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.

Arroz Caldo

Growing up,  I remember eating arroz caldo or lugaw whenever I'm sick. It is probably a norm back home, feeding children rice soup whenever they are not feeling well. What's with this lugaw? Probably since it has a lot of fluid, it is easier to digest especially if children had lost appetite when sick. It is also popular as an introduction to eating real food for babies. I remember giving lugaw to my daughter when she was 5months old. She loved it since. And would request for it from time to time. She calls it porridge, eversince she read Goldilocks and the Three Bears, where Goldilocks ate the porridge the bears left on their table. Porridge is somewhat different. Rice, oats, semonela, wheat or corn is boiled in water or milk, with sugar or honey to make it sweet. I didn't have the heart to tell my daughter that lugaw is different, as long as she eats it, I don't mind how she calls it. Lol.

Lugaw is Chinese in origin. It is called congee, from the word kanji, which is an ancient food of the Tamil people. Congee has thousand years of history in China. It is popular in Asia, but also cooked all over the world. It is called different in every country. In Philippines, it is called lugaw. Some parts of the Philippines, with a more prominent Spanish influence, calls it arroz caldo. Arroz caldo is a little different from lugaw because of some ingredients added to it. It has safflower and black pepper as spices instead of tradional ginger and scallions for lugaw. I like to put all the ingredients though. I would have ginger, onion, garlic, black pepper, and of course, safflower for color and distinct taste.

Here is a simple recipe for arroz caldo.

Ingredients

1         cup              jasmine rice
1/2      tsp               safflower
2         cloves         garlic, minced
1         tsp               chopped ginger
1         small           onion, chopped
1         tbsp             vegetable oil
2         tsp               fish sauce (patis)
2         cups             chicken stock

Toppings

3         pcs               brown eggs, boiled
1/2      cup              dried dilis, fried
3         pcs               kalamansi, or lime
1         pc                 green onion, chopped

Procedure

In a pot, sautè ginger, garlic and onion in vegetable oil. Add the rice and chicken stock. Let boil until rice is cooked, about 20 minutes. Add patis and safflower. Simmer for 10 minutes.

Transfer to a serving bowl, add boiled egg, dilis, onion stalk and kalamansi on top. Enjoy!

Spaghetti

If there is a non-Filipono dish that I couldn't live without, it would be spaghetti. I just love spaghetti, I could eat it everyday. I have created a recipe to make make spaghetti more Pinoy style, which is a sweeter than the usual marinara sauce that Italians and Caucasians make. I use to put hotdogs, which is one of the main ingredients in Pinoy style spaghetti, but since Sophie and I are not crazy about hotdogs, I took it out of my recipe.

I have been cooking spaghetti for decades. My friends especially would expect it when I invite them for my birthday parties back home. And now that I have Sophie, spaghetti is always part of the menu whenever she has birthday parties.

Pasta is a part of my weekly menu. I prefer spaghetti and mostaccioli. I would cook pasta once or twice a week. Sophie's preference varies in time. Before she loves spaghetti marinara, then she got tired of it and just wants spaghetti noodles with olive oil and mozarella cheese. Then she moved on to shrimp pasta in olive oil and parsley. A few months ago, she tried fettuccine alfredo. And have been eating it twice a week, with toasted garlic bread. Now she is back to loving spaghetti in marinara sauce. Who knows what she would request next.

Below is my own version of spaghetti in marinara sauce. It only takes 30-40 minutes to make.

Ingredients

1     lb           spaghetti noodles
1     lb           ground turkey or chicken (you could use ground                                beef)
1     jar         Everyday Essential garden spaghetti sauce
2     pcs         medium carrots, chopped
1     pc           medium onion, chopped
3     cloves    garlic, minced
1/4  cup        white sugar
1     tsp          salt
1     tsp          pepper
1/2 cup          water
3     tsp          vegetable oil

Procedure

In a pot, boil water and cook spaghetti noodles for 7-8 minutes, or until it becomes 'al dente'. Set aside.

In a saucepan, heat oil. Sauté garlic and onion. Add ground turkey. Cook for 15 minutes. Add carrots, cook for another 10 minutes.

Add the spaghetti sauce, sugar, salt and pepper. Pour water on spaghetti sauce jar and mix with remaining sauce inside. Add to the saucepan. Simmer for another 5 minutes. Pour over cooked spaghetti noodles.

Optional- sprinkle cheddar  or mozarella cheese on top.

Buon appetito!!