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.