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. 

Lasang Pinoy 17: Egg Roll

Angelo is hosting this month's Lasang Pinoy event. It was decided that the main ingredient for this event is egg.

I remember when I was a child; my grandmother had a concoction made from egg and sarsaparilla. She always prepared it for me because according to her this will strengthen my body resistance. She chose native chicken eggs because it’s more nutritious than the regular white chicken eggs. I love recipes with eggs, even if it’s quail eggs, chicken eggs, and even duck eggs.

My entry for this month’s LP event is a recipe with no name (lol). I will just name this as “egg roll.” I tasted this recipe way back 1995 from my friend’s wedding reception; her aunt cooked this recipe. I called up my friend to ask her if she knows the ingredients and the preparation of this recipe. But she informed me that she doesn’t know and the only thing that she remembered was that her aunt uses mince meat to cover the egg. So I experimented on this recipe according to my taste.

Ingredients:

6 hard boiled eggs

½ kilo ground pork

½ cup carrots, diced

1/3 cup Chinese celery or kinchay, chopped

1 egg, beaten

Salt and pepper

Flour

Bread crumbs

1 egg, beaten

Procedures:

1. Mix ground pork, carrots, kinchay, and 1 beaten egg, season with salt and pepper.
2. Wrap the hard boiled egg with the meat mixture and form like a ball.
3. Dip egg covered with meat mixture in flour, then dip in beaten egg and roll in breadcrumbs.
   
4. Deep-fry until cooked through and drain in paper towels.

Thanks Angelo for hosting this month's LP.

Chicken Roll

This recipe is one of my Aunt Thelma’s favourites. I always find it in her menu every time we have family gatherings. She taught me the procedure to cook chicken roll. I learned that some called this recipe Cordon Bleu.

Ingredients:

½ kilo chicken breast fillets

Flour

1 egg beaten

Bread crumbs

Salt and pepper

4 slices sweet ham

4 slices cheddar cheese

Procedure:

Pound chicken breast fillets in between sheets of cling wrap until they flatten to 1/2-inch-thick. Season it with salt and pepper. Place a slice of sweet ham on one end of each breast. Top with cheese and then roll. Season breadcrumbs with pepper. Dip filled chicken breasts in flour, then egg and roll in breadcrumbs. Deep-fry until cooked through and drain in paper towels.

Embutido

After a long absence because of some computer problems, here I am again posting this embutido picture. I got the recipe from Iska and tita C. Thank you for sharing this delicious recipe. You will notice that it's not a round embutido but a square one, I used a loaf fan because I ran out of supply of aluminum foil (lol).

Chopsuey and Banana Choco Chips Cupcake

Baguio vegetables (as I fondly called it) like carrots, cauliflowers, snow peas, cabbage, and others are a lot cheaper now than last December. Chopsuey is one of my son’s favourite dishes so I make it a point to cook this every other week.

This is my version of Chopsuey.

Chopsuey

2 tablespoons cooking oil
1 medium onion, sliced
1 tablespoon crushed garlic
¼ kilo chicken liver
½ cups chicken balls
1 medium carrot, sliced diagonally 1-inch thick
1 small head cauliflower, cut into florets
1 ½ cups trimmed snow peas
1 small head cabbage, cubed
1 cup young corn
1 red bell pepper, strips
½ cup kinchay
1 pouch Mushroom soup mix dissolved in 1 cup water
3 tablespoons soy sauce
½ teaspoon pepper

In a wok, heat cooking oil and sauté onions until transparent. Add garlic and sauté until light brown. Add chicken liver and chicken balls and sauté until cook and brown.
Stir in carrots. Cook, stirring occasionally, for about one minute. Add cauliflower, snow peas, young corn, bell pepper, kinchay and cabbage. Simmer for 2 minutes. Stir in dissolved mushroom soup mix, soy sauce and pepper. Cook until sauce thickens slightly and vegetables are tender crisp.


I love the taste of banana in cakes and pastries. So I was so happy when I saw this recipe from www.mygreatfood.com which is a San Miguel Foods Corporation website.

Banana Choco Chips Cupcake

2 2/3 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp. baking soda
¼ tsp. salt
1 cup Magnolia Gold Butter
1 1/3 cups sugar
3 pieces eggs
1 cup full cream milk
1 tsp. calamansi juice
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup mashed ripe bananas
1 cup chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Line muffin pans with paper cups. Set aside.
2. Sift together flour, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
3. Combine milk, calamansi and vanilla.
4. In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time beating well after each addition. Add alternately the dry ingredients and milk mixture until smooth. Add bananas and chocolate chips and blend well.
5. Pour into muffin pans and bake for 30 minutes.