It’s quite simple, just buy it from SNR. Hahaha. The name is seaquest cream dory with ponzu sauce. Add some garlic bits and your done. Yum! And it melts in your mouth.

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So in the spirit of the chicken tikka, we also made Kofta balls. Yeahes!

I found the recipe online and its quite simple. It starts off like a typical meatball recipe with half a kilo of ground beef, an egg and just mix it all up season with salt and pepper.

Here’s the difference. In your mixture throw in finely chopped garlic, red onions and parsley. A teaspoon of cumin, coriander and cinammon (yes, cinammon).  Last one in is 2 tablespoons of tomato paste. Be generous on this one, its good.

Grill on! Use that thing in the picture, i dont know what its called but it helps coz you won’t worry about flipping the kofta balls one by one, just flip the whole thing.

It accidentally opened when I flipped it and we lost two brave kofta balls. Sad. Anyway, so be careful and don’t get carried away in flipping it.

3-5 mins per side should do the trick.  It depends on how big you make your kofta balls.

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I grilled it myself. Ahem. Hehehe. Anyway, my sister sent us some indian spices so might as well right?

Here’s the chicken tikka. The marinade comes straight from the bottle. Just add yogurt, season and leave it for a few hours. Overnight is better.

The marinade is basically composed of different spices like coriander, cumin, tamarind, paprika, etc.  Just check the bottle. Patak’s tikka paste.

Let the grillin’ begin!  It only takes a few mins, probably 3 to 5 mins per side and you are done. Grill some veggies and the meal is complete.

Oh, garlic sauce! Plain yogurt, twist of lemon and garlic. Mix it all up and you’re done.  I was hoping to eat it with basmati rice but all they had at the grocery was brown basmati rice. Hmmmm. Nevermind. Anyway, yum yum yum.

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Mixed with real ingredients, in my opinion, this makes a pretty decent Caldereta.  Good job yaya.

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Weekend griling is fun.

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Are you ready? Here’s how I did it…

Ingredients:

• Sukiyaki Beef – the ones pre-packed at rustans or waltermart will set you back around 120 bucks but that much can serve up to 4
• Sesame oil
• Sesame Seeds
• Soy Sauce
• Brown Sugar
• Garlic
• Salt and Pepper

How:

Try separating the sukiyaki beef a bit and put into a bowl. Add the soy sauce, just enough so that the meat gets covered. Add a tablespoon of sesame oil or even less – it has a powerful flavor. I also decided to heat some sesame seeds on a pan to get the flavor our, set it aside and added it to the mix. Next, half clove of garlic – minced, around 2 tablespoons of brown sugar, and some salt and pepper to taste. Mix it a bit.

Set it aside – cover your bowl or do it like me where I mix everything on a plastic container that comes with a cover so I can shake it up with the sealed cover. You’ll need to leave it alone for about 30 minutes.

While your waiting, you can do one of my favorite side dishes which compliments the bulgogi well — bean sprouts (togue) with sesame oil.

Here’s what you need:

• Bean sprouts – one plastic at the grocery is around Php25 and that is all you need
• Carrots
• Green Bell Pepper
• Sesame oil and seeds
• Garlic
• Salt and pepper

Now here’s how you do to take out the bitter taste of bean sprouts. Heat some water on a pan and just guesstimate that if you add your bean sprouts they can all get soaked in it. Pour in the bean sprouts when it starts boiling and turn down the heat or better yet just turn it off – just let the bean sprouts soak in there for a while. After probably 2-3 minutes, drain it out. Be careful to not let it sit there with the hot water for a long time because we want to retain a bit of that crunch. After draining it, just set to the side.

Next you need to heat a bit of oil in a pan, throw in your minced garlic, carrots and bell pepper cut into strips (just for color), sesame seeds, and then throw in your bean sprout. Mix it all up in high heat because you will want to cook this quickly. Add in a few drops of sesame oil followed by salt and pepper to taste. You’re done! Great side dish to go with your bulgogi.

Time for the bulgogi…

If you’re not big on prep work then like me, you probably spent a few more minutes cutting up the ingredients used for the bean sprout side dish. Good move because at least you didn’t have idle time when the bulgogi was marinating.

Cooking the beef bulgogi is the easiest part, heat a pan and throw it all in there. Can you smell it? Yummy.. it takes less than 5 minutes for this version of the bulgogi to cook because we used sukiyaki beef and as you all know it gets cooked in a blink of the eye.

Buy some rice at ministop! Chow time!

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Its a simple dish to do, and you can find all the ingredients in your average grocery store.

• Ground Beef
• Carrots
• Raisins (add a few, even if you don’t like raisins – it adds to the authentic flavor)
• Garlic
• Tomato Sauce
• Onions?  I think I didn’t bother adding onions – but maybe it can add to the flavor
• Eggs
• Bananas

Here’s how you do it.  Now strap on your seatbelts because this will be really quick!

1. Finely chop garlic and carrots
2. Heat pan, put some oil and start with the garlic then add all the ingredients (ground beef, carrots, raisins, tomato sauce)
3. Stir occasionally and add salt to taste.  I used carrots because its also naturally sweet so chances are you don’t need to put in sugar but that’s up to you.
4. Fry your eggs
5. Fry your bananas – not deep fried, but again that’s up to you.  You just need to brown it and you are done.
6. Plate it!

I’ve received some comments about the banana leaf – Ha ha ha, I buy my rice at binalot – its only 12 bucks and bigger serving compared to ministop. (*wink)

The atchara is a good addition – only 50 bucks.  I also bought a bottle of garlic bits – only 100 bucks and goes a long way.

