Accidental Nasi Goreng

 

Late night dinner cravings and leftovers from the dinner table and fridge are actually two interesting things for me. It's actually a party waiting to happen. I have started eating brown rice, I think two months ago or so for health and fitness reasons. And to be completely honest, its not as appetizing as the white rice that we all love. So I learned to switch it up or I felt I needed to switch it up for my sanity's sake.

 

Other than spicy food, I also love fried rice.  If you mix those two together, you get spicy fried rice? Close. I got Nasi Goreng. It became an instant hit for me when we went to Jakarta last year. I wouldn't have imagined that I will be cooking this here. Well, it was an accident, and I didn't know that this is going to be the outcome of all these leftover food being cooked together, until I had my first bite. It was like a light bulb went up in my head. I swear I could've shouted Eureka! Hahaha

 

Enough of the mumblings.. This is how the accidental nasi goreng happened....

 

Coming home from the gym made me all hungry and seeing that we all have a lot of leftover food on the table and fridge, I decided to whip something up.

 

Nasi Goreng

 

Ingredients:

leftover chicken breast 

leftover tilapia

leftover spicy bagoong (shrimp paste)

leftover chili garlic oil

leftover brown rice.

bit of oil

chili powder

garlic, chopped

onion, chopped

1 egg

 

Just cook everything as you would fried rice. I want my Nasi Goreng a bit on the "toasted" side, so I made sure, it stuck a little to the pan.

 

They had bangus steaks that night, that's my viand, and I chopped up half a cucumber, tossed it in vinegar, sugar, salt and pinch of chili pepper for a side dish.

 

I have learn to love the unexpected, and delight on the joys and pains that come with it.

Spicy Tuna and Sausage on Whole Wheat Fusili

 

I live for everything spicy and really tasty. I can eat something spicy any time of the day and still crave for it, the next time. That's how I was raised, having a Bicolana mother and a Bisaya father who learned how to a whole green chili as if it's fried chicken. This is nothing new to me, and so this is how I want my food, hot and spicy.

 

 

It was another lunch quality time with Matt that I needed to prepare for. Being me, and not having all the time in the world for grocery shopping, I always live off of what we have available in our pantry and fridge at home. So for this "lunch QT", I found my whole wheat pasta, leftover spicy Hungarian sausage that I got from Wielan and my ever reliable can of spicy tuna in oil. And so the cooking begins. By the way, I don't measure my ingredients, that's why I'm a better cook than a baker.

 

 

 

 

Everytime I cook, I am in a completely different zone. A good one at that. It's like work, but on a much different level. The different tasks involved just to get one dish out, is actually very tiring. The prep portion I learned to love. I hated it initially, because it was tiring. The cleaning up part, I am also in the process of learning to love. But overall, cooking has been very therapeutic, like when I had a phase that cleaning the toilet calms my nerves and helps put things in perspective. This now, helps me do that, well aside from other things like, massages, hugs.. Haha!

 

I am no pro, and just like in running, I don't claim to know everything or claim to be really good at it. I am an enthusiast and a foodie, that's why I love to cook.

 

Spicy Tuna and Sausage on Whole Wheat Fusili

 

Ingredients:

1 can spicy tuna in oil

2 pcs spicy Hungarian sausage, cut into pieces

whole wheat fusili pasta, cooked according to package directions

olive oil

garlic, chopped

onions, chopped

green chili, chopped

salt and white pepper to taste

my homemade chili garlic oil (as a condiment/topping)

 

Sauteed the sausage first to let the oil out, then throw in the garlic, onions and chili. Sautee till the latter ingredients are cooked. Add in a bit of olive oil, then the drained tuna flakes. Lastly, add in the cooked pasta and mix well so that every bit is coated with the oil. Serve hot and with the chili garlic oil to add more zing. Make sure to have lots of water with you to drink, if it gets too spicy. :p

 

 

 

Homemade Chili Garlic Oil - A Kitchen Experiment

 

 

    

 

This post has been in my drafts for a month I think. That's what I do now. Procrastinate a lot. Though I must say, that I do that a lot in my free time. Yes, the last statement didn't make any sense.

 

When I made this, I was actually cooking lunch for me and Matt to share. The inspiration came from the chili garlic condiment from Nomnomnom when we ate there for dinner. Matt had a cream-based pasta with baked salmon and it was served with this chili garlic sauce or oil as a condiment. Pretty interesting. And it actually complimented the dish well.

 

And because I think I had a lot of time that morning and I was pretty keen on replicating it, because it tasted so good, I started chopping the garlic, red and green chilis and started cooking this, alongside my pasta dish (which I will also post as a next entry).

