Me Thursday

I was left all alone at home today and as it usually goes when I'm left on my lonesome, I cook pasta.

It's my default alone food.

Why?

It's just one of my quirks.   I don't want to cook a whole batch of steamed rice and viand (ulam) when I know I'll be eating it all alone. 

I already had some meat for breakfast (ham, eggs, and toasted bread with butter), and meat again for lunch (carbonara with pastrami) so I decided to make something light for dinner.

Here's what I made

Pan seared yellow fin tuna with sun dried tomatoes, basil, garlic, and black olives on pasta

 

I also only used the oil of the sun dried tomatoes to add more flavor.  This dish has no salt.

I made it light to compensate for my fat filled breakfast and lunch (ham, butter, pastrami, cream), and of course the carbs from the bread and pasta.

Oh and I also only used half a portion of pasta for this dish hehehe.

P.S.
While writing this, Im munching on chocolates......waaaaah......I don't know if I'll ever reach my desired waistline soon!

Healthier

I'm trying to start eating healthier. 

I've been eating plenty of vegetables since a couple of days ago, and minimizing my rice intake.  They say that when it comes to vegetables, the more colorful the set, the more nutrients there are. 

I think what I prepared today had a decent amount of color to reflect the variety of vitamins found in them.

We have here some vibrant yellow, orange, purple, red, and different shades of green.

I just sauteed them and added some tomato paste, oyster sauce and crushed black peppercorns.

Simple, light, clean but very tasty.

I hope I could stick to eating healthier this year.  :)

Fresh Lumpiang Ubod "Crepe" (hahahaha)

Mom and Dad brought home literally a whole coconut trunk today.  We just asked someone to hack the heck out of it with an itak to reach the center, which we pinoys fondly call ubod.

They bought it because they were craving for lumpiang sariwa.

Mom asked me to make fresh lumpia wrapper from her own recipe.

While browsing through the ingredients list, it kinda dawned on me that her recipe is a whole lot like crepe, so I just cooked it like a crepe, that is fluffier than what a regular lumpia wrapper should be.

I wrapped my portion like a crepe instead of like a lumpia and it turned out like this

fresh lumpia wrapper, lettuce, ubod, carrots, pork, chicken, lumpia sauce with crushed peanuts...the works!

I Jokingly said to my mom:  "Ang sosyal ng lumpia parang savory crepe hahaha."

And I realized, it kinda is a savory crepe, welll that's just my opinion.  :)

Simple and no fuss

I sometimes find myself unable to decide what I want to eat.  I pace from ref to pantry, back and forth for the nth time and still have no idea what to cook.

Today, is one of those days, maybe because of the holidays, I got tired of eating beef, pork and chicken.

What do I do when I find myself in this situation?

I rely on my trusty default solution: 

Get some tuyo, bagoong alamang, chilli oil, basil and lots and lots of garlic and make pasta.

It's a simple, no fuss dish using only items found in the house but it gives me delight that no haughty-taughty expensive food could deliver.

Tuyo and sweet and spicy bagoong alamang is comfort food for me, and I guess to most pinoys as well.  Combine them with another comfort food, pasta, and you have there a slice of happy pie.

I'm happy happy happy :)

Ban-apple Experiment

My mom kept on bugging me to make something from bananas and apples the past few days.  She said that she has tasted this dessert that has bananas and apples in it and it was good.

I'm kinda iffy about combining bananas and apples in a single dessert since I haven't encountered this flavor profile before and I don't know how it would taste.

Today, I finally gave in and decided to make a "ban-apple" cake.

I used one part bananas and one part apples combined with my tried and tested cake recipe sprinkled with muscovado sugar on top and boy oh boy was I surprised with how it turned out.

It was really really really good!  Super moist and fluffy and also in pinoy jargon, hindi nakakaumay.

It is visually plain though, so I just have to think of a way to make it look more appealing, but the taste is another story.

I think I have a new favorite now :)

Shrimp and Pork Dumplings

My mom asked me to make some dumplings today.

She bought some ground pork (with lots of fat) and shrimps from the wet market, and some stock dumpling wrappers in the ref.

I just added some finely chopped onions, garlic, ginger and a variety of seasonings to the meat, and assembled the dumplings.

I did the dumplings two ways:

Steamed

and Fried

Enjoyed them with some soy sauce, calamansi, and some home-made chilli garlic.


And as a bonus, made from the leftover shrimps

Stir-fried shrimps with Soba :)

Yummy!

Banana Chocolate Fudge Cake

My inspiration for this:


hershey's chocolates

  
  




bananas

  











You can't go wrong with a choco-banana combination.   This is not a frou frou dessert with intricate and delicate components.  This one is really plain and simple comfort food.   A layer of rich, creamy, velvety chocolate on top of soft and moist banana bread.

What I did:

I  baked a relatively thin layer of banana bread because I will be adding a layer of chocolate to it. 

I adjusted the  flour to banana ratio, adding more flour to make it sturdier and then baked it 350'F for 20 minutes and then turned the oven off and let it set for another 10 minutes.

While waiting for the bread to cool down, I made some chocolate fudge.  It's not strictly chocolate fudge because my recipe calls for condensed milk and semi-sweet chocolate, but I decided to use half condensed milk and half cream to lessen it's sweet-umay factor.  I don't know if it's right to still call it chocolate fudge because it's like half-fudge and half ganache but I liked how it turned out.

I then poured the chocolate mixture on the cooled down banana bread and let it set in the ref overnight.


I really love the balance of the clean taste of the moist banana bread combined with the rich taste of the chocolate.

Sinfully delicious! 

Rating:  Bilbil enhancer  :)

This would definitely add a few inches to your waistline.

Hungry Reflection

I was all alone today at home and very much hungry, and as it usually is when I’m all by my lonesome, I also found myself on a pensieve mood. 

Hunger and reflection, quite an odd combination coming from opposite sides of man’s spectrum,  id est instinctive, which is a baser  function  and intellective, which is our highest faculty.  These made me realize some things about myself,  specifically regarding my aesthetics lately.

As of the late, I keep on finding myself being drawn to simple subjects that have something quirky about them.  Seemingly uncomplicated things that have an underlying oddity that only a somewhat “weirdo” (loosely used)  like me would see.  It’s like looking at the ordinary with extraordinary eyes.

 With this playing in my mind while raiding our ref, I decided to make myself something simple to eat, no fuss,  nothing too complicated, but something that  has an image of being special. 


A few slices here, a little searing there, some simple but nice plating,  and this is what I made:

Seared Tuna Sashimi with Wasabi and Soysauce, from leftover fresh frozen tuna last sunday

Grilled Unagi, from a long forgotten pack of frozen unagi at the back of our freezer from who knows when

And of course, a small bowl of rice, the stickier the better

In an ideal world, I would eat these everyday, well the unagi and the rice maybe but the tuna, I think alternating it with salmon would be much better.  :)

Oooh and I forgot....Uuni, add some uuni to the equation and that's heaven!

Apple Pistachio Buttercream Cupcake

I oftentimes get insipiration to cook or bake with ingredients I find just lying around our kitchen.  It's usually just a spur of the moment thing, no plans, no recipe, just experimenting with whatever ingredient there is on hand and whatever cooking technique I have retained in my head from my experiences.

What inspired me today was some granny smiths and some pistachios.  Since I have been on a baking spree the past few weeks, I decided to make some cupcakes.

I find it cute that my paring knife is color coordinated with the apples as well as the pistachios.


and the color of the day is apple green, literally



Pistachios roughly chopped

This is the jist of what I did:

I cooked the apples in unsalted butter, pureed the mixture in the food processor and let it cool down a few minutes.  I then creamed the sugar with the eggs and the vanilla extract, adding the apple mixture while mixing continuously then I added some cream and mixed some more.  I sifted some flour and some baking soda and slowly incorpated this dry mixture into the wet mixture until there were no more lumps.  I transfered the batter into cupcake pans and baked them in the oven at 350'F.  As for the baking time, I wasn't sure at first since this is an experiment, so what I did was checked it after 10 minutes and when I saw that only a small portion of the cupcakes' middle part was still wet, I turned the oven off and let it set in the oven 5 minutes more.  While waiting for the cupcakes to cool down, I made some simple vanilla butter cream and roughly chopped some pistachio nuts.  I then frosted the cooled down cupakes with the buttercream and sprinkled with the pistachio nuts on top.

And the finished product:

cute cuts

Mom and Dad got these from S&R today.  

One word:  Cute (it's funny using the word cute to describe sharp knives)

There's nothing like cutting a bloody piece of meat with a pink knife, and removing the guts of a fish using an apple green paring knife.   :)

Teehee!