Free Rice

This has been my latest addiction: http://www.freerice.com/ . It is actually a vocabulary game that donates 20 grains of rice for every correct answer you give. It is very addictive! Read more about their program here.

Please visit and "donate" at least a few thousand grains to the needy.

Foodie Blogroll

Yay! Her Majesty, The Queen has just included my blog into the foodieblogroll (links and logo to the right)! It is the first and the biggest compendium of food blogs and a forum where members can discuss foodie stuff!

Peanut Butter and Oatmeal Cookies

Peanut butter cookies are a classic! They can be soft and chewy or crisp, but definitely rich and peanut-y! They are one of my favorites!

For some people however, peanut butter isn't enough and would need to be augmented with other things peanut - whole peanuts, peanut butter chips, etc. Throw in some oats and it makes for a healthy cookie!

I got this recipe from the marthastewart web site and the original recipe called for chocolate chips to be added to the dough. I thought of using peanut butter chips instead. But it seems local groceries have stopped selling these! So I just upped the quantities of peanuts and oats to compensate for the lack of peanut butter chips. (I really did not want to use chocolate chips as I wanted a really very peanut-y cookie.)





On another visit to the grocery, I chanced upon some Reese's peanut butter bits (sort of like M&Ms). They were perfect for the cookies!

These cookies are now one of my favorites!

WHITE!

After going green, I'm going white! Whatever that means!

Anyway, I realized I've done many different types of chocolate cakes, many before the age of blogging but I have never done any cake in white!

I initially thought this was a tricky cake, since white chocolate is plain fat and milk protein without the chocolate solids. I mean a few tablespoons of cocoa powder into a cake batter will turn it into chocolate cake, but figuring out how much butter and/ or liquid white chocolate will replace is far more tricky.

Luckily, I found a recipe on the internet. I gave it a try and the results were okay. I used sour cream, by the way instead of buttermilk.


The cake came out okay. It was dense and rich and buttery. It wasn't as dense as an olive oil cake but still a bit dense for me. Perhaps I wasn't too careful in folding the batter because on slicing, it revealed some dense 'unpuffed' areas. The taste was okay, too. The milky vanilla flavor dominated. Well, white chocolate doesn't have its own flavor anyway.




For the frosting I made a simple buttercream with one cup butter, 4 oz melted white chocolate and 1/4 cup cream. I added one cup of confectioner's sugar. The icing came out lumpy as I think it needed more sugar. But I would rather have it this way than add make it sweeter.

Let's Go GREEN

I just LOVE green tea! I think it is refreshing and sweet, unlike regular black or oolong teas which may often taste bitter. And the fruit infusions taste like car fresheners (not that i've tried some). Green tea, just like any natural drink or food is rich in vitamins and minerals and antioxidants. People in Japan believe drinking it everyday helps keep colon cancer away. Of course, studies have shown that you need to drink industrial quantities daily for it to have this effect. Then again, drinking it is way more nutritious than plain water and definitely healthier than other bottled or canned drinks (yes, teas come prepared in soda bottles and cans in other countries!).

You either like it or you hate it. I have a lot of friends who always order all things green tea in restaurants. On the other hand, my aunt who spent two years of her life as a missionary in Japan swears that green tea tastes and feels like warm horse saliva. I do not want to imagine how she came up with that comparison.

With the green tea theme in mind, I am posting two recipes I made previously with green tea. I used green tea powder I bought some time ago in Hong Kong. I know a lot of the local Japanese stores have it. This green tea is the one used in the ceremonies and is called 'matcha.' I am not quite sure if regular dired green tea leaves pulverized in a spice blender would work quite as well.


I got this recipe for Green Tea Layer Cake online. I did not have yogurt at that time so I used sour cream. The cake came out quite dense, but still soft and very flavorful. The combination of vanilla and green tea gave a flavor reminiscent of Green Tea Frappucino!

For the frosting, I reduced the amount of sugar by half, as I do not like my desserts too sweet. I divided the frosting into two. One part I mixed with some mashed azuki (boiled mashed red mung beans) and used it for filling. The other half I used to frost the cake.



With some matcha leftover, I then made some green tea butter cookies (sable). I think my oven temperature wasn't right as the edges have already browned and the centers were still a bit puffy. (My oven isn't calibrated.) But they tasted good! The cookies were buttery, as are all sables, and had the perfuminess of green tea.

