CRAB RANGOON

I am not a food snob. I am as much a fan of American Chinese cuisine as I am of authentic Chinese cuisine. I bear no shame in liking the numerous sweet and sour like concoctions, love the just sweet and a bit savoury dishes and most of all the various wonton crisps all sorts. Hands down, my favourite is crab Rangoon. I love dumplings but this dumpling is one I'm very fond of. 

PANCIT PALABOK

When one speaks with flowery words, beating around the bush rather than zeroing in on the point of conversation, one is said to speak with too much "palabok". This Filipino term is also the name of a dish with so many accoutrements: the pancit palabok. The dish, unlike the saying, is outright delicious at the first mouthful.

HONEY WALNUT SHRIMPS

Chinese food differs from country to country. The Chinese food on one's plate may differ greatly from another one's on the other side of the globe. In fact, the food that we know as Chinese food is different from the traditional food in China.

EASY GARLIC PAPRIKA PRAWNS

Prawns are for suckers. Although the creamy flesh is very tasty, most of the rich flavour has to be sucked out of the head and shell. This recipe makes the most out of the best part of the prawns.

Prawns have a lot of God given taste. You don't have to do much to make it delicious. The worst thing that can be done is to do too much to it. Although I like them simply boiled or steamed, I am quite partial to fried prawns.

LEMON AND HERB CRAB CAKES

I am happy to see tubs of good quality crab meat at the supermarkets. In the pre-convenience food days, crabmeat came from actual crabs which had to be cooked first before painstakingly picking the meat from the crevices of the crab. It was a whole lot of work and the yield is not that much. I think it is cheaper to buy crab meat than fresh crabs.

CAJUN JAMBALAYA

 

As a Filipino, I thoroughly connect to the taste of Jambalaya. Apart from the herbs and spices, it could have been a Filipino dish. We like all-in-one rice dishes like this because all the ingredients contribute to making the rice very flavourful.

INIHAW NA BANGUS (GRILLED MILKFISH)

Filipinos are nationalistic people; we have a "national" everything. Bangus or milk fish is our national fish. Although it is full of fine bones and is fiddly to eat, we just love it.

It is the height of summer in the Philippines around this time of the year. Although it is terribly hot, it is also incredibly fun. It is the time for fiestas and picnics. 

Going on a picnic is a whole day outing, usually with family or friends. The more rustic the setting, the better. The highlight is always the sumptous lunch. Everyone brings out their food and lines them up on banana leaves lining the table. Rice is always the main feature of a Filipino picnic. Everything else revolves around it. 

There would almost always be charcoal grilling involved. Pork, chicken and fish are usually on the menu. If bangus is grilled, it is always stuffed with onions and tomatoes. Bangus has a fatty belly but the flesh is very lean. Stuffing it gives it moisture and of course, more flavour. In a more local setting, It is usually wrapped in just banana leaves and grilled until the leaves char and fall off.

I like my bangus done just right, moist and with a good amount of filling. It isn't easy to do all these at the same time. Sometimes the fish is overcooked and dry by the time the stuffing is cooked. My solution to that is to pre-cook the stuffing before using. That also jumpstarts the cooking process as the filling is already hot.

Food like this are major rice magnets; they are so appetizing and so good with rice that you tend to eat a lot of it. It would have been a lot nicer to eat this if there were bamboo trees swaying and warm breezes blowing, and if it's not too much to ask, a gurgling brook. 

Ingredients:

1 bangus (this can be substituted with sea bass)
juice of 1/2 lime or 2 calamansi
2 tsps. light soy sauce
4 tsps. olive oil
ground black pepper
1/2 c. chopped tomatoes
1/3 c. chopped red onions
1 clove garlic, crushed
1/2 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. fish sauce

Instructions:


Season the bangus with the lime or calamansi, light soy sauce, 2 tsps. of olive oil and a pinch of black pepper.

Mix the tomatoes, onions, garlic, sugar, a pinch of black pepper, 2 tsps. live oil and the fish sauce. Microwave on full power for 1 1/2 minutes.

