Fresh Lumpia

Fresh Lumpia is a traditional Filipino dish. Lumpiang Sariwa, or Fresh Lumpia, are folded into a soft, crepe-like wrapper made with eggs. They contain a mixture of stir-fried ingredients, heavy on the veggies, Pork, and turnips, served with sauce and peanuts.

Fresh Lumpia Ingredients:

Filling:

• 1/4 kilo pork liempo, boiled and sliced
• 1/2 kilo shrimp, shelled
• 2 squares tokwa (tofu), cubed
• 1/2 cabbage, medium-sized, shredded
• 1 cup string beans, sliced diagonally
• carrot, cut into thin strips
• kinchay, cut lengthwise, half inch
• kamote, medium-sized, cut into thin strips
• lettuce leaves
• 3 tbsp. cooking oil
• 1 onion, sliced
• 1 garlic, crushed
• peanuts, finely chopped (for garnishing)

Lumpia wrappers:

• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/4 cup cornstarch
• dash of salt
• oil to grease frying pan

For sauce:

• 1 cup brown sugar
• water
• cornstarch
• soy sauce

Seasoning:

• soy sauce to taste

Fresh Lumpia Cooking Instructions:

· Saute garlic and onions. Add pork and shrimp.

· When pork and shrimp are slightly cooked, add tofu.

· Add carrots, string beans, kamote, then kinchay and cabbage. Do not overcook.

· Season to taste. Cool before wrapping.

To make lumpia wrappers:
Mix egg, water, cornstarch and salt thoroughly until smooth. Take about lA of batter to make each crepe (piece of wrapper). Brush some oil on a non-stick pan. Spread the batter thinly by turning the pan around. Cook only one side of the crepe over low heat. (Don’t keep the crepe too long on the pan as it will be toasted. When it turns slightly brown or small bubbles appear on the surface, it’s cooked.) Lift crepe off using a wide spatula, and place on wax paper. Stack cooked crepes with wax paper between them.

To make sauce:
Dissolve cornstarch in water and soy sauce. Put brown sugar in a saucepan. Caramelize by stirring the sugar continually until totally melted. (Don’t scorch the sugar.) Add some water and simmer until the caramel is dissolved. Add cornstarch dissolved in water and soy sauce. Stir until mixture becomes smooth and transparent.

To make lumpia:
Put 2-3 tablespoons of filling in lumpia wrapper. Roll wrapper and seal. Serve with sauce and finely chopped peanuts.

- from PinoyRecipe.Net

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Another food that I crave for.

Cua Pao and Humba

The food item we call cua pao does not seem to appear in the Chinese culinary vocabulary. Yet, it appears prominently in local versions of Chinese cooking. Cua pao is the generic term for folded steamed sweet buns with filling. And whether the filling is hong ma or pata tim, we call it cua pao.

Strictly speaking, the folded steamed buns are called manthao and they are available in some supermarkets. If you want to make cua pao at home, you can cook humba (the local version of the Chinese hong ma) or, alternatively, pata tim, slice the meat and use as filling.

You’re looking at home-made cua pao above. When I discovered frozen and ready-to-steam manthao at the supermarket yesterday, my next move was to buy a slab of pork belly. Despite the appearance of cua pao, it is not difficult to make at home. Humba is a very fuss-free pork stew and so long as you don’t intend to make the buns yourself, once the stew is done, it’s really just a matter of assembling. Of course, I want to be able to make manthao from scratch someday but that’s something in my to do list as of now.

Cook the humba

Ingredients:

1.5 kg. uncut pork belly
2 tbsps. of black bean sauce (available in jars; if unavailable, use salted black beans (tausi), rinsed, and ground)
3 sprigs of oregano (I used fresh; use only half as much if using dried)
1 whole garlic
4 shallots (sibuyas Tagalog) or 2 small onions
1 cinnamon stick
1 star anise
salt, optional
3 tbsps. of cooking oil

Heat the cooking oil in a wide non-stick pan. When smoking, lower the pork belly, skin side up and cook over high heat for a few minutes, without touching, until seared. How do you know it’s sufficiently seared if you don’t lift the meat to check? Me, I can tell by the smell and by the volume of the sizzling. I suggest you let the pork fry for 4 minutes before lifting and checking the underside if it has lightly browned. When it is, flip the pork over and brown the skin as well to make it puffy.

