baby rambutan

alias British mechado, according to my cheeky children. although it’s really Irish, i think.

well anyway.
it’s the merry month of May, but we still have cold spells here and there. i like having the screens on and windows open, to vent the house and let in a refreshing burst of air and the whiff of hope that warmer days are here.
but it still gets quite cold. i’ve had to un-bury the woolies and sweat pants…husband’s even turned on the heat again at one point.
this stew and dumpling combination surely warmed us up. i had to get a six pack of Guinness for this! it adds such a depth of flavor to the stew. too bad my bad eyesight got the better of me: i mistakenly turned the oven up to 350 F instead of 325 so the sauce got thick too quickly. still, with the dumplings…something i’ve been meaning to make for the longest time! i disobeyed the recipe and used butter instead of vegetable shortening. i balked at the thought of using anything not quite natural for this down-to-earth and hefty stew. my kids, especially the boys, loved the dumplings so much.
recipe based on one from “Farmhouse Cooking,” edited by Liz Trigg, JGPress 2008.

preheat the oven to 325F. season 1 tbsp. flour w/ salt and pepper and sprinkle over cubed stewing beef (2 & 1/2 lbs.; i used bottom round rump roast), tossing to coat.
heat 2 tbsps. olive oil in a large casserole and lightly saute 2 large onions, sliced, and 1 lb, carrots, sliced. remove the vegetables with a slotted spoon and set aside.
using the same casserole, brown the meat well in batches. return the vegetables and add any leftover seasoned flour. add the 1/2 pint or 1 & 1/4 cups Guinness or dark beer, 3 bay leaves, 2 tsps. brown sugar, 3 fresh thyme sprigs, bring the liquid up to a boil, and then transfer to the heated oven.

after the meat has been cooking for 1 hour and 40 minutes, make the dumplings:
mix 1/2 cup chilled butter (Crisco in the original recipe) and 2 cups self-rising flour and cut with a pastry blender until mixture resembles fine cornmeal. add 2 tbsp. chopped fresh herbs (parsley, thyme, oregano, sage, etc.–i used fresh chives from the garden) and enough water(about 2/3 cup) to make a soft, sticky dough. form the dough into small balls with floured hands. add 1 tsp. cider vinegar to the meat and spoon the dumplings on top. cook for a further 20 minutes, until the dumplings have cooked through and serve hot.

made this the other night, and did not tell #1son, in college and immersed in papers and final exams…i would have never forgiven myself if i caused him to catch a train home and get sidetracked!
i just set a platterful aside for him…
honestly there’s nothing like salty bistek (marinated beef steaks) with fried potatoes and sweet caramelized onions over rice to make my mouth water and my stomach juices rumble. i don’t know if it is a Pinoy thing, in our genes? it’s making me hungry, the thought of this. right. now.

i tried to tone down the saltiness by adding mirin (sweet cooking wine) and sugar to the calamansi and light/dark soy sauces and it worked just a little. it might put off people who don’t like salty food or who don’t like to eat their entrees with rice…all the rest of us, dig in!
everyone knows how to make Pinoy bistek am i right? how-to here, just scroll down please

clockwise from bottom left:
plum sauce, Frank’s extra red hot sauce, fine chili garlic sauce, Jalapeno pepper sauce, pineapple chili sauce(the big splash)
i looked high and low, and i just couldn’t find the clipping from the Boston Globe that husband had cut out for this chicken meat ball recipe. i think he threw it out in disgust.
he was very unhappy with the result–after all, it takes quite a bit of doing to shop for and prepare all the ingredients for this appetizer.
honestly, i liked it! he’s just not into green curry paste. i put away quite a few, it was very good with rice, and i had fun with testing out the (bottled) dipping sauces that would go well with it.
luckily the recipe is still online.
the only thing i would leave out of this is the water chestnut, somehow it was just too jarring to my palate and the crunch didn’t seem to “belong”…maybe some grated carrots would have been better.

result of my dipping game: it was a tie between pineapple chili sauce and plum sauce. in other words, sweet and mildly spicy won over hot and peppery.

just in case the recipe goes offline…just please don’t tell husband i plan on making this again… (more…)

this is food that i could eat all day.

i was watching Daisy Cooks! over the weekend and i was growing faint from the combination of hunger and desire. years ago my Boricuan buddies Judith and Albert served me beans with potatoes. and there was Daisy Martinez, who gave the proper recipe. see, Albert’s version had Spam and salt pork, both of them really some of my most favorite flavors but sadly not very healthy at all.
Daisy’s version has ham cubes–a big improvement! i decided to go “whole hog” and cook the entire meal:

(i had it for lunch, over white rice)
pink beans with ham and potatoes,habichuelas rosadas con jamon y patatas

yellow rice with corn, arroz con maiz,

and the sweetly named
chuletas de abuela, Grandma’s pork chops.

this was our supper. forgot to garnish with cilantro. we. were. famished.

flavors that go so fantastically well together. i’m lucky that my grocery has a Spanish section and stocks alcaparrado and Spanish style tomato sauce and bitter orange marinade, but in a pinch it wouldn’t be hard to substitute hard-to-find ingredients.

