Fish over Couscous in a Packet!

     Holiday was over! After days of deadly foods such us ham, smoked turkey, mashed potatoes, Aunt Kathy's stuffing, cookies, pies and tons of chocolates its time to mellow down. I've been seeing my husband doing some push-ups, sit-ups and jumping jack trying not to have a heart attack. It seems that after this past few days we're kinda like a heart attack ready to happen. So here is another fish recipe which I was inspired by our Grandma Joyce's recipe. I put a little touch of my own and hopefully you'll enjoy this dish. You can use many different kinds of fish. I have used salmon, tilapia, red snapper, halibut, sea bass and everything works just fine.

Ingredients:

Sesame mixture:

1 tbsp Sesame oil

3 tbsp Olive oil

2 tbsp Soy sauce

2 cloves garlic (minced)

Mix all the ingredients in a small bowl and set aside.

Fish with couscous:

Makes 2 packets (servings)

2 fish fillet

2 cups Couscous

2 carrots (julienne)

1 thumb size ginger (julienne)

½ red bell pepper (julienne)

1 bunch scallions (chopped)

½ cup cherry tomatoes (halved)

1 turnip (julienne)

4 oz mushroom (thinly sliced)

1 jar artichoke heart in water (drained)

Kosher salt and pepper

Procedure:

Preheat oven on 450 degress F.

Soak Couscous in a cold water for 5 minutes and set aside.

1. Clean fish fillet and pat dry with paper towel. Season fish with kosher salt and pepper.
2. In a bowl mix carrots, ginger, bell pepper, half of the scallions, cherry tomatoes, turnip and mushroom.
3. Cut a 2 foot sheet of aluminum foil.
4. Place 1 cup of Couscous on the first foot of foil and top it with half of the veggies mixture. Leave the other half of the foil with nothing on it, it will be folded over later for cooking.
5. Drizzle 1 ½ Tbsp of the sesame oil over the Couscous and Vegetables mixture.
6. Top the veggie mixture with the seasoned fish fillet and drizzle with another 1 ½ tbsp of the sesame oil mixture.
7. Put half of the artichoke heart on the side and garnish with scallions.
8. Fold the foil and seal all of the ends. Repeat procedure with the other fish fillet.
9. Place on a cookie sheet and bake for 20 minutes. Let it stand for 5 minutes before opening the packet.
   
   
   -Love-
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

Mussels and Clams!

     Let's Get Some Shell-Fish!
     After spending some time in Leavenworth and eating greasy yummy foods, J Bird begged me for some home cook food, so right after our 3 hours drive home we went straight to Central Market and picked up some shellfish. Also sometimes it pays a lot to balance ones diet (not to mention the guilt trips) with good healthy food. Pork hocks, steak, veal, lots of taffys and chocolate sounds really yummy when they are available but they can be really deadly! So here we go, please enjoy my recipe for super yummy mussels and clams!

Ingredients:

1 lb mussels (scrubbed and cleaned)

1 lb clams (scrubbed and cleaned)

5 tbsp butter

1 medium shallots (sliced)

3 cloves garlic (thinly sliced)

15 pieces cherry tomatoes (cut lengthwise)

1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

1/2 white wine

1/2 tsp Kosher salt

1/2 tsp pepper

Basil for garnish

Procedure:

1. In a pot melt in butter over medium high heat and saute onion until translucent about 3 minutes then add garlic for another 2-3 minutes.
2. Place tomatoes in and saute for 3 more minutes until flavors blend in.
3. Add mussels and clams stirring to incorporate flavors with the spices.
4. Pour in wine and red pepper flakes, simmer for 10 minutes or until clams and mussels open up. Discard un-open shellfish. Salt and pepper to taste!
5. Place in a serving plate and garnish with basil.
6. Enjoy with a really good piece of bread!

-Love-

Brined Roast Chicken!

      So I woke up Tuesday morning with an idea of brining a whole chicken. The advantage of brining is that at the end of the process you have a really tender, moist and flavorful meat. Since I've started this blog, I have oftentimes caught myself waking up in the middle of the night with some weird idea and almost every time its related to food. Bizarre! And so, for the sake of self satisfaction, right after work last Tuesday I drove myself to the store and bought a good looking chicken. The next day early in the morning on Wednesday, I brined my chicken. I made my brine with ½ cup of sea salt (you can use normal table salt but I prefer to use sea salt for the extra flavor), 1/3 cup of granulated sugar dissolved in about 3 liters of water and 1 quartered onion. Make sure to use a non-reactive container while brining your bird. This time I let my bird sit for 2 days in the brine and I rinsed it after with cold running water, then I place it inside the fridge for a few hours, this will help crisp the skin when roasting.

 Ingredients: 

1 whole chicken (about 5 lbs)

½ lemon

1 onion (quartered)

1 head garlic (cut end cross-wise)

1 tbsp kosher salt

½ tsp peppercorn

3 bay leaves

 Seasoning:

2 tbsp Butter (room temperature)

1 tbsp Kosher Salt
½ tbsp freshly ground pepper

1/3 tbsp cayenne pepper

Preheat over 450 degrees F

1. Pat dry chicken and place lemon, onion, garlic, 1 tbsp salt, peppercorn and bay leaves in chicken cavity.
2. In a small bowl mix in pepper, salt and cayenne pepper.
3. Brush melted butter all over chicken and sprinkle the cayenne mixture.
4. Tie chicken using cotton twine.
5. Place it on rack chicken breast up for 15 minutes for browning.
6. Reduce the oven temperature to 375 degrees F, pull out chicken and flip up-side down.
7. Bake chicken for 1 hour.
8. Flip the chicken again, right side up, and bake for 25 more minutes.
9. Let the chicken rest for 10 minutes before carving.
10. Enjoy!

