Mussel Chowder

We’ve been to Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco for a number of times and we seldom missed the clam chowder since we had it. It is just so good. . . . We usually buy one cup for $5. Last Saturday, 01/22/2011, me and my daughter Louise went for a bay cruise, and went for a clam chowder for a quick snack. This time I looked at the ingredients closer and imagined how would I make it at home. I see tiny cubes of potatoes and it taste milky. I think I got it, so I tried it at home.

My family think it was goooooodddd! So maybe you want to try it at home too.

Mussel Chowder

Fresh Mussels

Potato flour

Ingredients:

Mussels (Fresh and cleaned)
potatoes (cubed finer) if you want a little sweet taste, combine sweet potatoes and regular potatoes
butter
milk (whole fresh milk or evaporated milk)
mozzarella cheese
potato starch
salt
pepper
olive oil
green onions, finely chopped
finely chopped garlic
onions, finely chopped
white wine
water

Procedure:

1. Sautee garlic and onions in olive oil.
2. Add mussels, salt and pepper. Continue the sautee until shells open.
3. Add white wine and continue sauteing.
4. Add enough water enough for the soup.
5. Add add potato and sweet potatoes together.
6. Add butter, half of the milk and simmer until potatoes are soft.
7. While simmering the cubed potatoes. . . .
on a separate small bowl, dissolve potato starch on tap water and set aside.
8. When the potatoes are soft and the soup turned starchy, add the last batch of milk and
the mozzarella cheese and simmer for 5 mins more. .
9. Add Green onions and finally add the dissolve potato starch.
10. Stir until soup thickens a little bit and final taste.
11. Serve hot with sourdough bread or French bread.

Tips: If you bought too much mussels and you can’t cook at one time, store it in a container with ice and refrigerate, do not freeze.

Bamboo Shoot, Veges in Coconut milk (Tambo in Ilonggo)

We had this at Tita Sue’s house last Sunday. I like this very much!
We can make different variations of this with shrimp and small crabs.
But this one is just all veges and indeed healthy!

Ingredients;

Fresh or frozen Thinly-sliced bamboo shoots (use peeler to get it thinnest)
Spinach
Fresh or Frozen Corn grits
Coconut milk

Sliced tomatoes
Sliced Onions
Sliced Spring Onions
Sliced garlic
Salt

Procedure:
1. Boil the sliced bamboo shoot in water with salt. Throw the hot water and do this procedure 2x. This will remove the bitter taste of Bamboo shoot.

2. On the 3rd boiling water, use only half of the amount of water compared to the first two boiling procedure. 3. Then add half of the coconut milk.
4. Add tomatoes, onions and corn.
3. Simmer until corn is tender.
4. Add spinach and add the other half of the coconut milk, final taste with salt.
5. Let it boil very quickly. Then turn off the fire. Make sure you do not boil
the last coconut milk too much, to taste the milk instead of oil.

Serve hot and enjoy!

Bamboo shoot and veges in coconut milk

Stir fried Asparagus, sweet peas, corn,mushroom w/ shrimp

Quick, easy and healthy!

Try this at your own home

Ingredients:

Peeled Shrimp and cut lengthwise

Sweet peas
Fresh Corn grits
Thinly-sliced Mushroom
Asparagus

sliced Spring onions
sliced garlic
sliced tomatoes
olive oil
sliced onions
oyster sauce

Procedure:

1. Sautee Garlic, onions and tomatoes in olive oil.
2. Add shrimp.
3. Continue to stir until shrimp turned red.
4. Add Corn and stir in about 1 minute.
5. Add a little water to simmer. This will make the corn tender.
6. Add salt and oyster sauce.
7. When corn is cooked (not starchy) add asparagus, sweet peas and mushroom
8. Stir a little bit until all the veges are almost cooked and final taste and top with spring onions.
9. Serve hot with rice.

