Recipe 108: Beef Steak or Mutton Steak?

Mutton Steak

One of the dishes that I really missed nowadays is the yummy beef steak. Since my father died 7 years ago, I never had the chance to enjoy again the taste of this viand. Once in a while, when I was still in my home country few years passed, I have eaten several varieties of beef steak from the typical fast food chains or well-known restaurants but what I really missed is the distinctive beef steak my father used to cook and serve in our table. One time, I decided to give it a try and cook the typical beef steak for our dinner. Since beef is hardly ever available in our area where we stay right now, I have substituted beef from mutton as the basic meat component of the steak. So in short, it turned out; it was not really a beef steak but a mutton steak. Anyway, these two livestock meats look almost the same (both are red meats) and taste nearly equally. The only usual consideration I thought of in making this kind of dish is that it requires generous time of preparation. Since, my housemates and I usually purchase the meat as frozen (we could not avail fresh beef/mutton meat from the market), the frozen meat is usually soaked in water first for several minutes or few hours or until it softens then is sliced considerably thin and long. Hence one needs a really, really sharp knife in slicing the meat. So that’s it. This is how to cook a beef or mutton steak. It’s up to you which do you prefer.

Ingredients:

1kg Beef or Mutton

Potatoes (cut into medium sized squares)
Carrots (sliced into long pieces)
2 pc. Onion (one is sliced into ring-like and the other one into small pieces)
Cloves of Garlic (minced)
Soy Sauce
2 pc. Lemon or 2 tsp of White Vinegar
1 pc Ginger (sliced into thin and long pieces)
Cooking oil
Flour or Corn Starch dissolved in considerable amount of warm water until thickens
Ground Black Pepper

How to cook:

      Preparation (Marinade):

1. Slice the meat into considerably thin and medium or long pieces. Soak first the meat before slicing the meat in lukewarm water if it’s frozen. Put in an empty container or bowl and set aside. Get the ingredients; pour soy sauce together with garlic, onion (sliced into squares only), ginger, ground pepper, and lemon (and/or vinegar) into the bowl. Mix well then marinate for at least 30 minutes.
   
   Cooking Time:
2. In a pan, heat cooking oil. Drain first the meat and put it into the pan and fry in a very high heat until meat is cook thoroughly. It is advisable not to overcook the meat because it will become hard to chew. 
3. Once done, place meat in a serving plate then set aside until all meat is cooked. Put in the ring-like sliced onion in the remaining oil until it turns transparent.
4.  Put it on top of the beef once done. Pour the remaining marinade into the pan. Heat for few minutes. Put considerable amount of dissolved flour/corn starch and mix thoroughly. The more amount of the dissolved flour you add into the marinade, the thicker the sauce. Season to taste.
5.  Once done, pour the sauce over the meat and onions and serve.

Of course, the outcome never came up exactly the same taste as with my father's output , but I think it looks like almost the same as with his. As i have written in some of my posts about dishes, my father is always been my inspiration why I am doing this stuff, why I basically like cooking, and why I continue doing such this. It is because, whenever I do cooking, i remember my father.

Enjoy your meal!

Recipe 107: Fish Sweet and Sour

Usually, I do this dish once we have generous amount of left-over fried fish from our previous meals. The fish is usually a King Fish type, which is one of the very familiar in Qatar fish market. Unlike other kinds of fish, this one tastes good only once newly fried because if several hours passed King Fish typically hardens and losses its crispiness. So that the left over will not be put into waste, it is better for me to resort to another good menu – the sweet and sour using the left-over fried fish.

This one might be very far from the typical sweet and sour you have tasted in your fave restaurants but this too tastes very acceptable. I have been doing this for several times and so far I am satisfied to this dish.

Ingredients:

Left-over king fish: shred into considerable sizes

1 carrot: sliced into thin pieces

1 green bell pepper: sliced into thin pieces

Ginger: sliced into thin pieces

Cloves of garlic

1 pc Onion: sliced into ring size

2 pinch of Ground black pepper

Tomato paste 250 mg

1 tbsp of Sugar

1 tbsp of white vinegar

Considerable amount of flour dissolved in cold water (for thickening the sauce)

Fried Fish

Fried Fish with Sweet and Sour Sauce

   

How to cook:

1.       Refried the fish in the pan (to make it crispy again). Then place it in a separate plate.

2.       Heat another pan. Put cooking oil into the pan and sauté onion, garlic, and ginger until fragrant.

3.       Add the carrots until it turns tender then add the bell pepper.

4.       Pour a substantial amount of water and let it simmer for few minutes. Then add the tomato paste, white vinegar, sugar, ground pepper, and the dissolve flour. Mixed.

5.       Add the pineapple chunks (excluding the syrup) and season to taste.

6.       Pour the sauce into the plate with fish.

7.       Serve hot with rice.

       Enjoy your meal!

