Pancit

Pancit is like the macaroni and cheese of the Philippines. Every household has eaten it, cooks it differently, and thinks theirs is the best. Most restaurants that sell Pancit attach another name to it, such as pancit bijon or pancit canton, to denote a regional variation or special ingredient. It is a family-style dish, fast and easy to make, and a typical Filipino fast food. In fact, the word "pancit" which is used to mean "noodle" in the Philippines, actually comes from Hokkien Chinese "pian i sit" and translates literally to "something cooked conveniently fast". The longest part of cooking is likely soaking the dried rice noodles, but even that is less than 30 minutes, and while they are soaking, vegetables can be chopped and ready for the pan.

Basic Pancit

One bag of dried rice noodles (narrow ones are more traditional, but I used wide ones from my pantry)
One onion, sliced thin
3 bell peppers, any color, julienned

Cabbage, half a medium head, sliced very thin into shreds

2 cups meat or meat substitute of your choice, I used Quorn meat substitute
1/4 cup oil
4-5 cloves of garlic
1/4 cup oyster sauce
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup sugar

Start by soaking the entire package of rice noodles in a bowl of warm water, making sure the noodles are submerged.

While the rice noodles are soaking, start chopping vegetables into fairly uniform sizes so that they will cook uniformly. I used the vegetables I already had on hand, which is the common way to make pancit. Other vegetables that can be used are bean sprouts, baby corn, green onions, broccoli, or whatever you would normally like in a stir fry. Once the vegetables are chopped and the noodles feel soft, heat the oil in a pan, and add the meat first (if uncooked) or vegetables first if the meat is already cooked and chopped. Because Quorn is a frozen meat substitute, I added it first, along with the garlic.

Next add the meat or vegetable, whichever you didn't start with stir frying on heat heat until the cabbage starts to wilt.

Finally, add the noodles, sauces, and sugar, and stir fry until the noodles soften more, and the ingredients are incorporated evenly. Serve immediately. This makes enough for 4 hungry people. Don't be afraid to experiment with different vegetables and meats as you like. Shrimp, chicken, and pork are very popular choices, as are the vegetables I mentioned earlier. An easy dish to pull from your pantry on a busy night.

Mumbai ki Alu (Bombay Potatoes)

This dish is popular in India as a snack and as one dish in a vegetarian meal, though it isn't confined to that. It's very easy to make and for those who have reservations about Indian food, think of it as a slightly spicy fried potato dish. This particular dish is one of the first that the kids attempted making themselves, as it has very few ingredients and it pretty fool-proof. It was on our dinner menu tonight as part of a vegetarian meal consisting of the potatoes, a spicy spinach curry, rice, and raita (cucumber/onion/yogurt salad - recipe in an earlier post).

Bombay Potatoes

8 small to medium potatoes, peeled, and sliced horizontally into rounds
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 tablespoon turmeric
2 tablespoons cumin seed (ground cumin won't do for this dish)
dried red pepper flakes; as many as you can handle. I made it with 2 teaspoons tonight and it was mild for me.
Salt to taste.

Slice potatoes and set aside

Heat vegetable oil in skillet until hot but not smoking, and add cumin seeds, rubbing them between your palms as you drop them into the hot oil. This crushes them slightly and releases the aromatic oils in the seeds.

Allow the seeds to cook a few minutes in the oil until they start to change color, but make sure not to overcook them, or they will become bitter. Next add the sliced potatoes and the spoon of turmeric.

Also add the red pepper flakes in the amount that you desire. Do not omit them altogether and do not substitute black pepper, ground cayenne, or any other type of pepper, as part of the visual appeal of the dish comes from the yellow potato rounds flecked with the cumin and red pepper pieces.

Stir to distribute the spices and cook on medium heat until the potatoes are soft but do not lose their shape. I personally like to turn up the heat at the end to create some browned, crunchy pieces.

As a starchy vegetable, you can serve this dish with any type of Indian food you like, meatless or with meat. I like them as part of a vegetarian meal because they are starchy and filling, so with other vegetables and rice make a full, satisfying meal. This was my plate tonight, and it disappeared quickly!

