(Recipe to follow)
Mayang had a very cool idea about preparing a "Create Your Own Dessert" dessert which consisted of fresh fruits, broas, and cream with cheese (wicked wicked yummy thing should be called a "waistline buster"). Had a wonderful time, of course!
For dessert, we had my mother's buko & fruit salad, which was sooo yummy...
Pesto and Parmesan Stuffed Mushrooms
Here’s how to make it
1.) The Stuffing:
a. Combine bread crumbs, pesto, and parmesan cheese in a bowl.
b. Melt 1 tbsp butter in a pan. Turn off heat right away as soon as the butter has melted. (Do not wait for it to brown!) Pour into the pesto mixture and mix well. (It’s not supposed to be too moist; only moist enough that the ingredients have a paste-like consistency.)
c. Pour mixture into the pan and cook in low heat for about 5 minutes. Stir frequently. Transfer to a bowl.
2.) Slightly grease the pan and sauté the champignons until slightly brown. Add a dash of black pepper.
3.) Using a teaspoon, stuff each champignon with the pesto mixture. Once done, use kitchen tongs to arrange them inside the same pan stuffed-side up. Cook in low heat for 5-6 minutes or until brown. Do not stir.
4.) Transfer cooked champignons on a plate lined with a kitchen paper towel to get rid of the extra butter.
5.) Transfer to a serving plate and serve hot.
I spent the rest of the day having “friend time” with Tracy and had my first cup of coffee after one whole month of going without it. I ordered my favorite blend called Raspberry Mocha Kiss, and it was indeed BLISS! As they say, delayed gratification pays. :-) I spent most of the evening cooking for tomorrow’s packed lunch (there’s actually enough for dinner, too) since I will be very busy with my usual “first-day-of-the-month-high” at work.
Herbed Chicken
I rarely cook anything deep fried, but I guess this is a good reward for working out and for eating well on a rest day. Besides, I am now gaining more and more appreciation for different kinds of fresh and dried herbs and was up for a little experiment.Ingredients:
Fresh sweet basil leaves, finely chopped
Dried basil
Dried rosemary
Chicken breast fillet, cut into 3 inch slices
Eden Cheese
Pillsbury flour
1 egg, beaten
Lauric oil or canola oil
Steps:
Slice the chicken breast fillet into half, but not completely, creating a flap. Spread open and apply chopped fresh basil leaves.
Sprinkle with dried basil.
Add cheese, and close. (Use toothpicks to keep the cheese sandwiched in the chicken fillets if necessary.)
Repeat for the rest of the chicken fillets.
Sprinkle with dried rosemary.
Dip in egg, and then cover with flour.
Deep fry in lauric or canola oil.
Let stand on a strainer or paper kitchen towels to remove excess oil.
Serve hot.
Boiled Vegetables
This recipe is good for those who are watching their cholesterol level.
Some may consider this bland, but I do not agree because if one pays close attention (meaning that you are in fact chewing your food well), the vegetables have distinct individual flavors. Paying attention to how the individual ingredients in my food taste is actually one of those little lessons I learned from my little sister.
Ingredients:
Asparagus spears, cut into 3-inch lengths
Brocolli
Cauliflower
Carrots, slices
Water
Steps:
Bring water to a boil. Add all vegetables and cook for about three minutes, or until asparagus is soft, but not limp. Do not overcook.
Drain water.
Serve.
Have I ever mentioned that Chandler Bing was my favorite character in the tv show "Friends"?
It's so tempting to write this recipe this way, as Delirium's balloons are written--Delirium’s Vegetarian Three-Color Twists--but I'm sparing us all of a bad headache. LOLThis recipe would be perfect if Neil Gaiman was coming over for dinner. Haha. I WISH. I named the recipe after his playful Sandman character Delirium. (The colourful pasta spirals remind me of Delirium’s hair. She’s always been my favourite, especially when illustrated by Jill Thompson (who is said to be pretty much like Delirium)). Oops. Parentheses inside parentheses!
I know I promised less pasta recipes, but I wanted to try making a new recipe using those pretty pasta spirals (called rotini or rotelle or fusilli). And since this week’s theme is vegetarian recipes, this is going to be one, if without the parmesan cheese.