Recipe 106: Chicken in Chilis and Bagoong (Bicol Express – Inspired Menu)

Here’s another treat for anyone who loves Bicol Express but couldn’t find any pork meat in this desert state. Qatar has permitted sole merchant the selling of pork products to non-Muslim people only but still it is very costly and regulated with very limited supply. However, other gulf countries especially the Kingdom of Saudi, pork are seriously a no-no. So to lessen one’s craving from Bicol Express (Bicolano dish cooked out of pork meat cut into small pieces and mixed with bagoong and chilis), I substituted chicken meat from pork which is as good as the original one. This dish does only need few ingredients which are highly available in the market and this is very easy to cook.

Ingredients:

Half kg Chicken: cut into small pieces

Chilis: either green or red – cut into considerable length

3-4 tsp of Bagoong (Salted Shrimp Fry)

Cloves of garlic: sliced into small pieces

1 onion: sliced into small pieces

Ground Pepper

Ample amount of cooking oil

Pineapple chunks in syrup (Optional)

How to cook:

1.      Heat oil in a pan.  

2.      Add onion and garlic and stir fry until onions look translucent.

3.      Put chicken meat; stir from time to time, until the meat becomes brownish and soft.

4.      Add bagoong, chilis, and ground pepper. Mixed. Cook for 2 minutes.

5.      Separate pineapple chunks from the syrup and add into the pan and mix.

6.      Serve hot.

(Pineapple is added to give extra taste to the dish but this one makes the dish spoil hasty if left in under a room temperature. So it's better to put this inside the fridge after your meal and if you want to save it for the next meal.)

Recipe 105: Pininyahang Manok (Pineapple Chicken)

Here in Middle East, chicken meat is found anywhere in the market. In short, it is always available. Obviously, no pork meat (recently, the Qatar government allowed one retailer only to sale pork for those non-Muslim consumers but it is still costly). I know, most OFWs don’t have spare time for cooking, they do cook their food only once in a day which is good for breakfast, lunch and dinner already. The typical menus are Chicken Adobo for Monday, Chicken Menudo for Tuesday, Fried Chicken for Wednesday and so forth. And so am I. I am also guilty of that. But let me share to you this easy-to-prepare-chicken-dish that may add to your weekly menu.

Pininyahang Manok (Pineapple Chicken)

Ingredients:

1 kilo chicken, cut into serving pieces
1 can 250g pineapple chunks in syrup
2 green bell pepper, cut into cubes
1 carrots, cut into cubes
2 potatoes, cut into cubes
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 ginger, sliced to thin pieces
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon fish sauce or salt
ground pepper
3 tablespoons cooking oil or butter

How to cook:

1. Put salt and pepper to the chicken meat. Marinate it in pineapple juice for at least 30 minutes. Drain and set aside the marinade.
2. In a pan, heat cooking oil and fry potatoes and carrots until it turns light brown. Drain and set aside.
3. In the same pan, saute onion, garlic and ginger until fragrant.
4. Add the chicken meat; continue sauteing until it turns golden brown.
5. Add soy sauce, fish sauce, salt and stir occasionally.
6. Put in the marinade and simmer for few minutes or until chicken is almost tender.
7. Add pineapple chunks and sugar, simmer for another few minutes.
8. Add carrots, potatoes and bell pepper, simmer until vegetables are tender. 
9. Season to taste.

Recipe 104: Ground Beef (Giniling na Baka)

This is one of my personal favorites when I was a kid. I really loved eating this one especially when my father served this in our table. This is one of the easiest Filipino dishes to prepare. However, it was a disaster when I first tried to cook this one when I was a college student then. Basically, I learned cooking because of my father. Usually, once I cook, I tried to imitate my father’s recipes. Looking back when I was staying with my friends in a boarding house and I was trying to cook Pork Giniling for lunch for the first time. I remembered my papa was accustomed to use achiote seeds to make the food red so instead of using tomato paste I used the achiote seeds. However, it turned out to be a complete disaster because I poured the achiote seeds directly into the pan instead of dipping it first into a cup of water (then the water is the one added to the pan excluding the achiote seeds). In short, we never enjoyed our lunch because we have to remove the seeds in our mouth from time to time while we were munching the food. Epic fail! LOL


So instead of achiote seeds I used tomato paste in this recipe because the paste adds more thick, more reddish, and more taste to the sauce.  Plus you won't have the same mistake as i did before :) 

Giniling na Baka (Ground Beef)

Ingredients:

400 mg ground beef

Cooking oil

1 red onion, chopped

3 garlic cloves, minced

2 tomatoes, chopped and sliced

1 carrot, peeled and diced

1 potato, peeled and diced

1/2 c. frozen green peas

1 green bell pepper, seeded and diced

Black raisins

3 green chilis

1 tsp. fish sauce

Tomato paste

Salt and ground pepper

How to Cook:

1.  Heat oil in a pan.  

2.  Add onion and garlic and stir fry until onions look translucent.

3.  Add ground beef and cook until the meat becomes brownish.

4.  Add tomatoes and cook until tomatoes are mashed with the meat.

5.  Add the carrots, potatoes, green peas, bell pepper and raisin and stir well. Cover for ample minutes until peas, carrots and potatoes are tender.

