Flavours

I don’t like eating just for quantity. Which is why I hate carb-laden meals; you keep chasing a flavour, but you never quite catch it. Things like pizza, pasta, potato salad, and noodles. When I was a child, the only time I ate a lot of rice was when we had something like fried pork chops, and I basted my rice with the fat that was rendered from the pork and seasoned it with fish sauce. Salty and umami locked together, the silky feel of the fat in your mouth, you wanted it again and again and again.

Sad to say, I have never again dared to eat this as an adult -scared for my heart and and my veins - after my mother’s horror stories of people she knew collapsing right after eating such meals. But I’ve also learned a very adult skill- self-regulation. For how can you continue to enjoy dishes like salty adobo, pork binagoongan, curry, Filipino fried-chicken, kare-kare, bopis if you omitted the rice? But I’m more focused now on the flavour and to eat slowly. Now, I never eat more than a cup of rice with these dishes and I’m still satisfied afterwards. When faced with lechon or pork-belly, I can omit the rice altogether as long as there’s a vegetable side-dish.

The weight of a big meal is, well, heavy. The kids and I had Korean BBQ night at home on a Monday and you realise afterwards that you duped yourself into thinking that a lot of little things- pork belly, wagyu strips, kimchi, vermicelli- amounted to a little thing. But this is the effect of a buffet- you just carry on cooking and eating and cooking and eating.I was literally still burping the next day.

But today for dinner, I assembled one of my favourite easy meals- freshly cooked rice, kimchi, one duck egg and two normal eggs- yolks still runny- showered with spicy furikake. It’s a lot of little things, but it all amounts to flavours- the tangy bite of the kimchi, the velvety yolk with a hint of sesame and the sharp, cheddar-cheese like saltiness of the duck-egg.

Sunday's Kahuku style shrimps

I must say I’ve been craving shrimps for the longest time and I’ve tried a number of products, none of which were satisfying until I found farm-raised Ecuadorian shrimps. SHRIMP ALL THE WAY FROM ECUADOR!

But a quick Google search reveals something surprising: Ecuador is the world’s 2nd largest producer of (sustainable) shrimp, so there.

Since these were raw and still in their shell, I thought that the perfect style of cooking them was Kahuku style- a favorite local dish in the Hawaiian island of Oahu, popularized by a string of shrimp trucks (or stands) found in and around Oahu's Kahuku community. We had this when we were in Hawaii and have been replicating it ever since.

There’s a million recipes of it and this is how I made it:

Ecuadorian shrimp is good

Ecuador's insistence on lower stocking densities and the use of naturally disease-resistant shrimp ensure healthy and flavorful development without the need for techniques found in other parts of the world, including heavy use of antibiotics and genetic engineering.

Flour and baking soda

Truth be told, we’ve never really cleaned shrimp back in the Philippines. But I did it anyway- they were big enough- and then dredged them in flour and a teaspoon of baking powder.

Fry them first

I fried them quickly in high heat, and you can already see the fat in the heads melting and coloring the olive oil. The flour and baking powder coating also crisped up the shell, making them edible. Tip: trim off the walking legs and the swimmerets. This would make it easier to peel off the shell. After frying, set aside.

Do a whole head of garlic

Don’t mince them too fine

Use the best better you've got

You will end up eating a lot of butter so might as well use the best one, preferably grass-fed unsalted butter (this is Westgold).

Then add in your shrimps

At this point, I also added a chicken-flavor cube, paprika (should have been cayenne) and some water which helps create a thick, delicious sauce. Lower the heat and stir occasionally for about 15 minutes.

Peeled or not?

I might try a version with the shells taken off just to make the eating of them is easier and less messier. Most of the flavour was there though I have to admit. I might still batter the shrimps and leave the heads intact.

Best shrimp meal I've had in a long time

Can’t wait for the next one (the box did have 1.8kgs of shrimp).

