Enjoying Pesto Pasta

When I was younger I liked my spaghetti heavy in tomato sauce done Filipino style, meaning heavy on the sugar for the sweet taste. But as my taste buds matured and my preferences became more urbane, I found myself looking for more authentic Italian flavors.

I still enjoy spaghetti and thankfully my family has the same preference now for the sour Italian blend and al dente noodles. But I realized that the best pasta are often the simple ones, like the herby taste of pesto.

Pesto is a sauce comes from rendering basil, garlic, pine nuts and olive oil. It actually shares the Latin origin of the kitchen implement used to render the raw herbs into sauce, the pestle of mortar and pestle. So that is how basically it is prepared, through the pounding and grounding of said raw materials.

Pesto pasta as prepared by my sister.
I had this for my birthday a coupe of years back.

There are variations of the dish and one includes using cream in lieu of olive oil, but I prefer the original one. I like the dish so much that I often request it from my sister for my birthday, which she makes from the basil we grow in our garden.

Spaghetti Al Pesto at Pizza Hut. Served with a wedge of garlic bread.

In my opinion, the best pesto pasta available commercially in Cagayan de Oro, can be had at Pizza Hut. I just love it. They use liberal amounts of olive oil, mixed in some chopped olives and topped it with almonds. It is a guilty pleasure worth spending a cheat day on. I usually would like to have a lot of cheese in my pasta, but this dish transcends my need to drown pasta in cheese. It is so good that it has become my default setting for pesto pasta. If any I've tried at any restaurant does not approach it's greatness, I would be terribly disappointed.

The pesto pasta at Italianni's.
The photo is a little puny,
 but it is the only one I had rights to.

The only other pesto dish that passed muster would be the one from Italianni's. It is also at the Italianni's in Centrio that I've had true al dente pasta on a regular basis. They also used the freshest ingredients and it makes their version of pesto pasta stand out. Plus, they have refillable complimentary bread which useful in sopping every drop of the sauce clean off the plate.

I love pesto so much that my sister always stashes a little extra away when she's doing pasta. It's a great idea to add  pesto to mayonnaise for gourmet style sandwiches and that where we often use the extra pesto we've kept com our pasta meal. It gives ordinary sandwiches a little bite and a whiff of sophistication.

Food Adventures at Home: Singapore Swing with Hainanese Chicken

Hainanese Chicken, though it may have originated in mainland China, is a dish that has become associated with Singapore, which has a sizable Hainan Chinese community. The dish though appears throughout Southeast Asia and can be found in Malaysian, Thai and Vietnamese cuisine. 

My sister has always wanted to prepare the dish, as she is driven by an inexplicable to prepare chicken in the Hainanese way. Also, at the time, our kitchen stores had an abundance of garlic which she really wanted to use.

The dish requires a whole chicken, rice, herbs and spices. She deviates from the traditional Southeast Asian style by using brown rice instead of white. Before anything else, she detoxifies the chicken by salt on it. She then stuffed the dressed fowl with herbs and spices and boiled it in water seasoned with some salt and pepper. Once the chicken is cooked she used the stock to cook the rice and liberally added ginger and garlic.

My sister is a budding cook, and often my parents and I are the beneficiaries of her sudden bursts of inspiration. She seldom does a dish twice, preferring to expand her horizons by cooking new dishes that she gets from watching cooking shows on the internet or on television. For this dish, her inspiration was in preparing some healthy fare for us. The chicken is steamed with no cooking oil but its own rendered fat. The rice though was stir-fried before steaming to give it maximum flavor.

I must say it was indeed a tasty meal. The healthy preparation is a bonus. She used a lot less salt than most restaurants. From one chicken and some rice she made a three course meal. Suffice to say, it was a hit. There weren't any leftovers to keep.

Food Adventures at Home: The Mother's Day Spread

Left: The Mother's Day Spread.
Center, clockwise from top left: Deviled Eggs, Lettuce & Strawberry Vinaigrette,  Smoked Salmon Dill Cream Cheese Dip & crackers, Banoffee Cups, Salmon & Spinach Fettuccine with Homemade Sundried Tomatoes, Celery & Potato Soup. Right: the dinner wine.
Click to enlarge.

Salmon, the food fish whose once-in-a-lifetime journey to spawn has inspired poets is a delicacy I've not found often in the Philippines; especially a prime fillet of smoked king salmon from the Pacific Northwest of North America. Since all our mothers deserve the best, only the finest would be fit to be the theme ingredient of our Mother's Day spread.

My sister prepared the menu, a seven course meal designed to make the salmon stand out as the star of the evening. We weren't able to print out actual cards, but here they are, listed in the order they should be consumed.

Hors d'oeuvre: Deviled Eggs

Celery and Potato Soup

Lettuce with Strawberry Vinaigrette 

Smoked Salmon Dill Cream Cheese Dip

Salmon and Spinach Fetuccine with Homemade Sundried Tomatoes 

Dessert: Banoffee Cups

Wine: 2006 Sauvignon Blanc Peñalolen

I actually helped, but my contributions were limited to manual labor. She did ask me to take over mixing the cheese dip and I think it was better for it, with me applying the brute force needed to render the ingredients into spreadable bits.

The deviled eggs and the soup helped build the anticipation for the main course. They were just light enough to ensure that there was still space in the gut for the course yet to come. This was the same approach used with the light salad. Instead of heavy dressing, the vinaigrette was just enough to keep it interesting. The lettuce was a new variety I haven't tried before. It had a pleasantly bitter aftertaste that refreshed the palate in preparation for the next two dishes.

