Holy Week Menu Idea: ADOBONG HITO

Weekly Menu planning can be a tedious task, as it involves a lot of considerations: budget, variety and nutrition. And it especially can be more overwhelming if the menu will have constrictions, case in point: HOLY WEEK MENU PLANNING.

But Holy Week Menu planning should not be hard for Filipinos. Why? We have abundance in local vegetables and seafood that we can use to our advantage in seasons like this. Allow me to help you in planning your Holy week menu. My suggestion:  include a Hito (Catfish) dish to your menu, not only is it cheap, but delicious too. What I love about Hito is that its meat when stewed becomes really tender and juicy, not flaky like the other white meat fishes.

The Philippines is an Adobo nation, every family has their own version of how they make adobo; and almost anything can be adobo-ed. So if you are into Adobo and would still want to enjoy some this Holy Week, try making this: ADOBONG HITO (Freshwater Catfish stewed in Vinegar and Soy sauce).

Here’s how I do it: (If you have a different way of doing this, Share =) )

Ingredients: (For 2-3 servings)

- 2 medium size Hito or 1 big; cut in desired portions (thoroughly cleaned, innards removed)

- 1/4 cup vinegar

- 1/4 cup soy sauce

- 1/4 cup water

- 4 cloves of garlic

- 4 pcs bay leaves

- about 2 tbsp ginger

- whole peppercorns

- sugar and salt to taste

Directions: 

1) Pound the garlic; crushed the ginger.

2) In a  non reactive pot, combine the catfish, soy sauce, vinegar, water, ginger, garlic, bay leaves and whole peppercorns. Marinate for about 5-10 minutes.

3) Cover the pot and bring to a boil. Them simmer at medium heat until only a small amount of sauce is left. While simmering, taste. If its too sour for you,season with a little bit of white sugar, about 1 tbsp. Season with salt if still desired.

4) Remove ginger before serving. Best served with some steaming hot rice on the side.

Wasn't that simple?

I hope you will enjoy this humble dish. =)

Happy Eating! =)

Finally, my PISTACHIO BAKLAVA

Good things comes to those who wait; and boy, have I waited sooooo long to be able to have a taste of this again, and FINALLY make one. 

I have tasted Baklava only three times in my life. The first time was when my dear mother hand carried some as one of her “pasalubongs” when she and my father came back home from a U.S. vacation. Since then, I couldn’t forget it. I even have dreams about it; it’s definitely one of those moments: LOVE AT FIRST BITE! The second and third time came when my then boyfriend, now husband took me to The Cafe Mediterranean during some of our rare dates; and its always been a gratifying experience. So you see, its been quite a while since I had my last baklava.

I have wanting for sooooo long too, to make one myself, but I couldn't find any phyllo pastry around here. I wanted to make a substitute for it but the reviews for the recipes I found, claims it wouldn't be flaky when baked so I postponed the idea of using that. Good thing, one of my good friend bought some for me since she is near one of the branches of Santis Delicatessen where they carry a good brand of Phyllo pastry.

I got some free time yesterday so I have finally made one. I have a lot of baklava recipes at hand but I used the one with the most reviews on allrecipes.com, and just made some twitches upon reading the other readers reviews. Here's how I did it:

Ingredients: (for about 18 servings)

1 16 ounce package phyllo pastry (allowed to thaw completely)

450 g finely chopped, roasted pistachios (you can use any nuts of your choice, though walnuts and pistachios are best)

1 cup melted butter

3 tsp ground cinnamon

1 1/2 cup water

1 1/2 cup white (or brown sugar)

1 cup honey 

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

 a dash of ground clove

3 tbsp brown sugar

Directions:

1) Roast the pistachios in a pan, and finely chop it.

note: My hands got so tired after peeling these pistachios from its shells, I needed a manicure! So instead of finely chopping all of these manually, I put them in batches in a blender (we still don't have a food processor) and pulsed them for 3 seconds each.

2) Toss 3 tsp of ground cinnamon and 3 tbsp brown sugar to the finely chopped nuts. Set aside.

NOTE: If you like it really SWEET, follow this. But I think the next time I would be making baklava, I would lessen the brown sugar to 1 tbsp or just not add it at all. The baklava when soaked in the sauce gets really sweet.