The wondrous beauty of a deboned whole chicken

For deep frying, I buy supermarket chicken. If it still has skin on, it’s cheaper so this is what I get and mostly boneless thighs. Sometimes the bone-in chicken thighs are even cheaper so I get that instead. I’ve learned how to roughly take out the bone from a thigh using kitchen shears which is way faster and safer than a knife.

I discovered a whole- size 13 (around 1 to 1.1kilos, $26.99)- deboned chicken from the neatmeatstore and it has sat in our freezer for a bit and I’ve only taken it out yesterday. Frankly, I didn’t quite know what to expect. Stupidly, I was somewhat expecting it to be whole, as if the bones had magically dissolved underneath and leaving behind a kind of ‘chicken dress’.

But you can see that it isn’t so, and different really from like say, a chicken deboned for when you make a chicken galantine, at least the way we make it back in the Philippines. The galantine chicken is pretty much whole and the wings are left intact on the sides along with the drumsticks.

But this one has the leg and wing bones expertly snipped out. I guess one can technically sew it back together to hold the filling if you wanted to make a galantine, but that would be for another day.

It’s on my To-Try-And-Master list: deboning a chicken.

The chicken is free-range and ethically sourced, and while I can’t tell the difference between a free-range egg from a barn or cage raised one, I can tell with the chicken. It tastes cleaner, tastier and when you poach it, which is my preferred cooking method for this kind of chicken, there is hardly ever any scum in the broth.

This chicken gives me three meals (everyone here is dieting).

How much of your daily life is really yours?

It’s beginning to dawn on me, that Saturday is the only day that I get full possession of my life.

I wake up anytime I want and have ditched setting alarms. If I wake up at noon, then so be it (I never do). I do a quick check of the phone charging overnight on my bedside table. If it’s nothing urgent, I just leave it there. I avoid reacting to the news. If a comet had crashed into the earth in the middle of the night, there’s nothing we could have done. We’ll get painlessly pulverised in our sleep hopefully, and be mercifully eternally bound in whatever dreams we’re in.

Coffee. Then another coffee. A great bowel movement. Shower. I put on my face- serum, moisturiser, sunscreen if we needed to go out somewhere. Unlike weekdays where I don’t eat any breakfast, we either eat out or have some old favourites like Spam and rice, pancakes, a well-buttered toast.

Then it’s chores. The week’s laundry in batches; coloreds, whites and delicates. There is some sort of weird comfort in the washing cycle- wash, soak, rinse, spin. I love doing laundry because it echoes life. I’m perpetually organising my clothes, my shoes. I think of the week ahead and mentally put together outfits. I feel that I have too much. I also feel that I never seem to have enough.

I think about dinner because more than likely, there is something that I’d like to eat, something I’d like to cook that I’ve been planning for the whole week.

For this Saturday, it’s a simple roast chicken but done the way this restaurant in Paris does it. They only use a small portion of the breast and serve it with a hefty shaving of black truffles and bearnaise sauce.

I won’t be putting shaved truffles on it, but I was thinking of making bearnaise sauce (you can check out a YouTube video of how Le Clarence makes its roast chicken here).

But by midday, I’d changed my mind about the bearnaise sauce; we had gone to the Asian store, but I had completely forgotten to get white wine vinegar and shallots. Maybe some other time then.

The only thing unusual with the way the restaurant roasts its chicken is that it’s placed inside a dutch casserole and then placed in the oven; it’s then taken out at regular intervals where it’s basted with its own juices. Towards the end when it has browned, you put in butter, garlic cloves and fresh rosemary, basting it again over and over until it’s done.

This forces me to always check the clock.

The done part was about 45 minutes more than the usual way I roast chicken. I make a salad out of leftover romaine lettuce. I’ve taken out buns from the freezer and defrosted them. I make a normal gravy with chicken cubes and buttered roux. We start to eat at 6:15 pm, later than usual, but in the middle of summer, it feels more like noon.

The chicken is much more noticeable moist than usual though. It’s delicious actually though I detect a hint of bitterness from the rosemary; perhaps I put too much.

