Indisposed

I have not been posting for a long while! I was down with a flu for an entire week some time ago. Then my connection went bust. My server is apparently in the middle of fising some cables and antennae.

Stay tuned for more posts. I have been typing many of my experiments and will post them when the system clears. I still takes an eternity just to load a single pic. And this is the third time I am attempting this post. Hopefully I won't be given the "error" message when I hit "publish."

My airport is slowly coming to life...

With a few more details, I will finally be able to complete my airport diorama. I reached a milestone yesterday when I completed the main terminal building. I will soon link this to my satellite terminal, which I earlier made.

I would only need to draw my airport matt and buy some accessories and I will have a completed airport in the 1:500 scale.

Tuna a la pobre

Fish Steaks in Garlic Oyster Sauce
(oyster sauce gives this dish an Asian twist)

This is a really quick and simple recipe for any fish steak or fillet you have. You can marinate the fish steaks ahead of time, or leave it without any seasoning until the very last minute prior to cooking when you season it with some salt and pepper.

My grandmother makes this dish a lot when we get fresh tuna or salmon steaks from the market. The sauce also works well with lightly stir-fried shrimp or fresh mushrooms lightly sautéed in butter.

Fish
Marinate fish by rubbing with this mixture: salt, pepper, garlic and lemon juice. I typically use a wedge of lemon and a clove or two of garlic for every piece of fish steak. Again, you can leave the fish unseasoned until the last minute when you sprinkle it with some salt and pepper.

Heat up a skillet to med to med-high heat. Grease pan with two tablespoons extra virgin olive oil. Fry the steaks until half done. It usually takes 30 secs to one minute on each side, depending on the thickness of your steaks. You only want to give color to the fish and not cook it at this point.

Sauce
On the same pan, sauté some garlic (around three to five cloves, chopped for every steak) until lightly browned in some butter (add a tablespoon for every steak). You may drain the excess olive oil prior to adding the butter if you think there is too much. Season with some pepper and lemon juice. Add around a tablespoon of good quality oyster sauce for every steak, and around a tablespoon of water or stock.

You may add back the fish and gently cook until medium-rare. The fish will continue to cook with the residual heat on the sauce and plate. Let rest five minutes prior to serving.

Best enjoyed with white steamed rice or a crusty baguette.

Daing na Pusit (dried squid)

Comparative Anatomy: Imported vs Local
(the ones i get from HK are much "sweeter" in flavor - it does not have any of that bitterness.)

Though I am crazy for everything squid, I have never liked “daing na pusit” – dried squid fried in boiling-hot oil. It is too salty and slightly bitter. Perhaps because it cooks and toasts quickly, the adherent skin always ends up slightly burned. Then it is eaten dipped in vinegar – my arch enemy! (but I do eat paksiw! And cook with it to come up with sweet and sour stir-frys!)

One December morning, while on a hunt for dried shrimp and preserved pigeon legs at Des Voeux Road, Central, Hong Kong we chanced upon a stash of so-called “premium” dried squid. I was told it is special because of the extra cost of labor of having to skin them individually prior to drying. I bought one catty to bring home to Manila. That began my love affair with this dried seafood.

When raw, it has an ivory-beige color. Fried, it has a golden color (not brown) and sweeter taste compared to what we get locally. Crisp, but not as salty or burnt-flavored as the local variety. And it does NOT curl up on cooking!

It is also good cut up finely or otherwise (I use kitchen shears) to flavor seafood broths. The local type simply will not work as it will only impart a fishy bitter flavor.

I am still dumbfounded why no one has thought of making this locally. Skinning the squid takes it to a level of its own in the dried seafood world!

I bought a kilo of this goodie and ran out of it in less than a month!

(the local version is always dried with its skin on, making it slightly bitter when fried.)

Smoked Salmon Spread

(best served over toasted bread)

Smoked salmon, an imported product has been available locally for years! Yet few seem to appreciate it. Not all major groceries have it, or at least keep large stocks of it. One would think that these groceries keep it for the expat community. Perhaps it is because Pinoys know that temperate-water fishes have that oily fishy flavor – the type that not only gives you bad breath that people around you can smell, but the breath you belch all day, intoxicating just about anyone who comes within three meters of you. Smoked, salmon is several times more oily and fishy than its natural raw state.

