Saturday, October 30, 2010

Pork & Bean Sprouts Sauté


Hello everyone. This is my first official post in Mangantayon. As I have mentioned in Bushido Calling I will be temporarily taking over  writing and sharing here what I have come up with in the kitchen. I am in no way a master in the culinary arts. I will even present a lot of guerilla dishes just to share my adventure. Please be kind with the comments whenever you had the chance to stumble upon one of my recipes. Mind you, Rya would be my first critic and be the one approving what to post. So, here we go.

Ingredients:
pork (lean, cubed)
butter 
ginger (minced)
garlic (minced)
onion (minced)
bean sprouts (a handful)
carrots (thinly sliced)
cabbage (thinly sliced)
oyster sauce (about 2 tablespoon)
salt 
basil
oregano
parsley 
butterhead lettuce

Procedure:
1. Cook pork in small amount of water! Add ginger as the meat turns white (I like the taste of ginger on pork and this procedure sort of makes the meat sip that ginger flavor). Wait until water evaporates. Stir. Add butter. Then add garlic and onion. Stir until meat turns brown. 
2. In medium fire, add bean sprouts, carrots and cabbage (on a different variation you can add baby corn and ubod (heart of palm) to this combination). Jerk the pan! After all this is a sauté. Stir until the juice of the bean sprouts comes out. Add oyster sauce and a small amount of water. Stir. Add a pinch of salt. 
3. Turn of fire after a few minutes. Sprinkle basil, oregano and parsley.   

Presentation:
Ok this will be a first. I mean this presentation part. This is what I am most interested in. How to make a food more pleasing to the eyes. Given it is already pleasing in taste and in smell. This is my attempt.

Spread the fresh butterhead lettuce on the plate and the Pork & Bean Sprouts Sauté in the middle. Simple but not boring. Until next time. Don't forget to say grace. Mangantayon!  

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Spareribs with Pineapple in Oyster Sauce


It has been a long time. My harddrive is already full of food pictures that are waiting to be published here. My baby is already 5 months old yesterday and since September, we have moved to a new apartment and I have started a new job. Our new place is nice. It is a place where everybody still says "Ohayou" (Good morning) to each other and also offer you produce from their gardens when harvest time comes. Although we are far from the conveniences that city living offers, we are loving every minute that we are here. My husband is particularly loving the fact that there is a supermarket nearby which sells big chunks of meat at a relatively cheaper price than the usual supermarkets. And thus as a comeback, let me share Rad's favorite meat: the spare ribs.

Tonight, I decided to experiment a little bit. It is weekend, and we decided to spend the whole day inside the apartment just taking it easy so the ingredients are the things that I can find in my refrigerator only.

Ingredients:

spare ribs (4 cuts)
butter
1 potato
1 green bell pepper
2 rings pineapple
mushroom
half an onion
pepper
about 2 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tbsp soy sauce
water
lettuce (as garnish)

Procedure:
1. Sprinkle shio-kosho (a mixture of salt and fine pepper) on the ribs and fry in butter until brown.
2. Put in onion and potato and fry some more (use moderate heat).
3. Mix in oyster sauce and soy sauce until they are incorporated in the meat and potatoes. Sprinkle ground black pepper. Pour about 3/4 cup water and cover.
4. Mix in pineapple and mushroom.
5. Put in bell pepper when everything is cooked. The remaining heat is enough to cook the bell pepper and still have some crunch in it.

Usually, the meat that we buy are already so tender that we don't even need a pressure cooker or cook for a long time. I think the amount of water would depend on how tender or hard the meat is.