Two Homey Recipes

Gata Sitaw and Okra with Dried Seafood

I love gata. I love adding it into different recipes and it always makes it taste a little bit more special. This is just sitaw (yardlong bean) and Okra braised in gata. I grilled some dried squid and dried fish and added it into the stew for added smokiness and flavor. With lots of white rice, this is sure to be a winner!

250g sitaw, cut into 1-inch lengths
200g okra, tender parts only, cut stem end
250mL gata (coconut milk)
onion
ginger
grilled dried squid
grilled dried fish
salt (only if fish and squid will not be salty enough for you)

Boil coconut milk with ginger and onion. Add grilled seafood. Allow flavors to meld. Add vegetables and cook until crisp-tender. Serve hot.





Kilawin na puso ng saging

I'm not very sure why we call this "kilawin" when we actually cook both the banana heart and the resulting salad...maybe because it's primarily flavored with vinegar. But anyway, it's a great side dish for salty things like dried fish.

1 large banana heart, quartered (take away all the red layers, leaving only the pale yellow colored core. Quarter the core)
2 cups vinegar (I use tuba vinegar, but my mom used to use Datu Puti, so whatever vinegar you use)
salt/vetsin
garlic
onion

Boil banana heart until tender. The color should change to a somewhat gray color. After that's done, douse with cold water and take away the central ridge (the core that hold the "leaves" and blossoms together. All you should have left should be the blossoms and the "leaves" of the banana heart. Using your hands, mash them all up and squeeze out the sap. Repeat this step twice to make sure all sap is gone.

Season the squeezed out banana heart with the vinegar and salt and vetsin. Heat up a pan and sautee the garlic and onions. Add the banana heart mixture and stir until it absorbs the oil. Taste the mixture. If it's too sour, add some salt. Serve with dried or fried or grilled fish.

Sandwich Days

I am a rice eating person. Even if I feel like I'm being robbed for it. But I also like making sandwiches and sometimes I get weird with my creations. Up top is leftover tuna cabbage wraps in a pan de sal with some grated cheese. It was quite a yummy discovery. But then again, tomato sauce is good with anything.



Then I also made this sandwich out of sliced ham, tomato, mayo and cheese. Good for lunchboxes. We had this for dinner though.

Then there's spicy Spanish sardines with vinegar marinated white onions and hot mustard. Or corned beef with mustard and coleslaw. Basil with tomato and cheese. Grilled cheese. Tuna melt.

What's your favorite sandwich?

The Twin Rice Holders

We usually consume one kilo of rice per week. That's not a lot because we only cook rice once a day, and only for two people. So whenever we buy rice, usually around payday (every two weeks) we buy two kilos.

We're also long grain, white rice lovers. We tried doing a brown rice stint once, but decided that it's not enough to float our boat. We usually get the best rice variety the supermarket has (since we buy two kilos lang naman, not very pricey even if the per kilo price is higher than normal). So sometimes we get Premium Jasponica rice or sometimes Premium Jasmine. Most common is Organic Ifugao rice since we most commonly get our groceries from a neighborhood Ever Gotesco.

A couple of weeks ago, we cooked more rice than the usual and ended up with just half the container with around a week to go til the next big grocery day. I went to buy one kilo of what is labelled "Premium Jasmine" in Trinoma's Palabigasan. It was I think around Php60. When I went home, I noticed that the leftover Organic Ifugao (at Php50/kilo) was exactly the same as the Premium Jasmine I bought. I felt robbed.

We should have a grading system. We should have clear boundaries as to what is Jasmine, Premium Jasmine, etc. We should NOT have overlapping names for rice and Trinoma Palabigasan, YOU SHOULD NOT OVERCHARGE!

I have a WHAT?

Gross photo alert. You have been warned.

About a month ago, I woke up with a really stabbing, bloating pain in the upper right area of my stomach. Because I was stupid, groggy and utterly in pain, I took Mefenamic acid. The next day, I had red spots all over my arms and fingers and a couple on my lips. They were itchy and burning and I thought, "what the hell did I eat this time?" I thought it was a food allergy and even if I cannot really recall eating Shiitake mushrooms (my only food allergy) the itching was so pronounced that I thought it's the same thing.

