I wanted a nice comfort food for the rainy first day of spring. I had a slab of pork belly sitting in the freezer so I figured it had to be the meal of the night. Problem was, I didn't know what to do with it. I wanted something different that I haven't cooked yet so my usual lechon kawali (deep fried pork) was out of the question and so was my pork adobo and pork afritada. I did a quick search and realized I could do this awesome dish that I haven't had in a while! One problem was I didn't have tomatoes. That was easily remedied by Google and this recipe I'm doing as I type:

1 1/2 - 2 k pork
3/4 c vinegar
4-5 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
1 bay leaf
1 T black peppercorns
3 T Bagoong Alamang (Shrimp paste) or add to taste
How To:
Place pork in a pot with first 4 spices. Boil gently for half an hour and skim off the scum that forms on the surface of the liquid. When tender, strain the meat and other solids from the broth. Set aside broth for use later.
In a pan, heat up 1 t vegetable oil and sauté chopped garlic and onions till fragrant with the onions translucent. Add the pork and shrimp paste. Mix well. Optional, you may add some pork broth if you prefer a version with more sauce. Skip this step if you want a more dry version. Add some freshly ground black pepper and cook a few minutes longer. You may also opt to include some chopped banana peppers for a bit of zing.
Serve hot with lots of white rice and a vegetable side.
Another of my husband's favorites, this is another one that's easy to make and is awfully bad for any dieting people out there. This is a direct copy from http://japanesefood.about.com/od/beef/r/gyudon.htm

Japanese beef bowl is called gyudon. Simmered beef is served on top of steamed rice. It's one of the most popular rice bowl dishes (donburi) in Japan.
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients:
  • 4 cups steamed Japanese rice
  • 1 lb thinly sliced beef loin, cut into 2 inch lengths
  • 1 onion, thinly sliced
  • 1 1/3 cup dashi soup
  • 5 Tbsp soy sauce
  • 3 Tbsp mirin
  • 2 Tbsp sugar
  • 1 tsp sake
  • *benishoga (red ginger) for topping
Preparation:
Cook Japanese rice. Put dashi, soy sauce, sugar, mirin, and sake in a large pan. Add onion slices and simmer for a few minutes until softened. Add beef in the pan and simmer for a few minutes. Serve hot steamed rice into individual deep rice bowls. Put the beef topping on top of the rice. Place some benishoga (red ginger) on the top if you would like.


I'm in constant fear that the websites I take some of my recipes are will suddenly disappear. So I've been slowly moving all my beloved recipes to this blog and to a notebook I can refer to when offline. Here's another of my early favorites because of how easy and quick this is. Now if I can just learn how to do sushi, we'd do Japanese nights during the weekends.

 Ingredients:

  • 6-8 cups hot cooked rice
  • 4-5 eggs
  • 1/4 pound (115g) chicken
  • 2 long onions (naganegi) or 4 green onions
Sauce:
  • 2 1/2 cups dashi or chicken stock
  • 6 tbsp dark soy sauce
  • 6 tbsp light soy sauce
  • 3 tbsp sugar
4 servings

Directions

To prepare: Boil plain white rice. Mix (do not beat) eggs in a bowl lightly with chopsticks or fork and set aside.
Cut boned chicken (with or without skin, as preferred) into 1/4-inch (7.5mm) pieces. The chicken should be raw, but if the purpose of making the dish is to use leftovers, cooked chicken is fine, as is thin-sliced raw or cooked pork or beef. The flavor is best if you start with raw meat.
Wash and clean onions. Cut diagonally into 1-inch (2.5cm) lengths.
To cook: Combine ingredients for sauce in a medium-sized saucepan. Bring to a gentle boil over medium heat. Add chicken and simmer, uncovered, for 5 minutes. Add onion and simmer 1 minute longer. Correct seasoning if necessary.
Stir the eggs and pour gently in a steady stream around the chicken in the simmering sauce. Let the egg spread naturally. Do not stir. Keep heat at medium high till the egg starts to bubble at the edges. At this point, stir once. The egg will have almost set but will still be a little runny. Keep in mind that the high temperature of the rice over which the egg will be placed will do the final cooking. Do not let the egg cook hard.
To assemble and serve: Put portions of hot rice, 1 1/2 to 2 cups, into individual donburi bowls, or use deep soup bowls. With a large spoon, scoop a portion of the egg topping and sauce and place on rice. Sauce will seep down into rice, but the dish will not be soupy. Serve immediately. With this meal-in-a-bowl, serve hot green tea. Goes well with a clear soup.

