At home – Salt & (Chilli) Pepper Calamari (aka Deep fried squid)

A lot of people find squid intimidating. It is easy to see why as these creatures look like they belong to another planet. It is impossible to visualise how something good can come out of these slimy beasts.

There are other good reasons why squid could be daunting. For one, cleaning squid is an art. I’m sure you can Google this. Next, cooking them must be perfectly timed. You either cook them really quickly (like the recipe below) or stew them for hours. In the wrong hands squid might turn out to be the worst fodder on earth. But if done right…

My recipe below is similar to what they usually served at Yum Cha. Their good on their own as entrée or main with salad (or rice for us Pinoys).



Salt & (Chilli) Pepper Calamari

Ingredients
6 large squids (best to buy fresh rather than prepared squid tubes)
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon sea salt (Iodized salt might be healthy but it does not taste good so don’t use it! Get your iodine fix elsewhere!)
1-2 teaspoons chilli powder
1 ½ cups all purpose flour
Lots of oil for deep frying

1. Clean the squid by separating the head from the body. Turn the body inside out to make sure nothing nasty is left in it. Cut off the eyes from the head but make sure the tentacles are intact.
2. Cut the body of the squid into rings. Marinate all the squid pieces in soy sauce for about half an hour.
3. Mix the flour, sea salt and chilli powder.
4. Heat up the oil in a deep pan or use a deep fryer. Test the oil by dropping a piece of squid. If it sizzles immediately then your oil is probably ready.
5. Coat the squid in the flour mix a handful at a time. Shake the excess flour off.
6. Drop the squid pieces in the hot oil. It should be ready in less than a minute.
7. Drain excess oil and serve with lemon wedges.

At home - Pinakbet (Asian Vegetables in Shrimp Paste Sauce) & Pork Chops

My idea of the perfect Pinakbet is quite far from what is served outside my home. It seems not a lot of care goes in the preparation of this dish in some households. What should be a wonderful medley of vegetables usually turns out to be some watery ash coloured mash that is barely edible.

The bright green colours of the okra, snake beans and bitter gourd are virtually wiped out.
The pumpkin and the eggplant are obliterated into nothingness pureed together with the rest of the overcooked vegetables.

I never serve Pinakbet on its own. For dinner we also had Pork Chops, my way.
We didn’t have any okra and snake beans so I substituted string beans.


Pinakbet

Garlic chopped (as much as you like)
1 medium sized Onion chopped
1 large tomato chopped
A bit of pork (prawns can be substituted)
2-3 Tablespoons Shrimp paste
Pumpkin
Snake beans
Okra
Eggplant
Bitter gourd
Oil for sautéing
A bit of oyster sauce
Salt or Fish sauce to taste

1. If you’re going to use prawn you can skip this step. Heat up some oil. Stir fry the pork until they’re done. Remove from the pan and set aside.
2. In the same pan (with still the oil left in it) sauté the garlic until golden brown.
3. Add the onions and cook until it is translucent.
4. Add the tomatoes together with a bit of salt (or fish sauce), some oyster sauce and the all important shrimp paste.
5. When the tomatoes are cooked add the pork back in (or the fresh prawns) and cook for about a minute or so.
6. Add the pumpkin and the eggplant (as they are the longest to cook). If the mix is too dry add a few tablespoons (not cups of!) of stock or water.
7. Before the eggplant and the pumpkin are completely cooked add the okra and the bitter gourd.
8. To keep the colour of the beans cook them in the microwave for about a minute and immediately refresh in cold water.
9. Add the beans to the mix about a minute before turning the heat off.

Kidpawan’s Easy Pork Chops
Pork Chops
Salt
White Pepper
All purpose flour
Oil for frying

1. Season the pork chops with salt and white pepper.
2. Season the flour with salt and white pepper as well.
3. Heat up the oil in high heat for quick cooking to avoid rubbery pork chops.
4. Coat the pork chops in the seasoned flour shaking off any excess.
5. Fry the pork chops in high heat. They’re done when they’re golden brown.
6. Drain excess oil.
7. Serve with the Pinakbet and some jasmine rice.

At home – Pancit Sotanghon (Stir fried Bean-Thread Noodles) revisited

As mentioned in the previous post it was my wife’s birthday a couple of days ago. We would normally go out to dinner but that night we just didn’t feel like going anywhere. And at this stage in the pregnancy (7+ months) we’re not quite up to staying out very late.

So anyway, Cherry requested I cook noodles because she actually felt like having noodles and also as a birthday tradition. She already had her big dinner party on the weekend when we served noodles but she wanted more. Being the obedient husband (takusa) I gladly complied.

