Now I’d like to tell you that my Mom used fresh tamarind or fresh kamias but that was years ago when we didn’t have packaged sinigang mix. Lucky you guys these companies have made it much, much easier for us all. Otherwise you would go hit or miss with the sourness of the tamarind. For there were times when a kilo of tamarind was not enough to make a kilo of pork and 8 cups of water sour enough and worse it made the soup bitter. So this will make this recipe simple but anyway for the new cooks this will still come in handy…
SINIGANG NA BABOY
Ingredients:
½ kilo of pork
1 pack of sinigang mix
4-5 cups of water
1 medium size onion, sliced (optional)
2 tomatoes, sliced and seeded (optional)
1 eggplant, sliced
1 small radish, sliced
2 pcs gabi
1 bunch of kangkong (morning glory)
Note: I didn’t indicate which part of the pork to use because I prefer the buntot (tail part) or the pork ribs. Both are tastier because of the bones hence my tendency to use these. However, for the more heart healthy conscious ones amongst you, you can of course use pork loin. Also please seed your tomatoes if you’re putting these in as the seeds are said not to be kind to the appendix. No harm in heeding the warning. But keep the juice of the seeds and add to the sinigang.
Procedure:
1. Dissolve the sinigang mix you’re using in the 5 cups of water. If you like you can put the onion, tomatoes and the pork together. Otherwise, you can omit the onion and tomatoes. Most people would rather just use the sinigang mix as it is complete. But some, like me, want to have that authentic feel hence the onion and tomatoes.
2. When boiling, lower the heat and continue cooking for about 15 minutes. Add the gabi and the radish and cook for another 5 minutes. As with the adobo, check your pork for doneness. If you can already prick it with a fork, add the eggplant. When cooked, after about 3-5 minutes, covered, add the kangkong, turn off the heat and serve hot.
3. Just as an aside, the eggplant will not cook properly if you keep on opening your pot, so when cooking the eggplant, let it be for about 5 minutes.
4. The sinigang is best served with fish sauce but some, like me serve it with fish sauce and some calamansi.
Monday, June 8, 2009
DRY ADOBO IN A FLASH
Ingredients:
1 kilo pork liempo (pork belly)
½ cup vinegar (suka)
6 Tablespoons soy sauce (toyo) or ¼ cup plus 2 Tablespoons
2 Tablespoon fish sauce (patis)
½ cup water
1 whole garlic, peeled and crushed
freshly cracked black pepper (about 10 peppercorns or more if desired)
1 dahon ng laurel (laurel leaf)
cooking oil
Procedure:
Put together all the ingredients in a saucepan, glass, stainless steel or non-stick. Let boil. When boiling, lower heat, simmer and tenderize pork. After about 20 minutes or more if your pork is tough, say maybe 30 minutes, increase the heat to high and allow the sauce to dry up. When all the liquid is gone, the meat will start to sizzle and pop and zing. Hold the cover as shield and start stirring the meat. You can now lower the heat or turn the heat off to turn the meat around for even frying. When meat is fried to a rich golden brown color and you can smell all that inviting symphony of garlic, meat, soy sauce and a hint of vinegar and fish sauce...it’s time to call on everyone to start digging in. Some like adobo flakes the next day, so if you have any leftovers, you can shred the meat and deep fry and serve on top of freshly tossed fried rice with that aromatic garlic with some fried egg on the side…sunny side up please.
1 kilo pork liempo (pork belly)
½ cup vinegar (suka)
6 Tablespoons soy sauce (toyo) or ¼ cup plus 2 Tablespoons
2 Tablespoon fish sauce (patis)
½ cup water
1 whole garlic, peeled and crushed
freshly cracked black pepper (about 10 peppercorns or more if desired)
1 dahon ng laurel (laurel leaf)
cooking oil
Procedure:
Put together all the ingredients in a saucepan, glass, stainless steel or non-stick. Let boil. When boiling, lower heat, simmer and tenderize pork. After about 20 minutes or more if your pork is tough, say maybe 30 minutes, increase the heat to high and allow the sauce to dry up. When all the liquid is gone, the meat will start to sizzle and pop and zing. Hold the cover as shield and start stirring the meat. You can now lower the heat or turn the heat off to turn the meat around for even frying. When meat is fried to a rich golden brown color and you can smell all that inviting symphony of garlic, meat, soy sauce and a hint of vinegar and fish sauce...it’s time to call on everyone to start digging in. Some like adobo flakes the next day, so if you have any leftovers, you can shred the meat and deep fry and serve on top of freshly tossed fried rice with that aromatic garlic with some fried egg on the side…sunny side up please.
