I really like sotanghon noodles more than any other Filipino noodles used for pancit. Sotanghon is the Filipino term for ‘bean thread noodle’ or ‘glass noodle’ or ‘cellophane noodle.’ It’s basically made of soybeans and the threads become glassine when cooked or soaked in water. I like it (to cook and to eat) as pancit guisado and I also like it as a soup.
I recently discovered a Thai restaurant near where I work which serves ‘Glass Noodle Soup’ - it’s really nothing but sotanghon soup, just like the carinderias back in the Philippines serve it except that this was vegetarian - they used tofu as the main ingredient.
That really set the wheels rolling in my head - to recreate this dish - as it is a comfort food for me, especially when it was ‘bagyo’ (when there was a typhoon) back home. It was actually easy to do and I added pieces of chicken to make it more palatable to our taste.
Here goes:
chicken stock (either from scratch - boil thigh and breast or whole chicken with celery and black peppercorns) or from the can or you can also use chicken stock cubes
Chinese dried mushroom or shitake mushrooms, soaked in water, sliced and stems cut off
Baby bok choi (pechay)
garlic, pressed, the more, the better - it’s really up to you
onion, sliced
shredded or cut chicken meat (from the boiled chicken when you made stock or pieces of boiled chicken meat if you didn’t make your own stock)
tofu, cut into cubes
salt, pepper, lemon juice, patis (fish sauce), toyo (soy sauce)
green onions
oil
and … how can I forget,
sotanghon nooodles!
(1) Saute onion and garlic in oil in a sauce pan or soup pot or kaldero until onion becomes transparent … and don’t burn the garlic. There are times that burned garlic is good but not this time.
(2) Add chicken meat, tofu and sliced mushroom. Simmer for about two to three minutes. You can also add patis here if the smell doesn’t gross you out. If not, use salt.
(3) Add chicken stock, boil for another two-three minutes, then add the pechay leaves.
(4) Add the tanghon noodles and cook until tender.
Note: you may soak the noodles in water or in extra chicken stock prior to adding them so you can actually cut them easily with scissors as the threads could be a mile long. Or you can just add them directly to the boiling cauldron and then cut them with scissors when they’re cooked but at this time, you really don’t want to burn your fingers, don’t you?
(5) Serve in bowls, sprinkle with sliced green onions …
(6) Salt and pepper to taste, same thing with lemon juice, or patis. You can also use toyo (soy sauce) if you want.
Note, if the tofu becomes to crumbly and the pechay becomes too tender, add them later, like in the last 30 seconds before taking the pot off the fire.
‘Yun lang.
Last Friday, our office had a pot luck lunch organized by the high school students who are working in my lab. The students are from different ethnicities so the lunch was pretty much international. The rule was, each student (there are 14) should bring a dish that they themselves cooked.
This one was made by Alejandro R. whose roots trace back to Mexico. It will delight Filipino palates because the taste is quite similar to some of our desserts. It’s basically jellos in gelatin.
So far as I can ascertain, the recipe goes like this:
Ingredients:
* Different kinds and color of Jello
* packet of unflavored gelatin (Alejandro said, Mexican unflavored or vanilla gelatin works best for this but he used ordinary unflavored gelatin)
* evaporated milk
* condensed milk
(1) He prepared the different colored jellos just how they are prepared according to the manufacturer. When set, he cut them into cubes and set them aside in the refrigerator.
(2) So far as I can gather, he then made the binder (the white part in the photograph) by mixing water, unflavored gelatin, evaporated milk and condensed milk and then heated the mixture until the gelatin dissolved. He then kept the mixture cool in the refrigerator almost to the point of congealing. While still semi-liquid, he then poured the mixture over the cut cubes that he arranged in a pan. Then he let this set.
This second step is a little bit murky but that’s what I can make of it. Some recipes may add nuts and fruits together with the cut jello. Others also serve this with whipped cream on top.
This is quite standard in my household. In fact, it is my partner’s tried and tested recipe.
You need:
chicken pieces - thighs, breast, etc.
olive oil
salt and pepper
onions, chopped
mushroom, sliced
butter
white wine
corn starch
lemon juice
Rub chicken pieces with olive oil, salt & pepper; brown on all sides in large skillet. Saute chopped onions and mushrooms in butter & olive oil, either in a separate pan or with the chicken if there’s room. Combine the chicken, onions, and mushrooms, add 1 cup white wine and cook, covered, until chicken is done. Remove solids from pan with a slotted spoon to a holding plate.