some advance planning is required, as far as the pork chops are concerned: they need long marinating for maximum flavor. for the yellow rice, fresh corn on the cob is ideal but you can use frozen. that’s what i love about Daisy’s recipes–building up the complex layers of flavors can be easy if you have to take shortcuts, that is, using bottled sofrito and recaito and dry rub or marinade. recipes here…

i am so suffering from hypothermia right now! i can’t seem to shake off the sleepies. i often find myself nodding off at every turn. durn it i even feel so drowsy while swimming laps at the Y, it might be the first drowning-while-sleeping emergency in my town!

and the cold times call for soul-warming stews, like niku jyaga, “mother’s specialty” a quick and easy sake-soy-mirin flavored beef stew from Emi Kazuko’s “Japanese Cooking.”
i substituted edamame soy beans for the peas…my kids are just so suspicious of anything pea.

they come frozen in bags at the Asian grocery. i chose those still in pods, figuring, quite deludedly i’m sure, that they have less of the pesticides and toxins that might have soaked through from the growing and the processing.

i blanched them briefly in boiling water and then when cool enough to the touch, i podded them.

trouble was, everytime i turned around, the little pile got smaller. a ha! my youngest child was pilfering them!

you know, these edamame beans, you don’t even have to know that they’re good for you, they’re just so gosh-darn delicious you just gotta scarf them down. (hey why am i starting to sound like that VP candidate who doesn’t believe in science???)

thinly sliced beef rump bottom round roast, simmered with onions, carrots and potatoes in a soy-sake-mirin flavored broth. so wonderful topped over steamed short-grain rice with the flavorful gravy drizzled on top.

sometimes the right equipment makes all the difference. that’s why i’ve been searching so long for this…special mortar and pestle from Bali, as spotted at the rambling gypsy’s,
because of my love for this.
but barring an expedition to Java and beyond, there’s no chance in !!!! of finding a set.

i was using a mini food processor but not quite achieving that smooth paste consistency, and my little mortar couldn’t accommodate more than a half cup or so of ingredients at a time.
then i found this big white mouthed and highly-walled mortar and pestle by Kuchenhopf.

so it’s playtime!
there’s a lot of pounding and grinding going on lately at the baby rambutan nest. for tonight’s appetizer, i made Vietnamese pork skewers, marinated in a rich dark mixture of fish sauce, dark soy, sugar, shallots, garlic and lemongrass, grilled under the broiler and served with the best instant dip i’ve ever had the pleasure of discovering: bumbu sate mix from Indonesia. just slice the block thinly and pour boiling hot water and you get the whiff of peanuts, groundnuts, coconut milk and spices. the flavors together are just so right…
Vietnamese pork skewers with Indonesian bumbu sate

up to that point i was cooking beef tongue from a cook book.
then this summer when i went to LA with my kids to celebrate my dad’s 73rd birthday, and my ma threw him a sort of big giving thanks kind of party for his friends and family in the area…she asked me to help with some of the cooking and i happily obliged.

especially since i got to know the secret behind her beef tongue.
basically it is a matter of peeling the tongue, marinating, preferably overnight, in soy sauce, calamansi (lemon only as a last resort), garlic, and fresh pepper; browning to sear the flesh and prevent over drying; sauteeing in onions and mushrooms, with some of the broth from the peeling in pressure cooker part up to the point of almost tenderness;
browning butter and flour into a medium dark roux; browning the thinly cut slices of tongue in the roux, then putting back into the reduced and somewhat thickened broth with a bit of sherry or Madeira if necessary.

arrange thinly sliced tongue into a platter and pour some of the mushroom-roux-sherry sauce over the top…

at first, with all the steps necessary for this dish i was tempted to skip the part about the roux but remembering how my ma’s dish turned out i just had to complete all the steps to the last detail. i only skipped the serve w/ mashed potato part, i think my kids have had a potato overload by now…

i can’t believe i haven’t recorded the recipe for stuffed eggplant (tortang talong), my favorite cozy comfort food of all.

the men in my family vetted their wives by testing their cooking prowess in the department of favorite dish cooked by my mother category.
for my #1brother i think it was bulalo or bone marrow boiled dinner. wife didn’t cook, so i think her employing the right cook was the criterion.
#2 brother loved “lamang buche“, my mom’s dish of ground meat with cubed potatoes, olives and raisins. his wife had to seek lessons from mother in law to perfect it.
my dad sorely tested my mom whenever she cooked adobong pusit (squid in vinegar stew), constantly returning the bowl to the kitchen, “cook it again!” i think my mom deserves a halo for persevering and enduring.
if i were a man (which in childhood i often wished i were, in moments of seething rage when i noticed the brothers getting all the attention) i would have used the tortang talong as my dish.
torta in Spanish means cake but in my paternal grandmother’s repertoire, torta refers to a dish cooked in beaten egg. others probably call this dish rellenong talong, which translates more correctly into stuffed, but i’m using our family’s name for it.

