Chicken and Pork Empanada

Folded pastry around meat and veggie stuffing is probably the most accurate definition of my true Filipino comfort food. It is among the simple gastronomic treat that immediately reconnects me with home ……… family, relatives, childhood friends and everything in between. It is an ordinary snack which every bite for me is capable of educing flashes of happy thoughts, retrieving golden memories and subsequent feeling of divine-like contentment. It could somehow serve as a mother’s tender touch or spouse’s caress that provides warmth, consolation, sense of security and peaceful refuge even when you are actually so far away from home. I am referring to the tasty stuffed bread called “empanada”. :-)

Popular in many countries of Latin America, southern part of Europe and South East Asia particularly the Philippines, empanada refers to the stuffed bread or pastry, either baked or fried, made by folding a rich buttery dough or bread patty around the stuffing. The fillings usually composed of varieties of meats, seafood, vegetables or even sweetened fruits. It can be served as a small meal, a starter before a meal, finger foods in parties, dessert after a meal in case of sweet fruits fillings, morsel while watching TV or movies or sporting events and snack at any time of the day.

There are many international variations. In Argentina, their empanadas are often served at parties and festivals. The fillings are mainly chicken or beef spiced with cumin and paprika. In Brazil, they have fried turnovers filled with seasoned ground meat, shredded chicken, cheese, seasoned ground shrimp, hearts of palm and various other fillings. In Jamaica, they have their Jamaican patty that contains various fillings and spices baked inside a flaky shell, often tinted golden yellow with an egg yolk mixture or turmeric. Puerto Rico’s “empanadilla” is a small empanada that uses flour or cassava flour dough and lard. In Spain, empanadas are often made from thin, flexible, but resilient wheat pastry. The variable filling includes tuna, sardines and chorizo in a tomato puree, garlic and onion sauce.

However, the type I will be preparing here is of course the Filipino empanada. It usually contains ground pork or beef or chicken meat or chopped shrimps, diced potato, green peas, chopped onion and raisins in sweetish-buttery dough made from wheat flour or all-purpose flour. The dough can either be doughy or flaky and plain or covered in bread crumbs. The empanada can either be baked or deep fried with the former being my preferred method as it does not involve a degree of oil accumulation to the finish product. The golden brown tasty crust without the hint of fat (from frying) complemented with the sweetish meaty fillings is such a delightful delicacy to me. :-)

Tinausiang Manok (Chicken Cooked in Salted Yellow Beans)

A colleague-friend is coming over and we want to prepare an unusual viand cum “pulutan” or bites made from chicken I have been wanting to cook for the last several days. Already tired of the usual “adobo”, “afritada”, “caldereta”, fried and even barbecued chicken, we thought of preparing a chicken version of the earthy pork dish called “tinausian”. We believe the unique flavor of the pungent-tasting and sweet-spicy-smelling “tausi” or salted/fermented soy beans would also work well with poultry, especially if complimented with the sweet-sour flavor of fresh plum tomatoes or tomato sauce.

Just as I have already prepared almost all of the required ingredients and ready to sauté, I realized I no longer have “tausi”. :) We are in Sri Lanka and the canned “tausi” that we normally use all came back home from the Philippines. Maybe it is available in any of the several Chinese or Korean stores in the Colombo capital but we are yet to find one. I can no longer back off from doing the dish so I thoroughly scoured the cupboard once again. Right there at the back, I found a familiar “Temple” can but my joy is short-lived because the label says “Salted Yellow Beans” instead of “Salted Black Beans” which refers to “tausi”.

But then I thought it might serve the purpose as well, after all, it is made from beans and also salted. A short research from the internet confirmed it is a very similar seasoning ingredient which can be used for the intended dish and thus I have a green light. I found out later that salted yellow beans, also a type of fermented beans like “tausi”, is called “tauco” in Indonesia where it is popular and commonly used in cooking chicken. With that, it seems I’m on the right track.

The fact that I will be using a different condiment in my “tinausiang manok” made the preparation even more exciting. Apart from the dish itself, the opportunity to learn new preparation using the distinct ingredient opens a new horizon to my limited culinary world; that is, granted I really have one. :-) Like “tausi”, I could imagine salted yellow beans can be applied to many braised meat and seafood dishes as well.

