Easy Chopsuey Recipe

I absolutely love this dish! Very healthy and very easy to prepare. Here's my pacham recipe of this delectable Chinese dish, Chopsuey! Hope you'll like it.

Ingredients:
1/4 kilo of chicken breast, cut into bite size pieces
1/4 kilo of chicken liver
Shrimp, peeled
1 big Cauliflower
Chicharo / Sitsaro
Cabbage
1 whole Carrot, julienne cut
1 big red bell pepper
Garlic and Onion
Fish sauce or salt
2 tsp. Sesame oil
Mix 2 tblsp. cornstarch and water in a separate bowl


Prepearation:
Blanch the cauliflower first, set aside
Sautee garlic and onion, add chicken then the liver
Add 1/2 cup of water, salt or fish sauce to taste
Add cornstarch + water mixture
Add carrots, sitsaro, cabbage, cauliflower and bell pepper
Add 2 tsp. of sesame oil

Chopsuey tastes better when half cooked so make sure to not over cook your veggies. Enjoy!

Shrimp Tempura and Onion Rings Recipe

This is my first attempt at making TEMPURA, and sadly, it failed. For this one, I used a tempura batter mix that I bought at Japan Japan last week while buying Mimi a gift for her birthday. It didn't help that the instructions were written in Japanese so I had to guess how much water to put in the mix. From what I know, cooking tempura requires ice cold water, I did that, but the batter didn't stick well after frying.

I know where I went wrong. The batter was not thick enough and I also forgot to dry the shrimps (by damping paper towel on them) before dipping them on the batter. Nevertheless, it's still yummy.

The remaining batter, I used for onion rings. It wasn't that crispy.  

Few days after, I tried eggplant tempura and I made sure the batter was thick enough to hold them together. Guess what!? It's still not perfect :( Moral of the story is, before buying tempura batter mix, make sure you understand the instructions at the back!

Maybe, I should just try homemade batter next time.

How To Cook Tikoy

How do you like your TIKOY done?

For years, I always cook Tikoy in old fashion way - dipped in egg then fried. Yummy but the taste is a bit boring, right? So last Chinese NY, I decided to reinvent the tikoy I received from Jun (Ruthie's bf) and came up with Lumping Tikoy.

Ingredients:

New Echague Bakery Tikoy (the best tikoy in town)

Kraft Eden Cheese

Preparation:

Cut tikoy into 4 parts then thin slices (about 2-3 inches long, 1/8inch thick)

Cut cheese into thin long strips

Roll tikoy with cheese in lumpia sheets/spring roll

Deep fry

Serve hot

This tastes really really good. Sweet, sticky, crunchy and cheesy! You can also use langka, Nutella chocolate spread, cheezwiz, peanut batter and strawberry jam instead of cheese. The next day, I dipped the remaining tikoy with Pillsbury hotcake batter then fried it...and it tasted equally good!

A bit late but Kung Hei Fat Choi!  :)

Easy Carbonara Recipe

My favorite Carbonara has got to be the one from Jack's Loft. Sinful up to the last bite. Perfect al dente linguine pasta with creamy white sauce and bacon...oh la la! PERFECT! I have been cooking Carbonara for quite a while but still can't manage to achieve the same perfection.

Anyway, heree is my own version of Carbonara:

2 cans of big Alaska Evap Milk
1 250ml All Purpose Cream
1/4 cup grated cheese
1 small can of mushroom (drained)
5 pcs of sweet ham chopped into small pieces (or bacon)
1 tsp. butter

1/2 kilo of pasta linguine (check the packaging for directions)

Sautee ham into butter, add mushroon, then evap milk and cream. Mix all the remaining ingredients together. Wait until it gets condensed and creamy. Top it with more cheese and dried oregano. Serve hot or cold. Enjoy!

Special Omelette Recipe

This recipe has got to be one of my best pachams! It started when there's a single slice of left over SPAM ham in the fridge one day. Too tired to eat it so I cut it into small pieces, added some bell peppers (NOTE: bell peppers are rich sources of some of the best nutrients), eggs and cheese! Yummy!

Ingredients:
Potato balls
1 whole red bell peppers
4 eggs
1 slice of SPAM HAM
cheese


Procedure:
Cut potato ball into half the fry it, set aside
Heat oil in a pan
Saute ham and bell pepper together
Add egg (slightly beaten)
Season with salt or ajiginisa
Top with cheese

You can try adding diff ingredients like mushrooms, corn etc. Last week I decided to use ground pork instead of ham and it tastes good as well. Local meat loaf is also a good alternative but haven't tried it yet. Will try this with century tuna one of these days.