Yet, through all these years, smoked salmon has become more and more available, albeit in still limited quantities in a lot of groceries. Some of the local European style sausage manufacturers like “Swiss Deli” have their own smoked salmon. For years, Santi’s Deli has had its smoked tanigue.

Having seen Ina Garten in Barefoot Contessa do a spread with smoked salmon, I thought of trying out her recipe. But I had to think long and hard how to squeeze the fishy-ness out of this oily fish!

I laid out the smoked salmon slices on two sheets of kitchen towel, and covered it with another sheet. I let all the oil drain out for about 10 to 15 minutes. I know the Europeans will cry sacrilege with this, but really, most of the smoked salmon we get are too oily and fishy for our taste. You can skip this procedure depending on how much you appreciate fish oil.

I like using the Swiss Deli brand of smoked because it is not too salty and tastes and feels fresh after all that oil has been drained out. Other brands tend to have some liquid in it, making it even fishier! The Santi’s Smoked Tanigue works well with this recipe, too as it is not oily nor juicy.

On a mixing bowl, cream a whole bar (8 oz) of cream cheese with a tub (~1 cup of sour cream). Add in a finely grated small red onion. (chopped if you like them chunky). Season with salt and pepper, about two tablespoons of lemon juice, half a teaspoon Worcestershire sauce and a few drops of hot sauce (Tabasco). Taste the mixture. It should be slightly sour to offset the saltiness and the fish flavor. For a more lemony taste, you can add the zest of half to one lemon - depends on how “fragrant” you want this to be.

For some texture, I usually add in two chopped hard-boiled eggs. The yolks I mash with the dressing. The whites I chop and add later with the salmon.

Next, add in around three tablespoons of chopped fresh dill. They come in small packs in the grocery and I usually add all the chopped dill leaves this pack will yield – usually between 2 – 4 tablespoons. Don’t include the stems as they are woody! Dill adds a certain fresh flavor to this spread. Its fragrance reminds me of McDonald’s Fillet-o’-Fish!

Cut up the fish into small cubes, but do not chop! Handle them gently! Chopping or “mashing” them will release juices and make it taste “off.” Add the fish to the dressing and fold gently.

Serve over toasted bread!

(i make sure to remove all the fishy oil from the salmon fillets with the use of paper towels)

(store in an air-tight container)

Scallop Cakes

(scallops - instead of crab - give this a more delicate texture and flavor.)

I previously made some prawn cakes and posted the recipe in this blog. It was inspired by Nigella’s very simple version (Forever Summer with Nigella), but of course I had to add some flavorful herbs to pull it up to my standards.

I could not find (for the past three months) any raw crab meat on the market. But there have been a lot of fresh frozen scallops. So I thought I would try substituting these for the former. Of course, it still had some prawns to give it texture and body. The result was a more delicate seafood “cake.” They were softer with a much sweeter flavor. Do make sure your raw seafood is very fresh, or was frozen fresh.

(blitz the herbs ahead of the seafood to ensure you can control the texture of the meats. this is around 70-80% scallops with the remainder being prawns/ shrimp)

(it is softer, compared to prawn cakes)

Fruitcake...Five years old

(even after all that time, the cake had remained moist, but not soggy, perhaps because i doused the cake every four months or so with a bottle of rum.)

About 5 years ago today, I made this fruitcake while on sem-break during my freshman year at medical school. I graduated last year. I passed my licensure exams two months ago. And this fruitcake is still in my ref. No, it is not spoiled. It is actually delicious and quite intoxicating!

I had no intention of curing this cake this long when I baked it. I was trying out several fruitcake recipes that time and this was my third one, and the one that beat the other two. I used only dried fruits that were soaked in red wine for this recipe, and none of the candied citron peel that people still call candied dried fruits (ehem, it’s actually the PEEL of only ONE fruit). Being the third cake of the same category in a period of 10 days, people at home were pretty tired of fruitcake, a good two months ahead of the Christmas season. So I cut up the cake, placed it in an air-tight container and drowned it in a full liter of rum and cherry brandy. See you on December 25, I said.

