Quarantine Cooking: Comfort Food for a Child

I don't really crave dessert for comfort, but for sure, I like salty which is not good for my hypertension. And come on, during times of stress and anxiety, it's not unusual to temporarily sate those emotions with potato chips or macaroni and cheese or hot dogs!

And really it was the hubs who opted for hot dogs as I had given the other choice of hamburgers for dinner. We also just harvested potatoes from our vegetable garden and added potato salad to that repertoire of comfort foods and baked beans for the sweetness. I also made a pitcher of black tea to have more drinking options to alcoholic drinks. I love bubble teas, but not necessarily the tapioca balls--the flavors and the sweetness. I also like to experiment and try different flavors like lavender and rose and lychee. And so with this batch of black tea, I added rose petals a friend brought me from Iran and flavored my glass of rose tea with passion fruit syrup. Oh my goodness. Life changing. Better than coca cola.

Later in the evening I wanted an alcoholic drink and made myself a Sidecar Spritzer.

And suddenly after a busy busy work week, it was Saturday morning and I wanted breakfast. Or maybe I just wanted to finally finish off the package of English muffins. I went out into the herb box and snipped up garlic chives and chives. Took out an egg.

Contemplated whether to cook a French omelette or just scrambled eggs. Poured a little cream into the egg and decided I was not gonna grate a little Swiss cheese for an omelette and would instead scramble.

And beat the egg. And remembered the bottle of $25 rose champagne a neighbor gave me and decided to drink a mimosa.

My breakfast cocktail was delicious, but oh my am I still buzzed.

Breakfast was buttery and delicious even if I did overcook my scrambled eggs a tad.

Quarantine Lunch: Vietnamese Shrimp Spring Rolls

I had defrosted too much shrimp for my Filipino pancit and decided the next day to craft shrimp spring rolls. 

One of the reasons I love East Asian cuisines from Thailand and Vietnam is the heavy use of fresh greens. I was too lazy to cook rice noodles to fill and was only too happy to ditch the carbs and load up on green leaf lettuce, basil leaves, mint leaves, and lots of cilantro.

The first time I made spring rolls was at an English colleague's home. I remember drenching the rice paper so long in hot water that it dissolved completely away. Soaking and handling the soaked rice paper is tricky. I hate any kind of hardness in my rice wrapper, but you don't want it so water logged that you can't properly roll the filling.

I outdid myself on this peanut sauce with not only the chili sauce (which negated the need for brown sugar to sweeten), but also Sriracha, fresh squeezed lime juice, a little bit of rice wine vinegar as well as coconut cream to thin and amp up the flavor.

My eyes are always bigger than my stomach. This bowl holds a lot of shrimp.

Good thing I bought rice paper in which to wrap the seafood and vegetables.

In hindsight, I wish I had chopped up the cilantro stems--I don't like to discard because they've a lot of flavor, but they were kind of stringy and difficult to chew.

My first roll. Not bad.

It's a good idea to sprinkle a bit of water on your rolling surface to keep your wrapper moist. My cutting board is white, and so my rice paper is pretty transparent and a little hard to see.

Okay I figured that to make my rolls pretty, you need to lay the shrimp down first, even though I didn't arrange them very artfully.

After I placed the shrimp on the wrapper, next came the mint leaves. Lots of mint please.

After the mint leaves, I layered cilantro. Again I should have chopped up those stems.

And over the cilantro, I layered basil leaves. I'm going on the hunt at the nurseries this summer for Asian holy basil which is spicier than Italian basil.

Last as if I could ever get enough of herbs, salad greens, in this case, green leaf lettuce.

I think this was the 4th roll I made, and now I'm noticing the edge of the wrapper and the squinched end of the roll.

My last roll. I'm getting better at it, can you tell?

To keep your cilantro going longer in your fridge, put the bunch in vase of water. Sometimes I just wrap the bunch of cilantro in a damp paper towel and then put the wrapped herbs into a plastic bag to then store in a vegetable bin.

And lunch is served. T'was delicious y'all. And my neighbor to whom I gave the other 4 rolls said she was gonna teach her niece to make these rolls.

My iced tea afterthought. Next time I am making Thai iced tea.

Quarantine Cooking: Pancit Bihon & Lumpia Shanghai

I mentioned in another post that I was hankering for the dishes my mom cooked for our family growing up. Yesterday for the very first time, I cooked Pancit Bihon. But I started first with a Mai Tai cooler--lots of ice, Malibu, dark rum, pineapple juice and pineapple chunks, and a little coconut cream. 

I've a feeling this will be my favorite slushie for summer, not too sweet but very fruity and fragrant.

With drink nearby, I cut up pork into bite-sized pieces, but I wish I had cut the meat even smaller like my mom used to. I seasoned the meat with a little Chinese vinegar, Filipino soy sauce as well as salt and pepper and garlic powder and onion powder and a bit of cayenne.

