Tasty Back to Back Dinners: 1 of 2 PPNS

Last weekend, I felt as though I got a mild case of a stomach virus; feeling fatigued and weak. I had no appetite and had issues staying hydrated. While on my break on Saturday, I sent Richard a request to make some kind of soup: chicken, pho, Phnom Penh noodle soup (aka PPNS) or something. There was no reply. Andrew and I agreed to go to Sea King for some food if dinner wasn't something I could eat. We were about to leave when I called home to double check:

"Hey, what's for dinner tonight?"
"Phnom Penh noodle soup."
Yuhssss!
"Okay, we'll be coming home soon."

We were both excited cause we were really hungry. We decided to go to Sea King the next night.

I became giddy when I walked into the kitchen and saw that all the prep work was ready. And I became overjoyed when the pork bone seafood soup tasted remarkable. Sometimes the soup can be disappointing. This was luckily not one of those times.

There was sliced raw beef, chicken, and shelled shrimps. The accompaniments we had were green onions, fried garlic oil, and preserved cabbage. There was satay sauce, Sriracha, and hoisin sauce too for dipping sauces. And for everyone who wanted to eat the dry version of Phnom Penh noodles, there was oyster sauce and dark soy sauce. A meal like this is one of the reasons why our fridge is stocked full of condiments.


We cooked the sliced chicken in the clear soup. We shouldn't have if we wanted to keep the soup clear.  Meh. I cooked the soaked rice noodles in a separate pot of boiling water for about twenty seconds. Then I pressed the cooked noodles with the back of the ladle to get rid of most of the noodle water, before dumping the cooked noodles into a waiting bowl. Andrew cooked some chicken and shrimp for me since he was making his bowl before mine. I added some green onions and tossed in some raw sliced beef.


Once Andrew was finished with his bowl, I topped my bowl up with some hot pork bone seafood soup and headed to the dinner table. There, I added the final touches of the fried garlic oil (with fried garlic) and preserved cabbage. Not many words were exchanged during dinner. It wasn't necessary.

Lunch at Cafe Orient

On Tuesday, I had to go have an ultrasound done in the morning that required me to fast. After the ultrasound, I decided to go to Chinatown for some food.



That morning, the windchill made it feel like -38 degrees Celcius (-36.4F). To thaw myself out, I needed the help of a strong cup of HK milk tea.


For my lunch, I had the beef brisket, shrimp wonton rice noodle soup and a side of deep fried shrimp balls. The soup itself was quite bland. I wish they had added much more of the braising liquid into the soup. I'm glad I went with the rice noodles instead of the regular thin egg noodles.


The beef brisket pieces were super tender. Some of the strands did get in stuck in my teeth - I hate that!


These shrimp balls were a little different. Instead of having a coating of some cornstarch or whatever, these were battered and then fried. They did have green onions mixed in and were very juicy. I think the sweet sauce that accompanied the shrimp balls had some five spice powder. It added a nice depth.

For a post-fasting-ultrasound meal, I say this hit the spot.

~

Braised Lamb Shoulder Chops

Around 2am in the morning, I was in the middle of watching an Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations marathon when the scene in Naples (season 7, episode 11) transitioned from a marching band to the sound of "... slow simmering of meat in red sauce." It was like music to my ears. I wanted to eat some of the pasta tossed with the ragù and braised meats.

The next day, I found a package of lamb shoulder chops in the fridge. Mom told me that I was making dinner that night. After researching on Google for ideas, I began to get frustrated because nothing appealed to me. My mind kept wandering back to the clip of the ragù though. Done. That's what I'll try to make. I knew I wanted to slow cook the lamb and serve it separately from the pasta.


I began with dicing up onions, carrots, and garlic for the sauce. Then the lamb chops were seared with a little flour and vegetable oil. They were set aside while the sauce/braising liquid was made. Onions, and carrots were sautéed first, then the garlic was added in with some broth. A can of plain tomato sauce was poured into the pan. The sauce simmered on the stove top for a few minutes. Then the sauce and seared lamb chops were layered in a baking pan. It was put into the toaster oven at about 360F for about 3½ hours.