 

Word of warning, the chilis are very dangerous and spicy, be careful in handling them as it may get to your eyes or wherever in your body that you may not like to be.

 

Homemade Chili Garlic Sauce/Oil

 

Ingredients:

red and green chilis (as much as you like)

garlic (as much or as little you want)

chili powder

oil

 

Just sautee everything in low to medium heat in a pan, until everything is cooked down. I think you can let this sit for a few days to let the garlic and chilis soften and it can be made into a paste or something like that.

 

Apologies for the poor quality of photos, I only use my iPad's camera for my food postings.

 

If you like your chili garlic or spicy stuff, you may want to try making your own spicy condiment to top any food you like. :)

 

Crostini

This is a late post (super). This is the first time that I have made crostinis. The inspiration has struck me several times since one of my favorite starters from Cibo is Crostini with the Chicken Liver Pate. So I made my own. At first I was intimidated, but after researching how it is done, it was, well quite easy. :)

Ingredients:
old baguette
olive oil

Directions:
1. Slice the bread into crostini sizes.
2. Brush the bread with olive oil.
3. Bake in a 250 degree oven for 10-15 minutes.

Just make sure you watch the crostinis closely while baking, especially when you have sliced it thinly as it might burn.

This is great as a snack in place of chips. :) Or if you are planning to have a party, this is a good starter to your meal. You can top it with almost anything. I loved it with cream cheese and jam or even honey. Second favorite was the tinapa with tomatoes and basil mix with cream cheese. 

Try it once. :)

Photo taken via Instagram.

Brunch: Corned Beef Mash

I saw this recipe in Jenni Epperson's blog, and I immediately wanted to try it. As her, I always want to cook food with ingredients that are readily available in our fridge and pantry. I'm a fan of no fuss cooking so to speak. So for today's brunch kitchen experiment, I did her recipe. 

Ingredients:
3 potatoes boiled
3 cans corned beef
garlic, onion, red bell pepper, green chili
salt and pepper
1 tbsp butter
1/2 cup milk
1 egg
1/2 cup flour
oil for frying

Instructions:
1. Boil the potatoes until they're cooked. 














2. While doing that, cook your corned beef as you want to cook it. What I did, is cooked it the way we usually do, saute it in garlic, onions and for color, I added the chilis and pepper. Add salt and pepper to taste.

3. Multitask! As you are cooking the corned beef, mash the potatoes and mix in milk and butter. Make sure that there's no lumps or big chunks of potato for a better consistency.
 

4. Mix in the mash potatoes into the cooked corned beef. I added 1 egg and flour to make sure that everything sticks when you fry them. Mix thoroughly.
5. Heat oil in pan. I only added a small amount of oil, since I know, that corned beef is already oily. 
6. Form a patty and fry until golden brown on bot sides.
7. Drain the excess oil in paper towels.

I ate mine with brown rice and tomatoes since the corned beef mash is actually pretty rich. It was hearty and very filling. Downed it with my cranberry juice. Haha, still on a healthy living mode. 

Happy tummy!

Until the next weekend kitchen experiment! 

Laters tweeps!

The Journey to a Healthier Me

I'm on a roll! Hopefully this lasts and I get myself enough inspiration to write everyday and if not, atleast once a week. And with that, I am happy.

Romain lettuce with Adobo, Peach-Yakult Smoothie, Home made Siomai

I am happy that I am again, taking interest on the things that I love doing. Those are - reading, writing and cooking. Reading, takes a little more effort nowadays, because I fall asleep easily nowadays. Writing, emails are pretty easy. I eat emails for breakfast. Oh, wait, that doesn't count as writing. Well, pretty hard to write if I don't have something to write about. Cooking or making things in the kitchen is pretty much easy since I do it, almost everyday. Cooking for my lunch, making myself a smoothie for dinner or breakfast has become a habit, since I started to commit (well, I need to try harder) to eating healthy.



Wholewheat pasta with asparagus and bacon (top)
Rice topped with pork chops and steamed asparagus (bottom)

I love to surf the internet for the different varieties that I can make into a smoothie. Thanks to my handy dandy hand blender, this makes it very, very easy to whip up something for a quick snack. I need to incorporate more green veggies in my smoothies though to make it more yucky, I mean healthier. :) 

Smoothie made of frozen strawberries, grapes, pineapple with yogurt and arugula

Discipline is the key to eating healthy. I will pray for more of that.

Have a good week everyone!

Spanish Sardines Pizza

This weekend, though rainy and katamad, I was inspired and masipag to get down and dirty in the kitchen. To cook, bake and literally do the dishes. :) Before midnight today, I made a pizza. Yes, pizza. Mac really loved the Oreo Cheesecake Bars I made, and I was inspired to top that! Haha!