As a bonus, I added a simple and healthy soup dish.  I call it Instant Crab and eggs soup with Cabbage.

Remember the instant Knorr crab and egg soup – just add one egg?  That’s it. Just follow instructions in cooking and cut up your cabbage and add it there.  Its a quick and healthy way to make your meal more interesting.

Sarap at simple lang.

This weekend if I have time, I’ll be cooking some Beef Bulgogi – just like the one back in High School cafeteria of CSA.

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This is one of the simplest yet gratifying side dishes ever created.  Paired with anything fried and salty – excellent!

Here’s how I interpreted the dish in my small kitchen.

• Baguio Beans – get the bundled ones from your favorite grocery store.  At Rustan’s its like 15 pesos only.
• Coconut milk or powder – any will do, fresh is great.  I don’t like powdered one from Knorr – its too sweet and I don’t know why
• Garlic and Onions
• Ground Beef – not much needed
• Green chillies
• Ginisa flavored mix – I used the one from Maggi.  It stores better because its in granules.  Plus, it tastes better.

That’s it – you’re ready!

1. The prep: Finely chop the baguio beans.  Do the same for your garlic (half a clove) and onions (half).
2. Mix the coconut powder with water – read instructions
3. Pour them all into a pan and wait for it to boil, include the ground beef and green chillies.  In some versions, I cooked the ground beef separately.  I just slice the green chillies in half so I can still spot them and take them out.  Decide on how hot you want the dish to be by using less chillies or adding more.  Don’t take it out completely because its flavor mixes will with the coconut milk.

The taste came really close to the one from Recipes by Cafe Metro so I’m happy with this one.  Try it out!  For me, fried dried squid is the best partner for this dish.

I topped it off with some garlic bits

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For those of you who do not know what Tapsilog is – its a shortcut to TAPa SInangan at itLog.  A popular Filipino breakfast meal – but it still great at any time of the day.

Since I eat tapsilog all the time, especially after a few rounds of beer, I decided to try to cook it myself. So I asked my mom for the recipe and added a few personal touches. Here’s a picture of my first attempt:

Its simple and easy to cook. The only downside is that it takes a while. Here’s how…

Ingredients for tapsilog:

• Beef – the one used for Caldereta is perfect. Around 1/4 kilo serves 3-4 generously
• Garlic
• Brown Sugar
• Soy Sauce
• Bay Leaves
• Salt and Pepper
• Eggs

Garlic Rice

• Rice (bought some from MiniStop)
• Garlic
• Star Margarine! They have one in garlic flavor
• Salt

Instructions:

1. Clean up the beef – cut off the ligaments (litid). I personally don’t like it but its up to you.
2. One clove of garlic, crush it then take off the skin
3. Boil some water and keep it boiling. Put in the garlic and beef, make sure that water covers it completely. Add on water every now and then if meat is still hard.
4. Put in around 3 tablespoons of soy sauce, 2 bay leaves, pinches of salt and pepper
5. Let it boil for about an hour. Be sure to keep checking up on it, add water if it starts to dry up. You should repeat this until meat is tender. Check by forking it or cutting it or just by feel – you’ll know.
6. When its good and tender to the point that bits of it are starting to break off easily, add 2 tablespoons of brown sugar – be sure that you still have a little water in there.
7. When its ready just keep stirring and let the meat break apart until all water is gone and you are left with the flaky tapa. Make sure to lower the heat.

* My first attempt, I added Coke – yes, Coke! I was watching Travel and Living channel and saw them add Coke to one of the dishes. This version tasted good Next attempt, I’ll be adding pineapple juice as natural sweetener. *wink
For the eggs – my suggestion is just to keep the pan hot, make sure the whole bottom is covered with oil. Eggs stick when the oil is not hot enough:

For the garlic rice: (close to what they serve at Sinangag Express)

1. If you’re like me and just buy your rice from MiniStop because you don’t have access to a day old rice – then you can just do this. Put the rice in a clean plastic bag and add a bit of cold water. Start crushing it up so that it breaks apart.
2. Make sure you have all your garlic chopped up – trust your instincts on how many cloves. I used a lot – here’s a shot before finely chopping it:

3. 

4. Next is to put oil and Star margarine (garlic flavor) on a hot pan. Cook the garlic until its brown and set aside some of them so you can put it on top of the rice later on.
5. Pour in your rice and start mixing it all up – quick and easy. Add some salt to taste. A little pepper also adds some character to it.

That’s about it! I’m trying to teach myself the art of plating… as you can see, I still need more practice.

More photos:

Feel free to try it out and let me know your thoughts. Yummy!

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Anyway, I wanted to make this one different. So I opened the fridge and started digging through whatever was in there. A-ha! Eggs! Ooh – Bagoong. I wonder…

So here’s what I did:

1. Scrambled Eggs – while beating the eggs, add a small amount of bagoong, like half a teaspoon, it goes a long way. I have the Barrio Fiesta one.
2. Secret to cooking scrambled eggs – make sure your pan is really hot. Oil or butter – just move the pan around and check if it spreads to the whole surface, if it doesn’t – 2 things, pan is still not that hot or you don’t have enough oil or butter. Anyway, while its still hot, put in the beaten eggs and move the pan in a circular pattern for a bit to spread it equally. If you follow this, you always end up with great tasting scrambled eggs. Just make sure you don’t burn it, take it out of the flame – it cooks fast.
3. Instant pancit canton – just follow the packaging

That’s about it, mix the pancit canton into a bowl and top it off with scrambled eggs. Last, add a few drops of sesame oil (*wink). Yebah! Here’s a picture: (Its not that appetizing, but its good enough to satisfy your craving for instant pancit canton with a simple twist)

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