This photo was not exactly a product of food-styling as you can easily see. It was quickly put on a Styrofoam plate with the other dishes because I had been smelling it cook for the last 30 minutes and was more than ready to dig in! A side note on the spinach curry: if you think you absolutely do not like spinach, you might be surprised. I remember growing up eating the slimy, gray-green, tinned spinach that always had that slightly metallic taste, and so never had any desire to eat cooked spinach until I had it prepared in the Indian style. The dish is very obviously a leafy green, but without the slimy feel and tinned taste that tickled my gag reflex each and every time during childhood. I may feature it as well in a later post. 

The Dish That Started It All: Chicken Surprise

When I looked back, I couldn't believe I hadn't posted the one dish that started it all. Chicken Surprise.  Despite the name we gave the dish, it is an adapted curry dish that I learned to make from a college friend, Lourdes Anthonysamy. Lourdes is a southern Indian whose family relocated to Malaysia at some point, and the dish he first cooked for us was a student adaptation of an Indian curry with Malaysian influence. Using the ingredients at hand, the dish he created was much, much hotter than I currently make the dish, and its name came from the fact that the first several times I made it, it turned out different each time. A surprise. We have cooked it countless times since that first taste 20 years ago, and it is the number one dish that my two youngest kids ask for.

Chicken Surprise

3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts; cubed

2 large potatoes, peeled and cubed

1 onion, diced

1/4 cup oil

2 tablespoons turmeric

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1 tablespoon cumin seeds or ground cumin

1/4 cup ketchup

1/8 cup oyster sauce

1/8-1/4 cup Sriracha or Sambel Oelek (a crushed chili sauce)

1- 14 oz. can coconut milk (make sure it is NOT cream of coconut)

1/3 cup frozen green peas

Salt to taste, approximately 2 teaspoons.

Start by cooking onions in oil, as with most curries.

Add cubed chicken and sprinkle with turmeric. Once chicken is cooked, added the cubed potatoes, stir to transfer some of the turmeric to potatoes and cook about five minutes.

Add garlic, salt, cumin, coriander and stir in, then add ketchup, oyster sauce, and Sriracha sauce.



 Stir these ingredients in, then add the entire can of coconut milk. Sometimes the coconut milk will have separated, with the more waxy solid and a watery white liquid. If so, it is still okay, just stir the can before adding it to your pan.

The curry will then take on a yellowish/red color, slightly thickened.

Turn heat on low, cover and cook about 15 minutes or until potatoes are fork tender but not too soft. This was our first frequent "surprise" while learning to make this dish. Once the potatoes are soft, uncover and add the frozen peas to curry and stir in. Let it sit for a few minutes to thaw peas. Absolutely DO NOT use canned peas. The taste and texture is totally different.

Serve hot with cooked rice and watch it disappear. They would probably hate it that I'm telling, but the kids will actually use their fingers, Indian-style, to get every drop of the curry sauce from their bowls. As a note of interest, you can easily see the yellow color of the curry that we made today. Imagine our first taste of this dish using Sambal Oelek (which is about the same heat as Sriracha) and the dish was almost orange-red due to the amount of chili added! Ouch!









Tex-Mex Chicken Soup

Is this really Tex-Mex? Well, I lived in Texas for eleven years and it does have some Mexican spices and cheese in it, so Tex-Mex it is. This dish was made like about half my dishes are; meaning looking at the things in my pantry and fridge and making up something on the spot. I had boiled a pot of chicken thighs (skin and bones included) the night before, thinking I'd have a broth and chicken for whatever dish, but had no real ideas. So I took a peek at what I had in the house. There was a pesky bag of orzo pasta that had been on the shelf for awhile. There was also a box of Wisconsin cheddar cheese soup. Aha! Tex-Mex Soup inspiration hit! It was a hit with the kids (NOT picky eaters by any means) and easy to make.

Tex-Mex Chicken Soup

5-6 chicken thighs with bone and skin, boiled and cooled. Reserve broth (skimming some, not all of the fat if desired), and removing meat from bones and shredding.

