My husband loves breakfast, and since the girls went on summer vacation, we have been indulging too much. We've even had breakfast food for late dinner! We got us some true blue country ham, which reminds me of tuyo (salted, dried sardines), strangely enough, because of it's saltiness, and it's strong smell. It smells a bit like funky feet, but if you can get past that, which really, it dissipates as it cooks, is really quite delicious.
On this day, since we had plenty of green tomatoes, we decided to have some fried green tomatoes along with liver pudding (another southern specialty) and country ham, of course accompanied with buttery grits. Yummy cholesterol heaven!
The ham is so salty that I parboiled it first and threw out the first water, added a bit more and boiled it down until all the liquid has evaporated and the ham started to sizzle and take on some color. After the ham has browned, my mother in law used to deglaze the pan with coffee, producing what they call red-eye gravy which is then drizzled over the grits. I like frying rice in the same pan and getting that good country ham flavor all over the fried rice.
I have also taken a liking to fried green tomatoes which is simply dredged in flour and fried. We couldn't wait for the tomatoes in the garden to ripen, so this was a great way to have a sampling.
In contrast, this is my hubby's favorite Filipino breakfast meat, tocino.
This was my first attempt at making tocino at home, and it wasn't too bad, if I do say so myself. I simply marinated thin slices of a boston butt pork roast in apple cider vinegar, soy sauce, brown sugar, and black pepper. No coloring, so this doesn't have the usual reddish color, but the flavor was good. I cooked the tocino over low heat until all the liquid evaporated and the marinade started to caramelize and take on that golden color. Tip from my dad: cook it slow, don't over cook it, and you will have a tender tocino. It worked!
One of my favorite things to do in L.A. is visit Chinatown. Not only do you find great bargains, but also great food, and yes, even street food. Too bad that we forgot to take a photo of it, but we even saw them squeezing fresh sugar cane for a natural sugar high.
Start by preparing all the ingredients:
About a pound of Yard Long Beans - I decided to leave the beans long, as I thought it looked prettier this way than cut up. If the kids had been home, I may have cut it up to more manageable size.
5 cloves of garlic, crushed
1/2 Onion, chopped
1 teaspoon Ginger, minced
1 fresh, red cayenne pepper, chopped (about 1 tsp)
2 tablespoons Oyster Sauce
1 teaspoon Fish Sauce
1/4 cup Coconut Milk
1/4 cup Creamy Peanut Butter
1 tablespoon Brown Sugar
Juice of 1/2 lime or about 1 tablespoon.
1 teapoon chopped basil leaves
Blanch the beans for about 5 minutes or until tender, and drain. In a pan, heat 1 tablespoon of oil and saute garlic, ginger and onions until fragrant and tender. Add the cayenne pepper, oyster sauce, fish sauce, coconut milk, peanut butter, brown sugar and heat through. Add the basil leaves and remove from the heat. Pour the sauce over the beans and enjoy!
Being tagged for a cooking meme by CeliaK brought back a flood of memories for me, so I decided on a slightly different take on the meme. I have combined the first three questions, so I can reminisce a little about my lola, who was an early influence on my cooking, and growing up in the province.
What is your first memory of baking/cooking on your own?
Who had the most influence on your cooking?
Do you have an old photo as "evidence" of an early exposure to the culinary world and would you like to share it?
Cooking, it seems, has always been a part of my life starting with the first tea set and kitchen set I received for Christmas presents. But my first “real cooking” experience happened during one of our many visits to my lola’s (grandmother) house in the province. As young as 7 or 8, we were allowed to play with fire. Actually, I remember her teaching me how to build a fire on her wood stove at this age. During harvest time, we are allowed to throw sweet potatoes or corn to roast in the fire. My favorite game growing up is playing house, because then I get to cook.
I had a miniature set similar to my grandmother’s own clay stove and pots. My set is long gone, but I found this set during our last vacation to the Philippines. I am glad I still have it to share with my girls.
The set I played with wasn’t this fancy, it was just as plain as my grandmother’s real stuff, and by the time I had used it a few times, it was as blackened are hers were.
Now that I have my own children, I fuss at them for all kinds of stuff including warnings about burning the house down. Then, I think back to this time in my childhood when it wasn’t unusual for us to build a fire to cook on. I had a clay pot just like this, and I would use the small kindling sticks that my grandmother would cut to build a fire and cook rice. She never hesitated to give us a small cupful of rice to cook as we please. We gathered vegetables and fruits from the farm to experiment on. Most of the time though, our recipes consisted of boiling them with a bit of salt. We would eat what we cooked too.
Mageiricophobia - do you suffer from any cooking phobia, a dish that makes your palms sweat?
I’m willing to try cooking almost anything, but the things I fear I tend to procrastinate on. Soufle’s are one of them, or anything that has the possibility of “falling”. That’s why I am still hesitant at baking cakes. I guess soufle’s and airy cakes are next in my repertoir.