Enter Virlix. Virlix is my antihistamine of choice. Always works. By noon the spots where mellowed and as if fate was really trying to piss my off, my tooth started to hurt. Now this was the same tooth that's giving me trouble for a long time now. Dentists want to save it, but everytime they try to close it up, it begins to hurt. Like that day. So I took mefenamic acid and amoxicillin for around four days. After the very first dose, the faint red marks where my supposedly food allergies, became darker. As in dark red. I thought they were drying up. On day four, they were purple enough to scare me. I sought professional help:



The spots on my lips grew from two to four. The worse one, the one on the right side of my lower lip (even gross-er) got blistered and peeled off. Every time I smiled, laughed or even chewed, it hurt. Every time it effing stretched, it hurt. The ones on the upper lip where also starting to blister until I went to the doctor.

The doc, a dermatologist, had the most perfect skin. Sitting there with a fat, mahapdi lip and purple stains all over my arms, I felt as small as that bubble mascot in the Surf commercial after he plunged into the ground in between the men with dirty white shirts. (segue why do construction workers wear white shirts in soap commercials?)

And then she said it: "My dear, hala...that's not food allergy. Drug eruption yan." AKA Drug allergy. Allergic to mefenamic acid and/or amoxicillin. It was odd, I told her, because I took these meds before and I ended up fine. Two reasons, she said: Either the brand of meds I took (generic) had substances in them that caused me to become oversensitized or my body chemistry at the time I took those meds were configured in a such a way that the meds reacted (pretty violently) against it.

Either way, she said, I had to stop the meds. She prescribed Claricort for antihistamines and Triamcinolone ointment for the spots. The ointment is anti-inflammatory and is so goddamned effective. After the first time I used it, the mahapdi lip really mellowed and the spots lightened up. After three days, the swelling was completely gone. I can eat again! I'm still using the ointment til now though, because even though the swelling is gone the marks don't fade so quickly so I still apply it twice a day.

I went to Dr. Rizaela Nicolas. Find her in Medical City Trinoma and Medical City SM Fairview. Call them for her skeds. I have it in her prescription somewhere in my messy desk, but...

She also has other services on offer...Skin whitening and stretch marks treatments and stuff like that.

Napoli's Pizzeria

Uh, that's Allan. If you thought that was me, then you're probably more drunk than you think you are.

And if you ARE drunk, what best thing to have but tomato soup? We have been raving about Napoli's Pizzeria for the longest time but it's only now that I remember to post a couple of pictures from the joint. The best thing about Napoli is value for money. Large servings usually good for 2-3 for the usual price of one. For example, this tomato soup (which large-ish shrimps, buttered bread and sour cream) set us back Php125, but it was large enough for four small bowls or two large servings. And it's thick, creamy, warm and freshly made. None of that thin, watery nonesense other places serve. Imagine! Php125!!

And the tomato soup is really good. It's very comforting and malinamnam. It's also quite filling. I have to constantly resist the urge to douse all the other orders with the soup. Aglio Olio with tomato soup, pizza with tomato soup, coke with tomato soup. Kidding. I don't usually give this title to restaurant food, but this definitely falls under the I-can-eat-this-stuff-everyday category.



There's pizza, pasta, sandwiches and salads. But we usually just order soup and something else, because that's all we can finish, really. This is a "small" all-meat pizza. Good for the two of us. Actually, we had to get someone to bag the last 2-3 pieces because we can't eat any of it anymore. Other favorites are Aglio Olio, Puttanesca, Chef's salad and the uber yummy artichoke dip. If you want to really taste a lot of the food, come in large groups or maybe 5-6. That way you can order more and finish what you ordered!



Just as a blurb, this marching band of Nutcracker mascots were making rounds in SM North. SM North has this rather new strip of hangout places called, I think, Sky Dome? The usual display of SM's architectural taste...or lack thereof. But it's a place where you can find a spot to drink or hangout with friends.

Other than SM the Block (SM North) You can find Napoli Pizzeria in equally unappealing SM Fairview. The main branch is in Tomas Morato.

