THAI BEEF STIR-FRY

Source: Cooks Illustrated Magazine
Copyright: July 1, 2005

FOR THE BEEF AND MARINADE:
3/4 teaspoon ground coriander
1/8 teaspoon ground white pepper
1 teaspoon light brown sugar
1 tablespoon fish sauce
2 pounds blade steak, flank steak or skirt steak, trimmed and cut into 1/4" thick strips

FOR THE STIR FRY:
2 tablespoons fish sauce
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon light brown sugar
1 tablespoon Asian chili-garlic paste
3 medium cloves garlic, minced (about 1 tablespoon)
vegetable oil
3 jalapeño chiles, halved, seeds and ribs removed, diced
3 medium shallots, trimmed, quartered lengthwise, layers separated
1/2 cup fresh mint leaves, large leaves torn into bite-sized pieces
1/2 cup fresh cilantro leaves
1/3 cup chopped unsalted roasted peanuts
lime wedges for serving

1. FOR THE BEEF AND MARINADE: Combine coriander, white pepper, brown sugar, and fish sauce in large bowl. Add beef, toss well to combine; marinate at least 15 minutes.

2. FOR THE STIR-FRY: In small bowl, stir together fish sauce, vinegar, water, brown sugar, and chili-garlic paste until sugar dissolves; set aside. In another small bowl, mix garlic with 1 teaspoon oil; set aside.

3. Heat 2 teaspoons oil in 12-inch nonstick skillet over high heat until smoking; add one-third of beef to skillet in even layer. Cook, without stirring, until well browned, about 2 minutes, then stir and continue cooking until beef is browned around edges and no longer pink in the center, about 30 seconds. Transfer beef to medium bowl. Repeat with additional oil and remaining meat in 2 more batches.

4. Add another 2 teaspoons oil to now-empty skillet and swirl to coat. Add chiles and shallots and cook, stirring frequently, until beginning to soften, 3 to 4 minutes.

5. Push chile-shallot mixture to sides of skillet to clear center; add garlic to clearing and cook, mashing mixture with spoon, until fragrant, about 15 seconds. Stir to combine garlic with chile-shallot mixture.

6. Add fish sauce mixture to skillet; increase heat to high and cook until slightly reduced and thickened, about 30 seconds.

7. Return beef and any accumulated juices to skillet, toss well to combine and coat with sauce, stir in half of mint and cilantro.

8. Serve immediately over steamed rice, sprinkling individual servings with portion of peanuts and remaining herbs, and passing lime wedges separately.

SOUTHWESTERN GRILLED BEEF SALAD WITH CORN SALSA AND CHIPOTLE DRESSING

Dressing
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1 tablespoon chopped canned chipotle chilies in adobo sauce
2 large garlic cloves, pressed
1 cup olive oil

Salsa
2 ears fresh corn, husked
4 plum tomatoes, seeded, chopped
1 cup chopped peeled jicama
1/2 cup chopped red onion
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Steak
1 1/2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon chili powder
3 large garlic cloves, pressed
2 pounds beef tenderloin steaks (1 inch thick)

Assembly
1 avocado, halved, peeled, pitted, diced
10 cups mixed baby greens
2 small mangoes, peeled, pitted, thinly sliced

Whisk first 4 ingredients in medium bowl in blend. Gradually whisk in oil. Season with salt and pepper. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Cover and refrigerate. For Salsa:
Blanch corn in large pot of boiling salted water 2 minutes. Drain. Cool. Cut corn from cob. Transfer corn kernels to large bowl. Add tomatoes, jicama, onion and cilantro and mix. (Can be prepared 6 hours ahead. Cover and chill.)

For steak:
Combine first 4 ingredients in small bowl. Spread spice paste over both sides of steaks. Cover and refrigerate at least 2 hours or up to 6 hours.

For Assembly:
Prepare barbecue (medium-high heat). Grill steaks to desired doneness, about 5 minutes per side for medium-rare. Transfer steaks to cutting board and let stand 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, add avocado and 2 tablespoons dressing to salsa and mix. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Place greens in large bowl and toss with enough dressing to coat. Divide greens equally among 6 plates. Fan some mango slices on 1 side of each salad. Top each salad with 1/2 cup salsa.

Thinly steaks crosswise. Arrange atop greens. Serve, passing remaining dressing separately.

Bon Appétit, August 1994

Notes from Lotus:

If you don't have any jicama on hand, leave it out. It's still good.

If sweet or Vidalia onions are available, they are great in the salsa.

If you're feeling lazy, skip the avocado, mangoes, and/or steak.

Sardine & Tomato Noodle Soup

My mom used to make this soup when I was a kid. I haven't had it in a long time, but when I saw this recipe in my new cookbook (see previous post on 'Adobo Flavored Pecans'), I had to make it. This first time try was somewhat of a success although it was missing one of the key ingredients, the tomato (singular because only one is used in this recipe). Sometimes my mom would make miswa soup with meatballs, also one of my favorites. Misua (sometimes spelled as miswa) noodles are superfine wheat noodles with a silky mouthfeel. They cook really fast and if you put too much in, you will have a soggy mess. Since I didn't have the tomato, I thought I could put in another can of sardines in tomato sauce. The result was still okay, but too salty. I will have to make this again with tomatoes next time.

Sardine & Tomato Noodle Soup (Misua)

Ingredients:

1 tbsp olive oil

2 cloves of garlic, minced (although I just smashed mine)

1 green onion, chopped, white bulb & green stalk separated (I didn't use the white parts but a regular small onion instead)

1 small tomato (missing in the photos)

2 (5 1/2 oz) cans sardines in tomato sauce

3 cups Chicken Stock (I was lazy and used low sodium Chicken Broth)

2 oz misua noodles

2 tsp fish sauce (patis)

Heat the olive oil in a medium pot over medium heat. Add the garlic, the white part of the green onion and the tomato (M.I.A. obviously). Cook and stir for 2 - 3 minutes until the tomato begins to soften. Add the canned sardines with the tomato sauce and chicken stock.

Add the miswa noodles, fish sauce, and pepper. Simmer another 5 minutes until the noodles soften and the soup thickens. See the nice sardine?

Ladle the soup into bowls and garnish with the chopped green spring onion. Serve immediately.

I love these noodles. I should cook miswa more often. It would taste good with meatballs....that's for another post in the future!

Roasted Asparagus

Roasted Asparagus

Ingredients:

Asparagus

Olive Oil

Sea Salt

Black pepper

*optional - grated lemon rind

Preheat oven to 400 F.

Snap the asparagus stems. It will snap at the most tender point. Discard the broken ends.

If you want to be anal like me, slice the ends at an angle so they look uniform.

Place the asparagus in a roasting dish.

Drizzle a little bit of olive oil and roll the aspargus spears around to coat.

Sprinkle the sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper over the asparagus. Add the grated lemon rind if you wish.

Roast for 15-20 minutes (less if your stalks are thin).

Watch the tips to prevent burning.

You can eat this as is, or drizzle with a light vinaigrette.

In this case, I made a balsamic vinegar and soy sauce reduction.

Chicken Desarsa

Chicken Desarsa

(recipe courtesy of my friend's mother)

Ingredients:

1 chicken or 3 lbs of chicken pieces

1 onion

3 medium tomatoes

Garlic

3 potatoes

Raisins

Red bell pepper

1/2 lb of frozen peas

Salt & pepper to taste

Instructions:

Chop together onions and tomatoes in blender/chopper

Sautee garlic in olive oil in pot, place chicken in pot & cook for 5 minutes

Add chopped onions & tomatoes to pot

Add salt & pepper

Cook for 40 minutes in medium heat & stir occasionally

Add cut up potatoes, cook for 15 minutes

Add peas, raisins & sliced red pepper, cook for 5 minutes

Serve over rice...

Adobo-Flavored Pecans

This has got to be one of the nicest cookbooks I own on Flipino food. The author is Jennifer M. Aranas, a Filipina American and a former restaurateur from Chicago:

This recipe is one page 33, from the "Appetizers and Small Bites" chapter.

Adobo-Flavored Pecans (in this case, I also used walnuts & almonds as well
Ingredients:

2 cups of nuts
3 tbsp brown sugar
4 tsp soy sauce
2 tsp vinegar
1 tsp calamansi juice (substitute lime juice ---- I used key limes since I couldn't find any calamansi in the Filipino stores)
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 325 F.

Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl and mixt until the nuts are well coated.
Pour the nuts onto a parchment-lined baking sheet, separating the nuts as much as possible into a single layer.
Bake for 15 minutes until the nuts are golden brown.
Cool the nuts before handling, 10 - 15 minutes. They will be crispy with a brown shiny glaze.

This was my first batch of pecans only:
The second batch of almonds & walnuts:

Grinding the black pepper onto the nut mixture:

Fresh out of the oven:

TC helped mix the nuts. They came out pretty good, considering it was my first attempt (my 2nd attempt was just as good). This would be a good bar snack, but I don't drink beer. I don't think these nuts will last long in our house.