What would be your most valued or used kitchen gadgets and/or what was the biggest letdown?
My most valued kitchen gadget would be my 16 year old Oster Kitchen Center. I bought it to mix cakes and breads but I grew to appreciate the other features that came with it like the blender and food processor. It is probably one of the oldest gadgets I have and it’s probably nearing its end. I would surely miss it when it finally gives up on me.
Name some funny or weird food combinations/dishes you really like and probably no one else.
This is a really hard one for me to answer as I don’t think any of my food combinations are weird. If it tastes good, I’m all for it. One of the the food combinations that most of my American friends find strange is Avocado as dessert/sweet. I grew up eating avocado as dessert, so I don’t find it unusual at all.
What are the three eatables or dishes you simply don't want to live without?
Fruits, vegetables, and rice.
3 quickies:
favorite ice cream … Haagen Dazs Coffee
you will probably never eat … anything that smells foul or unsanitary
signature dish … any Filipino dish becomes my signature dish, since most of the time, I am the only Filipino where I live now.
I pass this meme on to any who haven't been tagged yet, and I hope Jade will answer some of the questions too.
The veggies from the garden have started coming in, and we can't get rid of them fast enough! The zucchini and cucumbers have been putting out like crazy, the tomatoes are finally ripening, and the "sitaw" or yard long beans have gone nuts. We have so much of the long beans, we don't know what to do with them. I think I'll try blanching and freezing some, just to see how well they do. I prefer fresh vegetable to frozen ones. There aren't very many people here that know what to do with them. There is one Chinese girl at work who does though, and was she ever glad to have them! I gave her a whole bag. The long beans are now in some of the grocery stores here, but they are still very expensive, about $2.99 a pound, so I haven't been buying much. Plus, they just don't have that fresh sweet taste that they get when they are fresh off the vines. The corn has started coming in too, so by the time the girls get back in a couple of weeks, they should be ready to eat. The sunflowers have started blooming, and in a couple of weeks they should be in full bloom, just in time for the girls' homecoming.
Karen's comment in the Manila Bulletin article below about rice paddy snails reminded me of this delicacy. My mom visited last month to pick up the girls, and while she was here we made a trip to the Chinese grocery store in Raleigh. I have seen these snails there before, but I never bought any because one, I wasn't sure if they were the right kind and two, I wasn't sure how I would fix it. She was excited to see these, because she says she hadn't even seen them in LA. She says they are called "leddeg" in Ilokano. I think they are river snails.
When we got them home, we gave them a good washing and soaked them in water for a while. Mom was glad to see they had prepped them already. Apparently, you have to break or crush the bottom part of each snail, to release the pressure and make the flesh easier to get to once they're cooked.
These were cooked simply, in boiling water with onions and ginger with a bit of tamarind powder thrown in. My mom liked the soup a lot. I hate that I didn't think about it, but I probably could have thrown in some pepper leaves for added flavor, and I sure have lots of pepper leaves in the garden. Ah, well, maybe next time.
Miss Annalyn S. Jusay, of the Manila Bulletin has graciously included us in her recent roundtable of food bloggers. She sent a few of us Filipino food bloggers questions about our blogs, and our take on food. We got a bit carried away answering her questions that she has to break up her article into two parts :-). Other food bloggers in the roundtable are: Karen of the Pilgrims Pots & Pans, TingAling of the World Class Cuisine, CeliaK of the English Patis, and Stef of Stefoodie.net.
Go check out the roundtable, part I.
Photo compliments of Karen at Pilgrims Pots & Pans.
Jade is presently on summer vacation, but the girl has not stopped cooking. She has been dazzling her grandma and aunts with her cooking. She has even put her Auntie O's brand new kitchen to good use, making this scrumptious looking pizza for her and her cousins.
Before & After Baking
I'm not really sure what she has on the pizza, I'll let her write her recipe down whenever she gets a chance.
Posting has been slow around here lately, and I had the best intentions, too! I really thought that after the girls left for summer vacation, I can finally catch up on posting some recipes. The weather has been beautiful, and this, our new baby, has taken up much of our time.
This is one side of our garden, where the herbs are planted. In this bed, we have basil, lemon balm, oregano, chives, lavender, flat leaf parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. You know the song...
I'll try to get more photos of the garden that's been occupying so much of our time, from morning till dusk. We wake up earlier than usual, and we immediately head for the backyard with our cup of coffee, and sit and watch it grow. My husband has been spending endless hours tilling, weeding, and just puttering in the garden. In the evenings, we unwind in the garden too, and now finally, we are reaping its fruits. We've already harvested cucumbers, zucchini, and green tomatoes, and just about everything coming out of our kitchen is peppered with fresh herbs. Oh, I do so love summer time!