I was supposed to do a tried and tested Chicken Afritada for dinner till I realized too late that I was missing a crucial ingredient: red bellpepper. With everything prepared, no back up dish and a hungry husband half an hour away from home, I had to think outside the box and improvise. I remembered I had a couple bottles of spice mix we brought back from Montreal's famous charcuterie. Schwartz's offered two different herb mixes for poultry and another for meat. I figured I couldn't go wrong with that mix and decided to just throw in the veggies along with the cut up pieces of chicken breast. I must've put in too much spices because it came out a tad spicy but it had amazing flavor that even the potatoes and carrots were infused with it. What started out as an experiment under time pressure turned out to be a repeatable dish that'll take half an hour tops to make.

Ingredients:
1/2 lb chicken breasts, cubed or sliced into bite size pieces
1 big potato, cubed into 1" pieces
1 carrot, julienne in 1" pieces
1-2 Tbsps of Schwartz's Poultry Herb Mix (depending on how spicy you want it to be, more if desired)
1 Tbsp patis or fish sauce
1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped

Procedure:

Marinate chicken breasts with half of the spice mix. Set aside.

With pan on medium heat, pour olive oil in. When heated, saute first garlic then onion. Then add chicken with a little hot water or chicken stock, if needed. Don't let chicken stick to pan. Then add vegetables and patis.
Let simmer for 15 minutes or until veggies are half cooked. Add more spice as desired. Serve immediately.

VH sauces are a great shortcut for all the busy cooks out there. Just open a jar and marinate your chosen meat overnight and it's ready to cook for dinner the next day. No frills and almost no prep time! But tonight, I wanted to do something from scratch that I normally use VH sauces with. I'll be basing my recipe on the one below:

Ingredients

  • 3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
  • 2 tbls. corn starch 
  • 3/4 cup water
  • 3 tbls. soy sauce
  • 1 tbls. honey
  • 2 cloves of garlic, crushed or 2 tbls. garlic powder 

How to make it

  • Combine sugar with corn starch, and garlic powder if using it.
  • Add water, soya sauce, honey and fresh garlic, if using fresh.
  • Bring to a boil stirring constantly.
  • Pour sauce over your cooked meat and serve immediately or keep warm in low heat oven.

Although instead of making just the sauce, I won't cook it on a stove top but just mix all the ingredients and use it to marinate the pork spare ribs. Then, I can opt to bake it along with the sauce and basting every 20 minutes or so, or cook on the stove top, first sauteing the garlic then adding the spare ribs to brown and letting it simmer in the marinade for a bit more to get it all tender. Before serving, a drizzling of honey should keep everything nice and moist (especially if after baking).

We haven't had a pasta dinner in a couple weeks so to mix things up, I decided to forgo the Chinese fare I was going to dish out and instead go for an Italian meal. Big problem was that I didn't have the usual ground beef/pork or chicken breasts on hand. I, however, did have some knackwurst slowly getting freezer burn. I don't particularly like wasting food and to prevent its sorry freezer burn from getting the better of the both of us, I figure it'll have to do as a replacement for whatever meat I usually have in my pasta dishes. Mind you I haven't actually tried to cook with this particular kind of sausage before, but it has a mild taste to it and I think it'll go well with some herbs and tomatoes. I found this recipe that I'll be basing our dinner on, but with a lot of substitutions with what I have in my cupboards and meager spice rack.

  •       Ingredients:
  •  
  •         2 1/2 pounds Italian sweet sausages, casings removed, crumbled
  •         3 tablespoons olive oil
  •         1 1/2 pounds mushrooms, thickly sliced
  •         3 cups chopped onions
  •         1 1/2 cups chopped fresh basil
  •         1/4 cup chopped fresh oregano
  •         6 large garlic cloves, chopped
  •         1 cup dry white wine
  •         5 cups canned crushed tomatoes with added puree
  •         2 cups diced tomatoes (about 4 medium-large tomatoes)
  •         2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) butter
  •         1 1/4 pounds pappardelle or mafaldine pasta (or any wide, flat noodles)
  •         1 1/2 cups grated pecorino Romano cheese (about 4 1/2 ounces)