1 onion, diced

1-2 jalapenos, seeded and sliced. I used two because I like it hot and spicy!

I reheated the broth, added the onion and jalapenos and cooked on medium heat for about ten minutes. Next I added the shredded chicken and the orzo. For those of you who don't know, orzo is a pasta that looks like large grains of rice. It is really good in soups and cold salads.

To these basic ingredients, add the following spices:
1 teaspoon dried oregano
2 tablespoons Adobo sazon, a mixed seasoning used in Latin dishes that also contains salt.
1 tablespoon garlic

Once the orzo has softened, add the cheese soup. I happened to have this particular brand of cheese soup, but you could also use a can of the Campbell's Nacho Cheese soup.

Allow the soup to cook another 10-15 minutes to thoroughly heat all of the ingredients. It is thicker than a soup but not really a stew. Garnish with chopped cilantro if you would like, and I DO like cilantro in everything I can put it in. Two thumbs up from my in-house taste testers.

Ode to Sriracha

An Ode to Sriracha

I really love Sriracha hot chili sauce. I put it in everything from curries, Mexican food, on eggs, and even in impromptu dips. You probably realize that you have seen the iconic bottle of bright red-orange sauce with the green lid in any number of Asian restaurants. If you are spice-phobic, you might not have tried it. However, now that you can find it on anywhere, even on Wal Mart's shelves, it is very accessible and worth a try.

Sriracha is first and foremost a hot sauce. Like most hot sauces, it is made from chilis and has some vinegar in it. The difference between it and most US hot sauces such as Tabasco or Louisiana hot sauce, is that the vinegar taste is not really detectable, and the consistency is thicker than those sauces. That makes it more versatile if you want to add it to a dish without the addition of a vinegary taste. For those concerned about the heat it has, it does have more heat than Tabasco and similar sauces, and is usually stronger when first opened. However, once you try it, I think you might get addicted to it.

Here are some of the ways I use it to add some punch to the things I eat:

Make a quick breakfast burrito by adding scrambled eggs and cheese to a tortilla with and topping with Sriracha.

Mix it with mayonnaise until it is pink in color. This can be eaten as a dip or used as a topping on sushi, as it tastes a lot like the "martini sauce" that a lot of sushi restaurants put on some of their specialty rolls such as the Volcano Roll.

Add it to ramen and stirfried vegetables for a quick, spicy lo mein dish.

It can also be eaten on hamburgers, hotdogs, pizza, and many other snack type foods when you want to add some spice. Try it, you'll like it.

This might sound like a commercial for Sriracha but I'm not representing the company or its product. However, if they wish to compensate me, they could always do it in cases of Sriracha, as I average a large bottle a month!

Alu Keema

If you read my last entry, you were probably expecting a Mexican dish, however it worked out that you'll read about another Indian dish called Alu Keema. If you remember another entry with the dish Alu Gobi, then you already know that "alu" means potato. Well, "keema" means minced meat, of any kind, and for this dish, usually ground beef. This is an easy, beginner dish, both in terms of cooking and for trying Indian food, as the spice can be adjusted to suit your preferred hotness. While you may find it in an occasional Indian buffet or small "dive" type Indian restaurant, its more often seen in Indian homes; Indian home cooking. The ingredient list for this dish is also very short, for those who are sometimes intimidated by the long list of spices in a lot of Indian dishes.

Alu Keema

1 pound ground beef; regular, not extra lean

1 onion; diced

5 small potatoes, peeled and  cut into quarters

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1 tablespoon cumin seed (you can substitute ground cumin)

2 tablespoons garlic powder

1 tablespoon ground coriander

1 teaspoon ground turmeric

1-2 fresh green chilies, chopped (optional or can be adjusted to taste, but do not substitute with bell pepper)

2 cups water

salt to taste

Start by cooking onions in pan with the oil until just starting to turn golden.

Next add the ground beef and cook until the meat is done.