What next? I feel like doing something and automatically, I try to look for the time. It’s always, do I have enough time??

I stop myself and make a drink (gin and tonic, which I don’t normally do) instead.

Japanese curry

I can’t remember how I discovered it. It might have been at a Japanese mart or an Asian store.

I like the thickness of it, the beef stew-like sauce but without all the effort of making an actual beef stew. Come to think of it, I might try making a beef one which I’ve never done. The protein here is chicken breasts (ugh, it always turns out to be tough- how do you make tender chicken breast pieces??).

Not all barbecues are made equal

Right off the bat, I went for the brisket and while it was good, we’ve had better (the brisket at Blue Ox Babe is superior).

And this is the thing with food places that focus on barbecued and grilled stuff; more often than not, you really go there for the heft and the quantity.

Nothing fills you up like really good protein. The sides are there just to serve as a palate bridge between meats. The ribs were good; the bacon-wrapped peppers filled with cream cheese were a revelation; the jalapeno-spiked Kransky sausages were a bit tough; the chicken wings had a nice tangy and sweet glaze; and the salmon we brought home nearly intact in a doggie bag. It felt like the odd man out in the group.

Matt was right; after a while, you were wanting for some rice!

MooMoo Smokehouse gets a 7 out of 10.

Tortang talonggggg

As a child, I probably wouldn’t have liked eggplant had it come in the form of something other than a torta (omelet). It would be adulthood when the eggplant, grilled until charred on the stove-top, mashed and dressed in nothing but vinegar, salt and pepper, became something sublime- a perfect foil to the salty, fatty richness of duck eggs (a combo that you can have with fish or pork or even chicken).

But as a child, anything fried was good, and to have meat, was even better. So the tortang talong was both, and it was also a vegetable, albeit one that didn’t have anything by way of substantial nutrients.

And when we grew up and could cook our own meals, being able to make the ‘perfect’ torta was a sign that the ‘baton had been passed down’ to you; that you passed the test that separated the so-so cooks from the capable ones. Our nanny was taught by my dad, but ironically, we had to learn it ourselves, and I did it by trial and error.

The requirement is simple- the eggplant has to hold the fillings in place (using the beaten eggs) and be in an acceptably regular shape. You get bonus points if the eggplant stem is intact and you can use it to transfer the omelet from the serving plate to your plate, without it breaking off. But I’m not fussed with this as the only reason why I keep it is for aesthetics; I like a lot of fillings so my tortas tend to be heavy and fat.

If you’re looking for a good recipe, try this one.

I’ve used shrimps as my filling, spiced up with Korean gochu jang. I also used FOUR EGGS (I’m currently dieting) which explains the round shape; the pan was literally filled up. I used the American eggplant as it’s currently cheaper. I wasn’t completely convinced that it would work, but it does; the flesh is more watery, but other than that, it’s virtually the same as the Chinese or Japanese variety that we’re familiar with.

The Weekend (eats) in images

Christmas treats from Pōhutukawa Pantry

Smashed burgers

Not going to cook my burgers in any other way

Research before you buy

This is at Gilmour’s which has none of the ‘excitement’ of Costco, but has a lot of what you actually need (do I need another 3kg bag of peanut-butter filled mini pretzels???). We’re having a party for some friends in the coming weekend and we’re pleasantly surprised at our final Gilmour’s bill; not as horrendous as we thought because we spent the better part of an hour comparing prices with what’s available at the normal supermarkets.

Malaysian cuisine

We were wanting some comforting Vietnamese soups but the rain made parking a challenge so we ended up at Uncle Man at Southpoint which had sheltered underground parking. At $68 for four dishes includiing two generous entrees (the chicken skin!!!!), you certainly felt that inflation was just a bad dream you had the other night.

