Tag: pork

Yelly Eats

Chick pea-chorizo-pork stew

Yelly

This recipe evolved because I missed the callos dish that my mom prepared for us.  Callos is made with beef tripe and has chorizo and red bell peppers and is served over rice.  When I moved to England, I didn’t know where to buy tripe because there weren’t any butchers that were close by and the bigger supermarkets didn’t have tripe on their shelves.  I had to figure out how to get my callos fix without having to buy tripe.  It was a brainwave when I remembered that oxtail is also used to make kare-kare (which is a peanut-based stew popular in the Philippines).  So I figured, if I used oxtail soup, then it would give me the taste of tripe.

This is an excellent soup for the winter months when you need something hearty and hot.  It can be served on rice or eaten on its own.  If you plan to not have it as a rice topping, I’d suggest adding another can of chick peas or a can of cannellini beans or red kidney beans to make it more substantial.  You can choose to add a spicy kick to it by adding either the cayenne pepper or the tabasco sauce.  I’ve been known to add both though.  It just adds a really comforting heat to the stew during the winter months.

This is a slow-cook recipe but it is definitely worth the wait!

Inspired by a tweet from Daphne Oseña Paez, requesting that I share the recipe, I challenged myself to weigh ingredients and approximate amounts.  So here goes(…nothing?!?)!

Chick pea-chorizo-pork stewIngredients:

  • 1 kilo belly pork cut into cubes
  • 226 grams of chorizo, cut into 1/4 inch disks
  • 2 400g cans of chopped tomato
  • 1 400g can of Heinz Oxtail soup
  • 1 400g can of chickpeas (or 240g of dried chickpeas soaked in water overnight to soften)
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 600g potatoes, peeled and diced
  • 2 teaspoons garlic, chopped finely
  • 2 large white onions,
  • 3 heaping teaspoons paprika
  • 1 teaspoon cumin
  • 2 pork stock cubes
  • 1 litre water
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • 1 heaping teaspoon cayenne pepper, optional
    or
  • 2 teaspoons tabasco sauce, optional

Directions:

  1. Heat the olive oil in a stock pot on medium heat.  Add the chorizo disks and fry until they crips around the edges.  When the chorizo oil turns the bottom of the pan slightly red, add the onions.  Reduce the heat slightly  Once the onions are softened and slightly translucent, add the garlic sautee for 2 minutes (approximately).
  2. Add the pork and sautee for about 15 minutes, until fat in the pork belly cubes have rendered slightly and the flesh has lost its pink colour.  Add chopped tomatoes, oxtail soup, pork stock cubes, 500 ml of the water and spices.  Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally, making sure the pork pieces and chorizo don’t stick to the bottom of the pan.
  3. Once the stock begins to boil, reduce heat to allow it to simmer for 30 minutes.
  4. Increase heat again, to add potatoes and chick peas and remaining water.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  It’s at this point that I add either 1 heaping teaspoon of cayenne pepper or 2 teaspoons of tabasco sauce for a kick.  You don’t have to add both if you don’t want it to be too spicy. Bring to a slow boil and reduce heat and allow to slow cook for a further hour, or until the pork is tender.
  5. This will serve 4-6 greedy people if served as an all-in-one meal or 8-10 if served over a bowl of rice.
Yelly Eats

Ah-doh-boh!!!

Yelly

Adobo is Spanish for sauce or seasoning or marinade and is widely used in Latin American cuisine.  It is also defined as a sauce or paste made from a variety of ingredients that may include chillies, salt, vinegar, garlic, and herbs.  There are also dry adobos which are spice rubs for meat, fish or poultry.

Adobo is very definitely the Philippine’s national dish.  Everyone has a take  on how it’s made, every Filipino who knows how to cook it, has their own version, their own set of ingredients.  There are versions with vinegar, versions with coconut milk, versions with pineapple juice, versions with boiled egg, versions with bay leaf.  There are so many ways of adjusting (and readjusting) the ratio of soy sauce to vinegar, some people love it really garlicky, some people want only a smidgen of garlic in it.  Some like it really sour, some really salty, some really sweet and some…somewhere in the middle of all of this. Some people love pork adobo, while some people will say chicken adobo is always best.  When it’s a national dish, there are a million permutations.  Maybe as many as there are Filipino households in the world!

This is my take on adobo.  I’ve tried it with chicken and pork and it seems to work really well.  So I’m going to brave the big bad world wide web, and put forward my recipe!  If you’d like to try it, let me know how it works out for you please! 🙂  I’d really love for you to let me know what it was like!