The oil will spatter — big time. If you have a screen to cover the frying pan, use it. If you only have the regular solid cover, cover the pan partially to make sure that the steam that build inside does not fall back in because that will make the pork soggy and cause even more oil spatters.

When the pork is nicely browned, just add the rest of the ingredients, pour enough water to cover three quarters of the pork, bring to the boil, then lower the heat, cover and simmer for an hour and a half to two hours or until the pork is very, very tender. Turn the pork halfway through cooking. Add more water if the sauce dries up before the pork is done.

Take the pork out of the sauce, place on a platter and cool. Meanwhile, strain the sauce and boil until reduced to about 3/4 cup.

Make the cua pao

When the pork has cooled, take the manthao out. That’s how they look. A rectangular piece of white bread folded in half and lined with paper underneath.

There’s the manthao from another angle. Just so it’s clear how they look.

So, place the manthao, in single layers, in steamer racks over simmering water. Reheat for 10 minutes or until hot and soft ans the top spring back when poked.

Place the cooled pork on a cutting board and slice as thinly as you can. Arrange on a serving platter, garnish with crushed peanuts and thinly sliced onion leaves. Pour some sauce over.

To assemble: Unfold the manthao. Place a slice of pork and a little sauce inside. Top with crushed peanuts and onion leaves, refold and serve.

You can assemble the cua pao before serving or serve the manthao, humba, additional crushed peanuts and onion leaves in separate plates and let the diner make their own cua pao.

- from Home Cooking Rocks

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I like this especially if you have to prepare it yourself. You can put whatever amount of humba you like in your cua pao. If given a choice between cua pao and siopao, I will definitely choose the cua pao.

Pancit Molo

Pancit Molo Recipe is an adaptation of wonton soup, is a specialty of the town of Molo in Iloilo a well-know district in the province. Unlike other pancit, pancit molo is not dry but soupy and it does not make use of long, thin noodles but instead wonton wrappers made from rice flour. Leftover wonton wrappers can also be cut into strips and drop into the hot broth.

Pancit Molo Ingredients:

Filling:

• 1 cup ground pork
• 1/2 cup cooked chicken meat, flaked
• 1/4 cup water chestnuts, chopped
• 3 tbsp patis (fish sauce)
• salt to taste

Stock:

• 8 cups chicken broth
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 25-30 wonton wrappers
• pepper to taste
• chopped spring onions
• oil for sauteing

Pancit Molo Cooking Instructions:

• To prepare filling: Combine ingredients in a bowl but use onlly 1 tsp green onions, salt to taste, and 1 tbsp patis. Set aside the remaining ingredients for the broth.
• Put 1 tbsp of the meat mixture in the center of each wonton wrapper.
• Wrap by folding one side of the wrapper to cover the filling completely, then turning the “unfilled” sides of the wrapper up so that the dumpling resembles a flower. (The filled portion should be in the center.)
• Cover the dumplings with a dry kitchen towel and set aside.
• To make broth: – Saute onion and garlic in oil until light brown.
• Add chicken stock and the remaining salt and patis from the filling.
• Allow to boil, the drop the stuffed dumplings into the boiling broth.
• Stir the remaing meat mixture into the broth. Simmer for 10-15 minutes.
• Season with pepper to taste.
• Before serving, garnish with chopped spring onions.

- from PinoyRecipe.Net

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Pancit Molo from an Ilonggo restaurant is the best, but the one I can't forget is a similar dish I ate in a market in Taipei when I was there in 1985.

Sinigang na Hipon Recipe (Pinoy Style Shrimp in Sour Soup)

Sinigang is a Philippine dish famous for the variety of ingredients. Sinigang often incorporates fish, pork, chicken, shrimp, or beef. This time we’ll use Shrimp for our recipe. Sinigang’s characteristic taste is attributed to the ingredient that gives its sour taste and most commonly use ingredient is Tamarind or Sampalok for its sour taste.