Afritada..Or is it Caldereta?

Can someone tell me what Afritada is? How different is it from Caldereta? Some meat stew made with tomato sauce, but Caldereta seems to be more associated with beef or chevon (goat meat) while Afritada is more chicken and pork. Is that the only difference?

Anyway, I love anything in tomato sauce, with tomato sauce or just tomato sauce or plain tomato. I love tomato soup (I'll feature the best tomato soup I've had so far in the next post) and tomato salads. I love it sliced for pizza topping or for braising meats. It's very versatile, and what more, it's very cheap.



And who can resist tomato with salted egg? With or without the tinapa, this combo has saved me from many nights of starvation, especially if I'm only cooking for one (Allan on the nightshift).

But let's go back to Afritada. Or Caldereta. This for me is something made only during fiestas or special occasions. I find that weird because chicken is pretty cheap and so are the other ingredients, but I guess the special-ness of the entire thing is reserved for special times only. So whenever I prepare this dish, I go all out, not only in the prep (whole block of cheese, carrot flowers) but with time. I use a slow cooker for this and cook it for 2-3 hours on low, just to allow the chicken to soften and release it's juices. By the time I serve it, the potatoes and the chicken will be tender, and the sauce thick and delicious. Never had complaints so far.

Afritada/Caldereta

Now remember, I always cook only for one or two, so this recipe will only serve that many people. Maybe even three, if you keep the portions smaller. But you can easily double the recipe.

500g chicken (I usually use the thigh/leg part with the bone in, breast is blah tasting)
~300mL tomato sauce
1 block of cheese, grated (Some use cheez whiz, I find that gross. Just sayin')
200g baby potatoes (You can cut them in half if they're bigger than bite size. Or you can cube regular sized potatoes)
1 carrot, cut into florets (you can cube them, haha)
1-2 cups peas (As much as possible, buy them fresh and shuck them yourself. Tastes MUCH better than frozen or, dear me, canned)
the garlic-onion sautee combo
2 bay leaves
cooking oil
salt/pepper

Let's do it!

1. Season chicken with salt and pepper and sear on high heat for two minutes. This part gives the chicken a nice caramelized crust and also preserves the juices within.
2. In the same pan, sautee garlic and onion, add the baby potatoes and carrots. Add the tomato sauce.
3. Put chicken back in and stir until chicken is covered in tomato sauce. Add bay leaves.
4. Transfer to slow cooker, cook on low for 2-3 hours. Alternatively, you can choose not to transfer to a slow cooker and just simmer it in the pan for about 45 minutes. After half the time (1.5 hours on slow cooker, around 20 minutes in stove top) add ALL the grated cheese. The sauce will lighten in color.
5. Season to taste. You may not need to add any more salt, but that's up to you. Leave to simmer for the remaining time.

While the chicken is cooking, let's sit down and let me tell you about my slow cooker. I bought it in a Japanese surplus shop for, like, Php500 and it can cook enough for ten people. It's really a great addition to my kitchen arsenal. I love those little surplus shops. Next I'm eyeing a nice electric griddle/pan/teppanyaki plate where I can grill stuff. Only around php400 I think. And it's teflon!

So, enjoy your chicken dinner. Don't forget the rice.

Strawberries Three Ways

Who can resist strawberries? They're luscious, juicy, sweet and tart all at the same time. It lends itself perfectly to chocolate and caramel and even bacon. Haha And what about that rich, red color? Only the best from Mother Nature.

I found some strawberries in the market the other day, for just php35 per container. They were not as huge as the php600/kilo ones flown in from California found in Rustan's, but the flavor is quite powerful. I bought a couple of these and hulled them, rinsed them and took a picture. Visually appealing, if you ask me.

But flash back to three years ago, this is the only way I get my strawberry fix. I know, lame.



Bottled jam and buttered toast. Tasty, but the jam does not do the fruit justice.

I think it's best if you enjoy these things au naturel or with the best raw honey you can find. It's not expensive to buy raw honey, it only takes some patience in finding vendors.



Rich, sensual but utterly healthy!