I opened the tub on Christmas day and a waft of sweet fruity alcohol greeted my nose. The most of the liquid had evaporated and somehow escaped and the cake was now sitting on a puddle of brown syrup. I took as slice and tasted it. It was sweet but still had a very strong alcohol taste to it. The syrup, on the other hand was heavenly! It was as if I were licking fruity honey, with a hint of rum! Superb! But thinking the alcohol taste was still too strong for the octogenarians in my family, I put back the lid and saved it for New Year’s.

I forgot about this cake, until around February. The cake had aged and developed a sweet fruity mellow flavor. But there was no one to appreciate it. Everyone was tired of fruitcake. So I got a new bottle of rum, poured everything in and stored it in the ref again. This cycle went on for the next years, with me pouring a new bottle every four to six months.

It had survived all these years! The flavor had remained the same, perhaps preserved by the copious amounts of alcohol. And it wields the utmost fruitiness because I only used dried fruits – dried apples, pears, apricots, cherries, golden raisins and blueberries. I also added some walnuts and pecans. Surprisingly, the texture is quite good, too. The area that remain soaked in syrup was a bit soggy, but the upper areas were soft and moist!

I’ll be posting this recipe soon. (I obviously need to search my files as I haven’t done fruit cake in years!) I’ll be doing a fresh batch of fruitcake that I’ll store and eat perhaps when I finish residency training! Haha!

(the cake had developed a brown syrup - ffuity and intoxicating- made from semi evaporated rum.)

Two-Face Pizza

(best of both worlds: the humble vegetarian on the left, the elitist carnivore's pizza on the right)

For several rainy days last June, I found myself stuck at home – hungry but not really wanting to build up all that fat. So I thought of making bread, from scratch. Kneading BURNS calories. Believe me, it IS a good workout! I would have burned all the calories I was to accumulate after the feasting.

And yes, I decided on a vegetarian pizza just so I could keep on track with the “healthy eating” theme. But I had to appease the carnivores at home as well. So I made an imaginary line on the tray and made a two face-pizza.

Dough
This is the same Focaccia dough I used for my other veggie pizza.

Veggie Toppings
Unlike the Veggie pizza I made for my birthday, this one does not have any mushrooms. There is the complete absence of any meaty flavor. But a trio of flavorful cheeses more than makes up for that!

I basically smothered the dough with the same tomato pesto for the first veggie pizza. I laid down slices of onions, tomatoes, sliced black olives and zucchini. Then I added a bunch of sliced romaine lettuce. Then I sprinkled a trio of cheeses: parmesan, mozzarella and feta. The crumbled feta has a very strong creamy but salty flavor. I think feta deserves its own pizza. Any meat would have stolen the show.

Prosciutto and Blue Cheese
This is my take on the ham and cheese pizza. But of course, with the elitist gourmet twist! We are not adding plastic pepperonis and artificial ground meat like most fast-food meatlovers’ pizzas.

On the same dough smothered with tomato pesto and herbs, I scattered a few slices of onions. Then, I sprinkled it with some chopped Prosciutto di Parma – the legendary Italian ham. It has a very strong salty-porky flavor, so I chopped only two thin slices. Then I crumbled around a tablespoon or two of blue cheese. Then loads of mozzarella. That is all there is to it.

Bake and serve.

(two-face pizza)

(the carnivore's never noticed the absence of meat - the lettuce leaves are even showing through!)

This one isn't edible either

but you can certainly try...

(waling waling in bloom)

My mother is extremely proud of her flowering plants and orchids. She had been naggin me to get pictures of her blooms.

Today, two of her five waling-waling orchids are in bloom! The original plant was handed over by a grand-aunt (sister of my paternal grandfather) years ago. The mother plant, as well as the one given to my own grandmother had already died. But my mom's thrived and budded several more plants.

(the nets protect it from birds pecking on the sweet flowers.)

Chocolate Cake

Some pics of the original...

Having just published a blog on sugar-free chocolate cupcakes, it pains me not to pay homage to the original chocolate cake. The recipe is identical, except for the use of brown sugar (I used isomalt for the sugar-free version), and the condensed milk icing I already posted. So here are some pictures of the original cake:

(it is human instinct that if you get smudged with that icing, you just have to lick it off!)

(brown sugar makes the cake moist and dense.)

INDULGE...

It's Guilt-Free!

(why do i like making cupcakes out of cake recipes? simple: portion control!)

