Potato Omelette

I like omelettes for breakfast. For this one, used two small potatoes and two eggs. Cubed the potatoes (for shorter cooking time) and then fried them. Beat the eggs and seasoned according to taste (basic salt and pepper, optional rosemary, sage and/or thyme). Poured eggs over the potatoes and allowed time to cook. Am not really an expert at flipping so just turned over sections of the omelette until everything was cooked. Breakfast is served!

Ten days later, had omelette again. This time, incorporated leftover lunch: cubed the carrots and added the eggplant and ground beef. It was almost like torta, but with the ingredients in different proportions. Goes well with ketchup. 

110615 Breakfast

One of the first things I learned to do in the kitchen: dip bread in beaten eggs until completely covered then allow to toast on frying pan smeared with butter until golden brown. Easy peasy breakfast. It's not the traditional sweet version of French toast served with jam because I like mine savory. Eggs are seasoned with salt, pepper, and rosemary. The toast is served with cheese, parmesan or otherwise. Good start to a good day. 

220615 Pork Chop

Going out of my comfort zone, I tried frying a pork chop for lunch the other day. Looking up recipes online, I decided to go with the simplest step mentioned in passing at this site, which is to season the meat with olive oil, salt and pepper.

Afterwards, I simply put on the pan and let it fry. 

The final result was surprisingly flavorful and tender, though I couldn't quite get the pork skin right. Maybe next time. 

Fish Fillet - Third Way

Allow fillet to defrost before putting it in aluminum. Normally would use foil but found this tray and reused it. It was a perfect fit for both fish fillet and oven toaster. 

Crush some peanuts. For lack of a mortar and pestle, a spoon and ceramic bowl does the trick. Position the spoon above a few peanuts and apply just enough pressure to crush without scattering them all over the place. This amount consists of three packs of Happy peanuts (you might want to use more if your fillet is bigger). It adds just a bit of crunch to the dish.

Mix peanuts in enough mayonnaise to cover the fish, maybe three to five spoonfuls. Spread mixture over fish.

Sprinkle parmesan cheese and cook in your oven toaster. Tried it on high (450 degrees) for five minutes but the cheese began to burn so turned the heat down to 350 degrees for the next ten minutes. Quite yummy. 

A variant:

The picture above is basically the same recipe but this time,
some pistachio was mixed with the peanuts. Oven toaster was
set at 350 degrees for twenty minutes. Found this did not
quite have the same toasty effect on the cheese so will
keep the five minutes on high for the next time.

Fish Fillet - Two Ways

There is a nice fish fillet at the supermarket that lends itself so easily to the novice cook. I've done two versions: steamed and fried. My sister likes to cover it up with mayo and parmesan cheese and put it in the oven toaster. Quite yummy.

For the steamed version, slice the fillet and season with salt, pepper, sage, rosemary and thyme. Place the fillets in the steamer (rice cooker); and allow to cook. It would be nice to be able to cook rice at the same time and hit two birds with one stone. However, rice cooks rather quickly, which could leave your fish almost cooked but not quite; so the safer route is to cook rice and fish separately.

I actually prefer the fried version. Beat an egg and season to taste (salt, herbs). Dip the fish slices in the egg and then fry.

Serve with sweet chili sauce or mayonnaise. Bon apetit!

290515 Dinner

Leftover beef and broccoli make yummy rice toppings. Dinner is served.

140515 Dinner

Leftover spam from breakfast cut into tiny pieces mixed in with the usual garlic rice base. Stirred in a beaten egg to add color and protein. Dinner is served.

260215 Sezjuana Lunch

This is my Pinoy version of the Szechuan eggplant dish... a touch of sweet instead of spicy.

Ingredients (serves two to three): 

1 eggplant
1 carrot
ginger
garlic
2 tbsp oyster sauce
3 tbsp mushroom soy sauce
sweet chili sauce
chicken broth
ground beef
corn starch
water

 Chop up the veggies. I like cutting notches on the side of carrots for a flowery look.

Mince the garlic and the ginger.

 

Mix the oyster sauce, the mushroom soy sauce,
and a dollop of sweet chili sauce.

  

Saute the garlic and the ginger in a bit of hot oil. Then saute the carrots. 