MOM'S PORK ADOBO
Ingredients:
1 kilo pork liempo (pork belly)
½ cup vinegar (suka)
6 Tablespoons soy sauce (toyo) or ¼ cup plus 2 Tablespoons
2 Tablespoon fish sauce (patis)
½ cup water
½ of a whole garlic, peeled and crushed
freshly cracked black pepper (about 10 peppercorns or more if desired)
1 dahon ng laurel (laurel leaf)
cooking oil
½ of a whole garlic, peeled and crushed
Procedure:
1. This is a recipe for those who have the time to marinate overnight or at least 3 hours. If you don’t have the time, please follow my dry adobo recipe, that’ll be adobo recipe number 2…
2. Put all the ingredients in a bowl and marinate. Please just avoid using the aluminum metal ones because when that bowl turns gray, that’ll mean some of it is in your meat. Yikes!!! Please get a glass bowl, a ceramic bowl or a plastic ware, choose the sturdy brands please…
3. Like I said, marinate overnight or for at least 3 hours to let that seep into your pork. You can poke you pork with a fork to let the marinade in.
4. The next day or after 3 hours you are ready to cook in a stainless steel sauce pan, a non-stick sauce pan or a glassware sauce pan. Just put all the ingredients together. Just an aside: 1 laurel leaf is to 1 kilo of meat, but when cooking a half kilo only, you can use the whole leaf.
5. Important note for first time cooks: Please DO NOT stir until the marinade boils as this will cause your adobo to taste acidic or plainly put in Tagalog, hilaw or uncooked. There is no remedy for this. Whoever you’re serving this to will just have to grin and bear it!!!
6. Now some think that the adobo is cooked when the boiling starts and the meat becomes a little tender. That will have to be nilagang baboy (boiled pork) in a dark sauce. As this is our all-time favorite adobo, let’s lower the heat when the liquid starts to boil so we can start the process of tenderizing the pork. If you get pork from the supermarket this may take only about 20 minutes. If you happen to buy tough pork meat, you just have to cook a bit longer, maybe 30 minutes or even an hour. The key is to check…check…check with a fork. When the pork is fork tender but not falling apart tender please, you can now drain the meat. Set aside the liquid where the meat was cooked for use later. Remove the cooked garlic bits and the cracked black pepper bits to minimize being attacked by flying bits and fragments of these when you start doing the next step…
7. You guessed it right; the next step is to fry the meat so you lock in all that gorgeous flavor. So you need lotsa cooking oil to deep fry that meat to a golden brown color or you can put some oil and pan fry the meat. Since there will still be bits of the garlic and peppercorn stuck in the meat somewhere, you will experience some popping while you fry the meat either way. Don’t be scared, my aunt used to wear a raincoat when frying during her first year of cooking and that’s no joke. But of course you can turn off the heat first before stirring and turning the meat around, or if you’re brave, lower the heat, then use the pan cover as shield and start stirring. You can use a tong to turn the meat.
8. When your meat is all golden brown, remove from the pan. From that oil you used to fry, just leave enough to sauté the other half of that one whole garlic which you’ve crushed combined with the bits of the one you got earlier. Put back your fried meat. Now slowly, put the liquid you set aside earlier. Please DO NOT pour all that liquid in because by now you’re rushing. This will slow you down more. By putting the liquid slowly, you allow this to simmer and thicken as you add more. This will give you a saucy adobo.