Sugar-free Chocolate Cupcakes

Chocolate cake. What more can I say? A soft, moist and fudgy treat that everyone loves! And the best part about these batch of cupcakes I made is that they’re sugar-free!

Over the last few years, I have tried various chocolate cake recipes in search of the perfect one. I have always wanted it soft – but not as airy and fluffy as sponge or chiffon. Maybe more like butter cake – dense enough to hold its moisture and suitable for light soaking in some alcohol. Then comes the perfect icing – rich, fudgy and indulgent.

I grew up eating the rich dark, almost black chocolate cake from Cookie Monster’s Bake Shop. It was so rich and sweet and moist! My father would always buy one whole, eat only a spoonful then give away the rest of the cake! Being a diabetic is never easy!

My aunt makes a similar cake that she makes for me during my childhood birthday parties. It wasn’t as dense as Cookie Monster’s, but equally indulgent because of its rich creamy icing (recipe below). She makes a chocolate chiffon iced with condensed milk icing.

For today, the following recipe is one I modified from Alton Brown’s baking book (Chocolate Fudge Cake). His recipe is a bit weird at first in that he pulverizes the baking chocolate to tiny bits and adds them to the flour. But then it makes sense: the bits melt during cooking and become the “fudge” in the cake. I’ve made this cake several times, and I once added the chocolate melted into the butter. The cake came out okay too, although a bit denser.

This recipe works best with BROWN sugar. If you can’t find a brown sugar substitute, then use the ordinary (white) sugar substitute. I could not find one, so I just used an equivalent amount of regular (white) granulated isomalt. (NOTE: excessive consumption of isomalt may lead to diarrhea.)

No, I do not need to go on a diet. I am not overweight, yet. So why did I make it sugar-free this time? Because my dad has been nagging me to. He IS on a diet.

Cake
Preheat oven 350°F. Prepare cake pans. If making a cake, line a 9x3 inch cake pan with parchment. If making cupcakes, line 24 muffin tins with paper.

In a mixer, combine 2 cups isomalt (or brown sugar/ dark brown sugar if you don’t need this to be sugar-free) and ½ cup butter. Beat until well combined. Beat in two eggs, one at a time, and also 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract.

In a food processor, pulverize 3 oz (three squares) of unsweetened chocolate (or baking chocolate for diabetic). Add in the dry ingredients: 2 ¼ cups all purpose flour, 2 teaspoons baking soda, one teaspoon salt and 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder.

Now add the dry ingredients to the butter and egg mixture, alternating with 1 cup sour cream, starting and ending with the dry ingredients. Mixture will be very sticky. Do not overbeat. Mix only until combine.

With the mixer running on the lowest setting, slowly add in 1 cup boiling water. This will thin out the mixture.

Pour batter on cake pan or muffin tins. Bake the cake at 350 for ½ an hour, reduce temperature to 300 then finish baking for another half hour. Toothpick inserted will come out wet – this is after all a fudge cake! Cake made from white sugar or sugar substitute will not be as fudgy. But cake will be springy when lightly touched. For cupcakes, bake them at 350 for 10 minutes then 300 for another 20 minutes or so.

Remove from oven and cool in pan for 15 minutes before unmoulding. Cool completely before icing.

Icing
Sugar-free: melt two oz unsweetened chocolate, ¼ cup butter and 1 cup milk or cream. Cool. Add in 2 cups icing sugar substitute (isomalt) and whip in a mixer until icing holds shape.

Traditional icing: on a double boiler, mix together one can (1 cup) condensed milk, 1 cup fresh milk or cream, three oz unsweetened chocolate, and three tablespoons. Cook until thickened (same consistency as the condensed milk before you added it.), stirring occasionally. This usually takes around 45 minutes to 1 hour when using a double boiler. Cooking time is excruciatingly slow, but is not prone to overcooking or burning. I usually cook this over direct flame – low-medium, and with CONSTANT vigorous stirring. It’s a nasty workout for your arms but cooking time takes only 15 or 20 minutes.

I usually make big batches of this traditional icing and store them in the freezer.

To ice the cake, cut cake in the center and fill with some icing. Spread the remaining over the top and sides.

To ice cupcakes, spoon icing over top and spread.

(let the cupcakes cool on the pan a few minutes prior to unmoulding.)

(moist and fluffy - not bad for something sugar-free!)