   

I kept the garlic and ginger on one side and the carrots on the other. Added a few scoops of ground beef to the garlic-ginger side; eventually, took the carrots out and set them aside to preserve their sweetness and a bit of crunch.

  

Add the eggplant. Then add the sauce mix. Adjust to taste by adding the chicken broth a bit at a time. It's okay to have it slightly saltier than one might like because of the next step. Optional: For this dish, added the leftover chicken from the broth to add more flavor.

As a final touch, add the carrots and the cornstarch mixed in water.
Allow sauce to boil then take off heat.

Voila! Lunch is served.

270115 Rice Mix

My default first step when home alone for lunch or dinner is to check what's available. I found today's leftovers: rice and two viands. That automatically means some version of fried rice. I picked this leftover ulam to make it with: 

Next, I saute four or five cloves of garlic (minced).

When the garlic is lightly toasted, I mix in the rice. 

Depending on the leftover, I sometimes take just a piece of meat and cut it up into bite sized bits. 

There was more rice than I could finish, so instead of using all of the garlic rice, I only mixed the leftover ulam with half of the rice:

I left the rest for later. 

Lunch is served. Bon appétit!

210115 Lunch

The day before I used leftover adobo with leftover rice. I tried using olive oil to saute the garlic I normally mix with the rice. It seemed that was the wrong way to go. For this particular dish, the olive oil did not mix well and seemed to leave a strange aftertaste instead. Note to self: stick with olive oil and bread or pasta but never rice.

For this meal, I used leftover beefsteak. This time I used the regular cooking oil to saute the garlic. The results were much better (even though I like adobo better and expected better results from the previous experiment). 

090115 Adobo

Served Nanay adobo attempt for dinner. Passable naman. So I will remember how to do it in the future, doing this post for me. Got no pictures.

Place chicken in saucepan. Put in crushed cloves of garlic, 1 tbsp of soy sauce, 1 tbsp of vinegar, and peppercorn. Allow to marinade. After enough time has passed, turn on heat. Do not mix. Only after mixture has boiled can you stir adobo, otherwise it will become unpalatable. After it has come to a boil, add a bit of water. 

Tonight, I did the shortcut version which was to serve the adobo after the chicken was cooked. But for future reference, take most of the liquid out of saucepan and fry chicken til remaining sauce evaporates. Return removed sauce and serve.

* * * * *

P.S. It seems my adobo attempts have paid off. Today's attempt had no leftovers. Yay! 

310715 Lunch

090115 Mar-borough Lunch

There is an abundance of bread at home right now so I decided to pass on the rice for today and do something different. This is partly inspired by the lyrics of Scarborough Fair and Margherita pizza.

Beat an egg and add a pinch of salt, sage, rosemary, and thyme. Dip two slices of bread in the egg mixture [you can try to get an even coating but I allowed one side to get soaked and let the other side get what remained, so only half of the other side was coated]. 

Slightly grease the toaster oven pan with olive oil and margarine. Place the bread, soaked side up. Slice and distribute the following onto the bread: one tomato, mozzarella cheese, Quickmelt cheese, and cheddar cheese. Or any cheese you fancy. I suspect Parmesan would work better than cheddar.

Pop into the toaster oven for seven minutes. Really happy with the results... heavenly =).

P.S. Tried this again, this time without the margarine. The toasted part underneath still tasted great (so the olive oil does the trick there) but it stuck more to the pan and that's where the margarine helped. Will retain margarine for future repeats.

Also changed one cheese---used parmesan instead of cheddar. That was an improvement. 

080115 Lunch

This is the sibling of yesterday's lunch because the only difference is instead of chorizo, I used tuna. Sauteed tuna and onions; put about two-thirds on a plate. Used one-third in the pan with the leftover eggplant & beef dish to mix with rice. 

070115 Lunch

Place half a Chinese chorizo, sliced, into a frying pan and let it cook in its own fat. Take off the heat. Saute minced garlic in chorizo fat. Add ground beef. Add garlic soy sauce leftover from Wingers package (commercial chicken nuggets); adjust to taste [I find it too sweet so added a tsp. of mushroom soy sauce]. Add eggplant. Add a bit of water to dilute sauce. 

When everything is cooked, take out half of eggplant-beef dish and put on a plate (below).

Place cooked rice in pan with remaining eggplant and beef. Stir until rice is evenly covered by sauce. Add chorizo. Voila! Lunch is served.