In Which One Puts the Ketchup On Before Frying the Chicken…

The ketchup is IN the chicken…

I was stumped for lunch ideas yesterday seeing how the past week was one marked by family feasts and a rather harrowing time at work for me.  I was more than a little drained and just wanted to laze about the house on a humid Sunday when I was, in a manner of speaking, bullied into preparing lunch.  Ach, porca miseria…

Now, I’ve been hankering to do a spin on caramelized chicken, a recipe I spotted in an old issue of Australian Delicious, but found that I didn’t have some of the ingredients on hand.  This is pretty much what I did: make a batch of fried chicken and give it a bit of a spin.

The list of ingredients for this recipe sounds a little trashy, seeing how tomato ketchup plays a role in flavoring the chicken.  Supermarket Parmesan and bottled Italian seasoning give it a bit of oomph, while panko gives it a nice, crispy crust.  Overall, it made for a fairly passable dish for lunch.

“Sweep the Fridge” Chicken

• 4 chicken thighs
• 4 chicken drumsticks
• 1 cup tomato ketchup
• salt and pepper
• 1 tablespoon Italian seasoning or 1/2 tablespoon each of dried basil and oregano
• 1 cup flour
• 1 tablespoon finely grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 cup panko breadcrumbs
• 1 egg, beaten
• oil for deep-frying

In a non-reactive bowl, combine the ketchup, Parmesan, and Italian seasoning.  Rub the chicken with salt and pepper, then add to the marinade.  Toss until all the chicken is well-coated; cover and leave to soak for 30 minutes to an hour.

Heat oil in a wok or a deep saucepan over medium heat.  Dredge the chicken parts in flour, dip in the beaten egg, and roll in the panko.  Fry until golden brown and cooked through.  Drain on a plate lined with paper towels.  Transfer to a serving dish; serve immediately.

Serves 6.

In Which One’s Kitchen Supper was a “Hot Mess”…

Gravy on toast

I first encountered the Hebrew word balagan in Saveur issue 137 where it was used to describe the state of peace in Israel and Palestine in recent years.  Given the context, balagan means “hot mess”, a total debacle, a situation totally in shambles.  Well, balagan – a freaking balagan, as a matter of fact – was pretty much how I described one recent day at work, seeing how I came home close to tears and just ready to throw in the towel or go throttle someone in a fit of rage.

Times like these are not for healthy eating, these are times for comfort eating – and bother those self-righteous fitness trippers who insist that you stick to salads and polystyrene-textured rice cakes.  On days when the world is too much with you, your body demands substance to build up your strength, to stiffen your backbone against adversity, to put some heart back into you.  Times like these, you need another hot mess to deal with the hot mess you’ve been put through.

Gravy on toast – a concoction of creamed chipped beef that has been known by several names including the nefarious-sounding “sh*t on a shingle” moniker it has gone by in the US Armed Forces – is one such comfort food.  There is just something mindlessly comforting about good beef gravy slopped over hot toast: it sticks to your ribs, it soothes your wounded psyche, it helps you sleep better on nights when you feel your worries might keep you from getting forty winks and then some.

Trouble is, dried beef isn’t at all that common in my neck of the woods and I’ve pretty much turned my nose up at those namby-pamby loaves of white bread from the supermarket.  That’s where a bit of improvisation comes in…

Instead of making standard-issue brown gravy, I whipped up a curry version of it with leftover meats from the fridge, a bit of potato, some onion, and a bit of milk.  Once the hot mess was all cooked and fragrant, I went and sloshed it over a couple of slices of buttered whole-wheat toast.  It was, to be perfectly honest, wonderful: the savory curry soaked into the nutty-tasting bread, the butter and meat adding richness, and the spuds adding heft.  Needless to say, I slept quite well that night.  Tomorrow was, after all, another day…

The Freaking Balagan

• 2 slices whole-grain bread
• butter for spreading
• 2 tablespoons minced onion
• 1/4 cup diced potato
• 1/4 cup chopped cooked meat (I used pork in mine, but cooked beef or chicken would also be nice)
• 1 tablespoon oil
• 3/4 cube Japanese curry roux
• 3/4 cup water
• 1/4 cup milk

Heat the oil in a saucepan over medium heat.  Add the onion and cook until softened and fragrant.  Add the potato and cook till the spud’s edges have browned.  Add the meat and cook for about 30 seconds.  Add the water; bring to a boil, then add the curry roux, mixing until it has dissolved.  Add the milk and cook whilst stirring until thickened.  Remove from the heat.

