Doenjang Jjigae (된장찌개)

Made this dish for my Dear a few weeks ago to help cure her colds.  Basically a spicy vegetable stew (jjigae) made with fermented bean paste, or doenjang.  Like most stews, proportions depend mostly on taste, so I'm not bothering with measurements.  Just throw everything into a pot, boil, taste, and adjust as you go along.

Ingredients:

doenjang*

kimchi**

firm tofu, cubed

cauliflower, chopped

water

1.  Put everything into a pot and bring to a boil; cook until cauliflow achieves desired texture.  Taste from time to time and adjust flavours.  

2.  That's it.

Serve piping hot, ideally in a heated ceramic bowl like here.  Cook with some pork belly chunks or bone for a richer soup. 

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* I got 1/2 kilo of good doenjang from Gourdo's for P80.

** Although kimchi jjigae also exists, my Korean colleague tells me they don't make a jjigae with both doenjang and kimchi as flavour bases.  To be more authentic, replace the kimchi with chilli flakes.

Sunday Lunch

Sundays are a great day to stay in and cook, free from the busy hours of weekdays and the errands of Saturdays.  I usually set aside Sundays to make slow-cooking stews that we'll eat the rest of the week, sometimes in different reincarnations.  This Sunday, however, my Dear prepared for us a Filipino-Korean lunch, which, unholy as it sounds, actually worked.  I helped, of course, though it felt new to me to be relegated to prepping in what used to be my own kitchen.

For the Korean part, we had a side dish of sukjunamul (숙주나물), which is basically blanched mung bean sprouts seasoned with minced garlic, sesame oil, ground black pepper, vinegar, and soy sauce.  We put in a tad too much garlic on this one, resulting in a pretty pungent sukjunamul which I liked but my Dear found quite overpowering.

The main course was boiled-then-fried Tuguegarao longganisa, named after the capital city of Cagayan Province.  Compared to the more famous Vigan longganisa, the Tuguegarao longganisa has bigger links, a more yellow colour (thanks to atsuete), and a milder garlic taste.  To serve, they are first boiled in water to fully cook the sausage and render the fat; the links are pricked so they won't burst.  After the water has evaporated you are left with sausage links frying in their own fat, which then browns the longganisas.  

After cooking, we ate the sukjunamul and longganisa with steamed brown rice.  Although both dishes were strongly garlicky, they presented the ingredient differently-- raw and pungent on the sukjunamul while sweet and mild in the longganisa.  The fresh taste of the bean sprouts also complemented the fatty richness of the pork sausage.  For dessert we had some fresh lakatan bananas, all washed down with senna leaf tea.

La Cuisine Française in a can

More than elaborate sauces, expensive wines, and Michelin stars, the heart of French cuisine is really the common man's fare: the staple baguette, the hearty cassoulet, the cheap and easy ratatouille.  And of course there's choucroute, which I just tried from a can.

Choucroute is basically sauerkraut from France's Alsace region, which borders Germany.  The name itself is a francicised version of the German dish, from German Sauerkraut to Alsacian Sürkrüt to French choucroute.  Choucroute garnie is choucroute garnished with sausages and ham, and choucroute royale is choucroute made with premium charcuterie and wine.

I first heard of choucroute from Anthony Bourdain, so when I saw a can of it at Rustan's Fresh I just had to buy it.  The big can of choucroute, good for at least two servings, costs around P250.  Made by Belle France CIBON, it is marketed as authentic Alsacian choucroute royale made with Riesling wine.  The charcuterie is composed of two pieces each of smoked pork belly chunks and three kinds of sausages (Montbeliard, Frankfurter, and something that tastes like a mild chorizo).

I did not have particularly high hopes for choucroute coming from a can, so I was pleasantly

 surprised that this one actually tasted good.  The choucroute itself was mildly sour and matched well with the meats; however, it had a greasy aftertaste, surely because of the lard.  I ate it with slices of soft baguette from Annabel Lee (P75 for a big loaf).

At around P125 a serving it is quite expensive for a meal from a can, but it's quite reasonable for the closest thing to authentic French cuisine you can buy from a supermarket.

Ay, Pottage!

Remember that ginisang munggo dish our moms made, usually during Lenten Fridays? That green, beany, savoury, soupy dish that's the perfect side for plain rice and fried anything? What do you call it in English? Soup? Stew? Porridge? dr.sbdink and I were discussing this recently and, well, we were stumped.

After some research, I can confidently say the answer is pottage, which is basically a vegetable soup or stew and is the root of the word porridge. The granddaddy of this word is the Latin porrum which means leek-- a common ingredient in soups and stews. From there it became the Old French potage meaning soup and then the current English pottage. Pottage and porridge were originally interchangeable terms, both basically meaning boiled vegetables or cereals. In the 17th century, however, the terms started to have the distinct meanings we have today, with pottage keeping its original association with vegetable soups and porridge referring to cereals (primarily oatmeal but also encompassing rice, corn, barley, etc.) boiled in water or milk.

