Infused waters

The easiest and yummiest drink made around our house is infused waters. Just cut the fruits and dump it in the water, then drink your way to a healthier body. Pitchers of it lie around our house so it is easy to fulfill our daily required water intake. Health for the lazy.

Below are the benefits to help with detoxification and hydration. Put as much fruit as you like and let the water sit for at least 30 minutes before drinking. You can put more water on the same fruit but you must discard it after 48 hours.

Green Tea, Mint and Lime - fat burning, digestion, headaches, congestion and breath freshener

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

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!

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

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

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.

My own yummy pasta!!

If Alexander Fleming had the penicillin, I had this pasta.

I wanted to make Putanesca but I lacked ingredients, so I just threw anything I can find inside our fridge. Tada! This makes up for the failed experiments that I've cooked week.

Ingredients

1. Wheat pasta

2. garlic, onions, tomato, basil

3. tomato paste

4. walnuts

5. pork floss

6. red wine

I love the taste of success. (finally!)

Stuffed chicken fillet

This was supposed to be beef fillet but I only had chicken available. So I pulled a Food 911!

Ingredients:

1. Chicken fillet

2. fresh mixed herbs (Honestly, I just threw in a bunch of things in the stuffing.)

3. cheese

4. In the over for ~ 25 minutes

Baked blue marlin

I was supposed to use salmon or another sort of fillet for this one but the groceries had none of what I required. Christmas rush much. But it still surprisingly turned out well (one that salvages my pseudo-fail from the baked snapper). I taught this to our helper so she can cook it for my family when I am away.

Ingredients

1. blue marlin

2. unsalted butter

3. pepper

4. basil

5. 20 min in the oven I think?

Baked snapper

Another creation (and also in an effort to force my brother to eat fish!) is baked snapper. The one I got from the grocery was HUGE but it was apparently the smallest they had available, so I had to make sure that I wasn't going to make a mistake about this.

Ingredients:

1. snapper

2. unsalted butter

3. garlic and herbs (I'm such a fan of basil and cilantro!)

4. ~30 mins in the oven

It came out cooked and edible, but on hindsight, it would have tasted better if I submerged it in some sort of sauce so the flavour can seep in the fish meat. The result of this one was tasted like cooked, edible fish. =\ Not fail, but not a shebang either.

Beef braised in beer

Home for Christmas! As per tradition, I was given a wad of cash for Christmas so I hit the nearest grocery story and bought some ingredients. My first experiment for the season is Beef braised in beer.

Ingredients:

1. beef

2. beer

3. honey (my own addition)

4. onions, pepper

5. 3 hours in the oven

My mom had it for dinner and her feedback was that altho it was really soft and yummy, it easily made her feel drunk. Hahaha! Anyway, success!

Sexy pasta with scallops

I borrowed term from Wen - Sexy is the apt description when you are too lazy to dress your pasta up with real sauce.

It turns out that my olive oil was hiding behind the sunflower oil so I went ahead with my planned pesto. The deviation I made this time was to cook the pasta on a water with cinnamon sticks and sesame oil. I love the smell of sesame oil and I put it in when I cook my brown rice, so I tried it with this one. I tossed in the cinnamon sticks to add a pungent hint of madness. >:)

I left it boiling and when I opened the bowl to check, the cinammon aroma pushed itself out. I stood there smelling my work and watching the bubbles dissipate, the cinnamon so enticingly fragrant I could have had a facial right there.

The sexy pasta of the lazy - pasta, chili, pepper, pre-ground basil, ready to cook scallops.

Pasta and scallops cooked in mushroom soup

I planned to have my usual pesto with some scallops but I discovered I don't have olive oil (I haven't cooked that long??). I did an interesting innovation (read: lazy) where I cooked the pasta and scallops directly in the mushroom soup to let the flavor seep into both ingredients. I added some pepper and basil, boiled it in the open so the liquid will evaporate thus making the sauce creamy and then -- voila! My housemates liked it.

I also ran out of parmesan (that long??) so I placed cheese slices and let it melt on the pasta. It helped jolt up the flavour. What I loved was the burnt chunky pasta parts from the bottom of the pan (see brown ones).