Yesterday, he was apparently craving for home made pizza and Spanish Sardines. Weird combination, but I thought it would work, just like anchovies, right? So we got the supplies needed. And these are what we bought and I got from our pantry/fridge:

Spanish Sardines Pizza
Ingredients:
Spanish Sardines
pack of kesong puti
black olives
mushrooms
baby arugula
frozen pizza dough (sorry, I still need to know how to do this from scratch)
tomato/spaghetti sauce

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius, and you also need to thaw out the frozen pizza dough before you put on all the ingredients. Spread out the tomato/spaghetti sauce on the dough and lay out all the rest of the ingredients on the dough except for the baby arugula which I added after taking out the pizza in the oven.

I baked them for 20-25 minutes, constantly checking if its burning. :) I didn't put any condiments like salt and pepper, because the sardines' already seasoned, kesong puti is already salty and the red sauce is tart and sweet. It's just perfect.

It tastes good! Loved it! Mac loved it!

Making this, took me back to some very good childhood memories I have with homemade pizzas. When I was a kid, we used to make pizzas with left over pandesal and whatever deli we have in the freezer and then pop it in the turbo broiler until the cheese bubbles. Oh! How the pizza pandesals smelled good! Happy times!

This is perfect for me. Homey, rustic and (I hope) very gourmet. :)

Potato Salad - my own version of it that is.

When you find yourself craving for something very comforting, think potato salad comes to mind. Made these when I have some baby potatoes sitting in for a couple of weeks already. It is just a matter of boiling the potatoes, browning the bacon, chopping the onions and bell pepper, and mixing everything together and enjoy! Easy!

My own version of potato salad:
Baby potatoes
Bacon
Onions
Cottage cheese
Sour cream
Green bell pepper
Salt and pepper
Chili powder (optional

Angel Hair with Bacon and Pechay Baguio cooked in Olive Oil

A quick experiment for my lunch “baon”. I don’t usually have the exact measurements because I cook for my individual taste. If you want to re-create, below are the ingredients for this recipe and the instructions.

Ingredients:

• angel hair pasta (any brand will do, and amount depending on how much you need to eat)
• olive oil
• bacon (will depend on how much you want in your dish)
• 1 head pechay Baguio
• garlic
• salt and pepper to taste
• Italian seasoning
• crushed chili (optional)

Instructions:

1. Angel Hair Pasta - cook it according to package directions. Usually the angel hair pasta, will cook in 2 minutes since it is much thinner than linguine or spaghetti pasta. You can also try other variations of pasta or whole meal types of pasta if you want it a bit healthier. Make sure you drain the pasta water, once done.
2. In a separate non-stick pan, heat a bit of olive oil (remember that you will use bacon and oil will come out while cooking it, so use just a little at first)
3. Add garlic and bacon. I do this so that the garlic will not burn. Brown the bacon slightly.
4. Add in the pechay Baguio and cook for atleast 2 minutes so as not to overcook the vegetable. 
5. Put in salt and pepper to taste. Mix in a dash of Italian seasoning.
6. Mix in the pasta, put a little of olive oil if you feel that the dish is getting dry. Make sure you mix everything well then serve.

You can use this recipe and measure the ingredients according to how many people you intend to feed. =)

Happy cooking!

Experiments in the Kitchen

I love to cook, that is when I have the time and energy and of course the inspiration to do so. It’s a phase for most of the time, cooking that is. I usually make time to cook my baon to take to the office for lunch, when I’m tight with my lunch money or I have a certain craving for something or, for the most part, I am trying to diet and eat healthy.

The photos in this entry are just some of the experiments that I did before. If I decide to cook in the morning, what I would normally do is just raiding the fridge or pantry for whatever is available in there and then coming up with something. Pasta, wraps and sandwiches are the most easy to experiment with since you can actually mix it with anything. Literally, from seafood to pork to vegetables. 

I take inspiration from the many cooking and lifestyle shows that I watch on a daily basis. Also, since I consider myself a foodie, when I taste something that I loved in a restaurant that we just ate in, I try to do it as well. Like that Bacon Asparagus that I love in Teriyaki Boy. 

Cooking is comforting for me. Though labor is required - the prepping, the actual cooking, the tasting, and the presentation, it gives me bliss at the end of a sweat-inducing cooking session. Why, because at the end of it, I can enjoy and appreciate something that I know I did by myself and in a small way, exercise the little creativity it is I have in me. But I think, the most rewarding part of it, is actually having people enjoy eating what you cook for them.

I hope to have more sweat-inducing cooking sessions in the future!