Drain the excess liquid then use to fill the bangus.






Wrap in a piece of banana leaf, then in foil. Grill for 10 minutes on each side. Remove the foil, leaving the banana leaf on, and grill for 5 more minutes on each side.

For the dipping sauce:

1/4 c. vinegar
1/2 red onion
1/2 tsp. sea salt
1 tsp. sugar
chilli


Mix all of the ingredients together and serve as a dipping sauce for the bangus.

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Thanks for dropping by. It would be nice if we could meet up on FACEBOOK or TWITTER. 

PRAWN WONTON AND BEEF NOODLE SOUP

Wanting to eat noodles is a basic and natural yearning for Asian people. The first mouthful makes the first and lasting impression. The soup, the noodles and the toppings all have to taste good. It is quite a tall order but is not that difficult to fill. Having said that, the best noodle soup in town still eludes me and I have to make mine at home. 

SQUID PUFFS

The smell of seafood is the aroma of umami. It is a bit off putting for some but an allure for others. Growing up in Asia, the smell is very familiar, interesting and appetizing.

It is the smell of home that I miss as I can't cook fried seafood as often as I like. Yet, on special days I allow myself to enjoy a fry up.

LUMPIANG SARIWA (FRESH SPRING ROLLS)

Of all the Filipino vegetable dishes, lumpia is probably the most popular one. The word lumpia simply means spring rolls. This particular one is called lumpiang sariwa which literally means fresh spring roll but refers to unfried spring rolls. The fried variety is called lumpiang prito, prito meaning fried. Lumpiang hubad (meaning naked spring roll) is the filling eaten without the wrapper.

PAN FRIED SEA BASS WITH PUTTANESCA SAUCE

We abstain from eating meat on the Fridays of Lent. Abstinence, like fasting is supposed to be an act of sacrifice. 

Not meaning to defeat the purpose, I always line up a few meatless dishes to cook in the holy week. 

BAKED SESAME PRAWNS ON TOAST

Do you ever wonder what's in the prawns on toasts in restaurants? It is not a case of 'duh'. There must be something there that made the sesame seeds stick to the bread but I'm not quite sure that it's prawns. One time my son actually asked the waiter, "What's in this?" to which the perfunctory reply was "Chicken". With the way the conversation went, I should have ended both sentences with exclamation marks. So if there was chicken where the prawns should have been, what's in the chicken?

SHANTUNG STYLE PRAWNS

I love this dish but never knew its origins. This dish allegedly hails from Northern China. I say allegedly because a lot of Chinese recipes have gone through so much alterations that they are just a shadow of what they originally were. Also, there is a non-traditional Chinese ingredient here: ketchup. Although ketchup is much used in Chinese cooking today, it does not hail at all from ancient China. The souring agent used then was vinegar. 

THAI STYLE PINEAPPLE FRIED RICE

It is time to prepare for the Chinese New Year and I want to use up the leftovers from the Christmas past. Frozen peas, frozen corn, frozen ham, frozen prawns spell fried rice. I would have made yang chow fried rice but we happened to have a pineapple so I decided to make pineapple fried rice for a change.

FRIED TAKOYAKI BALLS

My taste buds are honed to love eastern food. I usually cook Asian food at home so my children are accustomed to that taste, too. 

One of the cuisines that has remained unexplored is Japanese cuisine. We love Japanese food but we usually have to eat it in restaurants. The only reason for that is Japanese ingredients are not readily available in our area. Sadly, there is only a small selection in our Oriental supermarket so I can only make a few basic recipes. I also have to forego of ingredients that I cannot use again or those that are too expensive.

CAMARON RELLENADO (STUFFED PRAWNS)

As in the west, our celebrations on our side of the globe command cooking of stuffed dishes. Having a lot of ingredients make dishes special. 

Camaron rellenado simply means stuffed prawns. It is actually a Chinese dish but has a Spanish name because, in the olden days, restaurant menus in the Philippines were written in Spanish. 

