Fried chicken and vegetable salad
…this dish made with fried breaded strips of chicken thigh fillets, romaine lettuce and cherry tomatoes was today’s lunch. The idea was to make a salad a la KFC. Although my kids dug into the salad (Sam loved those cherry tomatoes!), what they really did was to eat the fried strips of chicken with fried rice. The salad was just a salad for them and not a main dish as it was for me.
The dressing for the salad is sort of a cheater’s Caesar’s salad dressing…
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Baked pompano and red cabbage
Despite the convenience of fish fillets, they cannot compare to the flavors of whole fish. The flavor is in the bones and the head, really. So, a lot of the flavor is lost during filleting. I must admit though that using fillets means less garbage that rots but where fresh whole fish is available, frozen fish fillets don’t seem so attractive.
Red cabbage, available in better wet markets and supermarkets, is more strongly-flavored than the green variety. The texture is the same although, uncut, red cabbage is more firmly packed. You can use green cabbage, of course, to cook this dish. I had red in the fridge and I thought it would make a rather colorless dish a lot brighter and more attractive.
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My secret pasta sauce
I taught my daughters to eat vegetables by finely mincing boiled potatoes, carrots or kalabasa (squash) with rice and broth as soon they were old enough to eat table food. I taught them to eat fresh fruits in the same manner. So, I never really had problems feeding them vegetables. Of course, they have personal preferences too. Alex does not like talong (eggplants), for instance, and Sam hardly ever touches carrots these days although it was among her favorites as a very young child. Okay, you’re wondering what the heck all that has to do with pasta sauce. Patience… I’ll get there. 
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Turkey and potato salad
In the turkey lumpia entry, I mentioned that half of the turkey meat I was able to salvage went into a potato salad. This is it. Not only was I able to save the turkey meat, I was also able to finally use the fat-free Kraft mayonnaise that no one wanted to spread on sandwiches…
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Roast turkey with rice stuffing
I know that in the U.S. cooking turkey is both a ritual and a tradition. As a non-American, turkey elicits no feelings for me except as food. I wasn’t even a turkey eater, having a preference for duck over the years, until I discovered that turkey can be just as great if prepared properly. By that I mean making sure that the bird is seasoned through to the bone before it goes into the oven. I really don’t like my meat bland. Relying on sauces and gravies for flavor does not agree with my palate…
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Baked macaroni
This isn’t a new recipe. I had this in my archive until December last year when I decided to take it down until I could post a better photo. It doesn’t mean though that I only cooked baked macaroni once since December. On the contrary, I must have made at least ten versions of this dish during the last five months but was never able to take decent photos for any one of the following reasons: 1) everyone was in a hurry to eat; 2) everyone was in a hurry to eat; 3) everyone was in a hurry to eat…
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Clams spaghetti with white wine
A cousin’s husband prepared something similar to this during a weekend party in Tagaytay some time ago and I’ve been meaning to make the dish myself. When I saw an episode of Nigella Lawson’s TV show a couple of weeks ago where she made the same dish, I was reminded of that Tagaytay weekend and I promised myself I would finally do this simple pasta dish. My problem was my younger daughter. Although she loves clam broth, she doesn’t touch the clam meat. She thinks it’s yucky… The problem ended at lunch today…
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Baked tahong (mussels)
I bought half a kilo of mussels the other day and thought I’d make some baked tahong–something I haven’t done in quite a while. I debated over how I would make them. Would I do it with the usual cheese topping or would I do it the way my father did one time long ago? I decided on the latter. With something as flavorful as mussels, less is more…
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