Once the meat is cooked, add the potatoes and the chili. Today I used one jalapeno chili which had the seeds and ribs taken out to decrease the heat, as my daughter doesn't like things really spicy, but again, add as much as you want. My sister-in-law in Bangladesh has been known to chop of ten of the little Thai chilies in her alu keema.

Next add all of the spices and salt to the dish and fry together for a minute to two. This keeps the spices from having a "raw" taste in the dish, something an Indian cook will spot in a moment.

Once the spices have fried, add the water to the pan, cover and cook on low heat until the potatoes are fork tender. Make sure that you do not overcook the dish, or the potatoes will practically disappear in the dish.

This dish is served with rice and raita, the yogurt, onion, and cucumber salad that I talked about previously. It is one of my kids' favorite dishes and has now made its way into my mom's and sister's cooking repertoires as well. This recipe makes about six servings, which in our house of three means that there are no leftovers. However it is very easy to double if you want leftovers or need to feed a larger crowd.

Darkened Kitchen

For those of you who have been following, you may have wondered at the sudden stoppage in entries to the blog. We ended up spending three days out of our place due to a fire upstairs, so needless to say, there was no cooking at all. It took another day or so to get things cleaned up (like water from the firehoses which runs down the walls), and then a 36 hour work weekend. But I expect to have another entry soon. The next entry I already know, and is a traditional Mexican dish and personal favorite of mine. Don't abandon me yet. The kitchen has been dark but things are getting ready to happen!

Creamy Chicken Enchiladas

Tonight we had chicken enchiladas, which was not from an established recipe, but from an experiment that turned out well. I had planned to make enchiladas of some sort, though I usually make the traditional  type with a red sauce. However, my daughter wanted something more cheesy and creamy, so I improvised with what we had in the pantry and came up with these. Considering the rate that they disappeared, I would say they were a success!

First slightly brown a pound of boneless chicken breast in a skillet with a tablespoon of oil:

Next add a tablespoon of Adobo sauce, a multi-spice Latin seasoning found in most grocery stores. Let that continue to cook for a few minutes.

Then add a cup of any store-bought salsa to the chicken. I used a generic chunky salsa with medium heat but you could use mild or hot as you like.

Let that continue to cook for a few minutes as well, then add a cup of water, cover, and continue cooking at a low heat. Once the chicken becomes very tender, use a fork or spatula edge to shred the chicken.

If you have excess liquid in the pan, just turn the heat up and cook the chicken uncovered on high for a few minutes so you won't have juice dripping out of your enchiladas as you try to roll them. Once the meat is prepared, set it aside and prepare the tortillas. Use corn tortillas, not flour, or you will end up with a soggy mess.

You will be preparing 10 tortillas and can cook as many at a time that will fit in your skillet or griddle. Use nonstick spray or a small amount of oil on the cooking surface and cook tortillas until they just start to have some golden spots and are more pliable. This is really important because you can't roll an uncooked tortilla or it will break apart.

Once your tortillas are all cooked, you will assemble your enchiladas in a baking pan, size 9 x 13 if you have it. The type of pan, glass, metal, or ceramic, doesn't matter though you should slightly oil the pan so that your enchiladas don't stick to the pan.

Start by putting a large spoonful of your chicken filling in the middle of a tortilla, folding it, then rolling it up.

Once your enchiladas are rolled, place them seam down into the pan in a row. If you don't have enough room, you can always fit more on the sides unless you are making a dish that you want to "look pretty". One

of the biggest tricks to making something like enchiladas, dumplings, or any food with a filling, is judging how much of the filling to put in so that all of the pieces are almost equal in size without having any leftover filling. When I first started doing food with fillings, I would always have some left over. Shredded chicken can be eaten on a sandwich, in a salad, or even a taco, so don't stress out if you have your nice row of

                                                       enchiladas and some filling staring at you from the bowl!









Once your enchiladas are rolled in the pan, you can set them aside and make the sauce. I used Crema Mexicana tonight, a Mexican triple cream that you can find in the cold case with other Mexican cheeses. If

you can't find that, then you can substitute whipping cream. It will be the cream part of the sauce rather than the usual sour cream that some recipes call for.