There are a lot of stuffed dishes like these in Chinese cuisine. It is basically the same mixture used in dumplings but wrapped around or used as filling. There is one ingredient that make it tasty and have a firm texture. It is an ingredient that I don't use because, sorry to say, it is bad for your health. That ingredient is chopped pork fat. You can add that to this dish if you wish but I skipped that part.

This dish is simple and only has a few ingredients. Although headless prawns are usually used, I have kept the heads intact. I think it looks better and I also happen to like prawn heads, especially when fried. If you like crab roe, then the inside of the prawn's head could also be a treat for you. What comes after is the best part. The creamy prawn flesh is encased in a seasoned pork mixture that brings on a distinct flavour of celebrations. I don't think anyone will walk away unhappy after eating this.

Ingredients:

250 gms. of minced pork
2 dried Chinese mushrooms, softened in boiling water and chopped
1 tbsp. sherry
2 tbsps. light soy sauce
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. sugar
1 egg, separated
1/2 tsp. sesame oil
1 clove of garlic, crushed
2 tbsps. chopped spring onions
2/3 c. corn flour (corn starch)
6 large shell-on prawns

Method:

Put the minced pork and chopped mushrooms in a mixing bowl. Add in the sherry, soy sauce, salt, sugar, egg yolk, sesame oil, garlic, spring onions, and 1 tbsp. of corn flour. Mix very well and divide into 6 portions. Set aside.

Cut off the antenna and legs of the prawn. There is also a very sharp, saw-like part on top of the prawn's head that you'll need to cut off.

Peel the body of the prawns but leave the head and tail intact.

Cut 3-4 slits in the inner curve of the prawns. This will keep them from curling as they cook.

Dredge the prawns lightly in corn flour.

Wrap the prawns body in a portion of the meat mixture.

Dust again with corn flour and dip in the egg white. Give them a final dusting of the corn flour.

Heat up a pan with enough cooking oil for shallow frying.

Fry the prawns on medium heat, two at a time until crisp and cooked through (about 5 minutes). Drain on kitchen paper. Serve hot with sweet chilli sauce or sweet and sour sauce (recipe here).

All rights reserved ©Adora's Box Copyright 2011. 

Please support Adora's Box by making your Amazon.com and mymemories.com (use the code STMMMS55174) purchases from this site. Click on their respective banners to proceed to their websites. It will not cost you a single cent more but will help sustain this blog. Thank you.


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Thanks for dropping by. It would be nice if we could meet up on FACEBOOK or TWITTER. 

TOFU PUFFS ON MIXED VEGETABLE STIR FRY

 Some people love tofu, some absolutely hate it. I belong to the tofu loving camp. What's not to like? Some don't like it's simple taste and brand it as bland. It is this simple fresh taste that makes it desirable and so versatile. It can blend in well with most dishes to add bulk, texture and nutrients.

WU GOK (TARO CROQUETTES)

 I know that I've said that making dim sum is best left to the experts. I have to say it again.

I just can't help but tinker with recipes that intrigue. These wu gok or taro croquettes, for example, I wonder how they burst into these flaky, almost feather-like crumbs. 

CHICKEN AND PRAWN PAD THAI

Pad Thai is the perfect epitome of Thai cooking. It is sweet, sour, salty and spicy. It is so delicious and has become ever popular and readily available in most places, even in the ready meals section of the supermarket. Now this is when things go wrong. If food becomes so popular, it becomes commercial and starts to veer away from the essential flavours that it is supposed to have. This is the reason why I'd rather cook pad Thai myself even if I know that I'll never be able to do it as well as the Thais do. At least I know that the end result will be to my liking.

SINGAPORE STYLE CHILLI CRABS

I was in Singapore recently, very, very briefly_ as in on a stopover en route to Manila. Having five hours to spare, I was hoping that my daughter and I could join the free two hour city tour. Unfortunately, we landed there in the early hours and the first available tour started at 9 a.m. and would finish 10 minutes before we were due to board our connecting flight. So that was that, it was just the airport we got to see.