Richard had actually made a loaf of bread in the new bread maker. Not sure what happened with the giant air bubble at the top.




The bread was airy and moist. A little too moist though. But that didn't stop all of us from eating half of the loaf of bread before starting dinner. I guess it was the complimentary bread with olive oil and balsamic vinegar you get at some restaurants.


I asked Richard to make a bean salad. Unfortunately the yellow beans, despite being rinsed a few times,  still tasted strongly of the can. It ruined the, otherwise good, bean salad.




Just like they did in the Naples episode, the pieces of braised meat was plated up and set aside. Most of the oil floating on top of the sauce was scooped out. The penne pasta finished cooking in the remaining sauce. At this point, I was getting excited at how dinner turned out.


Here was Mom's dinner plate with cognac to drink.


The lamb meat was really tender. Some of the cartilage was still a bit crunchy though. I really should've baked the lamb longer. The pasta tasted great in the sauce. It tasted even better the next day when I took it to work for lunch.


One plate of food was good for dinner. I needed a bonus round though. Just a couple extra bites.

The braised lamb shoulder chops turned out quite well. If there are tough cuts of meat on sale at the grocery stores, whether it's more lamb shoulder or even beef, I'll try to make this again cause it was a big hit with the family.


Future Tweaks:

• Cook the lamb shoulder chops for longer (over 5 hours)
• Add more tomato sauce
• Carefully go through the sauce to get rid of shards of bones
• Season the pasta more aggressively once the sauce is mixed in
• Make more bread
• Make a double batch for more leftovers

Canadian Thanksgiving 2013

Happy belated Thanksgiving to our Canadian readers! And happy early Thanksgiving to our American readers!

Unlike past years, we just had a small family dinner with our immediate family earlier this week on Monday, October 14th. On the menu: smoked salmon cream cheese appetizers, prime rib roast, pan-dripping gravy, sweet potato mash, buttered carrots and corn, and dinner rolls. We were going to have three kinds of homemade desserts: apple pie, apple crumble, and cookies.


The day started off slowly. I didn't end up going downstairs until 11:30am. It was nice to sleep in after a hectic week at work. My brief morning began with open-faced peanut butter banana sandwiches and a cup of coffee.


We began our prep work by making pies and cookies once everyone had a bite to eat in the morning. The apples actually came from our Golden Delicious apple tree, which Dad planted about 10 years ago. Mom made the pie pastry out of Tenderflake and some butter. The apples were peeled, cored, sliced, and seasoned with brown sugar, cinnamon, and a bit of salt. Then some oatmeal crumble was made for apple crumble. There was a little confusion in the kitchen and we ended up making apple pies, apple crumble, and even an apple crumble pie. I'll touch more on that in another post. (Update: Apple Crumble Pie post is up.)


I also worked on these DoubleTree chocolate walnut cookie dough too. Once the cookie dough was done, I put the bowl into the fridge to firm up.

I've been thinking about making these beauties for a while now, well, since I stayed at the DoubleTree Hotel by Hilton. They gave us warm cookies when we checked in. So amazing!


Around that time, Lucy arrived and we began to snack some more. She put together a Ritz cracker with smoked salmon cream cheese, half an olive, and some dry dill. Looks good, doesn't it? Lucy even took this, and a few other, photos with my dSLR.

Costco had one of their smoked salmons on sale the during the week. Cream cheese was also on sale a week prior. So we stocked up on both of them. Dad chopped up some smoked salmon and mixed it with the cream cheese for a nice kitchen hack. The real smoked salmon pieces were so wonderful!

I was planning to make either a spinach dip or caramelized onion dip, but we loved the smoked salmon cream cheese so much that we didn't need anything else. True story.