Estimated preparation and cooking time: 50 minutes

Sinigang na Hipon Ingredients:

• 1 Kilo Shrimp
• 12 pcs Tamarind (Sampaloc) or 1 pack Sinigang Mix
• 1 big Onion (diced)
• 3 big tomatoes (quartered)
• 2 pieces Radish (sliced)
• 1 bundle Sitaw (Strringbeans)
• 1 bundle Kangkong (cut into 2″ long)
• 3 pieces long green pepper
• 5 cups ricewash or water
• Salt or Patis (fish sauce)

Sinigang na Hipon Cooking Instructions:

• Boil Tamarind in rice wash or water to soften.
• Pound and extract all juices and set aside.
• In a casserole, boil rice wash or water, Tamarind juice, onions, tomatoes and Radish.
• Lower fire, add in Shrimps, Kangkong, Sitaw and green long pepper.
• simmer for 5 minutes.
• Season with salt or patis.
• Serve hot.

- from PinoyRecipe.net

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I'm not a fan of shrimps. Whenever I request Cecil (my wife) of sinigang na hipon, she is surprised.

Pot Roast with Mushrooms

This pot roast recipe includes onions, mushrooms, garlic, and herbs, along with other seasonings and ingredients.



INGREDIENTS:

• 1 beef pot roast, about 3 to 4 pounds
• flour
• 2 tablespoons oil
• salt and pepper
• 2 medium onions, halved and sliced
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/4 cup ketchup
• 1/4 cup cooking sherry
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/4 teaspoon dry mustard
• 1/4 teaspoon dried leaf thyme
• 1/4 teaspoon rosemary, crumbled
• 1/4 teaspoon ground marjoram
• 1 small bay leaf
• 1 can (4 to 6 ounces) sliced mushrooms with liquid
• 1 tablespoon flour blended with 3 tablespoons cold water

PREPARATION:

Trim roast then dredge in flour. Heat oil in a Dutch oven over medium heat; brown the beef on all sides. Season with salt and pepper. Add onions. Combine the water, ketchup, sherry, garlic, seasonings, and bay leaf; add to the pot. Cover and cook over low heat for 2 1/2 hours, or until tender. Add mushrooms with their liquid and heat through. Remove meat to a warm platter. Skim fat off pan juices. Stir in flour and water mixture, cooking and stirring until sauce is thickened. Serve over the pot roast.
Serves 6 to 8.

- from About.com

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I love beef. One of the best pot roast I’ve tasted is in Kafe Kapitan in Marikina.

German Sausage

Introducing the most common German sausages. They are all delicious and the cause of much national pride. A sausage recipe from a certain area is a closely guarded secret and the sausage as beloved as the town’s soccer team.

Bratwurst and Rostbratwurst is a sausage made from finely minced pork and beef and usually grilled and served with sweet German mustard and a piece of bread or hard roll. It can be sliced and made into Currywurst by slathering it in a catchup-curry sauce.

Thüringer Rostbratwurst – spices are marjoram, caraway, sometimes garlic and the sausage is formed using casings from pig intestines. These sausages are large and usually grilled.

Make your own bratwurst.

Photo shows bratwurst ready for consumption. Use piece of bread to hold sausage and your hands stay clean. Eat with French fries, mayo and ketchup (Pommes rot-weiss).

- from About.com

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Whenever I go to the, I look for and eat a sausage sandwich.

Unagi (Freshwater eel)

Kabaraki is a common way to cook unagi (freshwater eel) in Japan. Boned and filleted unagi are glaze-grilled with this sweet soy sauce based sauce.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup soy sauce

1/2 cup mirin (sweet rice wine)

1/4 cup sugar

Preparation:

Pour all ingredients in a sauce pan. Put the pan on low heat and simmer for a few minutes, or until sugar dissolves. Stop the heat and cool the mixture. Store the sauce in a sterilized container/bottle in the fridge.

- from About.com

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The last time I ate unagi was in 2002 at Rai Rai Ken in Mall of Asia, Philippines. I first tasted grilled unagi in the mid-80's at Kamameshi Restaurant in Quezon City, Philippines. I loved it since then.

Introduction

My wife says I am very easy to feed. I live in an all-day breakfast meal... egg, sausage, ham or anything fried. There is no challenge for her on what dish to prepare. And I don't comment if the food is not good. I'll just tell if it is too salty, too sweet, too spicy... But the same, I will eat it whatever its taste. What she doesn't know is that there are times that I crave on certain food.