In a separate pan, melt 1/2 stick of butter, sprinkle with 1 tbsp of corn starch and stir until the starch is dissolved and the roux begins to darken. Add juice of one lemon, stir quickly and mix it into the liquid in the large skillet. Add the cooked onions and mushrooms and stir until the sauce is properly smooth and thickened.
Place the chicken on a serving platter, ladle some of the sauce over it, and serve with the remaining sauce in a side bowl.
Accompany with rice and steamed asparagus or broccoli.
The province of Aklan’s cuisine is largely unknown and undiscovered. Some of the province’s native dishes sound and look very exotic yet the taste is quite familiar as they use common ingredients. They make use of coconut milk - a lot. Three dishes that come to my mind that fall into this category are:
(1) Manok nga Inubaran (pictured above), considered as the ‘manamit sa tanan nga tinoea sa Akean’ - the best vegetable dish in Aklan; it’s basically chicken with banana pith simmered in coconut milk;
Linabog
(2) Linabog nga eangka - unripe jackfruit cooked in coconut milk and vinegar; sometimes dried or fresh shrimp or dried fish (butterflied) called baroe is added to the concoction;
Tinumkan
(3) Tinumkan is really delicious. This is river shrimp and/or crabs, pounded and mixed with the flesh of grated or shredded young coconut flesh (gawod), and not just not any young coconut but the coconut flesh that’s about to become hard (as in brown coconut), then wrapped in gutaw (taro) leaves and then simmered in coconut milk. It’s like the Greek dolma. The recipe for tinumkan has already been featured before, here.
So for June 2008, the Recipe for the Month is:
Manok nga Inubaran (in Aklanon, the native language of Aklan)
Gisahon ro bawang ag sibuyas. Idugang ro kiniwa nga manok, gisahon man. Idugang ro payok hasta mag bukae. Idugang ro tangead ag ro ubod it saging. Asinan ag idugang ro rikado. Kon amat hay ginadugangan man it aeabihig o kon owa hay eanggaw, depende sa panlasa. Ipabukae hasta maghomok ro manok.
Translation:
Ingredients
- chicken, hacked to pieces (see Filipino Chicken Cuts how to hack chicken to pieces)
- banana pith - this is the center-most layer of the banana trunk; the banana trunk is composed of layers and layers of ‘bark’ - so you have to peel each layer of the bark until you reach the white parts, probably the last three or four remaining layers of the trunk; this is very tender and sweet, sliced thinly across; Note: this may not be available in the diaspora but I thought I saw some frozen in Filipino stores, or maybe canned from Thailand or Vietnam. Maybe I am just dreaming. If this is not available, you can use canned or fresh hearts of palm (this is also called ubod in the Filipino language).
- coconut milk
- lemon grass
- salt
- vinegar
- onion, sliced
- garlic, a clove or two, pounded
- black pepper
- ginger, small piece, pounded
- cooking oil
- fruit or leaf called ‘aeabihig’ tree - sorry I do not know its equivalent in English or Tagalog, it’s for souring, so it’s optional
Saute onion and garlic in cooking oil. Add chicken pieces and saute until the meat is nearly-cooked. Add coconut oil. Boil. Add lemon grass and banana pith slices. Add ginger, salt and pepper. Add vinegar or the leaf or fruit of aeabihig (if you want this a little bit acidic) or not, depends on you. Simmer until the chicken is tender.
At last night’s episode of Top Chef - they moved to Puerto Rico (from Chicago) and started the final round of the competition. The elimination challenge was - the chefs were given a whole pig and they were to cook three dishes using any part of the pig for a party at the governor’s mansion. They had some time to plan and buy ingredients at the fresh market on the eve of the party and had 5 hours prep time during the day of the party.
And to help the chefs … they brought back the last 4 eliminated chefs … including Dale!!! Whoo hoo!
Dale was selected by fellow-Chicagoan Stephanie to be her sous chef. They knew each other - they worked together before and Stephanie knew of Dale’s talents.
The sous chefs were asked to go to the market - and here again Dale mentioned something about the Philippines — which was great of him. When he was buying ‘black’ plantain, he said, back in the Philippines, we eat a lot of ‘black’ bananas.