I love sotanghon (bean thread noodles). I actually did not know that it was made from soy beans until recently. How cool is that! I also like it because among all the noodle varieties it is the most forgiving. It’s pretty hard to get it wrong. You can’t do that with bihon (rice noodles) or miki (egg noodles) or even Canton noodles. Too much or too little broth means disaster. Not with sotanghon.

Pinoy sotanghon is typically bright yellow or orange due to the atchuete (annatto). I don’t think the atchuete adds anything to the dish apart from colour so I never actually use it.

Kidpawan’s Sotanghon

500g Sotanghon (bean thread vermicellit)

Chicken (whatever part you like except for claws, beaks and feathers)

2 cups chicken stock

2 medium sized onions chopped

4-6 cloves of garlic chopped

1/3 cup Kinchay (Chinese celery, you can substitute normal celery)

2 Chinese sausages chopped

1 large carrot julienned

1 cup mushrooms (fresh not canned)

1 head broccoli (optional)

Half a cabbage head

1/3 cup soy sauce (Lee Kum Kee Premium is the best. It’s light in colour and not too salty)

2-3 tablespoons oyster sauce

Salt

A bit of oil for sautéing

Freshly cracked black pepper

1. Boil the chicken together with one onion and a bit of salt in approximately 2 cups of water for about 10-15 minutes. Let it cool down. Save the stock. Chop the chicken.
2. Soak the noodles in cold water for about 5 minutes. Drain and set aside.
3. In a large wok heat up a bit of oil. Sauté the garlic until golden brown then add the chopped onions.
4. When the onions are soft and translucent add the chicken and the Chinese sausages.
5. Add the carrots. Add a bit of oyster sauce and soy sauce at this stage. Stir fry for a minute.
6. Add the rest of the vegetables plus some more soy sauce, oyster sauce and black pepper. Stir fry for about another minute. You do not need to cook them fully at this stage.
7. Take the stir fried mix off the wok and set aide.
8. Pour the stock in the wok and let it boil. Adjust the taste by adding salt, pepper, soy sauce and oyster sauce.
9. Lower the heat then add the noodles. If it is too dry add some more stock a little bit at a time to avoid soggy noodles.
10. Add the stir fried mix back in the wok. Mix it well with the noodles. Cook for another 5 minutes or so.
11. Add more black pepper. Cover the wok and turn off the heat. Let it stand for about 5-10 minutes.
12. Turn the heat back on and stir fry the noodles one more time before serving.
13. Serve with pan de sal.

At home – Ginataang Kalabasa at Hipon (Pumpkin & Prawns in Coconut Milk)

This is a perennial favourite in my house. There are lots of versions of this dish all over the Philippines but my recipe below is how we do it in Laguna (about 2 hours south of Manila). Coconut is plentiful in the region that is why you’ll find it is almost always present in Laguna recipes from entrées to desserts.

Although prawn is prominent in the name of the dish all you need is the flavour of prawn. This is not supposed to be a luxurious seafood dish but rather a rustic side dish usually paired with grilled or fried fish.

Snake beans (sitaw) are typically included in this dish but I didn’t find any in the shops. I also add mustard greens (mustasa). The slight bitterness of this vegetable adds more dimension to this otherwise plain dish.

Ginataang Kalabasa at Hipon (Pumpkin & Prawns in Coconut Milk)

1 medium onion chopped
6 slices of ginger
4-6 medium prawns
Pumpkin (I don’t know how to quantify this. 1 regular size wedge, I suppose)
1 bunch mustard greens
1 can coconut milk
Fish sauce or sea salt
Oil for sautéing

Heat the oil in a pan.
Sauté the ginger for about a minute then add the onion. Cook until the onion is translucent.
Add the prawns and cook for about a minute.
Add the pumpkin.
Add a bit of fish sauce or sea salt at this stage of the cooking.
Pour in the coconut milk and simmer until the pumpkin is done.
Add more fish sauce or sea salt if necessary.
Add the mustard greens and cook for another minute.
Serve with grilled or fried fish.

Not quite my birthday

It was actually Cherry’s (my wife) birthday yesterday and not mine. But along with a package she received from the UK were gifts for me from my mother-in-law (Inay Carmen).

I love coffee but I also love tea. This is evidenced by the fact that in my tiny cupboard in the office you’ll find at least half a dozen varieties of tea.

When Cherry came back from London she brought with her a couple of cans of Ceylon tea from Harrods. I’m not really that fussed with brands but I expressed how good the tea was. She must have mentioned it to my “mabait na biyenan” (*sip sip*). Inay must have thought it inappropriate not to have something for her favourite “manugang” (naks! *sip sip* na naman!). So, together with Cherry’s gift she sent over a couple of varieties of tea from Harrods, of course. There was also a very English apron that came with it.