I took out pre-cooked frozen shrimp to thaw.

I had bought bok choi earlier in the day when I also had to pick up shrimp for this week's kare kare and rinsed it in the sink along with the pea shoots.

While at Ranch 99, I picked up a bottle of this sweet chili sauce to zhush the chicken lumpia I found at Safeway a month ago. I've discovered I like the vinegar and garlic and black pepper dipping sauce I grew up with for my lumpia. Now I need to figure out what else to cook with this sweet chili sauce to use it up, so maybe a Thai sweet chili chicken dish.

The instructions on the package of rice noodles called for soaking and then draining them, and so I poured hot water and then cold and let it soak until pliant. Big mistake. 

There was a lot of moisture from the vegetables and the pork and its sauce that made my noodles a big soggy and a different kind of pancit. Next time, do not soak the noodles for Pancit Bihon in order to achieve that dry fry texture of my mom's pancit. Also my neighbor, Cecilia who also grew up with pancit, said that the noodles are so thin that they easily soak up any kind of cooking liquid.

My mise en place on the top of my fire pit which I never did mosaic the top of--oh well--I'm glad I'm no longer obsessed with tile and glass and their cutters.

Years ago I brought home from the Philippines a wok, but it was so heavy and made to use directly over a flame, either gas or a stick fire. Very impractical. Instead I now keep a 12-inch cast iron, which retains heat, and so I let it heat on my electric burner for almost an hour to attain the heat of a wok.

Nope. Wok frying is akin to pizza baking in that you need super, sizzling, surrounding hot hot hot surfaces to achieve the results of quick cooking. I had to let this pork stew in fat for at least half an hour to achieve some kind of crispness. 

Asian cooking is not my forte, and so my vegetables didn't receive that quick fire stir fry texture needed for Pancit Bihon. I tried to evaporate the moisture from the meat and the vegetables. If I ever make this again, I need to figure out another method, which may merely be to not soak the rice noodles.

And I used pea shoots instead of cabbage. Another failed experiment, but at least the flavors were right for the pancit.

I went with it and tried to get my noodles as dry as possible and then forgot about the shrimp. Doh! And so I was microwaving the shrimp before nestling in the pancit. I had two hard boiled eggs in my fridge and remember fondly my mom sometimes adding them to our family noodles. The lemon slices are purely for show here, but really I should have reserved them for the dinner plate. Pancit Bihon as I remember from parties is a dish that can be served almost at room temperature and I miss the crunch and firm texture of celery and carrots in my mother's stir fried noodles though the flavor profile was there because of the garlic and black pepper.

I then put the pancit on the stove top to remain warm and then started heating oil in my smaller cast iron to fry the Lumpia Shanghai. From this frying and reading other cooking blogs, the key is not to stint on the oil and have it hot enough not to golden brown your lumpia but not so hot that it burns.

I tried to fry my Lumpia Shanghai in varying shades of mahogany to light gold. They were pretty delicious and I think everyone's favorite part of the meal.

Quarantining: Marketing and Making Do with Leftovers

I don't like to get groceries from a big box store if I can help it as I prefer to go to my favorite mom and pop produce shop or avail myself of the convenience of the grocery store close to my home. However, I received a Target gift card from my high school's parent organization, and so I stocked up on booze as well as nonperishable pantry ingredients like cake mix and pre-made frosting. And whenever I drive to Target in a neighboring city, I usually trek to Ranch 99 too. I brought home a bounty of Asian vegetables: long beans, sugar snap peas, Indian eggplants and other Asian staples like sweet chili sauce, rice noodles, Fiilpino sausage called longaniza, Thai tea, Taiwanese rose milk tea and pork. I miss this kind of shopping. On my next trek, I'll be buying seafood

I also picked up a package of oxtails to cook a Filipino peanut stew called kare kare.

But I was most excited to find pea shoots at the Asian grocery store.

These long beans are going to go into my kare kare as well as my Pancit Bihon.

But last night I needed for us to finish off the macaroni and cheese and bought pork spare ribs to be the protein main. I boiled them, slathered barbecue sauce on them, and laid them in a sheet pan with the leftover macaroni and cheese. Put it into a 225 degree oven for 40 minutes.

I also bought a head of broccoli a few days ago because I can't seem to get enough of its salad, and luckily I had 3 slices of bacon left in my fridge.

I like my bacon crispy, but there wasn't much, just enough to garnish the top. And so I didn't fold it into the broccoli salad which I put into the fridge to chill for an hour.

Success. No more macaroni and cheese and spare ribs. But a little bit of broccoli salad for a light snack.

Dessert was Irish coffee to finish off the Irish whiskey and whipped cream. 

I'm looking forward to a Memorial Day weekend of cooking memories of my Filipino American childhood.