Cheesy Pasta con San Marino Corned Tuna

Our family can’t live without “merienda.” Some say that the English term for “merienda” is snack. Snack refers to a small portion of food.  But for many of us Pinoys,  “merienda” is not just eating a small amount of food, we eat until we are full. I always have to stock bread or biscuits and bread spread so that every time we want to eat “merienda” we can easily grab some to fill our hunger. But I also make it a point to serve cooked dish for “merienda.” My pantry always have pasta noodles, San Marino corned tuna, canned mushrooms, pineapple tidbits, and cheddar cheese. I tried to make a pasta dish using San Marino corned tuna. I am not an endorser of this product (hehehe) but I find it very tasty and a real value for your money. I don’t know if this recipe was already featured in “Sarap at Home” (a cooking show using San Marino products from QTV 11 hosted by Ms. Sam Oh) because as of this writing I haven’t watched an episode featuring this recipe, maybe I missed it or I don’t really know. Anyway, here’s my invented recipe.

Ingredients:

2 canned SM corned tuna

400 gms. of spaghetti noodles (cooked as directed)

Crushed garlic

Diced onion

Olive oil

Grated cheese (cheddar)

Salt and pepper to taste

Procedures:

-          Saute garlic, onion, and SM corned tuna, add ¼ cup of water then simmer. Season with a dash of salt and pepper.

-          Add the noodles, stir to mix.

-          Serve hot, top with grated cheese.

My mom-in-law's Pochero

Before I got married I have this wrong notion that a mother-in-law and a daughter-in-law have no chance to live peacefully and harmoniously in one roof. I proved this really wrong. I have a very pleasant relationship with my husband’s mother.  Early on in our marriage, we lived in my in-law’s house for 6 months and I really learned a lot from her. She is very generous enough to share with me all her knowledge in managing a household and even some of her personal secrets. She also shared with me some of her recipes, those food that my husband loves to eat.  I know that my mother-in-law only wants the best for her son, the man I vowed to love till the end. 

I didn’t grow up eating pochero. It wasn’t in the list of my mom’s recipes.  My mother-in-law taught me how to cook pochero.  Her pochero is a very simple everyday dish and she didn’t follow those Spanish-style pochero recipes. I would say that it is more of a Pinoy viand. The taste is very Filipino with saba and camote as some of the ingredients. The additional gingery taste makes it more flavorful. I usually choose beef sirloin for pochero with some visible fats (yum). I also tried chicken but I prefer beef for pochero.

Ingredients:

Beef sirloin (cubed)

Garlic (crushed)

Onion (diced)

Ginger  (diced)

1 pouch tomato sauce

Pechay tagalog or bokchoy

Saba bananas (about 5 pcs. , cut cross-wised)

Sweet potatoes or camote (cubed)

 Potatoes  (cubed )

Fish sauce  and  pepper to taste
cooking oil

Procedures:

1.       In a pot, boil beef, reduce heat to simmer until beef is tender.

2.       In a pan, sauté ginger, garlic, and onions. Add beef (without the stock) and stir frequently until the beef absorb the flavor of the spices.

3.       Add the beef stock  and tomato sauce and let it simmer.

4.       Add potatoes and sweet potatoes.

5.       After 8 minutes add the saba bananas.

6.       Season with fish sauce and pepper.

7.       After 5 minutes, add the pechay or bokchoy.

8.        Serve hot.

I am BACK

Food blogging became one of my hobbies way back 2005. It made me truly realized how food affects our culture and our own life. I started to feel young again because of food that brings back memories of my childhood.  I also met many nice people through blogging who really helped me a lot and encouraging me to continue with my hobby.

I am on a temporary hiatus from blogging for almost 3 years because of some very personal reasons. But through Facebook I found some of my blogger friends. Mang Mike posted a comment on my facebook account that there is a plagiarist (someone who copy/paste some of my friend’s blog entries) and he told me to also visit the site to check if my posts were being copied also. But because of tons of blog entries of that blogger, I didn’t have enough time to browse his blogs (yes, blogs because he has many blog sites). From that incident, a dragon alliance was born, we (food bloggers) did our contribution to make that blogger realized his mistakes, and for him to respect his fellow bloggers. As of today, his blog sites are already deleted.

There are rules in blogging and the main rule is RESPECT. We can’t say that we are really good bloggers, but we really make a point that the readers of our blogs will surely learn something from our posts. It isn’t easy to write an entry, we spend a lot of time for a single blog entry. And it is really so unfair for us when our entries are being copied by other bloggers. We can share our entries (including the pictures) if people will learn how to ask for a permission. Isn’t it a big thing to ask?  We can create a peaceful blogging community if we know how to respect and give credits to those people who deserve it.

With this, I am officially announcing my return to blogging world because I miss you all, guys.