Red Pepper Hummus

Roasted Red Pepper Hummus

Ingredients:

1 15 oz can of garbanzo beans
tahini (sesame paste)
roasted red peppers
roasted garlic cloves
extra virgin olive oil
lemon juice
black pepper
salt

The tahini looks like pale peanut butter. I only bought it for making hummus or adding to homemade white bean spread

My lemon is still wrapped up; it was from our back yard. Our lone lemon from our nearly barren tree. I had extra lemons in case I didn't get enough juice form this. It was pretty big.

These are "pepitas" (pumpkin seeds) that I got from Henry's. I bought red pepper hummus before from Whole Foods and noticed they had pepitas in the ingredients. This ingredient is optional.

Here are some roasted garlic cloves. No, I didn't use the whole container. I just put in 6 cloves. You can also use RAW garlic, but your breath will be pretty strong afterwards and the next day too! And if you fart...watch out!

These were the roasted red peppers. The jar I bought had whole peppers. I just cut one up. You can buy jars of roasted peppers already cut into strips. I'd recommend that to save you some time.

Directions:

Dump the garbanzos into your blender. Save a little of the liquid

Pour in a tiny bit of the olive oil (1/8th cup? I don't really measure) - depends

Add maybe 1 tbsp or more of tahini

Squeeze your lemons (ha ha) - it's up to you how much you want to put in

Add the roasted red pepper strips

Add your garlic cloves (# TBD by you)

*optional - a small handful of pepitas

Puree mixture until smooth

Add salt and pepper to taste and puree again.

Here's how it looks before pureeing.

Here's how it should look like once you're done.

I just made this on Saturday and it's almost gone. We've eaten it with fresh vegetables, like carrot and celery sticks, sugar snap peas, rice crackers (Hazelnut crackers by Blue Diamond nut company), even pieces of romain lettuce hearts. I'm sure you can also eat this with toasted pita wedges or other types of vegetable crudites.

Oh yeah, you can also double the recipe but the mixture might be too thick for your blender. That was my downfall the first few times I made this. Now I just do one batch at a time.

Enjoy!

Sweet Potato fries

Sweet Potato Fries

ingredients:

2 bags ofTrader Joe's Sweet Potato spears ($2.49 each)
extra virgin olive oil
sea salt
fresh ground black pepper

Dump the pre-peeled and pre-cut sweet potato spears into a baking dish. Try to make it single layer, but what the hell, I didn't.

Drizzle or lightly brush the olive oil over the spears.

Sprinkle with salt and pepper

Bake at 400 F for 20-25 minutes.

Another close up...

Arroz Caldo

Since the New Year was also upon us and also because TC was coming down with a cold...I decided to make Arroz Caldo. This is a chicken & rice porridge (for lack of a better word) cooked with ginger. My mom used to make this when we were sick. She also made this traditionally on New Year's Eve, along with palitao .


Arroz Caldo

Ingredients:

5 tbsp vegetable oil
4 tbsp minced garlic
several pieces of ginger, cut into thick slices (depends how much you want)
1/2 large onion, peeled and diced
2 cups uncooked rice
8 cups water
2 1/2 - 3 lbs of chicken, cut into bite-sized pieces (again, I used wings & drummettes)
patis to taste
chopped green onion tops
ground black pepper

(pictured below) Lovely...bloody chicken parts...
Butchering the wings into separate pieces:
Mincing the garlic:

Here's the patis (you can even see the price on it!) and black pepper mill:

Directions:

In a pot, heat 3 tbsp of the oil and saute 2 tbsp of the garlic, the giner and the onion. The onion is done when light brown and the onion translucent.

Add the chicken and add the cover. Let it steam for several minutes (stirring occasionally) until the chicken is no longer bloody.

According to the recipe book, I was supposed to add the rice and saute for 5 minutes before adding the water. I didn't.

I used a different recipe book this time. In the past, I've never sauteed the raw rice. Anyhow, I poured in the water. Let the mixture come to a boil and reduce to a simmer. Continue cooking for 30 minutes or until the rice is done.

As you wait for the rice to cook, make yourself useful and heat the remaining oil in a skillet and fry the remaining minced garlic until it is golden brown. Set aside.

Ahh...golden brown garlicky goodness (except for some big pieces there...oops).

When the rice is finally cooked, add the fish sauce and continue cooking over lowheat for another 3-5 minutes. Serve in a soup tureen or soup bowls. Sprinkle the fried garlic, chopped scallion, and freshly ground black pepper on top. This is SUPPOSED to serve 4 people, but it serves more!

