Recipe | Tocinokatsu with Cheese Scrambled Eggs

I have a lot of things going on in my head lately that I neglected my fitness routines, I am eating irregular - I'd have breakfast at 11am, lunch at 4pm, and eat dinner before I sleep at night. I feel bad at many things that I am starting to lose focus on things I need to concentrate on. With that I have a confession to make: I lost track of many things that I forgot today's Friday - a "no meat" day supposedly, but I woke up real early to prepare this breakfast for my family.

My main reason of serving this is because my sister has been waking up real early everyday to get to work on time, but because she gets home late and would like to sleep longer, she would use a little more extra time catching up on sleep rather than cook herself some breakfast. I felt a little guilty and worried about it, so I decided to wake up and cook all of us breakfast, just so sis and mom would take a break from eating cheese sandwiches.

This recipe I am about to share is taken from YUMMY Magazine March 2012 issue.


Tocinokatsu with Cheese Scrambled Eggs
{Serves 4}

Ingredients - Tocinokatsu:

• 1 (500-gram) pack ready-to-cook tocino
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 to 2 cups Japanese bread crumbs
• oil for frying

Ingredients - Scrambled Eggs:

• 5 eggs
• 1/3 cup Cheddar cheese, grated
• 1 to 2 tablespoons butter

How to Cook:

• Make the Tocinokatsu: Toss tocino with the beaten egg, then coat each piece with breadcrumbs. Heat oil to medium and pan fry coated tocino in batches. Drain on paper towels. Set aside.
• Cook the Cheesy Scrambled Eggs: Beat 5 eggs in a bowl then add cheese. Melt butter in a nonstick pan, add cheesy eggs. Cook to your desired doneness.

What I loved about cooking this dish is that coating the tocino with breadcrumbs actually made it easier to cook, as we know tocino can be a little messy to cook - because of its caramel. When I served this, brother exclaimed, "It did taste like katsu!" A great indication that he liked what I served.

As for the eggs, the addition of cheese was a nice change, but as we ate more and more of it we tend feel "suya." Good thing I garnished it with spring onions, it added a little bit of dimension to the taste.

According to the magazine, you can also use beef tapa to this recipe, or use a different kind of cheese for the eggs. They also recommended serving it with salted eggs and tomatoes, but I felt it was a little too much eggs for the day, but of course, it is something you can also serve - not everybody wants scrambled eggs anyway.

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Recipe | Aglio Olio Spaghetti with Sprimps

In one TV Cooking Show, I learned that there are three kinds of pasta sauces: Tomato Based, Cream Based and Oil Based. Of the three, my I love oil based pasta the most because I love that I could taste the pasta more and I admit I kinda like the grease on my lips.

Sometime last year, our next door neighbor gave us a plate of pasta. We didn't know what's it called, but sister and I loved it. When the same neighbor gave us another plate of similar looking pasta earlier this year, we finally learned the name of the dish: Aglio Olio Spaghetti. I loved how simple the dish is, and because I found myself craving for it, I decided to search the Internet for a recipe I could follow.

The recipe I am about to share was originally posted on Noob Cook. I decided to try this recipe from all the Aglio Olio recipes I have read because it has prawns, something I am currently loving right now.


Prawns Aglio e Olio
{Serves 2}

Ingredients:

• 180g spaghetti, cooked per package directions
  
• 3 tbsp pure olive oil
• 40g butter, divided
• 10 to 12 large prawns
• 10 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced or chopped (not too finely)
• 2 red chili pods, sliced (or 1/2 tsp dried chilli flakes)
• 30g Italian flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
• salt and freshly cracked black pepper (to taste)
  

How to Cook:

• While cooking the pasta, remove the shells and veins from the prawns. Set aside the shelled prawns, but don't discard the heads and the shells. Use these to make a stock by putting the heads and shells in a small pot and add a little water. Simmer for about 5 minutes then strain and set aside the stock.
• In a sauce pan, heat half of the butter and cook the prawns. Be careful not to overcrowd the pan. Cook both sides and set aside.
• Using the same pan, add olive oil and saute garlic and chili just until the garlic bits turn light brown (not completely toasted).
  