3) Preheat your oven to 350 F.

4) Begin making the sauce by boiling 1 1/2 cup sugar to 1 1/2 cup water, just until all sugar has melted. Add 1 1/2 tsp vanilla and 1 cup honey and simmer for 20 minutes. If desired, add a dash of ground cloves. Set aside and allow to cool in the fridge until ready to use.

5) Butter bottoms and sides of a 9 x 13 inch pan.

6) Unroll the phyllo dough and cut it to fit the pan.

* yes, that's a chef knife, that's our sharpest knife around here. haha.

tip: to keep the phyllo from drying out, cover them with a dampened cloth or a cling wrap when not in use.

7) Place 2 sheets of dough in the pan, and butter thoroughly, cover it with another 2 sheets until you have a total of 8 sheets.

8) Sprinkle about 3 tbsp of the nut mixture on top.

9) Top with 2 sheets of phyllo; butter it. Then sprinkle again with nuts, cover with 2 sheets of phyllo; layering as you go.

10) Top layer should be 6-8 sheets deep, and buttered in between 2 sheets.

11) Using a sharp knife, cut into diamonds or squares to within a HALF inch FROM the bottom of the pan. 

tip: don't go all the way to the bottom so that when you pour the sweet sauce, it would  seep to every layer of the baklava and does not just sit at the bottom.

note: If you have extra melted butter, pour it on top the baklava before baking it.

12) Bake for 50 minutes until golden and crispy.

13) Remove from oven and immediate pour the COOLED sauce. This way, it will be crispy.

14) Let it soak in the sauce for at least 10 minutes before serving. Overnight is BEST. Transfer to individual cupcake papers if desired. Garnish with more pistachios on top (optional).

Some more tips:

- Make sauce ahead of time to allow it to cool.

- Pour COOL sauce to WARM baklava or WARM sauce to a COOLED baklava so it becomes crispy.

- You can freeze the leftovers but leave it uncovered so it wouldn't be soggy.

This is probably last of the "luxurious" treat I will give you for the month of March. For next week, I will be posting recipes for fish and vegetable dishes in preparation for the coming Holy Week.

For now, I will savor each bite of this. =)

Have a great weekend ahead.

Happy Eating! =)

What I owe to Japan? - GREEN TEA ICE CREAM & MOCHI; and my first time with a Philips Delizia Ice Cream Maker

I have been very busy lately in the clinic, mostly because there is an increase in oral surgery and extraction cases this time of the year, meaning I say the lines “Mag ice cream ho kayo pagkatapos or halo halo”/ “Take ice cream or yogurt after, a cold soft diet is the most comfortable at this time” quite often these days.

I  have been making homemade ice creams for quite some time now, even if I don’t own any ice cream maker. The recipe I use is a no-frill; super easy recipe that only requires egg whites and sour cream as its basic ingredients. More about that in a FUTURE post about “Super Easy Homemade Ice cream”. Well anyway, I came to know that my husband’s gracious aunt owns a Philips Delizia Ice Cream Maker and she’s willing to lend it to us since she has never used them. I elatedly accepted with extreme excitement, and came to get the machine the other night. I can finally make some custard base ice cream; I wanted to see its difference from my usual egg whites-sour cream base ones.

The first custard base recipe that came to my mind was the Green tea ice cream I got from one of F&B World living’s publishing; for I love green teas! I even wear a green tea perfume. Haha =)

So here’s how I made them and know later whether it’s really worth it to have some ice cream maker of your own.

Ingredients: (for 4 servings)

2 cups milk 

5-6 green tea bags (or 3 tbsp green tea leaves); I used Lipton's Clear Green

3/4 cup confectioner's sugar (caster sugar)

tip: using caster sugar will give your ice cream a finer and smooth texture since it dissolves quickly.

2 egg yolks 

tip: I have told you about the "Super Easy Homemade Ice Cream" right? So SAVE the egg whites for that; or make it into meringue, or anything; just DON'T discard it.

1 tbsp cornstarch

1 cup heavy cream 

(note: I could not find any heavy cream so I substituted slightly whipped whipping cream)

Directions:

 1) In a saucepan, boil 2 cups of milk. Remove from heat and stir in 6 green tea bags (I like strong green tea flavor, hence I used 6 bags. If you want it milder, stir in about 5 bags only.); and cover it to steep for 15 minutes. 