Kinunot na Pagi (Spicy Stingray Cooked in Coconut Milk)

Coconut milk in my food! I love it. Coconut milk and chili in my cookery! I like it. Coconut milk, chili and stingray in my meal! You eat it! But, wait a minute. Of course, I’m just kidding with the stingray. It is an astonishing animal so it is very likely that it could also make a wonderful viand. I have at least the Bicol region in the Philippines and probably the whole of Sri Lanka to support that claim. But let me put it straight; in support of WWF, I only refer to those varieties that are not endangered. Let me repeat that. Only those stingrays, and skates for that matter, which thrives in abundance and not currently threatened of extinction.

I may be both an angler and a hunter, but definitely a responsible one. I practice the ideals of nature conservation as I believe the sports I love will also perish, if I will not do my share of protecting wildlife now. I champion WWF you know. I may not have featured their noble conservation works yet but soon I will. Deep in my heart, I believe I should.

I first tasted stingray when I was in a project in Cagayan, Philippines some six years ago. Our friends from NIA in Camalaniogan town treated us to a lunch of exotic delicacies. Among them was a grilled stingray. I would say the taste was not bad but sadly it was not something that delighted my palates as well. The inherent stench or fishy smell of the flat fish was still pronounced on the cooked dish that even with the tasty and spicy soy sauce + “calamansi” dipping sauce, it failed to amuse me.

This could be the redemption of that not so exciting culinary experience as far as stingray as a food item is concerned. It has been quite a while since I last eaten a stingray and I am hopeful that after doing this dish, I will be somehow changed or transformed and will have a better perception and appreciation of stingray as a fine alternative table fare. I am referring to “kinunot na pagi” or stingray cooked in coconut milk and chilies. Being a traditional dish from the Bicol region, “kinunot” is banking on the creamy coconut milk and the spicy chili to deliver that magical taste that made the dishes “laing”, “sinanglay” and “bicol express” extremely popular.

Chami Recipe A La Lalaine - The Pride of Lucena, Quezon

When living (or working if you like) abroad, the most common inquiry you will receive from other Filipinos (“kababayan”) you will meet for the first time is the province you came from. It’s but natural of course. It is actually your first question to others as well. The question “From what province are you?” or as casually supplied in the local language “Anong probinsya ka (or mo)?” is the usual start of a usually warm conversation. You may be wondering why I have to mention this when the question is so ordinary, rather insignificant and probably won’t even require some brain processing to know the answer. Well, to most Filipinos it is, but to me it is something that always makes me think and smile.

Most of my childhood friends knew me as a full-blooded “Batangueno”, having spent most of my childhood days and critical formative years in Padre Garcia, Batangas where my father, 5 of my siblings and most of our relatives (from my father’s side) were born. My other friends whom I met during and after college and at the time I’m already working regard me as a true “Tarlaqueno”, having continuously live in Tarlac City, Tarlac with the whole family since I was a 6th grader. But that’s not all. My birth certificate has an important bit of information that will add more to that. I was born in San Antonio, Quezon, the town of my mother, her siblings and most of our relatives from her side making me a legitimate “Quezonian”.

Going back to the question “What province I came from?”, I bet you now have an idea why such a simple query would switch my brain into work mode and almost subsequently elicits a smile on my face. Yes, it may be a little complicated, but I came from all of the above. You could envy me for this. I consider myself as an amalgamation of several groups of awesome people; a Quezonian, a Batangueno and a Tarlaqueno all at the same time. I hailed from three great provinces, all of which I am truly proud of.

Orange Cake, Easy and Zesty

I love oranges. I really do! Like “ponkan” (a type of tangerine almost the size and color of an orange), apple and banana, orange is among the regular fruits I eat to curtail off food cravings during late nights when I have to stay awake either writing, blogging, watching movies or browsing the internet. I can consume lots of it just before going to bed and not have the feeling of guilt or being bloated. For this reason, I maintain a good stock of orange (or “ponkan” if available) inside the fridge which I regularly replenish every Saturday.

This practice of keeping a steady stock of orange in our home became very handy one day when I needed and wanted to bake a cake. While I would usually prepare either banana cake or carrot cake during such a time, the absence of banana and carrots from our pantry that day forced me (in a good way) to look at and consider the other ingredients at hand which happen to be orange and apple. I settled for orange and it proved to be a wise decision. The orange cake, unlike chocolate cake, was quite easy to prepare and was also zesty and tasty.