Sauté sausage in heavy large pot over medium-high heat until brown, about 12 minutes. Using slotted spoon, transfer sausage to large bowl. Add oil to drippings in pot. Add mushrooms and onions; sauté until tender and brown, about 15 minutes. Stir in 1 cup chopped basil, oregano, and garlic; sauté 1 minute. Add wine; cook until almost absorbed, about 4 minutes. Add sausage and crushed tomatoes; cover and simmer over medium heat until thickened, about 25 minutes. Add diced tomatoes and butter; simmer until tomatoes are soft, stirring frequently, about 15 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Cool slightly. Chill uncovered until cold, then cover and refrigerate. Bring to simmer before continuing.)
Cook pasta in large pot of boiling salted water until tender but still firm to bite, stirring occasionally. Drain well; return to pot. Pour sauce over pasta; toss to coat. Add 1/2 cup cheese and 1/2 cup basil; toss to combine. Season with salt and pepper. Transfer pasta to serving dish. Serve, passing remaining cheese separately.

taken from: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Pasta-with-Sausage-Tomatoes-and-Mushrooms-106961#ixzz1Awpk5UDA
The weather keeps becoming colder and colder as winter progresses. More and more, I'm pressed to look for comfort food that'll make staying indoors not entirely a bad thing. I have actually yet to do this recipe as I have yet to get some cloves and star anise (my temporary sorry excuse for a spice rack only has cinnamon out of all four spices listed!), as well as the dried bean curd puffs. The photos this came with looked so good and the blend of spices just seemed too good to pass up on. I plan to do my version in a slow cooker but until then, I'll let you know how it goes.

Ingredients:
300gm Pork belly, cut into chunks
10 pcs canned button mushroom, halved
5 pcs Dried bean curd puffs (tau pok), halved
2 nos Cinnamon, rinsed
2 nos Star Anise, rinsed
3 nos Cloves, rinsed
1 tbsp Black peppercorn, rinsed
5 cloves roasted garlic (retain skin), rinsed & bruised
2 nos Shallots, sliced
approx; 600ml Water

Seasonings:
2 tbsp Shao Xing Chinese rice wine
1/2 cup Light Soya Sauce (adjust according to taste)
1 tbsp Thick Soya Sauce

Methods:
1. Blanch pork belly with hot boiled water. Drained and set aside.
2. Heat up 3 tbsp oil, sautee garlic & shallots till fragrant.
3. Add in cinnamon, star anise & cloves. Sautee for 2 mins.
4. Add in water, bring to boil. Add in black peppercorn.
5. Add in pork belly, mushrooms & bean curd puffs. Bring to the boil & simmer for 5 mins.
6. Add in seasonings except thick soya sauce. Simmer in low fire for about 20 - 30 mins or untill pork belly is soft & tender.
7. Water should have reduced to half & gravy turns thick. Add thick soya sauce, mix well.
8. Dish up. Serve with hot steamed rice.

Note:
• Adjust the water for simmering accordingly. The water should be enough to cover all the ingredients.
• Adjust the seasonings according to your taste.

taken from: http://bits-of-taste.blogspot.com/2010/07/braised-pork-belly-with-spices.html
I love to cook. I have been involved in the kitchen for as long as I can remember. My mom, who herself had a love affair with the process of creating wonderful food, initiated me into the cooking world. It started out with measuring ingredients for her. I was probably five or six. Then, I was designated to preparation so I knew how to cut, slice, peel and chop. Next, I got the chance to saute the garlic and onions whilst atop a chair as I was too small to see what was going on inside the pan. Then, I was taught to do meal plans and actually serve dinner to my family of six that felt more like eight with my two brothers who can eat far more than one serving each. I was thirteen then.

Now, thirteen more years later, I'm cooking for my own family and enjoying every minute of it. It helps that my husband is a certified foodie, but not the picky kind. He'll eat pretty much anything you serve him, even the not so good ones though he is quick to tell what he doesn't like about it and how it can be improved. So I find myself wanting to widen my cooking horizon and actually incorporate more recipes and cooking styles into our everyday menu. I have the time to enjoy the process and to try different things.

I have, thus, decided to rearrange this blog as I have rearranged my life in the past year.

In lieu of websites shutting down or recipe books getting misplaced, I realized that the best way to store my recipes would be on my own blog. I have made several blogs and left them on the wayside as the years have gone by, but this one could very well be the one that'll last the longest. We'll see.