2) In a mixing bowl, beat the caster sugar into the yolks until pale yellow and thick. Beat in cornstarch. 

3) After 15 minutes, strain the milk mixture and remove tea bags. 

note: After straining the milk, I added 2 drops of green food coloring. As you can see, I wanted my Green Tea Ice Cream, well, GREEN; but I realized that the green tea bags that I bought was CLEAR. Silly me. =)

 Slowly beat warm milk into the egg mixture – this is called “Tempering”. You need to do this if you don’t want scrambled egg yolks. 

4) Then pour entire mixture back to the pan and cook over low heat; stir CONSTANTLY with a wooden spoon until custard thickens slightly. 

note: At this time, I wasn't contented with the "greenness" of this, so I added 2 more drops of green food coloring.

5) Remove from heat and pour the custard mixture into a strainer into a bowl, and cool slightly. 

note: I tasted this custard before adding the slightly whipped cream; it was perfect and this is the "green" tea color that I was aiming for.

6) While waiting for my custard to cool, I made some “mochis” to go with my ice cream. Original recipe for this was from Maangchi's Injeolmi. Here are the ingredients. 

7) In a microwaveable bowl, mix ½ cup glutinous rice flour, dash of salt and ½ tbsp of sugar.

 8) Add ¼ cup + 1/8 cup water, mix well. Cover it loosely with a cling wrap and microwave on high for 3 minutes. 

9) Put generous amount of Potato starch (cornstarch can also be used as substitute to potato starch) to a wooden chopping board as preparation for the microwaved mochis. 

10) Remove from microwave and mix with a wooden spoon (mochis tend to stick too much to metals) for about 20 seconds. Cover it again with a cling wrap and microwave on high for another minute. Once removed, mix as much as you can for it to be chewier then set aside to cool a little bit.

11) Transfer to the starched wooden board, generously coat your hands with potato starch and flatten the mochi dough.

12) Cut into bite size pieces using ceramic knife, (or coat your metal knife with the potato starch); coat with more potato starch to avoid them sticking to each other. Set aside. 

13) Let’s get back to the ice cream. Once custard is cooled, stir in the cream. 

note: After adding the cream, my custard mix lost its greenness so I took the liberty of adding 4 more drops of green food coloring. Note to self: must buy some MATCHA powder should I find one.

 14) You can already transfer this to another container, cover and freeze overnight. BUT since I have the Delizia, I used that. Before using it, I researched first how to properly use it. Manufacturer’s instruction says it only takes 30-40 minutes churning time and you’ll have some hard rock ice cream ready.

 BUT, after almost 2 hours, my ice cream mixture was still soft and gooey. So I ended up transferring it to a glass bowl , covering it with some aluminum foil and froze it overnight. What you can do to ensure your ice cream doesn't form “ice” crystals is to mix it every 30 minutes or so until frozen; but once or twice is enough in my experience.

15) Scoop the green tea Ice cream into a bowl and garnish as pleased. I garnished mine with some homemade sweetened adzuki beans (red monggo beans) and mochis.

The Green Tea Ice Cream was YUM, you can taste in each spoonful, the freshness of young green tea leaves; BUT I didn't get the color "green" that I was after so maybe next time I would add more green food coloring or buy myself some matcha powder instead.

The Philips Delizia Ice Cream Maker was a disillusionment last night ALTHOUGH I am not sure if the problem was because the machine was NEVER used or maybe the machine needed some dry run; or it has something to do with the recipe, which I doubt since it tasted great after freezing it overnight, .  But then again, maybe I SHOULD have been stricter and used HEAVY cream instead. Whatever it was, I won't be quitting on Delizia just yet and would still use it on my next ice cream recipe.  

I am not certain if we owe these treats to Japan but I remember that the first green tea ice cream I saw, was when the bubbly host of NHK'S "Oh Tokyo Tokyo" sampled some on one of her featured travel eats. I used to watch this show when I was a kid.

Let's just assume then that we DO owe this to Japan, and so while having some scoop of this, you might want to close your eyes too and say a little prayer for our Japanese neighbors. May there be no more earthquakes and tsunamis for them and for all of us.

Happy Eating! =)