Category Asian Dishes

If someone would ask me to name 2 Korean dishes that I love, easily I’d say kimchi and bulgogi. The spiciest the better, especially kimchi. The pork bulgogi I made for tonight’s dinner doesn’t have the spicy flavor that I really love because I wanted my son to enjoy dinner too without drinking a gallon of water by the end of the night, hah. To continue my light dinner plans, instead of rice, I decided to serve the pork bulgogi with corn tortillas, then the husband added a few flour tortillas as well.

Do you still have turkey leftovers? Tired of eating turkey sandwiches? I’m sure by now you’ve got favorite recipes to make using leftover turkey. Here’s another one to add to the list. Sotanghon noodles with leftover turkey, zucchini, and napa cabbage. After feasting on traditional American spread, have some more turkey with an Asian flair.

If you are like me who likes whole tilapia, a place to find them is at Wal-Mart. The store sells frozen whole tilapias for about $7. Depending on the size of the fish a bag has 3 or 4 whole tilapias in it. The tilapias are completely cleaned, meaning they’re gutted and scaled. Each fish come in an individual vacuum packed bag so you can take out what you only need for either frying, steaming, grilling or baking.

I actually baked 2 whole tlapias when I made this dish but only arranged the bigger fish for the picture. So for this recipe take out 2 tilapias to thaw out before cooking.

Sometime ago I found out from fellow food blogger and friend Iska of Iskandals that the other way I cook a fried chicken is actually similar to Max’s Fried Chicken. Max’s is one of the famous restaurants in the Philippines which apparently serves one of the best fried chicken in the country.

Iska’s version is steaming the chicken first. I on the other hand used the par-boiling method hence the title above. Whichever version you try the idea is to pre-cook the chicken first before hitting the oil to fry. The result? Crispy skin without the usual breading of a traditional fried chicken, plus juicy and moist on the inside.

These Pork & Sotanghon Noodles Spring Rolls were delicious but I have to say they were a bit tricky to eat. I made a few for lunch for my husband and I last Friday. I appreciated all the work that went through making them, starting with sauteing the pork and sotanghon noodles first, the wrapping process, and then the art of eating spring rolls without making such a mess. It seems like I’m complaining which maybe I am a little bit but trust me, these are really good. Once you’re done devouring the spring rolls, you can always have a bowl of the pork and noodles to supplement your lunch, which was exactly what my husband and I did by the way.

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My husband would really eat anything I cook. I know this coz he tells me all the time and he does eat anything I serve him. When I’m thinking out loud what to make, or when I ask him what he wants to eat for lunch or dinner he’ll say, “make anything, you know I’ll eat it.” However, there’s one dish he’ll never eat. That’s fish head soup. Being a Filipino I’ve had my fair share of fish head soup growing up. The latter involves a fish head, sour broth, and veggies. It’s pretty much like any sour soup we love to call SINIGANG, either with chicken or pork.

With my husband’s frequent fishing trips you’d think I’m taking advantage of using the fish head all the time but that’s not the case at all. When he cleans the fish that means the head goes too. I don’t mind, really. I only ask him to save the head when I get the craving or the ambition to deal with cooking a fish head. When he caught the 5-pound bass last month it just didn’t feel right to throw away the head after I cut up the steaks for the sweet and sour dish so I saved it to make sinigang bass head soup. Since I was the only one in the family who would eat this it took me 4 days to finish it. I just warmed up a bowl in the microwave to eat for lunch.

Here are the crappies that my husband and brother-in-law from one of their fishing trips last month. He came home with these alongside a 5-pound bass which I turned into a sweet and sour dish plus a fish head soup that I’ll post some other time. I didn’t do anything fancy or special with them. My husband gutted and washed them thoroughly that night he brought them home, stored them in the fridge then a couple of days later I scaled, chopped a little bit off of the gills and tails, washed them again, then baked them whole for lunch.

I had such a craving for corned beef & potatoes earlier last week. When I said corned beef, I don’t mean the corned beef brisket cooked in crock pot for hours with whole potatoes and cabbage to serve as the main entree during Irish Day. Although after typing all that I’m certainly craving that right now, Hah! Anyhooo, I’m talking about the corned beef in can, like the Libby’s kind, sauteed in a little bit of oil, with tomatoes, and small potato cubes. Give me a bowl of that with rice and I’m good for the day.

I bought all the stuff I needed but then I figured since I love eating the sauteed corned beef with rice anyway, why not turn it into sushi rolls? That would be something new to blog about for sure. My husband thought it was weird. My son thought it was cool. I kept saying it’s something new. My husband was right. the corned beef & potatoes rolls were weird. I mean they’re edible and we ate them but I was missing the seafood flavor of sushi rolls.

This is pretty much a learning curve. I’m posting the recipe here which in all honesty is really easy to figure out just with what I’ve already written about it, just to show you how I made the rolls. Perhaps, you want to try to make them so you can decide for yourselves.