Homemade Tocinokatsu
Like I’ve said many times before, Tocino is one of my most favorite Filipino dishes. It comes after pork adobo. I will forever profess my love to JMOM for teaching me how to make homemade tocino. So anyhooo, while blog hopping the Link Friday entries the other week, I came upon Tara, Let’s Eat recipe of Tocinokatsu. I’ve never heard of Tocinokatsu before until that day.
Tocinokatsu is basically your regular tocino, then breaded in breadcrumbs then fried in oil. It makes sense right? I decided right then that I am definitely making some as soon as I get a hold of some pork. So I did, and my whole world made total sense even more.
Catfish Fillets In Creamy Coconut Milk Sauce (Ginataang Hito)
I had 9 full ziploc bags of catfish in my freezer after my husband’s fishing trip last Thursday. So far I’ve made creole catfish nuggets out of the stomach fillets. The other night I cooked up another bag of the fillets by simmering the fish in coconut milk. It was soooo good. Anything simmered in coconut milk always turns out well, right? This Catfish Fillets In Creamy Coconut Milk Sauce is not an exception.
Creole Catfish Nuggets
My husband caught almost 60 pounds of catfish this past Friday night. It’s not just 1 fish, it’s a combination of 5 catfishes. When he got home that night, I asked if he caught any and he said he did but not worthy to keep at all. He went back outside and did whatever, then came back inside and asked me to get the scale and camera. I was all confused about the scale part.
Scaling? why?
Scale and camera..
Scaling, why?
I need the scale and camera, WOMAN! (he actually didn’t say the woman part but that would have been funny)
Ohhhh, Scale AND camera, ohhhhhhhhhh, you caught some, how many? Are they big???
Breaded Fried Pork Chops W/ Caramelized Onions
For a quick dinner last Thursday, I made breaded fried pork chops. It was the quickest and filling dinner I could make for my husband and son before they went out to go fishing. I threw in Lipton pasta and corn kernels for side dishes. Just this Monday, the husband asked for the same pork chops so I happily obliged. I love pork anytime of the day and week so who am I to complain? To add a little bit of twist to the pork chops, I decided to make caramelized onions too. To complete the meal, I added steamed asparagus and Italian bread for side dishes.
Baked Orange-Lemon Garlic Chicken
Technically, we have oranges in the house(along with grapes, apples, bananas, and watermelon) because my husband needed the mesh bag that holds the oranges. While going through the pictures of custard cake the other day, I realized that the bowl of oranges is quite prominent in some of the pictures. I thought about how delicious it would be to make orange flavored custard cake too. But I know I probably need to take a break from making another dessert for at least a week. Cooking with oranges is still something I wanted to do though so I decided to use 1 orange for a chicken marinade.
A very simple marinade involving citrus, soy sauce, and fresh garlic. That combination is such a really good marinade that could go with either pork, chicken, or beef. And here comes Baked Orange-Lemon Garlic Chicken.
Fried Rice W/ Smoked Sausage & Cilantro
To make the fried rice as good as the ones from your favorite Asian restaurants the trick is to cook the rice the night before. Line foil on top of a cookie sheet. Spread the cooked rice on the pan, breaking the chunks of cooked rice as much as you can. Then store the pan of rice inside the fridge to cool down overnight.
Chicken Sinigang
It’s raining right now and I’ve suddenly had the craving for sinigang aka sour soup. I remembered the chicken sinigang I made weeks ago that I’ve been meaning to write about here but it’s just too simple I figured it’ll just be taking space. However, I like to build up my foodblog archives so I might as well. When I make sinigang, I usually use pork but it’s just as delicious to make it with chicken or beef short ribs. Since I love pork-anything, I prefer the pork sinigang. I didn’t have pork when I made this so I used chicken instead. It was good nonetheless. I believe chicken just takes a little faster to cook than pork.
Leftover Chicken, Salsa, & Green Onions Quesadilla
Besides fried rice, soup, or frittata, quesadilla is what I make to use up leftover meats. Just chopped up the meat, tomatoes, and green onions, then throw ‘em on top of a flour tortilla, then bind everything together with shredded cheese on top, and another flour tortilla to finish it. In this quesadilla, I used the leftover southwestern chicken and salsa instead of fresh tomatoes. This is perfect for quick lunch or those weekend munchies with the family. It’s quite easy so let me show you how.
Shrimp Scampi W/ Fettuccini
What exactly is a Scampi? According to Seaffod Experts website;
Scampi is a type of lobster and is one of the world’s finest delicacies. There are, however, other species frequently referred to as scampi. For example, in the Midwest region of the US freshwater shrimp (Macrobrachium Rosenbergii) are referred to as scampi. So again, what exactly is scampi?
Is scampi a crawfish? Is scampi a crayfish? No, scampi are small clawed lobsters that unfortunately look a little bit like a crawfish. But they definitely shouldn’t be confused with the freshwater crawfish, which is primarily from the Gulf of Mexico and China. Crayfish is another name used for spiny lobster, and if that’s not confusing enough, in the southern US crawfish is called crayfish!.
“Scampi” is actually the tail of the “Nephrops Norvegicus” which is more commonly known as the Norway Lobster, Dublin Bay Prawn (although its not a prawn!) or langoustine. According to Wikipedia, the Nephrops Norvegicus is an orange pink lobster that grows up to 25cm in length and is typically found in the North East Atlantic, the North Sea and parts of the Med.
In short, Scampi is not how the dish is cooked, it’s actually a small clawed lobster that looks like a crayfish. But I bet you when you hear the word scampi you’d think of shrimps cooked in butter, white wine, lemon juice, with some sort of pasta, either spaghetti, linguine, or fettuccini noodles. Now that you know what a Scampi really is coz it certainly doesn’t hurt to know food trivia sometimes, let’s cook shrimp scampi with fettuccini coz that’s what we’re familiar with.
Hubby’s Surf & Turf Dinner And Tres Leches Cake
Hubby’s birthday is not until the 20th but we had his birthday dinner and cake today. He’s got work and school on that day so he won’t be home util about 9pm. The day after that is his day off but he still has school at 6pm. I don’t want to be cooking dinner for lunch. Besides, Caine would still be at school by that time. He suggested last night to just do it today so today it is. He told me a week ago to do a surf and turf dinner so I made steak and crab legs with broiled potatoes and sauteed asparagus.