Cotto

We had dinner out last Saturday for a friend’s birthday and when they said it was Italian (Cotto on Road), I was uhm like, carbs. And this is really by habit even if in truth, the Italian restaurants I’ve been to the last couple of years had a menu where you had heaps of non-pasta options.

And these were not after-thoughts either. Amano’s Hawkes Bay-sourced lamb shoulder is my go-to and is always excellent in whatever iteration. The prawns at posh local Andiamo prepared with a simple salsa verde and a confit potato side makes me want to ask the chef if they’ve been sourced fresh nearby because that’s how they taste (I haven’t though).

And of course at Cotto like most modern Italian restaurants, you don’t get a big bowl of spaghetti (though I wouldn’t mind one to be honest), but smaller, tasting plates.

Limoncello spritz

$7 Sides

Fermented fries with feta and oregano; lamb ribs with honey balsamic; Arancini cacio e pepe broad beans & salted ricotta; focaccia

Burrata smoked tomato panzanella

Tortelli zucchini burrata with basil & capers

Rotolo pork shoulder with watercress, cannellini beans & salsa verde

Happy Thanksgiving (a table for two)

There’s only just my sister and her husband now that their only child is a full-grown adult and living her best life on the mainland. So not all American tables this thanksgiving are groaning with food.

Friday's galette (?)

Galettes refer to the catch-all term for a pastry base, topped with either sweet or savoury fillings with the edges roughly folded in to create a gorgeous, rustic-looking bake.

But is still a galette if you used store-bought flaky pastry or did a square one instead of the more traditional round one with the roughly folded edges?

Who cares? Again, saw it on TikTok and had this craving for caramelised onions- the pastry base was just incidental. There was a bag of white onions at a reduced price of $2.50 and four sheets of ready-to-cook pastry was $6. Sam hates onions and I remembered that there were two pieces of leftover chicken kransky sausages in the fridge and what came to mind immediately was a version of chicken-cranberry pizza. We had some leftover strawberry jam which I mixed with some ready-made chili-lime and to soften this combo, dollops of leftover sour cream.

Brush with egg-yolk and put into the oven using fan bake for about 20 minutes.

Capsicum sauce

Finally, $1 capsicums, yay!! From a high of $4.50 per piece, summer is the inflation-buster we all need.

I don’t particularly like capsicums- in my mouth, I can feel the soft inner flesh separating from the plasticky outer skin- though I tolerate them in stir-fries and such. I also don’t eat pasta a lot; if I wanted carbs, I’ll just do rice thank you very much.

But I saw someone on TikTok making a red-pepper (aka capsicum) sauce for pasta and then I got a supermarket alert for specials ($1 capsicums!) so I thought that it was meant to be.

The good thing about this sauce is that you don’t need a whole lot of ingredients (and the costs do add up). It’s basically 3 large capsicums and the rest of the ingredients are stuff you may already have at home like garlic, shallots (if you don’t have these it’s fine), butter and chicken cubes. Cheese which is normally horrendously expensive was on special so I got a block of good parmesan.

You simply char the capsicums so that you can peel off the nasty, plasticky outer skin and I realised that I couldn’t really do it as pictured below, using the electric cooktop. So I ended up putting it in the oven using grill. So once you’ve peeled the skin off and taken out the seeds. sauté them in a pan with a bit of olive oil and butter, a chicken cube and diced garlic (shallots if you have them) for about 10 minutes. Blitz the whole thing in a food-processor- it didn’t even need water or a thickening agent; the puree is the perfect consistency. And the flavour- sweet, creamy with a hint of spice and tang. I admit adding two tablespoons of sour cream, but it didn’t really need it, nor the parmesan if I’m being honest.

I’m thinking of buying a whole bag of $1 capsicums now, prepping them ready for blitzing and stored in the freezer.

Friday cravings

Because I don’t have a family of my own, I realised that I didn’t need to enforce some of the rules or traditions that we had growing up. So yes, I can eat a whole bag of expensive shrimp (we had to share because there was only so much to go around). I can eat in bed, or in front of the television (rarely now because I don’t watch ‘normal’ TV anymore). Cake for dinner (why not?). Or a can of mackerel with eggs and rice for dinner when it’s normally for breakfast.

