weekend. But I got up so late, forgot to thaw anything from the freezer overnight and the kids would be home for lunch. They spent the morning preparing for the school fair and we will all be there later in the afternoon. So, there I was, sipping my first cup of coffee for the day at 11.45 a.m. and the kids were due home in about 30 minutes… (Believe it or not) The kids were home no more than five minutes before lunch was ready.

Char sui (Chinese barbecue sauce)

My husband came home last night with a kilo of pork tenderloin and I knew I was going to cook them a la Chinese asado. You know, the thinly sliced pork served as an appetizer in Chinese restaurants. These reddish rimmed and highly seasoned meat is served as a stand alone appetizer or as part of the cold meat platter. In the latter case, it is served with duck or chicken, pickled seaweeds, century eggs and suckling pig.

The marinade for the pork is called char sui sauce. You can buy char sui sauce in jars or you can make your own.

Ikan Moolie (fish in coconut gravy)

Rich and spicy, this dish might look like fish curry but it isn’t. It has no curry powder although turmeric, one of the spices that make up curry powder, is an ingredient and responsible for the bright yellow hue. Any white fleshy fish can be used. I suggest tilapia, dory, river cobbler, snapper (maya-maya) or grouper (lapu-lapu). The fillets may be cooked whole or cut into smaller portions.

Cooking time is less than 30 minutes.

Pinatisang bangus (milkfish soup with fish sauce)

My fifteen-minute fish soup made with boneless bangus belly fillets, shallots, tomatoes, garlic and onion leaves. It went into the kids’ school lunch boxes.

There is much confusion about the nature of shallots as the name is often interchanged with scallions. In Southeast Asian cooking, shallots refer to small red onions; scallions are the onion leaves. In Filipino cooking, shallots are sibuyas Tagalog (Allium ascalonicum) which would make them “authentic” shallots as being one of the two species of the Allium plant that are considered true shallots.

Pork and mushrooms noodle soup

The fresh shiitake and enoki mushrooms were meant for sukiyaki but thirty minutes before I was due to start lunch yesterday, I got flustered. In all the Japanese restaurants I have eaten in — and I have eaten in a lot of them — sukiyaki has always been served as a soup. Then, I saw an article by a Japanese lady that says sukiyaki is a fried dish and the eggs are for dipping the hot beef and vegetables into. Sounds more delicious than the sukiyaki soup served in Japanese restaurants in the Philippines (shall I call them bastardized sukiyaki now?) but something that would require quite a set-up — like a skillet on the dining table itself.

Shiitake mushrooms

Dried shiitake mushrooms are available in most supermarkets; fresh ones aren’t that easy to find. While dried shiitake is more convenient for storage purposes — keep them away from moisture and they can last for a couple of months — but there’s nothing like fresh shiitake. For some reason, even when soaked for hours, the texture and flavor dried shiitake aren’t quite the same as fresh ones.

To prepare shiitake mushrooms — fresh or dried — the stems need to be cut off and discarded. Whether the caps need to be sliced or not…

About Pinoy Cook

• About the author
• Cooking philosophy
• Food photography
• Where I cook
• Where I used to cook
• The noche buena section
• Product review policy
• Terms of use
• Privacy policy
• Recipe archive
• Published articles
• Food from all over
• E-mail the author

House On A Hill

Fish & seafood

• Braised tilapia
• Bangus (milkfish) fritters, v. 2
• No meat during Lent?
• Pritong tilapia (fried St. Peter’s fish) and cheese-topped chili-cauliflower bake
• Baked scallops
• Baked fish and spinach
• Fish fillet and vegetables in sour cream
• Tilapia with shredded corn and coconut cream
• Pasta with clams in red wine sauce
• Fish fillet with corn sauce

Healthy veggies

• Beef and broccoli leaves
• The complete salad
• Fish fillets and togue (mung bean sprouts) stir fry
• Pritong tilapia (fried St. Peter’s fish) and cheese-topped chili-cauliflower bake
• Pork and baguio beans with oyster sauce
• Mackerel frittata
• Baked eggplants with bacon and cheese
• Potato salad with toasted cashew nuts
• Mashed potatoes and kalabasa (squash)
• Oven-fried potato chips