Chicken Inasal

I am not the type of doctor who will ever admit to eating grilled stuff, at least in public. I used to love them when I was a kid, so much so that our convoy to Baguio every summer would always stop two or three times during the journey just so we could buy barbecue. And yes, there was even that time when people thought grilling is *the healthiest way of cooking.* You do avoid adding oil (and burn whatever is contained in the meat), but the burnt bits are exactly what will give you cancer.

Well, I've been BBQ-free for almost two years now, so I thought one small meal washed down with copious amounts of freshly brewed tea won't hurt. Excuses, excuses, excuses...

I was inspired to make "inasal" because my parents bought some last Saturday from the Salcedo market. I had known for a long time that it is relatively easy to make, owing to the short list of ingredients. Also, I found inasal interesting in its use of achuete (anatto seeds) and vinegar. I thought it was similar to what the Mexicans call as 'adobo seasoning' which is a paste made of ground anatto seeds and vinegar. However, the Mexicans use it as a spice, and we only care for its color. Perhaps, chicken inasal is a product of the Mexican galleon trade that boomed during the Spanish colonial period.



To make the marinade, I started with a rounded tablespoon of anatto seeds. I wish I had a spice grinder so I could have turned them into powder but I only had a mortar and pestle. Anyway, I tried to grind the seeds as finely as I could.





Then, over low to medium-low flame, I steeped 1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil with the ground anatto for 5 minutes.

I really think a more finely-ground anatto whould have given a stronger flavor.



There seems to be a consensus on the marinade for chicken inasal: search the web and you will find several recipes that are eerily alike in the proportion of ingredients! I found what seemed like a good recipe here.

However, I wanted to add my own touch. Besides, I did not have native vinegar and lemon grass. The inasal my parents bought tasted a bit vinegary - but closer to the taste of blasamic vinegar.

So I combined the colored oil with the following ingredients: one head of crushed garlic, one thumb-size piece of crushed ginger, one grated onion, half a teaspoon each of salt and pepper, one tablespoon brown sugar, 1/2 cup rice vinegar, 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar, and two tablespoons lemon juice. I substituted two Kaffir lime leaves from my mom's garden for the lemon grass.

I know all those recipes say that marination takes a maximum of one hour, but I wanted all the flavor to penetrate the deepest tissues of the chicken. Hence, I let the one kilo of chicken pieces marinate overnight in the refrigerator. (Besides, long marination in acid kills the meat tissue parasites)

The following day, I lay the chicken pieces on a rack and set it on a tray. I baked them for 25 minutes in a 325-degree oven, just until the thickest portions yield clear juice. Then I asked our housecook to grill them lightly for color. Baking avoids grilling them for too long that inevitably leads to burnt spots. Just compare the pics of my inasal with those from the net - they have much less black spots, which in my case are confined only to the skin.

My inasal came out perfect. Although for most of you, I think another half teaspoon of salt would need to be added.



Our housecook added some sliced pork belly to the marinade as well, and it tasted really good, too!

Chocolate Cake with Cherry Filling

Sometimes it is the simplest things that are the most elegant. - Ina Garten


Your are free to accuse me of not being creative in coming up with a name for this recipe. It is no "decadent blah blah," or "rich and moist blah blah." I hate pretentious cakes. This is what it is - a simple chocolate cake with a cherry filling. And yes, this is another product of the leftovers and nearly-expired stuff I collected from my freezer and pantry. The Peotraco cocoa powder survived Christmas, New Year and Easter in my pantry, but did not last longer than three days after being made into this cake. (Three days is long for glucophobic people like us.) And you may have guessed also that the cherry pie filling was also plucked out of the bowels of my freezer.


I wanted a 'light' chocolate cake (as if such exists) for this project so I decided on using a Devil's food cake recipe (aka old-fashioned chocolate cupcakes). I removed that extra half-cup of sugar, of course. The cake ended up 'light' (read, not dense) and fluffy, but still moist - perhaps because of the two(!) cups of refined sugar added.

I tweaked the cherry pie filling a bit by heating it with one tablespoon each of lemon juice and brandy. You may want to add some sugar if you find the cherries too sour, but do not omit the lemon juice. Believe me, it will mask the 'canned-taste' (or 'freezer-taste,' in my case).


After cutting the cake in half, I then doused it with more brandy before pouring the filling.

I used a chocolate buttercream to ice the cake. You can search then net for a chocolate buttercream recipe, but i simply used equal amounts of creamed butter and the chocolate condensed milk icing my family typically uses for traditional chocolate cakes. (Scroll down this previous post and the recipe is somewhere there.)