Normally, we would saute diced garlic, onions and tomatoes before adding in the fish, but I skipped that part for less oil. A dash of tamarind powder into the broth made for a good sour contrast with the rich oiliness of the fish.

Happy, nostalgic eating on a rainy Friday.

Bag of bones

When we visited the Pokeno Butcher shop last weekend, I got a pair of split beef marrow bones for $13. At the Asian shop the other day, I picked up a $5 pack of beef bones- so it’s literally a meal from bones.

Other ingredients
Diced garlic and ginger
spring onion for garnish
flavour packet of sinigang and pinapaitan
cabbage and spinach

Method
Saute the garlic and ginger in a pan and put into slow-cooker. Sear the beef bones on the pan where you just browned the garlic and ginger. Slow-cook for about 6 hours. When done, separate from the bones and set-aside. Add two cups of water to the slow-cooker broth, season with the sinigang and pinapaitan to desired flavour (I prefer it to be sharply acidic and bitter), add the beef chunks and let simmer for 30 minutes. Steam the cabbage and spinach separately. Season bone marrow with pepper and garlic salt and grill on high for 15 to minutes. Assemble as below. Garnish with spring onions and garlic chips.

Everything I ate last week

‘Eating well’ can be dangerous. I blame the dip in my immune system to the food I ate in the last week.

Eat like a king

After returning from Ashburton, I had a week-long craving for Filipino food even if I had my fill of it.

After unpacking bottles of bagoong na alamang and packets of instant Papaitan mix (bought in a Filipino store in Ashburton), I set about buying pork belly, and beef offal like tripe and stomach. I also bought a packet of a dozen Vigan-style longganisa made by a local producer- Nanay Nelly- in Auckland

I made something of a cross between binagoongang baboy and pakbet (minus most of the usual vegetables save for an aubergine that cost $6). In lieu of atchara, I had kimchi.

For a week I ate like a king who ruled his kingdom with absolute power; no one dared to point out the obvious.

bake, bake, bake

It’s slightly stressful doing heaps of little things and I had a couple of pastry sheets left over so… the thing with pastry sheets is that you don’t get to use all of them and you chuck the rest into the freezer with the intention of using them, but you never ever do.

So I used up all of them and made more palmiers; this time I made savoury ones stuffed with grated cheddar cheese and sprinkled liberally with paprika. And because they tend to be a bit bland, immediately after bringing them out of the oven, they were doused with a generous sprinkling of chicken salt.

But this is the thing with savoury palmiers; if you don’t brown them, the pale pastry takes in some moisture the next day (even if stored in a container) and would taste like pastry that had been sitting on a table for a day. So lower the temperature when you bake them so the cheese doesn’t burn and allowing the pastry to brown.

I also made chocolate palmiers by mixing cocoa powder and brown sugar- not so successful as the sugar burned too quickly.

And with the one pastry sheet I had left, I made three bacon and egg pies in a muffin tray. Cut to fill the cups and into that goes an egg and as many small strips of (rendered) bacon as you can fill it. Cover with a pastry piece, make vents through it and bake in the oven for like 15 to 20. And don’t forget the egg-wash!

It's because of yoga

I’ve been doing yoga consistently for the last three weeks, so it must be because of it!

I’m been calmer and more contemplative. When I made these Palmiere cookies this morning- something at work pissed me off so I had to step away to bake something yes- I wasn’t rushing it like I normally do.

I took my time assembling the ingredients and fastidiously cleaning up as I went, that I felt I was in one of those Asian ASMR videos. There’s a part in this recipe where you spread the cinnamon sugar all over the pastry with your fingers and the surface glinted like the rose nebula (use caster instead of granular so it would be less sugary) and I thought, life is to short to be pissed off at shit.

If you want the recipe for these cookies, click here