For the sweet potato mash, the sweet potatoes were peeled and boiled. They were mashed with half and half cream, cinnamon, powdered ginger, salt, butter, and freshly cracked black pepper. There was a carrot left behind.




Once the mashed sweet potatoes were seasoned, they were spread into a baking pan and then topped off with marshmallows.

I'd use less ground ginger and add more black pepper next time. Maybe I'd bake the mashed sweet potatoes for a bit before topping with marshmallows next time. That way the mash would be hotter.


This is the prime rib roast out of the oven. The burned parts is just the cap of fat. The prime rib was baked to rare and then we had to pop it in the oven for more time. By the time it was taken out, the prime rib was medium-well.


I grabbed my camera and went back to the table but Lucy blocked me off from taking the photo. She wanted the first shot. Alrighty then. After she took the picture, I swooped in to take one on my camera.


That's most of our spread. The dinner rolls, ginger ale, and red wine are missing.


Having prime rib was a nice change to turkey. Maybe we'll try making lamb next year.

Jimmy really enjoyed the prime rib. "How do you make something like this?"

"First, you need to buy a high quality of prime ribs -- high quality. Then you just season it however way you like it; like with steak spice or salt and pepper." Lucy chimed in.

As for the desserts, I'll be writing about the apple crumble, apple pie, and apple crumble pie separately. Here are the DoubleTree chocolate walnut cookies. I based these cookies off Food Geek's recipe.

The cookies taste the best when enjoyed just like the hotel serves their cookies: warm. That way the chocolate chunks are still gooey. The proportions of walnuts and chocolate chunks to cookie dough was a bit off. I remember the cookie was chunkier. I'll have to try the recipe out again. Until then, I'll hold off on sharing it.

Cooking and baking with the family does get noisy, but that's because we all have our different ways of doing things. Things get done however elaborate the meal is. And that's because we all know how to cook and, to some extent, bake. The underlying lesson is to learn to cook and bake for yourself and others. It's a life lesson.

Remarkable Tacos at El Camino

When tacos were all the craze in the States over five years ago, it seemed as though many food blogs I read were really into them. I was very jealous. Very. Jealous.

I've heard about a few decent taco joints in Ottawa. But the one that intrigued me the most was El Camino. Not only was it the newest craze in Ottawa this summer, but a friend also highly recommended it.


We had originally planned to go to El Camino on Saturday night but our family had other plans. We ended up going out to dinner with our large extended family. And of course when I checked Twitter that evening, I saw that Ottawa Senators' stud defenseman, Erik Karlsson, had been there for dinner. Bah!

My stomach still felt very heavy after brunch with my friends. We ended up leaving the apartment around 6pm. It wasn't tough to find the restaurant. We walked up Elgin Street and then saw a line up. Bingo.





We ordered our tacos and waited off to the side. You can watch the kitchen work their magic if you order from the taco window.


Once we got our tacos, we added some Cholula hot sauce to our food and began to walk back to Lucy's place. Lucy already devoured two out of her three tacos by the time we got about two blocks away from the restaurant.






My food was still warm when we arrived. I got an order of betal leaf shrimps and one crispy fish taco. The fish taco was remarkable! The warm pliable flour tortilla held the red cabbage and cilantro topped crispy fish. I believe there was also a slice of avocado too. I could've eaten four more of these if I had space in my stomach. The little wedge of lime helped.

The betal leaf shrimps reminded me of eating Vietnamese spring rolls with fresh thai basil. The flavour of the betal leaf help cut through the heaviness of the savoury shrimp filling. The filling surprised me. It was soft and slightly mushy instead of plump seasoned shrimps, as I had expected.

Lucy ordered two fish tacos and a pork taco. She was starving when we went, which was why she downed the tacos so quickly.


Andrew ordered one each of pork, lamb and ox tongue. The pork and lamb were both slow cooked and pulled apart. His favourite was the lamb. After trying a small bite of his lamb taco, I'd have to agree. I'd definitely get the lamb and crispy fish tacos next time.

