Cheese and mushroom omelette

I am a big breakfast person. I don't used to be. Not even when I was studying. I think it's because I didn't have time in the morning. That changed when I started working as a writer in a company that allowed me to start my day late. When I have extra time I enjoy cooking my own breakfast like cheese and mushroom omelette with garlic Spam and wheat bread on the side. Here's how I do it:

INGREDIENTS
- two beaten eggs
- one cheese singles (cheddar or anything milky)
- about a scoop of sliced button mushrooms (fresh or canned)
- cooking oil

TO COOK
Simply pour the beaten egg in a skillet with hot oil. Wait for the egg to brown underneath before carefully laying the cheese and mushroom on one side of the frying egg. Flip the egg halfway to make a pouch. Brown a bit more before serving.

You can fry the meat afterwards, toast the bread with some butter and always serve with a hot mug of freshly brewed coffee. Enjoy!

My cook books

Who doesn't own a cook book, raise your hands?

I didn't own a cook book until my late '20s when my love for food and my palette started to get a little complex. I now have about 10 cook books, complemented by print-outs of recipes I find online, recipes printed on the back of canned good labels or food cartons that I keep, and post-its with my hasty handwriting of recipes I see on TV.


The first cook book I owned is called The Little Book of Fish & Seafood, which I now find odd that it's my first cook book because I'm a meat lover. I hardly use this book because some of the fish featured are not easily available like skate and herring.

Later somebody gave me the Practical Wok & Stir-Fry and the Practical Barbeque cook books. These two are right up my alley because most recipes were easy enough for newbie cooks to follow.

Discovering food and loving it unfortunately could make one put on weight. That must be the reason why someone gave me a Low Carb cook book, which I love because most recipes are well thought of, delicious but not too involved to prepare.

Another step-by-step cook book I have is called Meat Dishes from the Essential Cooking Series. This is also a friendly cook book that I consult from time to time.

I'm also a proud owner of three books by Ina Garten. I have the Barefoot Contessa At Home, Barefoot in Paris, and Barefoot Contessa Family Style. I love watching Ina Garten cook in her lovely home at the East Hampton. She is very generous with the ingredients and her environment -- her own herb and flower garden, the small food shops she frequent, etc. -- is something I wish to have or visit. I have attempted to replicate a number of her dishes already. Several of her ingredients, however, are unique to the U.S. so I have to make adjustments to recreate her recipes. I noticed, though, that she loves to use flour and butter a lot. She's also a heavy user of the food processor. Nothing wrong with these, really, and her dishes are great. But sometimes I do struggle with some of the "big production" recipes that seem so easy to follow when I'm just watching her do them. I also wonder who keeps her kitchen looking so pristine before, during and even after her cooking episode. Because mine certainly looks like where a bomb dropped after I finished cooking.

Last Christmas I acquired the two volumes of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I am that intrepid! But that lasted only a few minutes before real trepidation set in because the moment I leafed through the pages (and saw the old-style reference drawings which I like but also kinda wish there are updated color photos of the dishes) of Julia Child's masterpieces, I felt so foolish to even think about replicating what a kitchen goddess had done.

I think 10 cook books will serve me for sometime when the mood to cook something new hits me. I just took them out from the shelves today and studiously listed and typed down the ones I think I'll try cooking in the days to come. Wish me luck :)

Beef shank with vegetables

Here's a beef shank dish that I've managed to cook on several occasions already. It's a simple meat-and-potato kind of dish but with a little extra garden variety and I make it extra tomatoey.



INGREDIENTS
- 1 kilo of beef shank, cut to serving size
- 1 can or a small pack of tomato sauce
- 8 small potatoes (peeled)
- 2 big carrots (peeled and cut)
- 2 large onions (sliced)
- 1 yellow capsicum (sliced)
- few olives
- garlic (crushed)
- a cup of red wine
- a tbsp of white sugar
- a dash of oregano
- wombok leaves
- salt and pepper




TO COOK:
Boil the beef shank till it's tender. Add the tomato sauce,potato, carrots, onion and garlic and continue boiling. Before the vegetables are done, add the wine, sugar and all the seasoning like salt, pepper and oregano. After it simmered for about 15 minutes, add the wombok leaves and the capsicum. Always sample the sauce to suit your taste. You can add some Knorr seasoning for more flavoring. Enjoy!