Sliced ingredients: sweet peas, shrimp asparagus

fresh corn grits

sliced tomatoes and spring onions

ready for your table

Cabbage Kimchi

Kimchi can be made with so many varieties, this is just one of them.
This is the most common yet, the most salable of all.

Ingredients:

Cabbage cut unto 1/4 size of the head
Cut Spring onions
Carrots cut into strips
Garlic crushed
Ginger crushed
Radish cut into strips
Cilantro sliced

Fish Sauce
Shrimp Paste
Crushed dried Chilli
salt (1/2 cup for every head of cabbage)

Procedure

1. Mix all salt in water to make a salt solution.
2. Marinate the cabbage into your salt solution for 6 hrs.
3. Put this inside your refrigerator.

For the meantime:
Prepare the Spices and chili mix
1. Mix in all the sliced ingredients: carrots, cilantro, ginger, spring onions, garlic, radish, fish sauce, shrimp
paste and crushed dried chili.
2. Mix thoroughly and set aside.

After 6 hours of marinating the cabbage:

1. Wash each leaf thoroughly with running water.
2. Drain water thoroughly and dry each leaf.
3. Put the spices in between each leaf and arrange nicely, until all leaves are thoroughly covered.
4. Cover the container where you arrange the cabbage and spices.
5. Leave it at a room temperature to age for 1 whole day.
6. Refrigerate and ready to serve chill.

Can be eaten with garden salad, meat, soup or rice.

Cabbage marinated in Salt Water

Spices ready to mix with Marinated Cabbage

kimchi

Vietnamese Goi Cuon (Summer Rolls) Varieties with Nuoc Cham

You could make countless varieties of Goi Cuon.
It’s one of my favorites at Lemon Grass Restaurant
and any Vietnamese Resto. 🙂

I love the rice paper wrapper and I love the variety you can make.

Variety 1 Ingredients:

1. Basil Leaves
2. Cilantro
3. Boil shredded pork skin
4. Boil peeled shrimp
5. Carrots cut in thin strips
6. Sliced spring onions
7. Rice Paper (Ba Co Gai)

Nuoc Cham (posted separately)

Variety 2 Ingredients:

1. Basil Leaves
2. Cilantro
3. Fried Thin beef (unflavor)
4. Sesame seeds
5. Carrots cut in thin strips
6. Sliced spring onions
7. Rice Paper (Ba Co Gai)

Variety 3 Ingredients:

1. Basil Leaves
2. Cilantro
3. Fried Thin beef (unflavor)
4. Sesame seeds
5. Cabbage Kimchi (posted separately)
6. Sliced spring onions
7. Rice Paper (Ba Co Gai)

Procedure:

1. On your plate, wet the Rice paper with few drops of water to soften
2. When soften, put each ingredients from 1 -6 on the paper just enough for
one roll.
3. Roll the paper with the ingredients.
4. Dip in Nuoc Cham sauce.

toasted sesame seeds

kimchi

boil shreded pork skin

unflavored fried thin-sliced beef

peeled boiled shrimp

shreded carrots

basil, cilantro and spring onions

Dried Rice wrapper

Variety one

Spring Roll Variety 1

Variety 2 Ingredients

roll with Variety 2

Nuoc Cham

Mix Lettuce topped with pesto (when Fresh is really Fresh)

I got enough Lettuce leaves from my pots. This is nice one.
I discovered that when you pick the leaves fresh from the lettuce you can see sap.
Maybe this is the one that will make you healthy. The taste of freshness is really different
with fresh pick.

Ingredients:

Mix lettuce leaves
Pesto

Procedure:

Wash the leaves and top with Pesto (see pesto on a separate post).

Enjoy!

Pesto Sauce

Lettuce in the pot

Lettuce in my pot

Fresh Lettuce with Pesto

Cubed Beef with Carrot & Potato in Soy Sauce

This could be another version of beef mechado with no tomato sauce!
This is another kid-friendly menu.