Ingredients

  • 1 kilo of pork or chicken
  • 5 tablespoons of soy sauce + 1 tablespoon for cooking
  • 2 1/2 tablespoons of vinegar + 1 teaspoon for cooking
  • 3 large cloves of garlic crushed (or 3 teaspoons of garlic granules)
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons of sugar
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 1 tablespoon of whole pepper corns (or 1 heaping teaspoon ground pepper)
  • 1 meat stock cube (chicken or pork, whichever meat you’re cooking)
  • 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
  • 400 ml water

Directions:

  1. In a ziplock bag, combine the soy sauce and the vinegar and the garlic.  Add the meat (use belly pork if cooking pork as the fat makes the meat pieces more succulent and less dry, and if you are using chicken, wings, thighs and legs are the best parts to use because these chicken parts have more flavour) and marinade.  I like using a ziplock bag because I like to be able to “massage” the marinade into the meat.  The longer you marinade the meat the better, but a minimum of two hours (with a maximum of massaging!) will do.
  2. Heat the oil in a stir-fry pan and add the meat pieces, making sure that you keep the marinating liquid.  Brown the meat on all sides.  Once the meat has been browned, add the marinating liquid.  Add the soy sauce, vinegar, pepper corns (or ground pepper), sugar, the stock cube and water.  Make sure that the stock cube and the sugar are dissolved well and make sure that all the meat are covered by the marinating liquid.  Tear the bay leaves and add to the pan.  Allow the liquid to reach a rolling boil, turning the meat pieces occasionally.  Cover with a lid.
  3. Allow the liquid to simmer for 30 minutes, at which time it would have thickened slightly (without you adding anything to thicken it!).  This is my little step: after the 30 minutes are over, keep the lid on and keep the pot over the hot plate (if you’re using an electric stove, or over the ring, if you’re using a gas range) for 5 minutes without lifting the lid.
  4. Serve over boiled rice, and voila!  You have my version of adobo! 🙂

Photo credits:

Adobo by ISKAndals.com

Yelly Eats

Slow-cooked Pork

Yelly

1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup paprika
3 tablespoons salt
1 tablespoon black pepper
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 teaspoon cayenne
1 tablespoon chili powder (optional)

Mix together well, using a wire whisk to make sure everything is incorporated well.

To cook the meat, rub as much as you can onto the pork and marinade for at least 4 hours (the longer the better). Cook under foil for 6 hours at 110ºC and for the last 2 hours, remove the foil and turn up the oven to 180ºC.

This is enough dry rub for 6lbs of meat.  if you want to store it, after mixing, store in a tightly sealed jar in a cool, dark place.  The rub can be stored for 3-4 weeks.

Yelly Eats

A Working Girl’s Mapo Tofu Don

Yelly

I started writing this entry with the words “When I think of home…” and started laughing.  Because in my head I started singing “…I think of a place where there’s love overflowing…”  If you don’t know the song I’m singing, well, your musical education isn’t as good as you think it is.  Well, either that or you weren’t alive in the 80’s (that’s when I first saw it, on RPN9 on a Saturday evening), or you’ve never heard of The Wiz.  It’s the Michael Jackson-Diana Ross adaptation of The Wizard of Oz.

And as usual, I digress!

I miss home and the little comforts that are so close (that or I can easily jump into the family car–our trusty Revo–and drive to where I want to go get things).  I miss having nail bars everywhere, I miss Ditas of David’s Salon in SM Fairview who does my hair perfectly, I miss Starbucks and the occasional green tea latte frap, I miss tocino, Purefoods corned beef.  I miss eating at the eat-all-you-can lunches (and dinners) of Saisaki (although, it may not be the same now), I miss the shawarma place in Fairlane (also in Fairview), I miss Mercury Drug (because buying things over the counter is sometimes quicker).  I miss my Tita Rescy’s cafe called Indulgence on…(argh! I can’t remember!) Perea.  I miss Ineng’s barbecue and I miss Teriyaki Boy!  Apart from their sushi, I miss their mapo tofu don.

Mapo tofu was one of the first dishes that I learned to replicate when I moved to the UK.  I loved it a lot (I think it loved me too, because I KNOW I gained weight because I ate a lot of mapo tofu don from Teriyaki Boy) and missed it so much that I looked for a recipe and searched for ingredients.  I can now, and I say this with absolute confidence, whip up mapo tofu in minutes.  I now have what I call the working girl’s version of this wonderful tofu-pork-black bean sauce dish.  It’s quick, and really easy.  I also like to think that it’s really healthy (because of the tofu! :)).  And all the ingredients are things you can get at the supermarket!

Ingredients:
Serves 4 people

  • 1 block soft tofu (about 350g), drained and diced
  • 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
  • 500g minced pork
  • 1 Blue Dragon black bean stirfry sauce packet
  • 2-3 spring onions, sliced into thin diagonals and separate the white sections from the green leafier bits
  • 1 packet coriander chopped finely
  • 1-2 teaspoons chili oil (depending on how hot you want it, you can include the chili paste at the bottom of the jar)
  • 1 pork stock cube (I use Knorr)
  • 2 teaspoons light soy sauce
  • Salt to taste

Directions:

  1. Heat oil in the pan and brown minced pork.  Add blackbean stirfry sauce and pork stock cube.  Allow to simmer for 3 minutes.
  2. Add chili oil (and paste, if you want it hot, hot, hot!) and allow to simmer for 3 minutes.
  3. Add the chopped white sections fo the spring onions, the soy sauce and two-thirds of the coriander.  Add salt to taste (I like to make it salty, according to my taste as the tofu hasn’t been added to the pork mince at this stage).
  4. Add the diced tofu and mix gently, making sure the tofu isn’t mashed but is distributed well.  Allow to simmer for 5 mins.
  5. Serve over a bowl of steamed rice.