The Smoked Salmon Dill Cream Cheese Dip was one of the dishes I helped prepare. It used Philadelphia cream cheese as a base. The salmon worked well together with the cheese. It was served  with two kinds of crackers: Jacob's Hi-Cal Original and M.Y. San Grahams. The dip worked surprisingly well with Grahams; the sweetness of the crackers topped with the dip made it blend of multiple flavors on the tongue.

The flavor-fest continued when one proceeded to the pasta dish. It was essentially  pasta alfredo with bits of smoked salmon mixed with the sauce. I grated the cheese for this one if one might ask. It was topped with more smoked salmon flakes, capers and homemade sundried tomatoes. The sundried tomatoes was especially flavorful and I wished my sister cut it into smaller pieces so I could enjoy my pasta better with all the flavors conspiring to smother my mouth into submission.

Dessert was banoffee cups, primarily for the its no-bake convenience, but also for the perfect combination of banana slices and chocolate chips. I had mine slathered with cream and it was glorious. The choice of Sauvignon Blanc Peñalolen from Chile of 2006 vintage as table wine held the meal perfectly and made it a sublime and ultimately stuffed experience and our mother's satisfied countenance worth all the kitchen work.

Food Adventures at Home: Going Korean

The spread

One thing that I love about having my sister stay with us at home during summer break is that she likes to do a few dishes that would broaden the horizon of the family's palates. This summer is no different as we have already crisscrossed much of East Asia with her flavors.

Bibimbap before mixing the whole thing.

There was night when she cooked the signature Korean dish bibimbap. It was actually her second  time to prepare the mixed rice dish but that twist for this version was that she used brown rice instead of the traditional white. The family has jumped on the brown rice trend as of late but I do believe that this edition of her bibimbap is better than her first for using the mostly unpolished grain.

Bibimpap literally means "rice dish" and my sister's version of this dish includes freshly cooked rice topped with beef, spinach, zucchini. bean sprouts, carrots and a fried egg. That combination is then mixed by adding gochujang (chili pepper paste) and minced garlic for the authentic spicy Korean taste.

The side dishes

She also cooked a couple of side dishes to go with the rice dish. She barbecued some beef strips and made a green onion omelet. For my plate, I served myself a ladle-full of the rice and some of the beef and omelet. I added a dollop of gochujang since I wanted a little more spice in each spoonful.

I sure was glad she prepared a rice cooker full of it, It ensured that I would be able to have cupful of leftover bibimbap for breakfast.

My plate.

Cooking with Titil: Pork Pata Adobado

Cooking with Titil: Pork Pata Adobado

I was on my way home when I remembered that I have to cook dinner for my family. I haven't had the faintest idea what to cook since I was very busy at work the whole day. So I stopped by a small deli shop in Divisoria to buy some meat and prayed that a recipe would pop out from my mind later on. Luckily, the cashier handed me a recipe...Pork Pata Adobado. It looks yummy and very simple to do since it is actually just a combination of HUMBA and ADOBO. So I bought the ingredients and went home with a sigh of relief. It is indeed very easy and a delightful recipe you can share with your family. As the saying goes "Sabaw pa lang, Ulam na!".

INGREDIENTS:

      1/2 kg Pork Pata Slice
      1 tbsp Crushed garlic
      1/2 tbsp Freshly Ground 
         Black Pepper
      1 pc Bay Leaf
      7ml Worcestershire sauce
      1/4 cup soy sauce
      1/3 cup vinegar
      1 cup water
      1/2 tbsp garlic, minced
      1/2 cup onions,chopped
      1/2 cup tomatoes,chopped


PROCEDURE:

1. Combine first the eight ingredients in a saucepan.

2. Cook over high heat until the mixture comes to a boil.Reduce heat to medium and let simmer,covered for 45 minutes.
3. Remove cover and cook for another 5 minutes for sauce to reduce and thicken.
4. Separate the sauce form the meat and set aside.

5. In another pan,saute onions,garlic and tomatoes until tender. Add the meat and cook for 5 minutes.

6. Add the sauce or you may serve it on the side.

Enjoy and happy eating !

COOKING WITH TITIL: Merienda Spaghetti

Simply Satisfying Merienda Spaghetti

 

I love food. I love to cook. When your passion is eating then you got to love cooking. Today's special menu is my favorite merienda since I was little (no pun intended). My late mother used to prepare this for our family with gusto and pride. Now it's my turn to show you all how enticingly luscious my mother's special merienda can be. Sit still, relax and keep that saliva in your mouth.

            RECIPES:

                  400 grams spaghetti pasta
                  560 grams spaghetti sauce
                  250 ml Nestle cream
                  1 cup grated cheese (1/4 for cooking)
                  250 grams ground pork or beef
                  6 cloves of garlic (minced)
                  2 pcs medium sized onion (minced)
                  3 pcs red bell pepper (minced)
                  sliced hotdogs
                  5 tablespoon cooking oil
                  3 tablespoon sugar
                  salt and pepper
                  1/2 cup water




 
 PROCEDURES:

1. Cook the pasta according to package instruction. Do not overcook the pasta to preserve its firmness.

2. In another pan, saute half the onion, garlic and bell pepper for a minute. Add ground pork/beef in the pan until the color becomes brownish. Add little water, soy sauce and pepper to taste. Let it simmer until the water dries up. Turn off heat then set the pan aside.

3. For the sauce, saute the remaining onion, garlic and bell pepper then add the sliced hotdogs and cooked ground pork/beef.

4. After 2 minutes add the spaghetti sauce, Nestle cream, and grated cheese. Let it simmer until it boils a little. Add salt, pepper and sugar according to your taste.

5. Mix the cooked pasta and meat sauce well. (Use low heat during mixing.)

6. Serve with grated cheese on top and ENJOY!