9. When you’re done, you can serve you saucy adobo with chopped tomatoes and chopped green mangoes. And you can use your hands to dig into that adobo with great abandon…
1 kilo pork liempo (pork belly)
½ cup vinegar (suka)
6 Tablespoons soy sauce (toyo) or ¼ cup plus 2 Tablespoons
2 Tablespoon fish sauce (patis)
½ cup water
½ of a whole garlic, peeled and crushed
freshly cracked black pepper (about 10 peppercorns or more if desired)
1 dahon ng laurel (laurel leaf)
cooking oil
½ of a whole garlic, peeled and crushed
Procedure:
1. This is a recipe for those who have the time to marinate overnight or at least 3 hours. If you don’t have the time, please follow my dry adobo recipe, that’ll be adobo recipe number 2…
2. Put all the ingredients in a bowl and marinate. Please just avoid using the aluminum metal ones because when that bowl turns gray, that’ll mean some of it is in your meat. Yikes!!! Please get a glass bowl, a ceramic bowl or a plastic ware, choose the sturdy brands please…
3. Like I said, marinate overnight or for at least 3 hours to let that seep into your pork. You can poke you pork with a fork to let the marinade in.
4. The next day or after 3 hours you are ready to cook in a stainless steel sauce pan, a non-stick sauce pan or a glassware sauce pan. Just put all the ingredients together. Just an aside: 1 laurel leaf is to 1 kilo of meat, but when cooking a half kilo only, you can use the whole leaf.
5. Important note for first time cooks: Please DO NOT stir until the marinade boils as this will cause your adobo to taste acidic or plainly put in Tagalog, hilaw or uncooked. There is no remedy for this. Whoever you’re serving this to will just have to grin and bear it!!!
6. Now some think that the adobo is cooked when the boiling starts and the meat becomes a little tender. That will have to be nilagang baboy (boiled pork) in a dark sauce. As this is our all-time favorite adobo, let’s lower the heat when the liquid starts to boil so we can start the process of tenderizing the pork. If you get pork from the supermarket this may take only about 20 minutes. If you happen to buy tough pork meat, you just have to cook a bit longer, maybe 30 minutes or even an hour. The key is to check…check…check with a fork. When the pork is fork tender but not falling apart tender please, you can now drain the meat. Set aside the liquid where the meat was cooked for use later. Remove the cooked garlic bits and the cracked black pepper bits to minimize being attacked by flying bits and fragments of these when you start doing the next step…
7. You guessed it right; the next step is to fry the meat so you lock in all that gorgeous flavor. So you need lotsa cooking oil to deep fry that meat to a golden brown color or you can put some oil and pan fry the meat. Since there will still be bits of the garlic and peppercorn stuck in the meat somewhere, you will experience some popping while you fry the meat either way. Don’t be scared, my aunt used to wear a raincoat when frying during her first year of cooking and that’s no joke. But of course you can turn off the heat first before stirring and turning the meat around, or if you’re brave, lower the heat, then use the pan cover as shield and start stirring. You can use a tong to turn the meat.
8. When your meat is all golden brown, remove from the pan. From that oil you used to fry, just leave enough to sauté the other half of that one whole garlic which you’ve crushed combined with the bits of the one you got earlier. Put back your fried meat. Now slowly, put the liquid you set aside earlier. Please DO NOT pour all that liquid in because by now you’re rushing. This will slow you down more. By putting the liquid slowly, you allow this to simmer and thicken as you add more. This will give you a saucy adobo.
9. When you’re done, you can serve you saucy adobo with chopped tomatoes and chopped green mangoes. And you can use your hands to dig into that adobo with great abandon…
POLLO AL HORNO con PATATA
Ingredients:
1 whole chicken (1.2 kg-1.3 kg)
juice of 5-6 calamansi (Philippine lemon)
1 cup soy sauce
½ cup water (if soy sauce is not too salty, reduce this to ¼ cup)
½ kg potatoes
¼ block butter
¼ cup fresh milk
salt and pepper
thick thread and large needle for sewing up the chicken
6 baby carrots (or 1 large carrot, cut with a crinkle cutter knife)
Procedure:
1. In a pot, boil your well cleaned potatoes.
2. In the meantime, mix together your calamansi juice, soy sauce and water in a cup. Inject this on the chicken, choose the fleshy parts and inject it, including the chicken legs and the wings. After injecting the chicken all over, make sure you massage the chicken so the marinade will be evenly distributed, otherwise you’ll find that your chicken looks like it has been beaten badly.