I never heard of the term before, but basically, they are ripened bananas, the skin of which have black pockmarks. They’re not rotten or spoiled, the skin is just black. They’re very sweet and soft, very good for doing mashes or banana desserts (minatamis na saging in caramel).
But Dale made a boo boo - he forgot to put the pork belly away that they worked on - rubbing spices and salt on the surface - that Stephanie was going to use for one of her dishes. Consequently, the next day during the day of the party, when they discovered this potential disaster, Stephanie wisely decided not to cook the belly and sounded off some ideas with Dale for her third dish. That was a very scary moment for her. No third dish - elimination, for sure.
This was where Dale redeemed himself - he suggested a tropical salad with chicharon (skin cracklings) - that sparked something in Stephanie - it eventually got made and the judges loved it!
One of the snacks that I readily ask for when I am visiting my home in Aklan is this lowly but delicious snack called ‘kumbo.’ It’s really nothing but a banana fritter, half a saba banana, wrapped halfway with batter and then deep-fried. I don’t know what the batter is made of, maybe rice flour, flour or a combination of flour and mashed banana. And this is only available in the public market, the home-made variety is always different from the ones that are bought in the market. It’s one of those times that the store- (or in this case, market-) bought variety is superior than the homemade variety. What’s interesting is, only a few vendors, probably family members, sell this kind of fritter, I haven’t seen it anywhere except in my hometown … and it seems to me that the recipe is highly guarded because I haven’t seen this replicated anywhere.
I had so much high hopes for him, he even was a finalist in the quickfire challenge today. But during elimination challenge, “Restaurant Wars,” he got teamed up with Lisa and Spike, two chefs that were always antagonist with him, Lisa especially, so their team just didn’t gel. He played it cool though but Lisa, being a whiner all the time, was always blaming him for everything. He did make some bad decisions though being the executive chef of their restaurant - an Asian Fusion type called Mai Buddha. And I think that was the first bad decision there - having an Asian fusion with two wannabes who prided of themselves as Asian-trained and who won’t follow instructions anyway from him because they think that their stuff was better than his. But wannabes who didn’t grow up in an Asian household or spend time in Asia don’t make good Asian chefs generally.
Dale Talde, the Filipino American chef, won the elimination challenge again at Top Chef! That’s win two for him (individual) and he also won a group challenge.
The challenge was to make a lunch box - healthy, hearty, diabetic-friendly, and delicious - for the Chicago Police. He did a bison meat salad - bison meat is like beef but has 50% lower cholesterol content. He made it with an Asian flare - some Vietnamese-style seasonings which prompted one other cheftestant to say that he is one-dimensional and can only cook Asian dishes. While other cheftestants invented recipes that are way out of the range of the normal police diet, the judges said that Dale’s creation was a good transition from the lunch food that the police usually eat at their cafeteria. The goal of the challenge was to change behavior of the police to eat healthier food.
I was trying hard to make something different for mother’s day brunch. I didn’t want it to be over the top. I just wanted something simple, easy to make and, frankly, I am tired of rich Filipino dishes, so I wanted something fresh and yup, different.
So, how about bagel and lox?
If you have access to smoked salmon, this is very easy to do and really is something quite far away from the usual Pinoy dishes yet familiar to the Filipino palate because … it has a hint of ‘tinapa’ since the salmon is smoked.
Needs:
bagel, cut in half and toasted
cream cheese (plain or mixed with ingredients)
capers
smoked salmon (from the deli)
red onions sliced into rings
cucumbers sliced
large ripe tomato, sliced
little bit of dill
butter
salt and pepper
Make sure that the bagel is warm - we always put them into a bread basket covered with cloth napkin just like in restaurants.
Butter and/or spread cream cheese on the bagel.
Add in different layers, salmon, tomatoes, onions and cucumber slices.
Add capers and dill on top. Sometimes the capers are mixed with the cream cheese so they won’t fall off :-). The capers, I think, while optional, are important because they give some acidic taste that really wakes your taste buds up.
Here’s how mine looked today at lunch, after I already took a bite, and remembered to take a picture, served with a side dish of wild rice salad:
Wild Rice Salad
Needs:
wild rice, cooked in chicken broth
white rice, cooked in chicken broth
pecans
green onions
yellow raisins
dressing of grated orange rind, olive oil and orange juice and salt and pepper