Ingredients:

Cubed Beef

Cubed potatoes
Cubed Carrots
Sliced Onions
Sliced Garlic

Olive oil
Salt and pepper
Soy Sauce

Procedure:
1. Sautee Garlic and onion with olive oil.
2. Add Beef, stir until pale.
3. Add water , soy sauce, salt, pepper and simmer until beef is tender.
4. Add Potatoes, continue simmering until Potatoes are nearly cooked.
5. Add Carrots, continue simmering until sauce turns thick and carrots are cooked.
6. Final Taste and serve hot.

Sautee beef cubes

cubed carrots and potatoes

ready to eat!

Visayan Veges Chicken Soup (Re-invented Utan Bisaya)

Since I was small, we were introduced to the healthiest & simplest soup I have ever known. It’s Utan Bisaya, Laswa in Ilonggo! Anybody from the Visayan region of the Philippines know what this dish is. It is common to any Visayan table. It is a mixture of different native veges, like squash, okra, alugbate, talong and sometimes corn, when you want to make it special. It could be all veges, with shrimp, with dried anchovies, with dried fish or with small-cubed-cut pork.

Since I’ve been craving for utan bisaya, I made my own version with the available ingredients. I am glad it tasted good!

Ingredients:

Chicken cut in strips (skin off)

Fresh Corn grits from a cob
sliced Eggplant (square size)
Sliced Pechay in strips (Buk Choy)
sliced Squash (Square size)

Onions
Garlic

Procedure:

1. Put Water in deep pan for the soup.
2. Add chicken, squash and corn grits, onions, garlic and salt.
3. Simmer in low heat until all three ingredients are tender and cooked.
4. Add Eggplant and continue simmering.
5. When eggplant is almost cooked, add the stem part of the pechay.
6. After a minute add the leaves part, final taste with salt.
7. Cover the pan with the lid and turn off the fire. Leave the soup for a minute or two.
8 Then serve hot.

sliced eggplant

squash, corn and chicken simmered

Ready to eat!!!

Ground Beef with Mixed beans and tomato sauce

This is one of the slow cook menus I love. Very little effort, it will just cook by itself with low fire, closely watching it. It just made sure I have enough water with simmering.

I like using mixed beans than pure kidney beans, they are tastier. This is one of the menu that I can use lots of basil on it.

Ingredients:

Mixed beans
Tomato sauce

Ground beef
Salt
Pepper
chopped Basil leaves
chopped Cilantro
chopped Spring Onions
Sliced Onions
Sliced Tomatoes

Parmesan cheese

Procedure:

1. Soak beans in water for 24 hrs.
2. Wash the beans and drains the water.
2. Put all the ingredient in a deep pan except for the parmesan cheese, add water and simmer for 1.5 hours
until the beans are really soft.
3. When the sauce turned think, final taste with salt and pepper.
4. Serve hot, topped with parmesan cheese.

soaking mixed beans

Mixed beans with beef in tomato sauce

Mixed beans with beef in tomato sauce

Ground Beef in Mixed cubed veges (ginamay)

This is another version of menudo with a different sauce, it’s oyster sauce! This is called ginamay in Cebuano.

Corn is an amazing ingredient, including corn on this.

This is one of Louise’s favorite

Ingredients:

Ground Beef
Fresh Corn grits from a cob
cubed carrots
cubed potatoes
raisins

sliced onions
sliced tomatoes
chopped garlic
olive oil
salt
oyster sauce

Procedure:

1. Sautee garlic and onions in olive oil, until onions turned clear.
2. Add tomatoes, continue the stir until tomatoes becomes soft.
3. Add ground beef. Sautee until beef becomes pale and combined
with tomatoes, garlic and onions.
4. Add corn grits. Stir for one minute and add oyster sauce.
5. Add water to simmer the corn until nearly soft but still a bit
starchy.
6. Add potatoes and continue simmer.
7. When potatoes are nearly cooked, add the carrots and raisins.
8. When carrots are cooked, final taste.
9. Serve hot.

Fresh Corn Grits

cubed carrots and potatoes

Ready to serve!