3. When your potatoes are cooked, drain the water, now it’s either you have calloused hands so you can handle the hot potatoes or you wait just a few minutes and immediately peel the potatoes, perhaps blowing hard at the potatoes to cool down and your aching hands at the same time. Either way there’ll be some heat on your lovely hands but don’t fret at least you won’t have discolored cooked potatoes. Please make sure not to drop the hot potatoes while trying to handle and peel them at the same time. Not good for your family’s health.
4. Now you’re ready to mash the potatoes with a fork or a masher, whichever you have at home. Put the butter so it melts, pour the fresh milk and add some salt and pepper, according to your taste (in other words, up to you, salty or not). Mix and mash well. Now pre-heat your oven at 350 degrees, you’ll need 10 minutes to do this.
5. You can now proceed to putting these mashed potatoes inside the cavity of your injected and massaged chicken. Push down the mashed potatoes as you spoon it in making sure that your chicken will be plump and juicy looking after you’ve stuffed it with the mashed potatoes. Should you have left over mashed potatoes, set aside, you would find that a lot of people would love second helpings of your mashed potatoes.
6. Now sew that chicken up. I know it feels like your doing some surgery or dressmaking but this is gonna be good. After it has been sewn up, you can put in a baking pan, either a stainless steel or glass dish. There will be some marinade seeping out, don’t worry…your chicken is juicy and tasty.
7. Start cooking the chicken in your pre-heated oven. A big chicken can take from an hour and a half to about 2 hours to cook. Please, check for doneness. I can always tell you it will take an hour or hour and a half and sound so precise and all-knowing but you know from my experience, honestly, it varies. Some ovens are hotter or some chicken is bigger and tougher to cook.
8. After an hour and fifteen minutes, you can put your baby carrots or your beautifully crinkle cut large carrot and cook it together with the chicken. Also check your carrots, once they are done and your chicken is not done, please take them out; let’s not start a fire here!!!
9. Okay this is not in my recipe, but my kids love mushrooms so I add the mushrooms together with the carrots sometimes. You may want to do the same thing. Put a whole can of button mushrooms, drained of all that salty water of course, if your kids love them.
GOURMET COOKING KUNING
Gourmet Cooking At Home Kuning
I was looking at this very fat juicy looking chicken in a food magazine, golden brown on the outside, shiny, succulent, love at first sight…I had to do the recipe. So I browsed at the recipe, went over it once, then stared…looked up, stared again, looked far, then stared again…how could this possibly be as good as it looks…can’t be…they must be really kidding. Aside from being so blah and wahdamatterwidisthing??? the recipe was calling for stuffing the chicken with rice…not glutinous rice, mind you, but plain white rice with some green peas and corn and carrots.
Well, it was one of my lousy lazy days and I wanted to kick my energy level to a hundred per cent and rev it up to the max. So I mused on what could be better than this supposed gourmet roasted chicken staring back at me. I felt the chicken leap at me from the magazine page. It was a 3D call to action…I zoomed to the nearest supermarket. Raced up and down the aisles, picked the plumpest chicken I could ever find, picked out the shiniest light brown potatoes, strode over to the freezer for some butter, got a glimpse of cutsie baby carrots and grabbed some, searched for some whole mushroom in cans, some fresh calamansi and my soy sauce. I still had some cooking wine at home so that would just be fine for what I had imprinted inside my head…on 3D!!!
So okay now here’s what I finally came up with. This is my famous roasted chicken which never fails to fascinate guests, young and old alike. It is plain awesome! I broke the ice with one of my most difficult unsmiling clients the minute she tasted this, so try it with your most obstinate bosses. Might work…but wait!!! Here’s the tricky part here, you must inject the chicken with this marinade because try as you may to marinate this chicken for 3 days you will never get that chicken to retain that entire flavor in.
