Chicken Afritada

I love dishes that has tomato sauce on it.  My favorite is menudo. It is pork stew with potatoes, carrots, hotdogs, bell peppers, raisins and tomato sauce on it. Another is kaldereta, which uses beef or goat instead of pork, with added cheese on it. But since I don't eat pork and beef, I would settle for chicken afritada. Its almost the same as menudo, only in this dish, chicken is used instead of pork.

Afritada, like menudo, mechado and kaldereta are Spanish in origin. They are all tomato based and has vegetables in it, mainly potatoes and carrots. It is always present in parties and fiestas. Different versions have been done on this dish. It is very easy to make. My recipe is a simple chicken afritada, I didn't experiment on it. I feel like it is so good already that I don't want to change it.

Ingredients


2       lbs              chicken legs and thigh, cut in serving pieces
3       pcs              medium size potatoes,quartered
4       pcs              carrots, cut in big chunks
1       pc                green bell pepper, roughly chopped
1/2    cup              raisins
1       can              tomato sauce
1       pc                tomato, chopped
1       pc                small onion, chopped
2       cloves         garlic, minced
1/2    cup              soy sauce
2       tbsp             fish sauce
2       pcs               calamansi or lime
1       tbsp              ground pepper
2       tbsp              vegetable oil

Procedure

Marinate chicken in soy sauce and calamansi juice for at least 30 minutes.

In a pot, sauté garlic, onion and tomato in vegetable oil. Add chicken. Let simmer for 20 minutes or until chicken is tender.

Add potatoes and carrots. Simmer for another 15 minutes.

Add tomato sauce, raisins, bell pepper, ground pepper and fish sauce. Simmer for another 5 minutes.

Serve with rice.

Today's merienda:Kamote Cue

I haven't posted anything in two weeks. I broke one of my New Year's Resolution of posting an article in my blog every week. Tsk tsk tsk. What has gotten into me. I guess since last week, I couldn't make up my mind on what to write next. Yes, I do run out of ideas sometimes. It happens. What's more. I didn't experiment on anything since last week! Shocking!! I have been cooking comfort food, simple food that is easy to make. Not challenging, I know. But oh well. We all get lazy sometimes. Lol.

What I will make today is something simple and yet delicious. Filipinos love merienda aside from the three important meals of the day. There are a lot of pinoy merienda to choose from. Some heavy, some light. These merienda are most popularly sold by street vendors. I remember, every afternoon, me and my sisters and cousins would wait for 'Mang  Manny' to come up near our house so we could buy fishball and squidballs. We 'tusok-tusok' the fishball using a small bamboo skewer and dip it in 3 different sauces. I especially love the mild spicy gravy. Yummy! I wonder how he makes his gravy. There is nothing like it.

During high school days, I would buy pineapple or mango with alamang (shrimp paste) for my morning merienda. Sometimes I would order singkamas (jicama), with alamang also.

And of course there are varieties of  kakanin to chose from. Puto, biko, kutsinta, palitaw, sapin sapin, take your pick. If you want something heavy, you could go for pansit. Either pansit bihon or palabok. Or if you want something sweet, you could go for turon, banana cue or kamote cue. So yummy that people would wait for the vendor while cooking it because they ran out so quickly.

Kamote cue is like  sweet potato fritters. It is a sliced sweet potato coated with brown sugar, then deep fried and served on a skewer or bamboo stick, like a barbecue, hence it is called 'kamote cue'.

Here in Midwest, we don't have the type of sweet potato we have back home. Here we have yams, slighly different from kamote, but it will do.

Here is the simple recipe for kamote cue


Ingredients

5       pcs           yam, cut into pieces
1       cup           brown sugar
1       tsp            cinnamon
2       cups         vegetable oil
                           bamboo sticks

Procedure

Combine brown sugar with cinnamon. Coat the yam on both sides.

Heat the oil in pan. Deep fry the sugar coated yams. It is cooked when the yam is tender and the sugar is caramelized.

Arrange 3-4 pcs of yam per bamboo sticks.

Enjoy your merienda.