He found the ox tongue to be a bit on the bland side compared to the other two tacos. It wasn't gamey though.

Andrew: "My tacos are dripping!"
Lucy: "Mine didn't drip."
Me: "That's because you inhaled your tacos so quickly!"

We'll definitely be back to El Camino. Hopefully it will be sooner rather than later.

It was fun celebrating my birthday with great food and better company! Thanks everyone!

~*~

Cheap Beef Shanks, Bo Kho

Now that Mom has added bo kho to her repertoire, we are always looking for cheap beef shanks and/or beef short ribs.


Here's one loaded bowl of bo kho and rice noodles. It was garnished with cilantro and a small wedge of lime. My mom likes to eat bo kho with fluffy warm bread.


My cousin, KG, came over for dinner. He had a total of three bowls. This was his second round of bo kho and noodles--this time with a large bone to gnaw on. Okay, you don't gnaw on the bone itself. You're supposed to pick off the tender meat and tendons that are stuck on the bone. Some pieces of bone have marrow too. You're supposed to suck out all that creamy goodness. (That's what she said.)


He liked it so much that he had a third bowl. KG said that he took home cooked meals for granted when he was living at home. It was a great humbling experience.

Mom's bo kho really hit the spot. I liked it when the bo kho was thickened almost to the consistency to stew, but it seems like everyone else likes it more loose. I just love the flavours and richness of the bo kho.

Mom's Chicken Curry

Mom made a pot of chicken curry last month and invited my grandparents for lunch. While she usually chops the pieces of chickens into bite-sized bits, we requested that she leave them whole. Whenever she'd make this curry with bite-sized chunks of chicken, we'd always find fragments of broken bone in our curry. Not fun.

Here's a brief rundown of how Mom makes her curry:

Chopped onions are sautéed with minced garlic and curry paste. Then the meat, in this case it was chicken drumsticks, peanut butter and fish sauce goes in. Coconut milk and water are added before seasoning to taste with sugar. The curry is then simmered for a few hours, with certain root vegetables and vegetables thrown in at during times to prevent over-cooking. Mom has used things like: potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, onions, string beans, eggplants and bamboo shoots.  For the best results, this curry is made the night before and then it's gently simmered for a few hours the following morning/afternoon.


There are two main ways our family eats this curry: with bread or with vermicelli noodles. We rarely eat the chicken curry with rice though. I prefer eating this curry with the Japanese somen noodles. I like the texture much better than the wiry vermicelli noodles we sometimes use. The somen noodles are the same noodles I like to eat Vietnamese bun with.

The somen noodles does require more attention though, because after it has been boiled, it needs to be rinsed off in cold water, and then the water needs to be squeezed out to prevent the soft noodles from becoming waterlogged.


Warmed up in the toaster oven, our favourite bread is a nice baguette.




The curry is usually so satisfying!

Escape into Silence - Lilom Fish Sanctuary

Greetings from across the world! What a whirlwind summer it has been for me! Between work and sleep, it's been hard finding the time (and more importantly money!) to travel around the beautiful Philippines. 

Of course, I will try my hardest not to transform this into a travel blog and will stay true to the food.

So here is my latest trip! During the first weekend of September I was invited my a coworker to celebrate his birthday at a beautiful resort called Lilom. The resort is located in Batangas - what is considered the best region for snorkeling and scuba diving - in the small town of Anilao. 

I'm told that Lilom is the native word for Shade and it could not have been more mysterious. We arrived around 8pm due to a broken down car and some delays but it definitely added to the mystery arriving at night. 

Some brief history on the resort: originally it was a privately-owned resort that was also a fish sanctuary. As such, there were many restrictions about how many people could snorkel in the water at a time (15 max if you wanted to know) and what gear you could use. There was a sign but I was too relaxed to remember to take pictures. Within the year, the family opened up to the public and charge about 2000 Pesos (around $50) a night with breakfast, lunch, dinner and merienda (snacks remember!) included - what a deal! 

In order to get to the resort, we had to walk along the shore at low tide some distance from the parking lot and loading dock. In the picture above, you can see that it was no white sand beach but a rough kind of beach with coral reefs just 20 ft from the shore. 

We arrived just in time for dinner - buffet style. Oh man, this was some of the most delicious food I have eaten in the Philippines! On a bed of rice, I picked some teriyaki chicken: sweet of course but also just salty enough for my palate - similar to Mom's marinade for BBQ chicken during the summer but I think they shallow simmered the meat as it was quite tender.

I scooped up some delicious mushrooms stewed with pork belly and eggs. I guess this was the Filipino version of Three Layered Pork but the star was really the shitake mushrooms (or at least I think it's shitake - same texture but slightly sour flavour). Hard-boiled eggs were stewed in the sauce as well. And then, some delicious pancit (noodles!). These white, glass rice noodles were stir-fried with deep-fried garlic and some stuff that made it perfectly salty - just enough to linger on your palate and make you crave more.

What you're not seeing is the most delicious mangos I have ever eaten. I think we all consumed a good 10 mangos because they were the sweetest, creamiest, most melt-in-your-mouth deliciousness that has ever blessed my tongue. It tasted so mango-y you'd think it was pumped with mango flavour extract (I hope it wasn't!)

The next morning we woke up to overcast skies that finally gave way to an intense Filipino sun around 10am. Oh yeah, we slept in these amazing bamboo houses called Kubo's that are very traditional. I got a king-sized bed to myself and while the lights were out, the room was absolutely black. It was the soundest sleep ever and for the first time since Ottawa I was able to wake up to natural light (my apartment is facing another building so we don't get natural light ever, plus we live off a major road called EDSA...honk honk all the time...)

Breakfast was AMAZING! We were served the BEST coffee I've had in the Philippines (they don't do coffee well at all) in a French press and banana pancakes which I ate with a heaping spoonful of butter and mango jelly. They also made a (canned) tuna omelette which was alright - I mean I needed an egg with my breakfast somehow...

With the beautiful weather shining down, we decided to go snorkeling for a good two hours. I wish I had an underwater camera or a waterproof phone case because snorkeling is absolutely breathtaking! The reef was literally twenty steps from the wading pool in the picture above and was filled with all sorts of exotic fish. After not too long, it was lunch time!

This soup is the most amazing soup I have had. From what I heard, they boil the crap out of chicken bones to get a deep-flavoured broth. Then they throw in young papaya and wild corn (more starchier than the corn I'm used to in Canada) and add young pepper leaves right before serving. I think I had three servings of the soup as it had that delicious umami that made me crave more.

When I pulled myself away from the soup, I got some eggplant and liempo (pork belly). The eggplant was first grilled (it had that charred flavour) then dipped in egg, topped with sauteed onions and then pan fried. The mellow flavour of the eggplant was nicely complemented by the saltiness of the egg and the sharpness of the slightly undercooked onions. The liempo was also delicious but really tasted like any other liempo I've had in Manila.

As if I wasn't full enough after three eggplants, I created this beautiful looking bowl of dessert. Local bananas (starchier than bananas I'm used to but not as starchy as plantains) were sauteed in caramel and served to us. We took it a step further and asked for some crushed ice and yelo (milk and sugar). I peeled some rambutans and assembled this beast that took me a while to crush. But as you can imagine (like everything I ate) it filled me with such happiness that I needed to nap to process it all.

After we all napped, we packed up and took a boat back to our car and returned to the concrete jungle of Manila. I really miss the fresh air and complete serenity I felt while at Lilom. Honestly, time slowed down to a crawl as you take in the beautiful scenery - I never felt an urge to check my phone. It is definitely the perfect place to escape to for a weekend, no more though because I feel like you'd get bored since all you really do is lounge and snorkel. If you're ever in the region, I highly suggest dropping by for a night or two of pure escape and relaxation!