Cropped from "Delirium" artwork by Richard Case
Ingredients:
1 cup three-color pasta spirals
2 tbsp olive oil
2 pcs eggplants
2 pcs ripe red tomatoes, sliced
1 pc red bell pepper, sliced
parsley, chopped
½ tsp salt
ground black pepper
cashew nuts (optional)
grated fresh parmesan cheese (optional)
Steps:
Peel the eggplants and cut them into 2-inch lengths, about ¼ inch thick.
Toss with salt and place in a colander or strainer set over a bowl to catch the liquid (You’ll be surprised when you see the liquid!). Weight the eggplant slices with a small, heavy bowl. Let stand for an hour. Rinse off salt. Drain.
Heat 1 tbsp of olive oil in a non-stick pan. Fry the eggplant slices until lightly browned. Transfer to a strainer and let stand (or pat dry with kitchen paper towels) to remove excess oil.
Cook the pasta in boiling water until al dente, or firm to the bite. This takes about 10 minutes. Drain.
Toss the pasta with 1 tbsp olive oil, tomatoes, red bell pepper, parsley, and eggplants. Sprinkle with black pepper.
Add cashew nuts and/or grated fresh parmesan cheese if desired.
p.s.
According to Marie Simmons’ “365 Ways to Cook Pasta”, the three colors the pasta comes in actually mean something: green=spinach; pinkish red=tomato; and natural.
p.p.s
Look how peaceful our street is, tonight! Everybody must be out since it's Saturday. I hope my friend forgives me for “forgetting” tonight’s dinner at a Japanese restaurant near my place that I’ve always wanted to try. Inspiration for new recipes rarely comes these days. Couldn’t refuse the call of the kitchen!
Bon appetit!
It was a good thing that I was done cooking the tomatoes by then and was just waiting for them to cool when this incident happened.
So anyway, I decided to make a very simple pasta recipe tonight so I can use the tomatoes: Pasta de Sarde. As it implies, it's pasta with sardines.
When I was a child I saw a cooking show where this one particular celebrity cooked pasta with spanish sardines and I was pretty convinced that the host was just being polite to the celebrity in saying that what the latter cooked was yummy when in fact she really wanted to switch to a commercial break so she can spit it out. My, what an imagination I had!
I now wonder what my old friend Sigmund Freud has to say about me trying out a Pasta de Sarde recipe of my own.
Ingredients:
5 big tomatoes, boiled until their skins peel off. (Remove skin!)
1 tbsp lauric oil or olive oil
1 medium-sized white onion, sliced into rings
Spaghetti pasta
155g Spanish sardines, drained
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
apple cider vinegar
1 tsp dried thyme
Steps:
1.) Boil the pasta until al dente. Drain and transfer in a serving dish. Set aside.
2.) Transfer Spanish sardines in a small bowl. Mix with lemon juice and vinegar.
3.) In a non-stick pan, sautee onions in oil until slightly limp.
4.) Add the tomatoes, crushing them with a wooden spoon as you stir them in. Mix well.
5.) Add the Spanish sardines. Do not stir. Let simmer for about 3 minutes.
6.) Sprinkle thyme on the pasta.
7.) Pour sauce over pasta evenly, with the sardines on top of the onions and tomatoes as much as possible. Serve.
I ended up wolfing down a plateful of this tonight, with much guilt and gusto.
FRENCH TOAST ATTEMPT
Well, there is cause for celebration. Tomorrow’s a company holiday and we won’t be going back to work until Tuesday. A lot of my friends are leaving town to be with their families for All Saints’ Day or to have a weekend getaway somewhere. My cousin Joyce invited me to spend the weekend with her and her family at her in-laws’ house in Tagaytay (as I used to do) but I decided to stay in Makati this time to get plenty of rest and to get some things done: 1.) Purchase plane tickets for Christmas trip ; 2.) Take camera to the Sony Service Center; 3.) Register as a voter for the 2010 elections (Last chance this weekend!); and 4.) Do more kitchen experiments.