• Turn off the stove. You can cook the garlic until they are golden brown or you can now add the cooked pasta and prawns, as well as a little of the stock, parsley and the rest of the butter to give the pasta that shine. Stir, making sure the pasta has a coat of all the sauce. Season with salt and pepper, according to your preference.
  

This was my first try to cook such a dish. I realized, I didn't really like the addition of the stock - that I preferred my dish just with olive oil and butter. I did love the addition of the prawns. The recipe called for flat leaf parsley, but it wasn't available at the supermarket, so I just went for the curly parsley.

I have cooked this dish about three times after this one. I have made some changes and now I finally found the taste I wanted.

• I loved adding a dash of Italian seasoning as I saute the garlic and chili.
• I found out that dried chilis tend to be spicier - which I loved more.
• The more garlic, the better.
  
• To make the oil more garlic-ky, I would leave some cloves of garlic into the oil and leave it overnight.
• I prefer the dish to be as simple as this... no need for cheese.
  

The one neighbor gave us had bacon bits and sliced black olives. I will go ask them how they cooked it and maybe use chicken or turkey franks instead of bacon.

Original recipe can be read HERE. Thanks for the inspiration, Noob Cook.

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Recipe | Ginisang Pechay at Tokwa

This was an old picture that I wasn't able to share...

The "Mama Sita's Lutong Bahay" cookbook proved to be a very useful cookbook for me - dishes were easy to make and it has saved me during days when thinking what to cook was quite difficult. My mom couldn't eat any soy products (because of uric), so this I had for lunch one time ago.


Ginisang Pechay at Tokwa (Sauteed Bok Choy and Tofu)
{Serves 4}

Ingredients

• 4 tablespoons cooking oil
• 1 block tofu
  
• 1 big clove of garlic, minced
• 1 small onion, sliced thinly
• 2 small pieces of ripe tomatoes, sliced
• 2 tablespoons Mama Sita's Oyster Sauce
• 300g Bok Choy, washed and cut in half
• 3 tablespoons water

How to Cook

• Fry tofu in oil until golden brown. Set aside and cut into small cubes once cooled.
• In the same pan, saute garlic, onions and tomatoes. Wait for the tomatoes to cook a little then add the cubed tofu, water and oyster sauce.
• Add the white part of the bok choy and mix for about 30 seconds. Add the green part of the bok choy, mix, then cover the pan. Turn up the heat for a few seconds to cook the vegetables then serve the dish.

The tofu cubes were a bit soft because it absorbed the liquid, but the whole dish was turned out good. It was a light lunch that can be eaten with or without rice, and can be paired with fried meat, if wanted.

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Recipe | Chicken Wings with Lee Kum Kee Chili Garlic Sauce

Like what I said last time, I am hoping to cook as much recipes printed on the Lee Kum Kee booklet given to us at the Cooking with the Masters event. I already posted one, and I was hoping to cook the Pork Binagoongan this week, but I wasn't able to buy the Lee Kum Kee Fine Shrimp Paste, so I decided to cook a different dish instead.

This recipe is created by Chef Ernest Reynoso-Gala, son of another culinary icon Sylvia Reynoso-Gala. This recipe, aside from being printed as part of the collection of Lee Kum Kee dishes created by celebrity chefs for the 123rd anniversary of Lee Kum Kee, was also featured in the October 2011 issue of Appetite Magazine.


Chicken Wings with Lee Kum Kee Chili Garlic Sauce
{Serves 5 - 6}
[Printable Version]

Ingredients:

• 1 kilo chicken wings, each cut into two
  
• 1/3 cup cooking oil
  
• 1 tablespoon Lee Kum Kee chili garlic sauce
  
• 1 tablespoon ginger, finely chopped
  
• 1/2 cup spring onions, chopped
  
• 2 tablespoons Lee Kum Kee oyster sauce
  
• 1 tablespoon Lee Kum Kee premium soy sauce
  
• 1 tablespoon sugar
  
• 2 cups water
  
• For thickening: 2 tablespoons tapioca starch, mixed with 1/4 cup water and 1 teaspoon Lee Kum Kee sesame oil
  
• For garnish: Romaine lettuce leaves

How to Cook:

• Heat oil in a wok.
  
• Add wings, cover and cook for 3 minutes per side.
  
• Remove cover and push wings to side of wok.
  
• Add chili garlic sauce, ginger, and spring onions. Stir awhile.
  
• Add oyster sauce, soy sauce, sugar, and water. Mix well.
  
• Let boil, then cover and simmer for 25 - 30 minutes. Thicken with starch mixture.
  
• Pour on lettuce lined platter and serve.

Obviously, I wasn't able to plate this one well because there were no lettuce available at the nearby market. Anyway, the recipe calls for 1/2 cup chopped spring onions, but I only used about 1/4 cup, some I set aside for garnish. The recipe also calls for 2 cups of water, but I only used 1 cup, because my chicken was only about 3/4 kilo (just 4 wing pieces, one wing for each of us here in the family). Cooking the chicken, I didn't really brown it well, I just fried it until the skin was firm enough to handle the 25 minutes cooking time. I added the thickening sauce at the last 5 minutes of cooking.

I found this dish lip-smacking good. While it is not as crunchy as the normal buffalo wings we know, the sauce was really something that made the dish wonderful. Personally, I loved this more compared to the Crispy Chicken with Hoisin Peanut Sauce, but both my siblings loved the other one compared to this. Oh well, to each his own, I guess, but I am sure I will cook this again some other time.

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Recipe | Beef Stroganoff Pasta

It's been a while since I last shared a recipe here on my blog... thankful for the event I attended last Tuesday, I was able to learn three new recipes, one of which I cooked the day after the event.


Beef Stroganoff Pasta

{Recipe by: McCormick}

Ingredients:

• 1/2 kg Beef Sirloin, sukiyaki cut
• 1 can button mushrooms, sliced
• 2 tablespoon oil for sauteeing
• 2 packs McCormick Mushroom Gravy Mix, diluted in 2 1/2 cups of water
• 1 pack All-Purpose Cream
• 1/2 cup cold butter or margarine
• 500 grams cooked linguine pasta (or any pasta of your choice)
• chopped parsley (for garnish - optional)

How to Cook:

• Pre-heat a pan with some oil; season the beef with some McCormick Iodized Salt and McCormick Black Pepper Ground. Saute a little of the beef at a time until slightly cooked then set aside. On the same pan, saute mushrooms until brown.
• Mix in the diluted McCormick Mushroom Gravy Mix onto the pan and simmer until the sauce thickens. Fold in all-purpose cream and the cooked beef. Once the sauce thickens, turn off heat.
• Swirl in the cold butter (or margarine) to make the sauce richer. Season with some salt and pepper, then toss with the cooked pasta. Garnish with some chopped parsley and serve.

This was the very first time that I cooked a pasta using a gravy mix as its sauce and I was blown away with it. It tasted really good to the point that I didn't need to add more seasoning to it... and yes, I didn't have to chop up some garlic and onion, like I always do whenever I cook pasta. However, I made some changes with my pasta: instead of using cream, I used low fat milk and water to dilute and thin the gravy mix, and I didn't add butter to the sauce after I turned off the heat because I already sauteed my beef and mushroom with olive oil added with some butter. Cream based pasta (or simply white sauce) is one of the "rewards" I could give myself, but because I am really trying hard to lose weight, I reckon I'd just tweak the recipe just to make it a "little" healthier.

Speaking of the healthier alternative, during the cooking demo, Chef Deejay also gave some tips to make this dish healthy. You can either use sliced chicken breast or canned tuna and you may also opt to add vegetables like broccoli or cauliflower. You may also opt to put cayenne pepper to add more anti-oxidant to the dish and to give it a little kick. You can also use whole wheat pasta or red/brown rice if you want to.

Also, I learned something new at the cooking demo... we (that includes me) often times refer to cream based pasta as "carbonara," but according to Chef Deejay, carbonara has eggs. If the white sauce didn't have eggs, it's called "alfredo." Now I know. :)

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