So initially, I suggest you purchase the biggest injection and needle from your nearest drugstore which is what I did the very first time I did this concoction of mine. Or if you want, you can get a marinade injection from any reputable department store, because that was what I did the next time around. Or you can purchase a stainless steel injector from the internet, have it delivered to you but for a rather stiff price, which is of course what I did after 6 months of successfully serving this all time favorite dish in so many get-togethers and parties I went to. Check my recipe POLLO AL HORNO con PATATA...
I was looking at this very fat juicy looking chicken in a food magazine, golden brown on the outside, shiny, succulent, love at first sight…I had to do the recipe. So I browsed at the recipe, went over it once, then stared…looked up, stared again, looked far, then stared again…how could this possibly be as good as it looks…can’t be…they must be really kidding. Aside from being so blah and wahdamatterwidisthing??? the recipe was calling for stuffing the chicken with rice…not glutinous rice, mind you, but plain white rice with some green peas and corn and carrots.
Well, it was one of my lousy lazy days and I wanted to kick my energy level to a hundred per cent and rev it up to the max. So I mused on what could be better than this supposed gourmet roasted chicken staring back at me. I felt the chicken leap at me from the magazine page. It was a 3D call to action…I zoomed to the nearest supermarket. Raced up and down the aisles, picked the plumpest chicken I could ever find, picked out the shiniest light brown potatoes, strode over to the freezer for some butter, got a glimpse of cutsie baby carrots and grabbed some, searched for some whole mushroom in cans, some fresh calamansi and my soy sauce. I still had some cooking wine at home so that would just be fine for what I had imprinted inside my head…on 3D!!!
So okay now here’s what I finally came up with. This is my famous roasted chicken which never fails to fascinate guests, young and old alike. It is plain awesome! I broke the ice with one of my most difficult unsmiling clients the minute she tasted this, so try it with your most obstinate bosses. Might work…but wait!!! Here’s the tricky part here, you must inject the chicken with this marinade because try as you may to marinate this chicken for 3 days you will never get that chicken to retain that entire flavor in.
So initially, I suggest you purchase the biggest injection and needle from your nearest drugstore which is what I did the very first time I did this concoction of mine. Or if you want, you can get a marinade injection from any reputable department store, because that was what I did the next time around. Or you can purchase a stainless steel injector from the internet, have it delivered to you but for a rather stiff price, which is of course what I did after 6 months of successfully serving this all time favorite dish in so many get-togethers and parties I went to. Check my recipe POLLO AL HORNO con PATATA...
COOKING INA 911
Years ago, oh please just don’t ask how many moons ago, I wanted to traipse into my first foray into gourmet cooking by making a meat loaf. Yep, a meat loaf that looked so sumptuous and so delectably picture perfect in my brand new cookbook. So there I was in the supermarket, a virgin shopper, looking for each of the ingredients with the determined must have this look. I bought every pinch and dash that needed to go into that meat loaf.
Then off I toiled in my teeny-weenie kitchen, chopping and cutting and mashing…finally my most cherished meat loaf was ready for baking in my…ooops…had no oven but I had my wedding gift turbo broiler. So I carefully laid it down in the middle of the rack…ahhh my meat loaf in a baking loaf pan. After 30 minutes, well according to the darn recipe book it was supposed to be done by then; to my horror it was swimming in some soup on the sides, and some of it was dripping into my brand new, never been used turbo broiler.
So maybe the recipe wasn’t carved in stone after all…maybe, but I had to break the 30 minutes and cooked it for 15 minutes more and a little more, some 10 minutes more perhaps...well it finally looked good after an hour and a half and there was this smell that may just be the hint of burning meat. I let the meat loaf rest, not wanting to confirm my worst fears…that it tasted awful, that the meat loaf would fall apart when sliced, that it had that slightly burnt after taste…I could just go on and on in my mind. The tension of gourmet cooking was seeping into my veins.