So, speaking of #4, I came up with the idea for this recipe while walking home yesterday. The idea for buttered mushrooms came from my colleague, Moppet, who said (with all conviction) that one can never go wrong with cooking mushrooms in butter; the idea to stuff them was inspired by a female chef in a cooking competition I saw on TV in passing while hanging out at my cousin’s apartment last August. (I stopped watching TV eight years ago.) Anyway, the female chef was eliminated and left the show in tears, but she had no idea that the appetizer she came up with lit a light bulb in my brain. :-)
Ingredients
* For this experiment, I actually mixed in the garlic RAW. One thing I realized too late is that I should have sautéed the garlic first as it wouldn’t get cook well anymore once stuffed inside the mushroom.
Here's how to make it:
1.) Melt butter in a pan. Turn off heat once butter has melted. Pour into a small bowl. Leave the pan, still slightly greased, on the stove.
2.) The stuffing: Get 2 tbsp of melted butter and, in a medium-sized bowl, mix with the bread, egg, garlic, and cheese. Blend ingredients using a wooden spoon. Set aside.
3.) Arrange the champignons, top-up, inside the pan. Cook in low heat for 4 minutes or until slightly brown. Do not stir.
4.) Using a wooden spoon, transfer the champignons in a bowl and wait for them to cool. But if you’re impatient like me, proceed to #5
5.) Use a teaspoon to put the stuffing into the hollow part of each of the champignons. Once done, arrange them inside the same pan (add 1 tbsp melted butter to re-grease slightly) stuffed-side up. Cook in low heat for 5-6 minutes or until brown. Do not stir.
6.) Transfer cooked champignons on a plate lined with wax paper to get rid of the extra butter. Let sit for a few minutes.
7.) Transfer to a serving plate. Arrange as desired. (In my case, I arranged them like a snowflake.) TA-DAAAHHH!!!
Things I found out while working on this kitchen experiment:
1.) Champignons are pretty sturdy, so pulling the stems out wouldn’t deform them. The stems will come off easily.
2.) Use a kettle when boiling eggs. They work well as egg-timers, and the water boils faster (or so I think. Is it because of the material they are made of?)
3.) If in doubt about your egg-boiling ability, boil two eggs. If it happens that you have prematurely cooked them, you still have one egg to re-cook and you only need one for this recipe
4.) Use wax paper to the chopping board when chopping a hard-boiled egg. It will make the task less messy, and it is very convenient when transferring the chopped egg into a bowl.
5.) When using black pepper, never shake it directly from its container and into the food. Always measure only how much you need and use your hand to put it in.
Cooking this recipe was fun and easy! The combination of the flavors of cheese, garlic, and butter is definitely wicked! I ate a “forgivable” amount and put the rest in 2 small containers. My roommate Tracy (one of the most imaginative artists I know—she even turned our kitchen countertop into a beautiful, functional work of art—and my ever-willing taste-tester) is taking one to her office for tomorrow’s lunch. Of course, the recipe is really for the purpose of hors d’oeuvres and best served with cocktails, but you may eat and enjoy it in any way you want. I am reminded of those Greenwich Ricemelts that I loved when I was still in college.
Well, I gotta go now. I’m currently reading three books for my Nobel Prize for Literature Project and am hoping to hit my target of four books this month. I devoured Neil Gaiman’s “The Graveyard Book” as I did those stuffed mushrooms. One down, two and a half to go.
Sigh. Who am I kidding? I'm sooo sleepy, I'm going to bed now. Zzzzzzzzz....
(p.s. I must mention that the recipe above was cooked with “So Unsexy” by Alanis Morissette playing. IN MY HEAD. OVER AND OVER AGAIN. I guess that’s what you’ll get if you eat too much of it. Haha)
See you next time!
Here's a healthy option when you're craving for pasta:
Ingredients:
10 pcs black olives, cut into halves
1 tbsp lauric oil (or olive oil)
1 medium-sized white onion, chopped
Dried basil leaves or chopped fresh basil leaves
1 can (184g) tuna (solid in water)
Apple Cider vinegar
Grated cheddar or parmesan cheese
Spaghetti pasta
Steps:
