Muffin Frittatas

Thanks to Su, I have another easy go to healthy meal: frittatas! It's so easy and healthy I was done in 30 minutes. Su advised on her blog that I go crazy, so I did!

Healthy Frittatas, adapted from Makan Musings

Vegetable Tofu (with Broccoli and Carrots)

I get creative when planning home-cooked dinners with my mom because she is into healthy, organic food.  We can't eat chicken because they are raised in a coop and fed manufactured food. We can't eat fish because they are raised in a cramped pen and are fed unspeakable chemicals. Beef and pork are not allowed for elders. The only option left for us to eat is vegetables. I don’t want to float any discussion on the growth conditions of vegetables because we might end up eating nothing.

One of the dishes we keep coming back to for dinner is Vegetable Tofu. It has everything I want and it meets my mom’s standards for edible, healthy food.

Vegan Coffee Butter Almond Ice Cream

I have been reading on equally yummy versions of ice cream that does not require an overdose of eggs, milk and cream, as dictated by the gelato recipe we made the last time. One of the healthy alternatives that made it to my radar was vegan ice cream.  Making vegan ice cream basically means you make ice cream without using milk and eggs. We got some coconut milk and coconut cream and decided to give it a try (for the sake of our cholesterol levels and the risk of diabetes)

We tried it for the Coffee Butter Almond Ice Cream recipe we found. There will always be subtle differences between simple ice cream, gelato, frozen yoghurt etc, but I'm not choosy as long as it satisfies my sweet tooth. This one came out creamy and not too sweet.

VEGAN Coffee Butter Almond Ice Cream

Adapted from the Cusinart Recipe booklet, our minor renditions incorporated to make it vegan

Green Tea Gelato Recipe

Ignorance in bliss, and this never rang more true than when I finally learned how to make gelato ice cream. I remember enjoying eating gelato growing up, and then when I finally made it to Florence I spent all of my allowance tasting different versions of authentic Italian gelato.

Then one day my brother decided to make use of the ice cream maker my mom got me for Christmas to make green tea gelato ice cream. Healthy gelato! Perfect for my blog.

Wrong. I saw the recipe, then my world shattered. It was an end of an era.

They say knowledge is power. The facts (/recipe) is after the jump. No wonder people with very high IQs end up depressed about the world.

PHEW. Doing all that straining and container transfers was physically strenous, so props to gelato makers!

Experiment with beautiful beans

I made it to the rice section of the grocery story and did not realize how much variety of rice there was! I only knew of black, brown, white and jasmine (different variations of white), but when I looked closely at their rice selections, I saw yellow rice, cous cous, off white rice, and THIS.

A combination of rice and beans: how can I not resist so much color?

Garlic Shrimp

There are only two dishes I know how to cook by heart. One is adobo and the other one is this garlic shrimp. I love both dishes and would eat them several times a row when our helper prepared it back in Manila.

Ingredients

1. Tomato and tomato paste

2. Shrimp

3. Garlic

4. Olive oil

Sometimes I add walnuts and random greens

Larissa's Asian-Jamaican curry

Larissa of Live Beautiful is not only a budding expert on beauty and fitness, but is an accomplished cook as well. She spent the past year experimenting on dishes, and I've gone to their place a couple of times to sample some of her creations. This is what she prepared for us for our girls' day in.

Jamaican-Asian curry - not too spicy, actually a bit sweet? I'm not sure what kind of magic she put into this.

Kinilaw na Hipon

Back during my vacation in Manila, I did a lot of cooking at home but I did it with the usual dishes that I practiced on before. I wanted to try a different mode of cooking so when I googled kinilaw ng hipon, I had my new adventure.

Main ingredients

1. shrimp

2. vinegar

3. lemon

4. onion

5. sugar, pepper for seasoning

Dessert by Gabriel

My first guest post! This one is from my brother Gabriel who is currently based in San Francisco. Since he is alone right now staying in a flat, it left him more than ample time to create and concoct meals for himself. In an effort to contribute to my blog, he sent me a photo of this un/healthy dessert that he made.

Ingredients:

1. Strawberry

2. Banana

3. Melted chocolate (random chocolate - melted on the pan with butter)

Pour the melted chocolate on the fruits and freeze for 30 minutes.

P.S. Gabriel is taking baking classes so watch out for more guest posts on his creations! =)

Eva's home made orange cheesecake

Props to my very good friend Eva for a gastronomic innovation worthy of a spot on the Ritz Coffee Bar - cotton soft sweet tangerine goodness perfectly paired with a cup of black coffee. She shared that its perfection is attributed to the sour cream added along with cream cheese, and the zest of orange juiced into it. A few minutes after it came out of the oven, we all had ourselves a slice. Try it at home!



My lactose intolerant stomach taught me a lesson by late afternoon.

Cream chicken and mushroom pasta

After my red wine experiment, I used white wine for this pasta. A dab of sour cream added some taste

Ingredients

1. pasta

2. chicken

3. mushroom

4. white wine

5. all purpose creme

6. a bit of sour creme

Dabbling with Salpicao

I always thought that cooking Salpicao involved an intricate preparation of beef, but turned out it was just about frying it. The game changer was the marinade, the cut, and the sauce that you cooked the beef in.

Ingredients:

1. beef

2. oyster sauce

3. pineapple juice

Hot and sour prawn soup

I did a bit of an experiment on hot and sour prawn soup.

Major ingredients:

1. prawn

2. lemongrass (!)

3. kaffir lime leaves and galangal (missed this one, so I compensated with...)

4. mushrooms

5. lime juice

This version could have done better (put too much water and I should have added more chilli), but the beautiful orange shade made it appetizing enough for our Sunday breakfast.

May also work best with squid and carefully chosen veggies!

Beef bourguignon

I wanted to try my hand at Julia Child's BB since I saw it in Julie and Julia. Sadly, I did not have the time nor the patience to let the beef stew in red wine for 5 hours, so I settled with 3.

Beef bourguignon is one of many examples of peasant dishes being slowly refined into haute cuisine. Most likely the particular method of slowly simmering the beef in wine originated as a means of tenderizing cuts of meat that would have been too tough to cook any other way - from here

Major ingredient: red wine! I had a thrill pouring in half a bottle only to throw out most of it when it was time to serve the beef

Salmon and Prosciutto

Ideally I should have done this in the beginning of the vacation because I was most excited for this one (aside from my big project: Julia Child's Beef Bourginoun), but it took for 3 Rustan's groceries, 4 Santis Delis and 1 Terry Selection to get myself a prosciutto. This was easy to make except that the herb paste was too laborious to create, but that too paid off as the oven exuded a beautiful aroma

Ingredients:

1. salmon

2.. prosciutto

3. herbs galore (parsley, dill, thyme etc)

4. olive oil

5. pecorino cheese

Pork in red wine

What I love about beef and pork is that you just throw them in a bowl together with marinade and some spices then you have this amazing viand after 1-3 hours (depending on the dish)

Pork in red wine ingredients

1. pork

2. red wine

3. unsalted butter

4. honey (and others. at this point, I placed all sorts of ingredients at whim)

Turned out well! Try it!

Pears in red wine

We receive bottles of red wine yearly so I made it my main ingredient this season. Another experiment I made was the pears in wine, and the real adventure was making syrup out of the wine

Ingredients:

1. red wine

2. pears

3. sugar

4. cinammon

Can't say its great, but it is novel, thus making it to our New Year's picks for tonight.

Avocado soup

Some more experimenting over the holidays. This didn't turn out so well - wasn't able to create a good blend of the savoury chicken stock and the sweet avocado. Not too edible, but I'm just going to take this as a lesson

Ingredients

1. avocado

2. chicken stock

3. all purpose cream

4. garnish

My winner Tiramisu!

It's not perfect (yet!) but I'm proud to say that it's a great result of experimentation. I still maintain, however, that Tiramisu from Al Forno is still the best

My rendition

1. all purpose cream

2. broas

3 baileys

4. French Arabic ground coffee

Wagyu for Christmas!

Thank you to WDeli for tirelessly delivering beautiful and delicious Wagyu for us.

My brother's contribution to our Christmas dinner. His gut tells us the proper time to turn over the Wagyu on the heating pan.

Merry Christmas!