baby rambutan

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.”

for our cozy little 4th of July family picnic (”staycation”) the kids asked for homemade cheeseburger.

i’ve been baking sandwich bread with my Dak bread machine, but still buying bulkie or kaiser rolls from the supermarket. i think they’re too soft and often times get downright soggy. i wanted hefty, dense… yet buttery and tasty, buns to defy the gravity and stand up to all the fixings we wished to pile on.

the store we’ve nicknamed “Whole Paycheck” sells designer brioche buns for almost $5 for four– count ‘em, 4!– measly buns.

it was time to take matters into my own hands.

i searched for and found “Moomie’s Burger Buns,” from King Arthur Flour, the recipe that everyone was raving about. i made the dough er my Dak made the dough, on manual setting, and i shaped it into 8 luxurious dough balls, and let them rise into puffy glory.

brushed with egg wash and baked on a lightly greased cookie sheet for about 12 minutes. we split and grilled them before stacking up our fixings.

i think we’re getting spoiled!

i was looking for something new. again.
the kids are on what husband calls a “short rotation menu” wherein they have a few favorite dishes, and of course we tend to cook for them those that they will ALL eat.

but i need new recipes like i need fresh air.

this one is a very tasty and outrageously easy recipe, yet it looks like you spent all day preparing it.
thick pork chops browned and then braised in a creamy mustardy sauce and sprinkled with crispy bacon bits and parsley…
anyone want the recipe?

recipe from Anne Willan, Perfect French Country Cooking, DK Publishing, Inc. here it is…. (more…)

more from the pork belly annals:

i’ve never had any particular preference for my rice. as long as it’s jasmine (”milagrosa”) .
there’s just something about the scent of it newly cooked and gently steaming on low to give you an appetite.
i have already fine-tuned (i dare not say ‘perfected’ because i still burn a pot occasionally) my cooking technique (no rice cooker, Lola’s fingertip water measuring method, enameled cast-iron teeny weeny Le Creuset pot just enough for the family).

a couple of weeks ago we were almost running on empty, and i saw that the price tag had jumped from $13.50 to $22 for a 20-lb bag. i never thought i’d get sticker shock from a sack of rice!

it was very alarming.

for the truth is that my body is programmed to function well only with the ingestion of steamed rice at least twice a day.

i tried to wean myself off the milagrosa, as a hedge against the escalating prices, by preparing American grown rice, and even tried the various other varieties (red, brown, wild, black, sticky). i baked bread almost daily too, to give my kids an alternative.

but nothing compares 2 U, miracle rice.

and here’s why.

“hong chrauk,” pork simmered with peanuts and dried lily buds, a dish from “The Elephant Walk” a famous Cambodian-French-American restaurant with a branch each in Waltham and Cambridge. it’s incredible to find that pork belly recipes with a sweetish-sourish-hottish sauce unites so many different cultures. this is just subtly different from our humba or estofado or paksiw na pata dishes.

and you just gotta have jasmine rice with it.

bigla kasi akong ginutom at ang pinanggigilan ko ay adobong baboy, liempo sa katunayan…

yung talagang tabain at may balat pang mangangatngat? paraisong parisukat? bawal na pag-ibig ko?
paano na lang ang buhay, kung bawal itong pagkasarap sarap na barbeque at adobo at sinigang at….haaaaay.

hala bilis inom ng gamot na pangpababa ng cholesterol….

this is my entry for Litratong Pinoy #3…a square/a cube of fatty pork belly, which i will put into my adobo pot along with some chicken thighs.

the young man. #1son, requested Beef Wellington for his birthday, April 14. his 19th birthday!

Gordon Ramsay’s recipe from bbcGoodFood.com, calls for wrapping the seared beef tenderloin in slices of prosciutto instead of crepes. i didn’t feel like adding on more carbs to the pastry, i added more fat instead.
complete recipe here.

and he requested Schwarzwalder torte but i didn’t have enough time nor nuts (almonds, hazelnuts) so instead i bought what i thought would be a close approximation, a hazelnut orange torte from the Whole Foods bake “shoppe”–
a gamble i lost. the “sales associate,” i discovered when i got home, had dented the top of the ganache frosting in a most unsightly place. uggh. i thought a Whole Foods item was bound to be good. it tasted really bland and nothing like hazelnuts at all… and so i ended up quickly baking a ten-inch double chocolate layer cake with a rich ganache frosting.

and everything turned out okay naman….anything to make the birthday boy happy on his 19th celebration! wow, he’s 19….

this is a dish that i’ve been longing to replicate, since way back when.

somehow it has been embedded in my consciousness/awareness.
i must have seen its preparation on a Philippine TV cooking show, or my Ma might have had a little booklet from the premium butter brand at the time, Anchor. i don’t remember. whatever it was, it stuck in my brain.
chicken Kiev is not really of Russian descent according to the Wiki, but was probably so christened due to a Russian empress’ love of French cuisine. the empress in turn influenced her loyal subjects, and it is theorized that it was named Kiev by New York City cooks trying to please Russian emigres who demanded it on their menus.

a chicken paillard with a hidden “treasure”, breaded, fried, sliced, and then revealing, no, oozing its rich golden butter secret.