Siomai soup

There was one particular evening recently when I just couldn't call it a night because my stomach was still growling. I had dinner, yes, but it was so forgettable and unsatisfying that I wanted to eat again. Problem was I couldn't think what my extra dinner would be. I didn't want anything heavy and with carbs. Thankfully, there was an angel in my kitchen that night who quickly whipped up something for me.

The tasty invention involved the following...

INGREDIENTS:
6 large pre-cooked pork siomai dumplings (pre-cooked)
1 chicken broth cube
2 to 3 glasses of water
salt and pepper
1 tbsp of Lee Kum Kee soy sauce
2 medium sized eggs

TO COOK:
- beat the eggs and fry in vegetable oil. Once cooked, slice the egg thinly like noodles. Set aside.
- boil the water in a pot and add the dumplings and chicken broth cube.
- season with salt and pepper and soy sauce
- add the sliced egg

Enjoy!

Chicken Tortilla ala Shawarma

I wanted something quick but delicious for lunch that won't involve a lot of cooking. My solution was to fix some chicken tortillas which use the simplest ingredients and methods of preparation.



INGREDIENTS:
- 3 chicken quarters
- 4 medium-size tomatoes
- 1 big yellow onion
- 3 spring onions
- a teaspoon of garlic powder
- half a lemon
- a cup of mayonnaise
- a pack of tortillas
- olive oil
- salt and pepper

TO COOK:
- First, boil the chicken quarters in some salt and pepper.
- While it's boiling, slice the onion and tomatoes into small cubes. Chop the spring onions coarsely. Set aside in a dish or bowl.
- Put garlic powder and mayonnaise, plus olive oil and a dash of salt and pepper in a mixing bowl.
- Whisk everything together until the mayonnaise turns light.
- In a separate bowl, shred the boiled chicken meat or slice them thinly for a more uniform look.
- Squeeze some lemon juice to the chicken then give it a toss to distribute the lemon juice well.
- Heat the grill and place the tortillas. Heating the tortillas should just be for half a minute tops or else they could become crispy and crumbly, if not burned.
- Place the heated tortilla in a dish and lather it with some mayo-garlic spread. Put onion and tomatoes and shredded chicken on top of each other. Roll the tortilla and, if necessary, use a toothpick to hold it together.
- Enjoy!!















I think it would also be okay, if not great, to add some cheese but it's just the cheese monster in me talking. This dish is also a perfect snack item and a very quick one to prepare for guests who come unannounced.

How original is this dish or how different is it from shawarma? Well, it's original in the sense that I freely dabbled on the ingredients which I thought would work well together and only used my fleeting memory of a good shawarma I had long ago as reference. And, yes, instead of just one pot, I also used a griller. The result is a tasty meal to quell hungry pangs right away.

Menudo

Ahh...Menudo. A staple in Filipino feasts, menudo is also often served at home and in carinderias (informal food stands) and in office or school canteens. However, it's not something I always see in the menus of local restaurants. It's one of my favorite local dishes though it sure doesn't sound local; more like Spanish where the word "menudo" means small or little. And that's apparently how this dish, which is made up mainly of small cubes of pork and pork liver, got its name. Whatever its true origin is, I'm just glad I could cook a simple version of this Spanish-Filipino dish all in one pot.

INGREDIENTS:
* A kilo of pork kasim chopped into small cubes
* Half a kilo of pork liver, also chopped into small cubes
* Two medium sized potatoes, cut into small cubes
* One big carrot, cut into small cubes
* A big red onion and about 4 pcs of garlic chopped coarsely
* A small box of raisins
* A dozen of pitted olives
* Three cups of tomato sauce
* A teaspoon of sugar (optional)
* Soy sauce, salt and pepper to taste
* A bay leaf

TO COOK:
* Saute garlic and onion
* Add pork and a glass of water. Boil briefly.
* Add carrots, potato and tomato sauce. Also add the salt, pepper, soy sauce and bay leaf.
* Simmer for like 10 minutes before adding the chopped liver.
* Simmer some more till the liver is cooked before adding the raisins and olives.
* If it's a bit sour to the taste due to the tomato sauce, balance it with a teaspoon of sugar.
* Enjoy with hot rice.

