'Asian cooking' archive

(Vietnamese style) Honey ginger chicken

Over two years ago, when I first cooked a chicken dish seasoned with a combination of honey, lemon and ginger, I thought I created something original. In fact, I found it amusing that it was inspired by Halls candy — you know, the honey lemon flavored ones?

Little did I know that honey-ginger dishes are common in Vietnam. There is honey ginger chicken, honey-ginger prawns and honey-ginger pork…

Mussel soup with coconut milk

My 16-year-old daughter, Sam, adores mussels any way they’re cooked. But her 14-year-old sister does not touch mussels unless they were baked and topped with cheese. Until tonight. Oh, how she feasted on this soup! And she’s not even a fan of spicy dishes.

It’s a Thai dish but the similarity to the most common Filipino mussel soup is uncanny. You have the usual spices and aromatics like ginger and garlic…

Ma Po tofu

There are two recipes for Ma Po tofu in the archive but I don’t mind posting a third. Any recipe can be improved or tweaked further to suit the cook’s or the diner’s palate. In the case of Ma Po tofu, I was looking for a particular combination of spices and seasonings that would give it that certain oomph! That happened yesterday, finally. How? I added an essential ingredient that I did not have during my previous attempts at cooking the dish — Sichuan peppercorns.

Lemongrass tamarind chicken

It is curious how one finds the basic sweet and sour dish in the cuisine of every Southeast Asian country. We have our escabeche; the Thai have their Pad Preow Wan Kai (they even have a name for their sweet and sour sauce — Nam Jim Priao Wan); the Malaysians have a cooking style known as Masak Branda/Belanda which, according to Bee of Rasa Malaysia, applies to eggs as well as fish; and there’s this Vietnamese sweet and sour chicken dish with lemongrass and tamarind.

Crispy catfish and green mango salad (yum pla dook foo)

Yum Pla Dook Foo was one of the dishes we tried at a Thai restaurant recently. I so loved it that I vowed I would learn how to make it so that we can enjoy it at home. It’s not an impossible task. It’s not too ambitious a project. There was a time when we only enjoyed miso soup when we ate at Japanese restaurants; these days, we can have Japanese soup at home anytime we like. Same thing with kani salad. The trick is to discover the ingredients of a dish, find a good source of the ingredients and learn whatever unique techniques are involved in making the dish.

Chicken and coconut cream soup

I tried it at a Thai restaurant last weekend, bought a Thai cookbook and made the soup last night with a few modifications of the cookbook recipe. Thai food is wonderful, if you haven’t tried it, and I am really, really smitten. The same cooking techniques as most of Southeast Asia but the dishes have a more piquant flavor from aromatics like lemongrass, galangal and kaffir lime leaves, all of which you will find in most Thai dishes.

Tofu and baby corn stir fry

It isn’t just vegetarian; it’s a vegan dish — no meat and no animal by-products whatsoever. No, we’re not turning vegan. We’re not even going vegetarian. But no-meat vegetable dishes are great accompaniments to meat and fish dishes. We had this tofu and baby corn stir fry with fried alumahan several days ago. What is alumahan? Oh, it’s the name for any of several varieties of mackerel.

White (Hainanese) chicken

Based on Kylie Kwong’s recipe as cooked in her TV show, this is a simple chicken dish that requires a large pot and a very sharp and very heavy cleaver. The pot has to be large enough to contain the chicken and the cleaver has to be heavy and sharp enough to cut through the bones. The only cooking skills required — knowing how to simmer, cut, slice, mix and pour. The cooked dish is not colorful but what it lacks in color, it more than makes up for in flavor.

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Fish & seafood

• Fish croquettes
• Pritong tilapia (fried St. Peter’s fish) and cheese-topped chili-cauliflower bake
• Clams spaghetti with white wine
• Fish fillets in white wine
• Salmon salad with mango-lemon dressing
• Fish fillets in white wine and cream-and-cheese sauce
• Fish fillets with pepper and thyme
• Pasta with clams in red wine sauce
• Fish fillet with corn sauce
• Baked river cobbler fillets

Healthy veggies

• Mashed potatoes and kalabasa (squash)
• Chicken livers and string beans
• Spanish tortilla
• Tortang sardinas at togue (canned sardines and mongo sprout frittata)
• Broccoli and potatoes frittata
• A side dish: buttered corn and carrots
• Cheese-topped beef and eggplants
• Fried beef brisket and potatoes with sour cream
• Pork and baguio beans with oyster sauce
• Roast pork loin and spicy kangkong

Side Notes