hehe i think it’s probably very telling that i married a non-Pinoy guy….

tortang talong eggplant omelette???:
just broil eggplants, preferably the Japanese or Asian Variety which is smaller and thinner than the Italian kind.
lightly broil with olive oil and make a few slashes across. broil or grill until charred and soft.
let cool.
meanwhile saute garlic, onions or shallots, tomatoes, and ground pork (or other ground meat, like beef, turkey or chicken). season with salt and pepper. you can also add fresh or dried thyme, oregano, or basil, this recipe is quite flexible.
let the meat mixture cool.
beat the eggs.

heat up a shallow nonstick skillet with vegetable oil. open up the eggplant, taking care to keep the skin flat and attached to the stem; alternatively, if you don’t want the skin, scrape off the inner part and mix with ground pork and beaten egg and fry like an omelette. i like the skin on, so i set the whole, cut-up, opened-
up eggplant on the skillet, arrange the ground meat, and pour the beaten eggs on top. carefully spoon back the eggs on top of the meat, then flip, using two spatulas, and cook the other side until set.

serve with the sawsawan of chili, garlic, vinegar; banana or tomato catsup work well too.

we have a tiny little patch of a vegetable garden outside, with a couple of hopeful tomato big boys, a couple of long peppers, and our annually-enhanced, pocket-handkerchief-size herb garden.

#2 son has been taking good care of them and we’ve just harvested two peppers. as in two pieces.
i automatically thought of this recipe from Ken Hom’s The Taste of China (where it is billed as “Pickled Chilies with Pork”), something easy to make, not to mention quick, yet quite substantial in flavor, not too spicy but bold enough in flavor to make you want to eat bite after bite.

it made me remember Jeff Smith, the Frugal Gourmet, remember him? he used to have a cooking show on PBS. although he often was quite annoying with his squeaky talkativeness i did appreciate his spotlighting Chinese and Southeast Asian cuisine. it was from him i learned about the holy triumvirate of flavors that distinguish Chinese cooking: garlic, ginger, rice wine.

this dish just truly exemplifies those flavors. and we got to eat our home-grown produce!
#2 son was very proud!

for the marinade:
1/2 pound lean boneless pork
2 tsps. light soy sauce
1 tsp. dark soy sauce
1 tsp. rice wine or dry sherry
1 tsp. sesame oil
1/2 tsp. cornstarch

for the stir-fry:
4 ozs. mild red or green chilies(we used both-augmented by store-bought cubanelle and cowhorn peppers)
6 scallions
1 & 1/2 tbsps. peanut oil
1 tbsp. finely minced garlic
2 tsps. finely chopped peeled fresh ginger
1 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp. salt

for the sauce:
2 tsps. light soy sauce
2 tsps. rice wine
2 tsps. white rice vinegar
1 tsp. sugar

cut the pork into thin slices, about 1/8 inch by 3 inches long. in a medium-sized bowl, combine the pork with the marinade ingredients. set aside.

cut the chilies in half and remove the seeds and slice them into thin shreds. with the flat of the knife or cleaver, crush the scallions and shred them.

heat a wok or large skillet until it is hot. add the oil, then the garlic, ginger, chili flakes, and salt and stir-fry for 10 seconds. then add the pork and continue to stir-fry for 1 minute. now add the chilies and scallions, stir-fry for 1 minute, and add the sauce ingredients.

continue to stir-fry for 2 minutes or until all the liquid has evaporated. serve at once.

also starring, in our garden:

hopeful bigboy tomatoes

fragrant sampaguita pot from sis-in-law#2

sisig is a popular Filipino “pulutan” or appetizer or cocktail accompaniment of chopped up roast pig parts, especially the pork cheeks or jowls, the brain, and the ears, with an internal organ or two (liver especially). the whole mixture is then sizzled on a hot plate then served with lime juice and hot pepper sauce.

the skin on the cheeks, that part that is called the “maskara” (mask) and is really the entire face, just roasts up really impossibly crisp and tender. the ears lend crunch, the brains and livers, the mush.

all together, you must eat it to believe it.

me want it! even though it is so bad.

this is what husband almost did, after i begged him to please please please go up to the Butcher’s counter of the Chinese grocery, and ask for a fresh pig’s head:

once in a while they do sell cooked pig’s head but it’s flavored, i am guessing with five-spice powder and soy, and somehow it does not compute with the sisig formula.

my neighbors brought me some on our first barbecue together, and that is how i got inspired to make sisig with other pig parts, since my husband who had vowed to love and to cherish, to have and to hold… refused to procure me a pig’s head.
they also suggested the sizzling plate.

my sisig-sisigan, made with deboned boiled pork leg and hocks, ears, chicken livers, roasted over charcoal, chopped up, then poured into a hot plate, with red onions and hot red chili peppers (i used my fajita pan), then broiled under the toaster oven heating element, and THEN drizzled with lime juice:

i was a finalist in one of the contests of the “does my blog look good in this?” four years ago when i started out babyrambutan.blogspot.com.
i did not win.
i suspect it was because i described it as a “weird salad.”