Gravy!

3 tbsp flour

1 cup chicken stock

salt and pepper

     Using the chicken drippings, mix in flour until it looks like a paste in a medium high heat. Pour in the chicken stock. Keep whisking continuously until reaching your desired texture. Salt and pepper if needed.

-Love-

Beef Pochero!

     For days I've been really craving some Filipino food, but I haven't been able to figure out which, or what I really wanted. Isn't it funny how sometimes you know that you want something but don’t know what exactly it is? You want something sweet but not candy, your hungry but really your not, you really don’t know what that something is but the name of it is just on the tip of your tongue! That was me!

      So last night was my husband's company party, and after 2 glasses of red wine, a vanilla-bourbon-coconut flavored cigar and a really fun time, I woke up this morning light-headed around 9 am and the first thing I had in mind before my legs woke up was Pochero! Tadaa! Mystery solved!

      Just a bit of background info for you all, in my opinion one of the best thing that we Filipinos inherit from the Spanish colonization of the Philippines was food. Pochero has become a traditional dish among Filipinos with the use of different kinds of meat such as chicken, pork and beef with a vast variations of veggies and a tomato sauce as its base. The cooking method of this dish depends on the cooks preference. So here is my own version of Beef Pochero, instead of using tomato sauce I indeed use pork and beans.

Ingredients:

1 Beef Shank (About 2 lbs)

2 Tbsp Kosher salt

6 cups water

1 medium yellow onion (quartered)

¼ whole of cabbage

5 bunch baby bok choy (trim ends separating individually)

20 pcs green beans (trim both ends and cut in half)

1 15oz pork and beans

1 medium size shallots (chopped)

3 cloves garlic (thinly sliced)

1 5oz Portuguese sausage (sliced)

2 medium potatoes (cut)

2 Tbsp olive oil

Procedure:

In a slow cooker over high heat, place beef shank, water, quartered yellow onion and kosher salt and leave simmering for 4 ½- 5 hours or until meat is falling off the bone. This dish 30 minutes if using pressure cooker or 3 hours if stove top.

1. In a deep pan heat olive oil over medium heat.
2. Browned sausage for about 3 minutes and set aside.
3. Using the same pan saute shallots until translucent and add garlic after.
4. Put in the beef shank and add 3 cups of broth from the boiled shank.
5. Add potatoes and simmer for 10 minutes or almost tender, lid on.
6. Mix in pork and beans over and add green beans. Simmer for 5 minutes with lid on.
7. Place cabbage, bok choy and the reserved browned sausage for another 3 minutes. Salt and pepper to taste. Turn heat off!
8. Serve and enjoy with steamed rice!

-Love-

Homemade Chicken Stock!

     As I promised, here is my easy to follow recipe on how to make your own chicken stock. Making my own chicken stock is one of the main reasons why I love to buy an entire chicken, and on top of being really yummy, it is also very economical. You don't just have a meal from the whole chicken but you can save money by means of making chicken stock rather by buying it. Chicken stock can last up to 4 months when properly refrigerated.

     Since we all love savings, I will be posting my recipe from the meat I extracted from the chicken carcass next. Make sure to get as much meat as you can. My wonderful mother-in-law has always a three day rule when it comes to meat, if you plan to keep the meat for more than 3 days, you can store the it in the freezer until you are ready to cook later.

Ingredients:

1 Whole chicken carcass

1 medium yellow onion (quartered)

1 head garlic (bottom trimmed)

2 bay leaves

1/2 Tbsp whole peppercorn

2 Tbsp Kosher salt

11 cups water

3 stalks celery (cut)

2 large carrots (peeled and cut)

Place all the ingredients in a big pot and let it simmer for 50 minutes over medium high heat.

-Love-

How to cut up a whole chicken!

A good friend of mine, Crystal asked me if I could help her with a class project and make a Filipino dish with her for a Literature class in which they had to bring an International cuisine. So we decided to make chicken and pork Adobo; since it is one of the dish's that the Philippines is known for. It was perfect timing too as I was just trying to figure out what other food related posts that I could do that were not cooking itself. After a lot of thinking I came to the decision that I would share an easy way of cutting up chicken into its different pieces. I would like to suggest to my viewers that you watch the video as a reference as well as read the directions below.

So more than anything else, the secret to piecing out a chicken is... a very sharp knife!

Hope this video is a big help to you! And by the way don't throw the carcass, I have a great way of making a good chicken stock with it; watch out for my next blog about it.

1. Clean whole chicken and pat dry with paper towel.
2. Make an incision in the chicken skin between the body and a chicken thigh to separate the thigh meat away from the body; make sure to snap the hip bone and finish separating. Place the first thigh to the side, and repeat with the other side.
3. Locate the joint that connects one of the chicken wings to its collar bone and cut around the joint, the wing will separate easily. Set the first wing aside and now use the same procedure to do the other wing.
4. Last feel the ridge across the top of the chicken between its breasts and glide your knife down to start cutting from the collar bone along its rib cage keeping as close to the ribs as possible to utilize the most meat.

-Love-

P.S. Special thanks to Julia and Katie, for entertaining me while I got ready to post this.