The Foodie's Food Trip

Adobong Sitaw

Here's another recipe to share with you... Adobong Sitaw.

Adobo is a famous Filipino food. It's usually meat (or vegetable) stewed in vinegar and soy sauce.

There are different Adobo recipes... Pork Adobo, Chicken Adobo, Squid Adobo, there's even Adobong Kang Kong (although I haven't tried this one).

Adobong Sitaw normally is cooked with ground pork or sliced pork belly. The way I cook it... all veggie. :)

Adobong Sitaw

Ingredients

1 tablespoon cooking oil
1 clove garlic, crushed and chopped
1/4 cup diced onion
500 grams long beans
1/4 cup soy sauce
3/4 cup vinegar
pepper to taste

Directions

Heat oil and fry the garlic until slightly brown.
Add the onion and stir fry until the onion is translucent.
Add the long beans and saute until it's half-cooked.
Add the soy sauce and vinegar. Season with pepper.
Let it simmer, stirring occasionally, until the long beans are cooked.

Chocolate Overload!

My first cooking class... Heaven! Why? Because it's the Ultimate Chocolate Treats course!

Ultimate Chocolate Treats I

I love chocolate! Our house never runs out of chocolates... May they be chocolate drinks, chocolate ice cream, or chocolate candies (most of the time, all of the above). So when I saw the opportunity to attend a demo class with chocolate as their main ingredients, I told myself I had to enroll no matter what!

Outside Shermay's Cooking School

Sign on the way up

The class was at 3pm, but we were advised to arrive early so we can pick our seats and have some drinks/refreshments before the class starts. Choice of drinks were ice cold water, brewed coffee, hot water, and iced tea. I only had the iced tea and I love it. It was Gryphon Tea Company's Lemon Ginger Mint tea... very refreshing!

So anyway, since I want to get a nice seat, and not seat at the back of the room, I left early,around 1:15. I arrived just in time, 2:45 and I got a seat on the third row.

Chef Joycelyn Shu started 3pm sharp. Chef Shermay Lee, the owner of Shermay's Cooking School was also there.

The recipes she demonstrated were: Creme Chocolat, Ultra Fudgy Brownies, Heirloom Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies, Chocolate Peanut Butter Squares (with samples passed around...yummy!!!), and last was Black Forest Trifle (using the Creme Chocolat made).

While the class was ongoing, they passed around Chocolate Peanut Butter Squares for the class to try. Omygosh! speechless! It has that perfect sweetness, perfect texture, perfect flavor! They also passed around Black Forest Trifle.... heaven!!! It has just the right amount of alcohol and cherry flavor... not overpowering the chocolate.

Other than the chocolate peanut butter squares and black forest trifles given during the class, each student also took home a chocolate chip cookie and a chocolate brownie. The chocolate chip was so chewy and yummy, one piece was not enough! The chocolate brownie was so soft and chocolatey... perfect!

Ultra Fudgy Brownies

Heirloom Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies & Chocolate Peanut Butter Squares

Black Forest Trifle

That's not all they gave away... We also were given a pack of all-purpose flour and a pack of cake flour! Thanks to Prima for that! (damn! wrong time to not have an oven!) :)

The chocolates used for all the recipes were Valrhona. For the brownies, creme chocolat and the chocolate peanut butter squares, Chef Joycelyn used Valrhona Equatoriale Noire 55% Dark Chocolate. For the cookies, Valrhona Perles were used.

The Ultimate Chocolate Treats course is divided into two series. The second one, Ultimate Chocolate Treats II will start in April.

Visit Shermay's Cooking School website for more info about Shermay's Cooking School.
Visit Chef Joycelyn's blog for more info about the demo class.

Today's Comic Strip

Starting today, I'll post comic strips in my blog (as often as I can remember them hihihi).

Here's a little something about Cheap Thrills:

Tasty recipes in comic-strip form that are easy enough for the novice cook, but delicious enough to please the more experienced chef.

Cheap Thrills Cuisine offers recipes, whipped up by Chef Peppi, the alter-ego of chef Bill Lombardo and cartoonist Thach Bui.

Ginisang Sayote

Ginisang Sayote or Sauteed Chayote is another Filipino dish that is easy to cook and requires a few ingredients only - chayote and shrimp/prawns. I've seen and tasted a lot of variations for this dish. Some would use ground pork, some would add tomato, and some would even add carrots.

Ginisang Sayote

Ingredients

2 tablespoons cooking oil
500g chayote, peeled and chopped
1/2 cup shrimps, shelled and deveined
1 clove garlic, crushed and chopped
1/4 cup diced onion
1/2 cup water
salt or fish sauce to taste

Directions

Heat oil and fry the garlic until brown.
Add the onion and stir fry until the onion is translucent.
Add the shrimps and saute a bit until half cooked.
Pour the water and add the chayote.
Season with salt/fish sauce, cover and simmer until the chayote is a tender.

I'm Out of Gas

The day we moved to our new apartment, first week of May 2008, was the day we got our first tank of LPG. We thought by the third month we'll be able to replace it already... but it's still not empty. Four months... five months... six months... We stopped counting the days. Until two days ago...

Two days ago, I was cooking some pork steak for dinner. If you know beef steak Tagalog, then just change the beef to pork, that's pork steak. :)

My ingredients are all ready for cooking. I've already marinated the pork in calamansi & soy sauce. So I started cooking the meat. I've semi-cooked one side of the meat already, so I'm just waiting for the other side to cook so I can put the sliced onion. A few minutes later when I checked my cooking, the sauce is not boiling... there was no heat! I checked the stove... no flame! Just when I was in the middle of my cooking! I called up the LPG supplier and they told me that they can't deliver that night and the earliest is the next morning. Waaa! How about my pork steak! :(

What did I do? I cooked our dinner in the microwave. Good thing we replaced our old and dilapidated microwave. Our new microwave has this Slow Cooking feature. So I just read the instructions on how to use the slow-cooking feature, placed my pork and the onion in a microwave-safe bowl, and slow-cooked it for 30 minutes (supposed to be more than an hour, but I changed it to 30 minutes since the meat's almost cooked anyway).

After 30 minutes... voila! Pork steak! hihihi :)