The meat loaf tasted fine…yeah, yeah, alright…was just trying to rewrite history for awhile there. Oh well the meat loaf fell apart as soon as it was released from that tin loaf pan. Adding insult to injury, the cheap aluminum loaf pan turned gray where the meat loaf lay; my conclusion? Well I must have eaten quite a dose of aluminum that day okay??? So that’s why I never ever used aluminum pans again, especially when cooking something with suka (vinegar) like say my all time favorite adobo. We ate that meat loaf for a week and there was still some leftover which I just had to discard without looking so as not to feel guilty about the so many starving children around the world.
With that first failure, my passion for cooking grew by leaps and bounds. Much as I wanted to have cooking independence at that time, I knew it was time to call on my personal cooking 911. My mom!!! Yeah good ole Mom, so to all non-native speakers, of Pilipino I mean, the title of my blog, Cooking ng Ina Ko, simply means…My Mother’s Cooking. There’s a certain naughtiness about the title which I might say is very Pinoy.
I called on Mom to please give me her recipes and please to make the recipes good for two only (note that my Mom’s a Kapangpangan and cooking for two is not in our lingo, so she couldn’t ever make a recipe for two…ever!!!). So in a flash, Mom was there with her index cards of recipes, written in a rush I was sure because I could hardly read some of her writing. Mom would have made a good doctor you know, with her writing skills and all? But I digress. Anyway, I browsed through my treasures, asked and rewrote words I couldn’t decipher, as though that would have made a difference for I did get her writing skills…digressing again…anyway, here are the recipes which I wish to share with you. These are simple, unpretentious, easy to follow everyday home-cooking recipes...
Then off I toiled in my teeny-weenie kitchen, chopping and cutting and mashing…finally my most cherished meat loaf was ready for baking in my…ooops…had no oven but I had my wedding gift turbo broiler. So I carefully laid it down in the middle of the rack…ahhh my meat loaf in a baking loaf pan. After 30 minutes, well according to the darn recipe book it was supposed to be done by then; to my horror it was swimming in some soup on the sides, and some of it was dripping into my brand new, never been used turbo broiler.
So maybe the recipe wasn’t carved in stone after all…maybe, but I had to break the 30 minutes and cooked it for 15 minutes more and a little more, some 10 minutes more perhaps...well it finally looked good after an hour and a half and there was this smell that may just be the hint of burning meat. I let the meat loaf rest, not wanting to confirm my worst fears…that it tasted awful, that the meat loaf would fall apart when sliced, that it had that slightly burnt after taste…I could just go on and on in my mind. The tension of gourmet cooking was seeping into my veins.
The meat loaf tasted fine…yeah, yeah, alright…was just trying to rewrite history for awhile there. Oh well the meat loaf fell apart as soon as it was released from that tin loaf pan. Adding insult to injury, the cheap aluminum loaf pan turned gray where the meat loaf lay; my conclusion? Well I must have eaten quite a dose of aluminum that day okay??? So that’s why I never ever used aluminum pans again, especially when cooking something with suka (vinegar) like say my all time favorite adobo. We ate that meat loaf for a week and there was still some leftover which I just had to discard without looking so as not to feel guilty about the so many starving children around the world.
With that first failure, my passion for cooking grew by leaps and bounds. Much as I wanted to have cooking independence at that time, I knew it was time to call on my personal cooking 911. My mom!!! Yeah good ole Mom, so to all non-native speakers, of Pilipino I mean, the title of my blog, Cooking ng Ina Ko, simply means…My Mother’s Cooking. There’s a certain naughtiness about the title which I might say is very Pinoy.
I called on Mom to please give me her recipes and please to make the recipes good for two only (note that my Mom’s a Kapangpangan and cooking for two is not in our lingo, so she couldn’t ever make a recipe for two…ever!!!). So in a flash, Mom was there with her index cards of recipes, written in a rush I was sure because I could hardly read some of her writing. Mom would have made a good doctor you know, with her writing skills and all? But I digress. Anyway, I browsed through my treasures, asked and rewrote words I couldn’t decipher, as though that would have made a difference for I did get her writing skills…digressing again…anyway, here are the recipes which I wish to share with you. These are simple, unpretentious, easy to follow everyday home-cooking recipes...
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