This is what Arroz Caldo looks like ungarnished (it still tastes good this way):

and here it is with garnish...

I put my Arroz Caldo in this Corning Ware dish that we hardly use:

My mom would use all kinds of chicken pieces. For example, she would cut the wing and thigh pieces in half which I didn't like because the bone fragments would be floating around; those were not fun to encounter while eating! Ronin said he makes his arroz caldo with lemon because that is how his mother makes it...Any other variations?

White Chocolate Peppermint Bark

This is a late post. I made this White Chocolate Peppermint Bark during the holiday break for fun. I first saw a version of this recipe on Life on Manitoulin's blog. However, I couldn't find the White Baker's Chocolate it called for, so I found a similar recipe here which used Nestle's White Chocolate Chips. I thought, hmmm, easy enough.

White Chocolate Peppermint Bark

Ingredients:

1 (12 ounce) package Nestle Toll House white chocolate morsels
24 hard peppermint candies

DIRECTIONS

LINE baking sheet with waxed paper.

MICROWAVE morsels in medium, microwave-safe bowl on MEDIUM-HIGH (70 percent) power for 1 minute; stir. Microwave at additional 10- to 20-second intervals, stirring until smooth.

PLACE peppermint candies in heavy-duty plastic bag. Crush candies using rolling pin or other heavy object. While holding strainer over melted morsels, pour crushed candy into strainer. Shake to release all small candy pieces; reserve larger candy pieces. Stir morsel-peppermint mixture.

SPREAD mixture to desired thickness on prepared baking sheet. Sprinkle with reserved candy pieces; press in lightly. Let stand for about 1 hour or until firm. Break into pieces. Store in airtight container at room temperature.

One thing I would do is add a tiny bit of peppermint extract to the white chocolate. It tasted a bit plain to me. Also, I didn't use a rolling pin to smash the candies. I used this metal ice scream scooper we had and whacked those things in a zip loc baggie.
As a prime example of screwing up this easy recipe, I skipped "straining" the candies over the chocolate and dumped all the pieces in there. In retrospect, I should have dumped some, but not all of the candies. Why? The white chocolate covered the prettiness of the freshly crushed candies. I would have saved some of the bigger pieces and placed them on top of the bark as specified in the recipe!

That being said, it was relatively easy. Bert liked it, but you'd have to be a major white chocolate and peppermint fan to like this. It sure does look nice though.

Another recipe I saw on the web was pretty much the same except you dipped the broken pieces into melted milk (or you could even use dark) chocolate! Even better!

Dump Cake (try at your own risk)

When I first saw this recipe for DUMP CAKE in my Cake Mix Bible, I thought, hmmm...interesting.

I remembered seeing another version of this recipe in a book (100 TV free things to do with your toddler) I bought when TC was still small. Then, recently I saw yet another version of this in the Food issue of "Simple" magazine except it was called "Dolly Parton Dump Cake" (WTF?). Well, I decided to try it. It has the lovely name of Dump Cake because you are supposed to "dump" all the ingredients into the pan. If you like your desserts to resemble fruity slops, then this is the dessert for you. I made it for Christmas Lunch at my mom's. I ended up begging her to toss it. Not that it tasted bad (to others), but I didn't like how it looked (or tasted). The end result is kind of like a cobbler but more wet. Yeah, that sounds gross. Well, I tried it once. Seemed easy and it was. But...as Antoine Merriweather and Blaine Edwards from "Men on Film" would say, "Hated it!"

Dump Cake

Ingredients:

1 box yellow cake mix
1 can crushed pineapple
1 can blueberry filling
1 can cherry filling
1 stick of butter

Directions:

Dump the cake mix into a greased and floured 9 x 13 pan
Actually, I poured it in nicely, anal person that I am. Then, pour the crushed pineapple, including the juice on top of the cake mix.

"Dollop" the cherry pie filling on top of the pineapple topping.

Here's the whole can of cherries plopped on top of the first two ingredients.

Next, you add the can of blueberry filling. Look appetizing yet?

This is what the dessert looks like so far.

Then you get out a stick of butter and cut it into pieces and dot it on top of this concoction.

Here's a close up...

This is the end result, a bubbling, oozing dessert.

Fruit slop or delicious dessert? You decide!

Warning: Perhaps I didn't soak the yellow cake mix layer enough with the pineapple, but parts of it were still powdery! Ugh! How could I have fked this up? Aargh!