6.  Add the tomato paste. (If you want to make the sauce more reddish and thicker, put more tomato paste. Add an ample amount water if it dries up).

7.  Season with fish sauce, salt and pepper to taste. Cover and simmer for 2 minutes and serve.

In the Middle East, since it’s quite hard to look for fresh vegetables in the market, you can buy packed frozen mixed vegetables instead. The packed mixed vegetables include green peas and carrots. So this may save you time for preparing the ingredients. This recipe is good for 3-4 persons.

Enjoy your meal!!

Recipe 103: Chicharong Manok (Chicken Cracklings)

One of the good things of staying in the accommodation provided by my company, though I hate it when the place was first introduced to us, is the unlimited source of fresh chicken skins. In the accommodation we are only three Filipinos, my co-site nurse and an agricultural engineer, out of hundreds of our company’s manpower mostly of Indian, Nepalese, and Syrians. Here in the Middle East, every Friday is considered as the weekend or the rest day from work. Hence as a treat, the mess hall (where the workers take their food) served them special biryani rice with fried chicken wherein the chicken skin is taken out before cooking/frying. Imagine how many would it be if hundreds of chicken skins were taken out? Last week we started asking for the skins and they handed us a plastic bag full of chicken skins! In short, we have unlimited source for making this crispy chicharon manok.

Here’s how I make this kind of cracklings:

1.       Clean the skin with water and drain.

2.       Add a considerable amount of vinegar, salt and crashed black pepper. Mix.

3.       Heat a pan with oil and deep fry the chicken skins until golden brown.

4.       Serve with or without garlic-vinegar dip.

Chicharong Manok

Personally I really like this one as a finger food during drinking (inuman) sessions because once I started eating this one, I felt like I never stops ;) But just a reminder, this is high cholesterol food so take in cautiously and moderately for those with high BP’s. Enjoy!

Recipe 102: Mixed Vegetables with Chicken Liver

 

Mixed vegetables w/ Chicken Liver

One of the best dishes I love to eat is chopsuey. But since here in Qatar where I stay is too far from the supermarkets were most of the vegetables are available, I have to make some variation to the original chopsuey menu. I often make this kind of dish if I am already fed up of meat foods.

The vegetables I used in this particular recipe are the ones only available in the market where I buy the stuffs. The veggies may seem incomplete as compared to chopsuey but the result is so satisfying.

Ingredients:

Chicken Liver

Cabbage – cut into medium size squares

Green String Beans – cut into considerable length

Carrots – cut into pieces

Green Bell Pepper – cut into squares

Green Chili

Snow Peas

Onion - minced

Garlic – cut into pieces

Salt and Pepper

Fish Sauce

How to Cook:

1.  Sauté onion and garlic in a pan for few minutes.

2.  Place in chicken liver and fry until the chicken liver oil comes out and the liver is cooked.

3.  Add the carrots and simmer for few minutes. Then add bell pepper, snow peas, chili, and string beans at once. Season with fish sauce, salt and pepper. Mix from time to time (Put little amount of water if it dries).

4.  Put in the cabbage and simmer for another few minutes until cabbage is coked (fyi: cabbage is usually placed last because it is easily cooked unlike the other ingredients).

5.  Serve hot with fried or plain rice.

Enjoy your Mixed Vegetables with Chicken Liver!!!

Recipe 101 : Ginataang Papaya

Ginataang Papaya topped with green Chili

One of the things I love to do is eating cooking. I guess this kind of interest might be rooted because of my father. When my father was still alive, he knew how to cook lot of dishes and through the years of serving meals for his kids, I used to learn his recipes and style. This is the soul of my love to cooking; whenever I cook, I remember him as well.

Anyways, I am a native of Bicol so we used to cook almost any vegetables in coconut milk or in ‘Gata’. This one is called ‘Ginataang Papaya’ mixed with dried fish. Actually, you can substitute sardines, pork or chicken meat, leftover fried fish, or shrimps instead of dried fish. It does really depend upon your choice. This is just very easy and here’s how to do it:

Ingredients (Middle East Version):

1 Green Papaya (medium size) – peeled and cut into serving pieces

Coconut Powder (since it’s uncommon to find fresh coco milk here in the Mideast you may use the powder one) – dissolved in a 300-500ml of warm water until thick

Dried Fish – or any meat substitute

3-4 Cloves of Garlic - minced

1 Onion – cut in pieces

Pepper

Salt

1 tsp Bagoong (Optional)

2-3 Green Chili (Optional)

How to Cook:

1.  In a pan, pour the coconut milk. Add garlic, onion, dried fish, bagoong, and bring to boil.

2.  Put in the papaya.

3.  Season it with pepper and salt. Place in chili. Simmer over medium heat until papaya is slightly soft and the milk thickens.

4.  Serve hot with plain rice and fried fish.

Enjoy your Ginataang Papaya!!!

This recipe is good for 3-4 persons already. Next time, I will post another menu I usually cooked here in Qatar.

Note: if you want a much thicker sauce (milk), dissolve a separate coco powder in 100ml warm water and add this one once the papaya is soft. Then simmer for another few minutes.