Manong Ken’s Kain Na Blog

I found some blue crabs (just like our alimasag) in the Vietnamese store the other day. They were cheap too. So I thought I would make something out of them for dinner. Not just boiled crabs, but something fancier. I already have made stuffed crab before, so I didn’t want to repeat it. But I couldn’t think of anything else … so I’m back again, revisiting this recipe.

I actually found a recipe from Mark Bittman’s excellent Fish, the complete guide to buying and cooking:

He said that this is a traditional Maryland recipe, but it surely is familiar to Filipino palates too. Here goes:

2 slices of white bread
1/2 cup milk
1 pound fresh lump crabmeat, picked over for cartilage - this is really the most tedious part of this recipe, separating the meat from the ‘bones’
1/3 cup minced onion
1/4 cup minced fresh parsley
1 teaspon soy sauce (or Worcestershire sauce)
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
butter

Soak white bread in milk until softened. Add it to a bowl along with all the remaining ingredients except the butter. Shape into patties and refrigerate for at least one hour.

Heat the butter over medium high heat in a skillet. When foam subsides, cook the crabcakes until lightly brown on both sides, turning once, very gently.

Very easy, isn’t it?

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 night, I upgraded the OS of my server … so I had to take down the Carinderia as well as the blog.

They will be back … and soon.