Pottage is actually mentioned in the Bible, in Genesis XXV 27-34 where Esau sells his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of lentil pottage and some bread. The Hebrew says וּנְזִיד עֲדָשִׁים (naziyd 'adash), which literally means boiled lentils, and is translated as pottage of lentils in the King James Version. Esau eventually regrets the trade with Jacob and this becomes the nucleus of their (and their descendants') endless conflict. Jacob, after wrestling with a mysterious man, later thought to be God himself, eventually became known as Israel (literally he who wrestled with God). Thus, Jacob's lentil pottage set the stage for the Arab-Israeli troubles we see today. But I digress.

Therefore, since our munggo dish is thickened by legumes rather than cereals, the precise English term would be mung bean pottage. Hopefully our mung bean pottage won't start any wars.

Deep Fried Everything and Azeri Cuisine

For my birthday my Dear gave me a deep fryer. I usually avoid deep-frying stuff to show some concern for my health, but I do like fried foods like everyone else so this was a welcome gift. I'd feel too guilty to buy myself a deep fryer, even if it would make a good addition to my galley gear. It requires at least 750mL of oil to start cooking-- not exactly frugal, but it does go a long way.


So two weeks ago I finally used the deep fryer, frying everything I can put my hands on. I began with a lunch of deep fried sausages and eggplant. For dinner, I fried potato wedges, Vienna sausages, and some canned salmon. The following day, I fried some Thai-style chicken wrapped in pandan leaves bought from SM. After which I had to reluctantly throw away the oil-- I don't usually consume 750mL of canola oil for just three meals.


This week I tried my hand at making saciçi, that afritada-like Azeri chicken dish I had in Baku. I departed from the original recipe though-- I used olive oil and butter instead of pure butter, I added a lot of garlic, and I cooked it with orange juice and slices. Also, I used bigger cuts of chicken and vegetables in my saciçi so I had to use more water while cooking; thus, the ensuing dish had a lot more sauce. It's quite greasy due to the copius amount of oil and butter, but the orange cuts through it a little bit. It was quite close to the saciçi I had in Baku, though I wish I used less water so the chicken and vegetables could've fried more. Next time I'll use smaller cuts of chicken.

Finally, just saw a video on Azeri cuisine:



Now I'm officially looking for a good Azeri (i.e., Turkish) restaurant in Manila.

Singapore Food Trip

Took a lot of pics, so I'm posting on my multiply. I have two posts:

Hainanese Chicken Rice, Char Kway Teow, etc.

Sha Tin Kitchen- restaurant review

Great Guatemalan Guacamole

This recipe is from my colleague Eliana. She is actually a Colombian living in Australia, but the guacamole recipe is Guatemalan due to the addition of mint.

Ingredients:
avocados (2)
lemon or lime juice (1 spoon)
vinegar (1 spoon)
onion (about 2 spoons, finely chopped)
tomatoes (about 2 spoons, finely chopped tomatoes)
coriander (about 1/3 cup)
mint (about 1/3 cup)
chillies
salt and pepper
garlic (one clove, if you don't have a date that evening)

Mash the avocados with a fork. Finely chop the onions, tomatoes, chillies and garlic. Chop the coriander and mint. Mix everything and add the lemon juice and vinegar. You may also use a blender or food processor to mince and mix the ingredients, but you'll end up with a very smooth guacamole.

A mixture of chopped coriander, onion, tomatoes, chillies, and garlic with a dressing of lemon and vinegar is called pico de gallo. Guacamole, pico de gallo, and sour cream are three essential ingredients for authentic tacos. Recipe for chicken and beans to follow.

Simple Spinach Surprise

Here's a simple spinach dish I concocted a while back. I was happy with this one because I expected very little but it turned out surprisingly well. Very easy to prepare.

Ingredients:
spinach (and loads of it)
red bell peppers (paprika to some people)
garlic
black olives
freshly-ground black pepper
Worcestershire sauce
virgin olive oil (just enough to brown the garlic)

1. Roast the bell peppers in the convection oven, turning occasionaly, until the skin starts to brown on all sides and the peppers are soft. If you have a paper bag, put the roasted peppers in the bag and crumple the top; if you don't, just leave the peppers in the oven after you turn it off. The idea is to let the peppers steam and sweat-- this'll make the skin easy to peel later on

2. Peel the skin off of the roasted peppers. This can be time-consuming, but, believe me, it's worth it. Throw away the seeds and juilienne the flesh (yeah, I did a poor job).

3. In a skillet (or wok), heat the oil and fry the black pepper until you can smell it. Sautee the garlic (I just halve or quarter the cloves) until it starts to soften but not yet brown. Add the roasted peppers and olives. This'll cool down the pan, so allow the heat to build up to sauteeing heat.

4. Add the spinach and a few dashes of Worcestershire sauce and cook until it starts to wilt, then turn off the heat. Don't let them wilt totally-- the remaining heat will do that. You'll see that the spinach will be a small fraction of the original bulk. You can see from the picture that I underestimated my endpoint remaining spinach.

Goes great with grilled meat or fish.