Toast the bread, buttering it generously afterwards.  Place on a plate and pour the curry gravy over the toast.  Serve immediately.

Serves 1.

In Which Soft-boiled Eggs are Part of a Lovely Breakfast…

The incredible, edible egg

Soft-boiled eggs served with soy sauce and ground black pepper have been staple fare in the kopi tiams (coffee stalls) and hawker centers of Malaysia and Singapore for a very long time.  There is just something delectable about them: they are moreish with the right hit of umami – just the thing you need to go with hot buttered toast, maybe a schmear of kaya, and a large mug of kopi c (milky coffee) or teh tarik (pulled milk tea) for a good Peninsular breakfast.

Considering the fact that the culinary traditions of the Philippines echo those of its Indo-Malayan neighbors, most Filipinos have never eaten soft-boiled eggs.  In this part of the world, eggs are usually fried sunny-side up, over easy, or scrambled.  If eggs are ever boiled, they’re boiled till hard and mixed with mayonnaise and pickle relish for a sandwich filling - if they aren’t sliced up for a garnish or left whole and stuffed into meat loaves or roasting fowl.

That said, my take on this kopi tiam staple has an egg that isn’t quite soft boiled.  The appropriate culinary term for the egg shown above is Mollet egg.  This French technique involves starting the eggs in boiling water (never cold, though some brave cooks actually do so) and cooking them for around 6 – 8 minutes.  The end result is an egg with a firm-ish white and a semi-solid yolk that is utterly unctuous and satiny on the tongue.  It is similar to poaching, though you don’t have to crack the eggs into the water; indeed, Mollet eggs can be used in the place of poached eggs for such dishes as eggs Benedict or eggs Florentine.

Mollet Eggs – Singapore-style

Best way to eat them, in my personal opinion, is to drizzle on about half a tablespoon of soy sauce and a generous sprinkle of ground black pepper.  It is, to be quite honest at this point, like a cross between a kopi tiam egg and Japan’s hot-spring poached in the shell onsen tamago which is served in a similar fashion: cracked and stirred into some soy sauce and a bit of dashi stock.  Hot buttered toast and coffee are a definite must.

So, going back to the

In Which Slow Food Rules…

Cannelloni for your thoughts

I managed to catch The River Cottage Treatment yesterday and was fascinated by the way Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall changed the minds and eating habits of five individuals who spent much of their lives eating fast food or what the Brits call “ready-meals” – frozen, pre-cooked dishes that you just pop into a microwave to thaw out before eating.  He turned them on – turned them back - to making their own meals from scratch after proving that doing so was both time-efficient and much cheaper than stocking up on the storebought stuff.  It was also a great way for those city slickers to know where their food actually comes from, thus helping them to develop and even greater appreciation of it and those who help bring provender to kitchens and tables.

Here in the Philippines, the situation has been equally dire: most urbanites prefer take-away meals from one fast-food joint or another, saying that they haven’t got the time nor the energy (and, in many cases, even the proper skills are absent) to prepare good, wholesome, and delicious food at home.  That annoys me a great deal: the same people who spend hours in the gym after work, the same people who play video games hour upon hour, the very same people who watch too much television while gobbling scads of junk food claim to have neither the time nor the energy to make, serve, and enjoy a proper meal.

Well, pardon my French, dear readers: bollocks to that – and bollocks to the lot of them.