Basically, orange cake is just a common pound cake added with some orange juice and flavored with its zest. Although it can be served without any frosting or just sprinkled with icing sugar, I prefer it with some light frosting simply made by dissolving confectioner’s sugar in some orange juice. It adds zing to the taste and at the same time retains the cake moist for several days. Amazingly, orange can really be used to make a truly exciting cake.

Sweet orange which refers to the citrus variety called “Citrus sinensis” is the most commonly grown tree fruit in the world. While it is reported to have probably originated in Southeast Asia (this makes me wonder how come it is not commercially grown in the Philippines?) and first cultivated in China (2500 BC). Brazil, USA (Florida), India and Mexico are now the top growers of the tree for its delicious fruit, either to be eaten as a whole or to be processed as juice.

Chicharon Bituka (Crackling Intestines) for April Kulinarya Challenge

For a person who’s in serious diet, decadence could mean indulging in foods not in line or in total contrast with the diet program. Most often the foods involve are those excessively sweet, heavy on carbohydrates and overly laden with fats and/or calories. Since I am not so much into sweet foods, like banana cake, chocolate cake, carrot cake, no-bake or refrigerated cake, “ube halaya”, “maja blanca” and “minatamis na saging” (no … not really, I just like to make them :)), decadence to me is feasting on salty and oily foods like “crispy pata” (the all-time favorite), “crispy ulo” (unsightly but goodie), “rebosadong taba” (gush, I have to make this again soon) and as recently featured here “chicharon bulaklak” (the ultimate in crisp). The mere thought of these fatty but utterly tasty foods made me slobber and feel seemingly a pound heavier. :-)

In response to this month’s (April 2011) Kulinarya Challenge under the theme DECADENCE (I really like this term, for some reasons it sounds good and feels good), I thought of adding another sinful dish similar to the deep fried meats (or fats) above but this time using the equally challenging intestines of a swine or a bovine. Okay this maybe a bit unusual for non-Filipinos and definitely not for the squeamish as it involves part of the offal or internal organs of an animal used as food. While I usually use such intestines in “dinuguan” or blood stew, this is also good cooked as “chicharon”, either as a viand or side dish in a main meal, as a snack eaten in between meals, or as “pulutan” or bites munched over a bottle of beer.

Unlike the ordinary “chicharon” made from pork rind, I find “chicharon bituka” particularly fatty, salty and if store-bought, excessively seasoned with MSG. That’s on top of the fact that it is made from internal organ which has a high concentration of cholesterol. Thus, I consider it decadent to indulge with. But like most Filipino (and some Filipina too), I would still crave for it whenever I see some or even just hear someone talking about it. It is among the wicked Filipino foods that once you get used to are quite difficult to avoid or remove from the diet …… sort of kicking a vice.

Ginisang Alimasag sa Patola at Miswa (Sauteed Blue Crabs with Gourds & Noodles)

It has been a while since I last posted something on the delectable blue crabs or sea crabs or to be precise the blue swimming crabs of Asia known as “alimasag” in the Philippines. While we usually have them for our Saturday seafood dinner, we always cook them steamed, an easy crab recipe which I have already featured here, so there is no special reason for me to do a re-posting. As suggested by a colleague-friend, this weekend it’s different. Instead of just steaming the blue manna crabs, we agreed to sauté them with ridge gourds and wheat flour noodles.

Since I have already provided some information about the blue swimming crabs in my previous posts where I cooked them, steamed, “ginataan” or cooked in coconut milk, “torta” or fried like frittata and a very similar type of preparation sautéed with “sotanghon” or glass noodles, I will just share some background facts about the other two major components of this tasty dish – the ridge gourd and the “miswa” or wheat flour noodles.

Gourd or “patola” as called in the Philippine language belongs to the tropical and subtropical vines comprising the genus “Luffa”. The fruit of at least two species and typically called “luffa” or “loofah” or “lufah” is grown and harvested while still young and tender (before maturity) and eaten as green vegetable. The type I will use here is called ridge gourd and the other type (among the two species) is the smooth or cylindrical variety.

While it can only be cooked and incorporated into various dishes while still young, gourds are also allowed to ripe and dry when then it can be made into the popular plant sponge called “loofah”. It can be obtained after processing where everything but the network of fibers called xylem is removed. It is then marketed and used as bath and kitchen sponges. Due to its inherent natural properties, it is widely patronized as a hand and body scrub.