i cobbled together a recipe from quite a few that i searched for online and from cookbooks and magazines.

most recipes call for chicken breasts, which, if you’ve been at all plowing through my wordy posts, you will have
noticed, i don’t care for. i like skinless boneless thighs.

first step is to make a very well chilled herb butter.
soften butter until it succumbs easily to a spatula, then add chopped herbs like parsley, chives, thyme, your choice!, form into a log, wrap tightly in plastic, chill until ready;
pound each chicken thigh until very thin fillet, between two sheets of cling film, see below; set a baton in the middle of it, then enfold and wrap tightly, secured together with toothpicks (the only time i thought i should have gone with those breasts as the thighs flattened out into odd irregular shapes), dipped in turn in a bowl each of seasoned flour, beaten eggs thinned down with milk, then rolled in bread crumbs (Japanese panko will work too).

if you end up, like i did, with a tortured looking piece of meat, all riddled with bamboo skewers, just use your hands or two spoons to completely cover the chicken rolls with the respective coatings.

pan fry in a combination of mostly olive oil and a bit of butter, about a depth of one inch, over medium-high heat, until brown, around 4 minutes per side.

let rest a minute or two before slicing and serving. (i loved mine dipped in Heinz chili sauce and Franks Red Hot original!)

Daddy’s been in the kitchen, and he has lately whipped up some tasty meaty treats:
a delectable beef Stroganoff

and a meatloaf to convert the non-meatloaf-eater in the family (er, that would be me! yeah, it’s that good, and moist, and tasty).

recipes upon request!

meat loaf recipe:
1 &1/2 pounds ground chuck
1 medium onion minced
2 eggs
1 15 ounce can stewed tomatoes
2 slices of firm white bread, torn into pieces
1/4 tsp. ground black pepper
2 tsp. salt
1 & 1/2 tsp. chili powder
1 & 1/2 tsp. mustard powder
1/2 tsp. granulated garlic
4 slices bacon

preheat oven to 350F. put the ground chuck in a roomy bowl. add the onion, eggs, and tomatoes, and mix well. it is easiest to mix meatloaf with your hands. add the bread bits, pepper, salt, chili powder, mustard powder, and garlic and mix thoroughly. put the meat mixture in a loaf pan and pat it to fill the pan evenly. lay the strips of uncooked bacon over the top of the meatloaf, tucking the ends under. place the loaf pan on a cookie sheet and bake for 1 & 1/2 hours. every 30 minutes, check the meatloaf and remove any excess fat with a turkey baster.

source: forgotten! it was cut out from a magazine years ago…

*note: the meat loaf shrinks quite a bit as the beef fat cooks out.

don’t judge a book by its cover
beauty is in the eye of the beholder
and there’s more to this casserole than meets the eye! hmph!

this is something i crave, when the skies are grey and it’s nippy and chilly outside.
my best friend from childhood’s nanay used to serve this to us when i (or more of a barkada’s worth of a bunch of girls) would show up at their house, hungry and tired from school.
she’d ask, would you like to stay for dinner? and all my senses would wake up and get sharper. i lived just across the street, just to cross the dividing barrier with the tall acacia trees in between was no more than a hop and a skip away–yet an invitation to dinner at their house was such a thrilling, clapclapclap kind of a treat for me.
i’d stay for dinner and sometimes for breakfast too if it was an impromptu sleepover!.
this is my tribute to Nanay N., the legendary cook of my childhood days. she used to make her own patis fish sauce! in Quezon City, in their kitchens…it was an ooh-and-ahhh moment when she let me have a taste.

pork chops with pork and beans casserole

4 thin pork chops, seasoned with salt and pepper
2 large cans of pork and beans
worcestershire sauce
maggi or Knorr seasoning sauce
Dijon mustard
thinly sliced onions

preheat oven to 375F.

this is a maskipaps, maski papano, extemporaneous kind of recipe: no measurements, just keep tasting until you feel it’s perfect. mix the pork and beans, sauces, and mustard together in a small bowl.
arrange the pork on the glass baking dish and pour the pork and beans over. top with thinly sliced white onions. bake with aluminum foil tightly sealed over the top for about 30 minutes until pork is almost tender. remove the foil cover then bake for about 20 minutes more or until pork is very tender and onions have browned.

THEY’RE BAAAACK!!!!

i have to tell you about this!
i wanted to cook a Basque-style tongue from Saveur magazine,(battered and fried tongue in a pureed dried-pepper sauce–i still have to tweak this recipe!)

and have found that the best way to skin a tongue is to pressure-cooker it.
cooking time varies from tongue to tongue though. just check on the tenderness by following manufacturer’s instructions in opening the pressure cooker lid. seal it shut again and cook some more if not yet tender.

bring the tongue to a boil with salt then throw out this water.
refresh with cold clean water then add your seasonings (i used sea salt, freshly ground black pepper, thyme and bay leaves). bring back up to a rolling boil then seal the lid shut.
cook for about 25 minutes for a 2 & 1/2 pound size tongue (counting time starts when the steam starts to be released).
following instructions for your pressure cooker on opening the lid, remove tongue from the broth and peel while hot. it should come off in just about one piece. proceed with the recipe, or slice and serve as is ( it’s good as a “cold-cut” sandwich meat).