There is much to be said about taking time and effort to make a meal – and a very good one at that – and the satisfaction level is significantly higher.

All of them filled by hand, by the way.

Saturday’s cannelloni al forno was one of those dishes that was really worth the effort.  It involves stuffing tubes of pasta with a herb-seasoned pork forcemeat (actually an old sausage recipe of mine), smothering the lot with a rich-tasting mushroom and eggplant ragu, and drenching the whole thing with bechamel sauce before baking it into a magnificent, full-flavored, deeply satisfying casserole that handily serves a dozen people.

Note, though, that I did take a few shortcuts here: the cannelloni I used were the boxed, no-need-to-boil kind which I hand-filled with spoonfuls of the sausage mixture, and the sauce uses pre-packaged tomato sauces.  Nor did I make my own stock; I believe in doing stuff from scratch, but I’m not that masochistic.  Nevertheless, the end result was definitely worth the nearly four hours I spent making it – and it sure beats any old store-bought pasta dish hollow.

Definitely worth it.

Cannelloni al Forno

• 1 250g box cannelloni (check: you need one that has 24 tubes)
• 1/2 kilo ground pork
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 2 tablespoons rubbed sage
• 2 teaspoons dried thyme
• 2 teaspoons ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 250mL tomato sauce
• 250mL chunky tomato pasta sauce
• 1/2 cup basil, finely chopped
• 1 red onion, finely chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1/2 cup red wine
• 1 can sliced mushrooms, drained and liquid reserved
• 1 medium eggplant, diced
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 chicken bouillon cube
• 1/4 cup butter
• 3 tablespoons flour
• 500mL milk
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 2 tablespoons parsley, finely chopped

Grease a large rectangular baking dish.  Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees / Gas Mark 4.

Combine the pork, sage, thyme, cayenne, salt, and black pepper till well-combined.  Divide into 24 portions and stuff these into the pasta tubes, leaving some space on both ends.  Arrange the tubes in a single layer in the baking dish.

Heat the olive oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat.  Saute the onion till softened.  Add the garlic and cook till it has browned slightly and is fragrant.  Add the basil and cook just till the leaves have wilted.  Add the eggplant and mushrooms and cook until the eggplant has softened.  Add the wine, reserved mushroom liquid, and bouillon cube; stir till the bouillon has dissolved, then bring to a boil.  Add the tomato and pasta sauces and cook till bubbly.  Immediately ladle the sauce evenly over the pasta tubes.

Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the flour, stirring till it becomes a good, thick paste.  Pour in the milk and cook whilst stirring till bubbly and slightly thickened.  Remove from heat and whisk in the egg and half the cheese.  Return to heat and cook till it bubbles again.  Pour evenly over the sauced pasta and sprinkle over the remaining cheese.

Bake for 45 minutes.  Remove from the oven, sprinkle with the chopped parsley, and serve immediately.

Serves 12.

In Which Asian Flavors are Added to a Philadelphia Classic…

Here are the fixings…

The Philadelphia cheese steak (more colloquially known as a “Philly cheese steak”) features strips of grilled steak in a hotdog bun, smothered in caramelized onions and drenched with a gooey cheese fondue.  It’s a scrumptious little bit of Americana that has recently made its way into the local food scene.

I, for one, don’t find it as appealing as everyone else does.  Given that most cheese steaks I’ve eaten err on the overly salted side (over-seasoned for the most part), these sandwiches have never exactly thrilled me.  Until, of course, I decided to give it a spin with some Asian elements.

The Bulgogi Cheese Steak

I decided to use up some leftover bulgogi by turning it into a kind of Korean Cheese Steak.  I layered fruity-tasting beef bulgogi on some mayo-slathered wholegrain bread, topped it with mild Cheddar (anything stronger would overpower the taste of the meat), and popped it into a toaster oven till the bread’s edges crisped up  and the cheese softened.  A few shreds of spicy kimchi, and I had a sandwich to rival Philly’s best.  ;)