Expenses: around 80.00P
Servings: 4-6

Simple Chicken Ala King Recipe

Here's my first attempt at Chicken ala King.

I absolutely love this dish. I'm soo proud I was able to cook it because I don't really know how it's done. It turned out to be really yummy. Enjoy!

1/2 chicken fillet (cut into small pieces)
1 carrot (diced)
4 potatoes (diced)
1 bell pepper
1 small can of mushroom
1 small can of green peas
1 big onion
3 cloves garlic
1 cup chicken broth
small can of Carnation evap milk
1/4 cup of Nestle cream


CHICKEN BROTH:
Boil chicken in 2 cups of water, dash of salt and pepper and 1 small onion

Preparation:
Sautee garlic and onion
Add bell pepper, mushroom and chicken
Season with salt and pepper
Add 1 cup of chicken broth
Simmer for 3mins
Add potatoes and carrots
Add carnation evap and nestle cream
cook for another 3mins or until the veggies are cook

Serve with rice or pasta! Yummy!


Servings: 10-12
Total Expenses: 226P

Stir Fry Chicken with Potatoes and Oyster Sauce

Here's another pacham I'd like to share to you. Easy to cook, very affordable and very yummy too. Enjoy!



1/2 kilo of chicken fillet (cut into strips)
Soysauce
2 tsp. oyster sauce
Salt and Pepper
Bell pepper
Potato balls (cut into half then fried)
Onions


Preparations:
Marinate chicken fillet in soysauce, pepper and cornstarch for 30mins
Sautee onions and bell pepper
Add the marinated chicken
Add 1/4 cup water, 1tsp of soysauce + 2 tsp. of oyster sauce
Add the fried potato balls
Cook for 5 mins

Total expenses:
Chicken Fillet 99.53P + Potato Balls 20.35P + bell pepper 8P + other ingredients 20P = 147.88

Servings: 8-10

Easy Beef Brocolli Recipe

1/2 kilo of beef sirloin, cut into thin slices (195P in SM)
Oil (I prefer olive oil)
2-3 brocolli heads (you can buy this for a cheap price at Quiapo market)
2-3 cloves of garlic (minced)

Marinate:
3 tsp. soysauce
pepper
2 tsp. cornstarch
Ginger

Sauce:
1 tsp. soysauce
2 tsp. oyster sauce
1/2 cup of water or broth (whichever is available)

Marinate beef in soysauce,pepper and cornstarch for 30mins.
Cut brocolli into bite size then blanch them
Heat olive oil in a pan, stir fry your beef sirloin
Add garlic
Stir fry for 1 min or until beef is cooked
Add the sauce, cook for 3-5mins
Then add the brocolli

Serve with rice.


Total Expenses: 265Pesos
Servings: 6-8

Garlic Butter Shrimp Recipe

This one is very easy to do, just saute garlic (lots of garlic, don't let them burn) on your butter (in low heat), add shrimp (marinated for a few hours on lemon, cheaper alternative is Sprite), add salt and pepper to taste. You can also add Parsley if you like.

California Maki

Ingredients:
Crab Sticks, Mangoes, Cucumber, Seaweeds, Japanese rice, Sesame Oil

TIP:
Instead of bamboo suchi roller mat, buy plastic sushi mold. EASY.

Instructions:

Add sesame oil to your rice, mix it well then keep in the fridge and let it cool.
Put rice inside the molder, add mangoes, cucumber, crab sticks (thinly sliced)
Roll it over your seaweeds
Cut into slices
Serve with Japanese soy sause and wasabi

Finish product!

For the Love of Cooking

I absolutely love cooking!

When I'm not soo busy internetting, I'm usually in the kitchen cooking different PACHAM dishes.  I cook just about anything what I see from various resources. Many times, I just pick whatever is on left on the fridge and toss them altogether, adding salt and pepper etc.
The thing is when I cook, there's not a dish that tastes exactly the same because I don't really know theproper way of cookingthem. Like the Adobo I cooked last week isn't the same Adobo I cooked yesterday LOL.

I can't say I'm a good cook, but oftentimes, I think I'm doing ok.
Enjoy reading!