Eggplant Salpicao

What you need:

• One (1) eggplant diced.
• One white onion, halved then quartered.
• 3-4 cloves of garlic minced.
• 1-2 tbsp of Knorr Seasoning
• 2-3 tbsp of Lea and Perins Worcestershire Sauce
• Salt and Pepper

How to:

• In a pan on medium heat, sautee your garlic and onions in some oil.
• Add in your diced eggplant once the onion is semi-translucent.
• Add pepper, seasoning and Worcestershire sauce. Cover to cook.
• Once fully cooked, taste and add salt if needed.

Here I paired it with some ready made breakfast sausages I bought at Rustan’s supermarket, red rice and a glass of white wine.

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Super Tamad Meal

One night, I was craving for chips! But I didn’t want to go all junk food… so I went to our neighborhood fruit and vegetable stand and bought a bundle of kangkong.

What you need:

• Hungarian sausage, sliced.
• Kangkong, leaves and soft stems only
• Knorr Seasoning
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced

How to:

• In a pan, sautee the garlic in some oil.
• Add the sliced sausage.
• Once the sausage is almost cooked through.
• Add the kangkong on top. Cover to cook.
• Once the kangkong is wilted, add Knorr seasoning.
• Mix to incorporate flavors.

Et voila!

Paired it with chips! And I made my own Happy Four Seasons by spiking it with some left over vodka! 😀

A Glass of Merlot

The past few weeks things have been really busy and the other night… JP surprised me, dropped by my apartment with a bottle of wine. 

It was a decent wine, slightly spicy with some tanginess.

All in all pretty ok… but much better with some meat i.e. sausage or salami, etc.

Steak and Potatoes

The S&P combo is pretty classic and one that I’ve done several times already. But… at the grocery one day, I found a bundle of super fresh basil. So I wanted to try and incorporate it into my cooking.

What you need:

• 1 piece of steak, marinating for 1 hour in salt, pepper, & Knorr Seasoning).
•  4-8 baby potatoes (adjust number depending on size).
• 3-4 cloves of garlic minced
• 1 small/medium white onion, chopped
• 5-8 leaves of fresh basil, roughly chopped

How to:

• In a pot, boil the potatoes till cooked.
• Once cooked set aside.
• In a pan, sauté onions and garlic in olive oil.
• Once cooked, set it aside to the coolest part of the pan.
• Cook your steak till preferred doneness. (Pan searing! Or grill it if you have one).
• Add the basil.
• Once the steak is done, remove it from the pan.
• Return drained potatoes to the pan and sautee.
• Serve warm!

I enjoyed dinner with a glass of Malagos!

Porkchop the Second

A while back I cooked a Quintessential Pinoy Porkchop dish (porkchop marinated and cooked in soy sauce and calamansi)…I used the same marinade on two other porkchops with a certain twist. Here’s the second porkchop.

Pineapple & Honey Glazed Porkchop

What you need:

• 1 pc. Porkchop (marinating overnight in soy sauce & calamansi juice)
• 1 can/packet (200g or less) or cup (100 g) of Pineapple tidbits or chunks.
• 1 tbsp honey

How to:

1. Drain the sugar syrup from the can of pineapples into the porkchop marinade. Allow the sweetness of the pineapple to work its way into the porkchop. Let it sit for at least 15 minutes. An hour is ideal, you could also marinade it overnight. (Set aside the pineapple tidbits or chunks for the meantime)

2. In a skillet w/ oil, I fried the pineapple a little bit, just so it seals in the pineapple flavor. (I made sure there were caramelized bits.) Then remove the pineapple and set it aside.

3. Dunk the porkchop and some of the marinade in a skillet. Fry your porkchop. When it’s about 1-2 minutes away from being done, add a tbsp. (or 2) of honey, switch sides. The pan and the honey will burn a little, that’s ok.

3. Transfer the porkchop to your serving dish and top with the pineapple tidbits or chunks.

Porkchop the Second will undoubtedly be on the sweet side with some tanginess from the pineapple. Serve the porkchop with rice and side of steamed or buttered vegetables. (If you’re like me, I added a little bit of Knorr seasoning ang hot sauce) 🙂

Disclaimer: the marinating pork chop did not sit in my fridge for months! I cooked this way  back but it’s only now that I was able to post the blog about it.

Adobong Kangkong

Many think that adobo refers only to pork and/or chicken cooked in soy sauce and vinegar. But really the Filipino term adobo (not to be confused with the Spanish adobo-which is a specific way to marinate or season raw meat or the Spanish dish adobado-which tastes like Filipino menudo but with red wine) is also method of cooking using salt and vinegar. It is an indigenous cooking process (that means even before the Spanish came to the Philippines it already existed.) The Spanish termed the process adobo because it was very similar to the Spanish adobo process.

There are many many variations of the adobo in the Philippines – pork adobo, chicken adobo, CPA-chicken pork adobo, adobong pusit, adobong Bicolano (with gata-coconut milk and labuyo-a type of hot chili), adobong okra, etc. Today, you’ll read up on my attempt to cook Adobong Kangkong – one of my favorite Filipino vegetable dishes.

What you need:

• 2 cloves of garlic minced
• ¼ onion  – minced
• ½ tali (bundle) kangkong with leaves removed from the stem, and the stem chopped in 1-2 inch sections – make sure it’s fresh, I made the mistake of using old kangkong that had been in the fridge for a couple of days for this and it was really tough… in retrospect, I should have just used the leaves and discarded the stems since my kangkong was old and drying up
• soy sauce to taste
• vinegar to taste

How to:

1. In a skillet, sauté the garlic and onion in some oil until cooked through but not burned.

2. Add your kangkong. Allow it to wilt a little.

3. Add soy sauce and vinegar in equal parts first. You just want to flavor the kangkong and not make it into a soup. I recommend you use a teaspoon or table spoon and add these little by little (for the sake of good cooking don’t pour directly from the bottle, you might just have kangkong swimming in soy sauce or vinegar).

There you are DONE! 😀 Enjoy.

Malagos Bignay Wine

A few months ago, I visited the Echo Store in High Street, BGC. There I found Malagos a local wine made from Bignay or currant tree berries. I’ve been seeing bignay wine in Baguio for several years now but they had always been of poor quality.  Anyway, I saw this bottle and decided to give it a go.

I forgot how much I bought it for but its between Php350-500.

Smooth and sweet with just the right amount of acidity.

It wasn’t until I took a photo of the back label that I realized it was being sold as a ‘dessert wine.’

See elsewhere in the world, when a wine is this sweet it’s not good for pairing with meals. But since Filipinos have a penchant for sweet wines, this would really do well for us as a table wine. Plus, it doesn’t heat the body like imported red grape wines do so it’s perfect for our warm climate. I drank it room temp but I think it would be great slightly chilled too. It’s almost like a sangria but without the sharp citrus flavor. It can come of as a tad too sweet, if that’s the case, watering it down a bit does the trick nicely!

BTW: Since I live solo, I couldn’t finish the whole bottle in one sitting. This keeps really well over a 7 day period.

I’m gonna buy this again when I get the chance! 😀