I used the entire 15 ounce container of cream, putting it into a nonstick saucepan and heating it on low heat. After that, I added a cup of shredded yellow and white cheddar cheeses and allowed them to melt in the cream. I also added a tablespoon of the Adobo sauce for seasoning. After the sauce is smooth and hot, pour it over the enchiladas.

Bake your enchiladas at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 20-30 minutes or until the sauce is bubbly and slightly browned.

Serve the enchiladas with any of your favorite toppings such as salsa or hot sauce, chopped green onions, sour cream or guacamole, that is totally up to you, but I ate mine tonight with Sriracha hot sauce and chopped green onions. I only got two out of the pan as the rest disappeared too fast!

This is definitely an adapted dish, more "Tex-Mex" than authentic Mexican, and having eaten plenty of both in the ten years I lived in Texas, I can honestly say that I like it all!

Fried Rice

Fried rice is traditionally a dish to use leftovers so there is no real "recipe", and my recipe will reflect what we had in the house today. When I make dishes accompanied by rice, I usually go ahead and make a full pot of rice in the rice cooker with the intention of making fried rice later. Basic fried rice similar to what you would find in a Chinese restaurant is usually just a bit of scrambled egg mixed in with the rice and some soy sauce, and is made to accompany a stir-fried dish. However, this dish has more components and made as a stand alone dish. You can have it with or without meat, again, depending on what you have or what you want.  As is with all Chinese dishes, you should assemble your ingredients and prep them before starting to cook. In this case, there wasn't much prep other than chopping five green onions, white and green parts.

Today I used one cup of pre-packaged shredded carrots as my other vegetable, but you could chop your carrots fresh, use a cup a frozen mixed or stir fry vegetables, or peas and carrots. I wouldn't recommend using a frozen mixture with broccoli in it, as the broccoli pieces become mushy. You could also use white, yellow, or red onions in place of the green onions, but they will be slightly sweeter, and since I used carrots today, I didn't want the dish to be overwhelmed with sweet flavors.

Now that the vegetables are ready, start by adding an 1/8 cup of oil to your pan and getting it fairly hot. Add two eggs, and stir until cooked thoroughly and in small pieces.

After cooking the eggs and breaking them up into smaller pieces, add the onion, stirring until the onion is translucent.

At this point you add your meat. It can be chicken, shrimp, pork or sausage, depending on your tastes, and is totally optional. The favorite in our house is chicken, but we didn't have any leftover chicken today, so I used Quorn, a meat substitute. You can also use freshly cooked meat if you choose, though it will add to the cooking time and you will have to cook it separately first.

Once the meat is added, stir it until it is heated, then add the vegetables that you have already chopped or gotten from the freezer. Make sure they are are small pieces that will cook thoroughly quickly.

Stir all of the vegetables in until cooked, then add 6 cups of your cooked, cold rice. Again, like the meat, you can cook your rice fresh, but keeping in mind that warm rice will have a tendency to stickiness and isn't in the spirit of the dish as a quick use of leftovers. If using cold rice, add it to the pan and when breaking up the chunks, make sure to use the back of a large utensil to mash the kernels apart rather than the edge of the utensil. If you use the edge, you will end up cutting up the rice grains into smaller pieces. Once the rice is separated, add 1 tablespoon of garlic, an 1/8 cup soy sauce, and if you like spicy, 1 tablespoon of Sriracha. Stir all of the ingredients to mix thoroughly and cook until heated through. Fried rice is really popular in our house and this recipe size disappears quickly between the three of us.

Fried Rice Ingredient List

6 cups cold, cooked rice

2 eggs

1/8 cup oil

1 cup cooked, cold meat of your choice (optional)
1 cup onions chopped, any type
1 cup chopped vegetables, fresh or frozen. Best choices include carrots, green peas, or mixed veggies.

1 tablespoon garlic; granulated or fresh minced

1/8 cup soy sauce

1 tablespoon Sriracha (optional)