I just would like to say Thank you Inay!

Australian Customs have got one of the strictest quarantine policies in the world. A “reality” TV series was created to show this (Border Security). Inay’s package did not escape the close scrutiny of this government department. You'd think x-ray and sniffer dogs would have been enough. Nope! One of the tea packages was actually opened to satisfy themselves that there was nothing prohibited.

The lost art...of cooking

I’ve read an interesting article (A Fat Society of Able Cooks by Jane Fynes-Clinton) in the Courier Mail a few days ago discussing the lost art (the author calls it a “skill” but I prefer “art”) of cooking. The author also highlighted Jamie Oliver’s crusade to change society’s attitude towards food. Jamie Oliver recently launched a book in conjunction with a new TV series called Ministry of Food. In the show, he laments what he calls “a new form of poverty caused by a generation that lacks the basic life skills to feed their families”.

The other remarkable point the article made (that I totally agree with) is how there are “increasing number of people who don't know how to cook at all - and many are loud and proud of it.” I’m sure all of us have met these people. Lacking the skill to cook is a disability in my book but for some it is a badge of honour.

Please follow the link and do not be shy with your comments.

At home - Beef Curry

The only reason I call my beef curry Malaysian is because I use a curry powder labelled as “Malaysian Curry Powder.” I don’t think you’ll find “my style” of cooking in any Malaysian cookbook. I should have titled this post “Kidpawan’s Beef Curry Using Malaysian Curry Powder” but that’s just a bit too indulgent.

The recipe works well with other types of meat. I know because I’ve tried. You just adjust the cooking time based on the meat of your choice (chicken, for example, cooks quicker than hippopotamus).

searing meat

There are also lots of curry powders available out there that you can substitute. I just find the Malaysian one fits my taste better than the others.

sauteing veges

Malaysian Beef Curry

Ingredients

2-3 cloves of garlic chopped

6 slices of ginger

1 stalk of lemon grass sliced

1 red capsicum

4-6 teaspoon Malaysian curry powder (more if you want it spicier)

1 kilo beef (cheap cuts like brisket, chuck steak, shanks, etc.)

1 can coconut cream (substitute coconut milk if you want a less creamy sauce)

Salt to taste

Potatoes quartered and deep fried

Carrots

A bit of oil for sautéing

Tip: It’s best to use heavy based pots for cooking this.

Procedure

1. Heat up a bit of oil in a heavy based pot. Sear the meat pieces in the pan (a few at a time) to seal in the juices. Remove from the pot and set aside.
2. Add a bit more oil if needed. Sauté the ginger first.
3. After about a minute or so add the garlic. Before it turns completely brown add the lemon grass.
4. After another minute add the onions and the capsicum (save about a quarter for garnishing later). Cook this for about 5 minutes.
5. Add the curry powder to the mix and cook for about another minute.
6. Add the meat to the mixture. Make sure the meat is coated well.
7. Add the coconut cream and simmer for about 1 hour before adding the carrots.
8. After about 10 minutes add the fried potatoes and simmer for another 10 minutes.
9. Serve with roti parathas or jasmine rice.

Fusions Italian Ristorante - Singleton, NSW

Entree: Spaghetti Marinara

Home made spaghetti with prawns, calamari, fish, scallops and mussels

Main: Angus Fillet and Jumbo Gulf Prawns

250g char-grilled Angus fillet (medium rare) with giant prawns in their shell, mash, garlic butter sauce

Wine: Melville Hill Cabernet Merlot

Whenever oyster is available on the menu it would be my first choice as entrée. I still found it tempting. But after consuming more than 3 dozen of these bivalve molluscs just a few days ago I decided to go a different direction.

There was a wide selection of pastas on the menu that were also offered as entrées. And since I feel like seafood there’s no better option than the spaghetti marinara. I was quite surprised when my order arrived as the plate it came in was just as big as the “mains” plate (not that I’m complaining).

The calamari and scallops mentioned on the menu were noticeably absent from my plate. Also, it seemed the chef was a bit too generous with the salt tonight. But I overlooked all these flaws as the whole dish was actually good. The seafood tasted of the sea (and not of the fish market). Fresh tomatoes were obviously used (as opposed to bottled or canned passata di pomodoro). It tasted much better than the last time I had it in the same restaurant.

After the pasta I soldiered on with my main! The steak was done just as I ordered (medium). In fact, it was the most perfect steak I’ve had in a restaurant for a long time. The vegetables that came with it enhanced the already exceptional meal. The caramelised carrot batons that came with it were terrific!