Filipino Chicken & Pork Adobo

I am fascinated at how Adobo has become one of the things that defines us as Filipinos. I am told that there are many ways and variations to cook Adobo, although I only know one version, which is pretty basic but nonetheless delicious.

Foreigners, mostly Americans who have Filipino friends or married to a Filipino, love our Adobo. In my last US visit, a black taxi driver who was taking me to the Houston airport told me how he loved eating adobo with his Filipino friends. At first, he couldn't remember what it was called so I asked him to describe it. He had only so far mentioned soy sauce and meat when I blurted out "Adobo!", and he said "Yeah, that's the one!" and I think he kinda licked his lips at the memory of the last savory adobo dish he had.

I also spotted in a food court in one of the hotels in Las Vegas a Mexican food stand offering Chicken Adobo. I already bought my greasy, tasteless, starchy Chinese meal then so I passed on the Mexican Chicken Adobo; something I regret till now because I haven't stopped wondering how different or similar could it be from ours.

I was watching a reality TV last night called "The Family Restaurant" when the matriarch named Amy, a Chinese woman who is so jovial and friendly, declared she wants to offer Adobo in her "Amy's Chicken" food stand. She and her family are based in Canada where they operate a restaurant called Lingnam.

I loved Adobo even as a kid. I've eaten it so many times that when I had to cook one for the first time, I didn't need a recipe. It also helps that my family turned me into a sous chef (a fancy name for kitchen runner and helper) so I grew familiar with what ingredients are needed for Adobo.

On the off chance that there's still a grown-up Pinoy who doesn't know how to cook Adobo, let me share here my basic recipe for this timeless Pinoy dish.



CHICKEN PORK ADOBO (serves four)
* half a kilo of chicken thighs (cut in serving size)
* half a kilo of pork cubes with some fat
* 8 cloves of garlic (the more, the better)
* 1 big red onion
* half a cup of good soy sauce
* 5 tbsps of good vinegar
* 2 bay leaves
* peppercorns
* 3 teaspoons of sugar
* 2 tbsps of cooking oil
* 4 boiled eggs

TO COOK:
* In a tbsp. of cooking oil briefly fry the chicken and pork cubes just to brown them a bit. Set aside.
* Saute the chopped garlic and onion using another tbsp of cooking oil before adding all meat back in the pan.
* Pour the soy sauce and vinegar and let it boil.
* When it's boiling, add the bay leaf, peppercorns and sugar.
* Set the stove to medium heat and let the dish to cook until the pork and chicken are tender.
* Serve with boiled eggs on top.

**The quantity of soy sauce and vinegar, as well as the onion and garlic, peppercorn and sugar can be adjusted to suit individual tastes and preferences. I, for one, hate being constricted to super strict measurements when it comes to cooking...

When I was a young girl I would watch my mother cook Adobo and she would often caution me from stirring the pot after she had poured the vinegar in. She said the vinegar wouldn't cook properly if it's disturbed before it boils. But the ever impatient me couldn't resist stirring the pot when I cook Adobo now because I want to constantly taste the sauce to be sure the flavor is okay.

One time my sister made her version of Adobo using just salt instead of soy sauce. She called it "Adobong Puti" because the finished product naturally didn't produce the dark color from soy sauce. It also didn't produce the kind of Adobo taste I know, but I must say her Adobong Puti was not bad at all.

Then my other sister decided to really push the Adobo envelope after seeing a cooking show on TV that used catsup (!) to cook Adobo. It was bad, please don't try it at home.

As I said there are supposed to be many versions of Pinoy Adobo. Some add coconut milk. But this basic recipe I shared here already satisfies me and the people I serve it to, whose only usual complaint is that it makes them eat more rice.

Oh, I'm sure many Filipinos also know that leftover Adobo tastes even better, especially when the sauce has turned into gel. A true gastronomic dish that made Filipino Chicken & Pork Adobo a true classic.