Tag: Filipino recipe

Ginataang Sitaw at Kalabasa (Green beans & Squash With Coconut Milk)

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Ginataang sitaw at kalabasa with fried fish, photo by Mae Mercado-Sanguer

Ginataang Sitaw at Kalabasa (Green beans & Squash With Coconut Milk)

I am very partial to recipes that call for coconut milk.  It makes the dish creamy and rich tasting.  Just love it.

I urge you to try this recipe as it is really something.

This recipe uses meat.  Another recipe we have uses shrimps, which is equally good.

Ingredients:

  • 1 small or 1/2 a squash or pumpkin, peeled, deseeded and cubed
  • 200g string beans (green beans), cut into about 1½ to 2 inches lengths.
  • 100 g pork, cut into bite-size pieces.
  • 1½ cups water
  • 2 cups coconut milk
  • 5 cloves garlic, chopped or minced finely
  • 1/4 cup shrimp paste (bagoong na alamang) or 1¼ tbsp fish sauce
  • 1 onion, peeled and sliced thinly
  • 1½tbsp vegetable oil
  • salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.

Preparation:

  • Heat the oil in a wok or large frying pan.
  • Sauté the garlic and onion.
  • Add the pork and stir-fry until golden all over.
  • Stir in the shrimp paste, if using.
  • Pour in the water, bring to a boil, reduce the heat and leave to simmer until most of the liquid had evaporated and the meat had softened.
  • Drop in the squash and string beans.
  • If not using shrimp paste, then add the fish sauce.
  • Pour in the coconut milk and continue to stir well until it begins to boil.
  • Adjust the seasoning by adding salt and black pepper according to your taste.

Delicious served with freshly boiled rice and any leftover is fantastic as breakfast with some fried rice.

Sinangag (Garlic Fried Rice Filipino Style)

Food Blog & Review

Sinangag, Photo by JMorton

Sinangag Breakfast , Photo by JMorton

Sinangag (Garlic Fried Rice Filipino Style)

Filipino fried rice called sinangag is the easiest fried rice recipe to do.

It is so tasty because of the addition of fragrant garlic.  It gets even tastier if the oil you fry it in was from the oil you fried your meat of dried fish in as it absorbed all the tasty residue of the meat or fish.

Fried rice are better cooked from left-over rice or at least rice that has been cooked a day or night before.  A day old rice has a a better texture as it had ‘dried’ up as it sits on the fridge.  A fried rice from a freshly boiled rice tend to yield a rather soggy mess.

Sinangag cannot be simpler.  It can just be from left-over rice, onion and garlic.  This is because it is often eaten with separately cooked friend eggs, salted eggs, hot-dog sausages or the best there is – tuyo or danggit.  (See above photo.)  All washed down with a hot strong milky coffee.

Ingredients:

2 cups leftover rice, even out the clumps

4-6 garlic, peeled and chopped or minced finely

1/2 onion, chopped finely

salt & pepper to taste

1 tbsp cooking oil

Procedure:

Heat the oil using a wok or a large frying pan over medium to high heat.

Fry the garlic, then quickly add the onion.  Stir-fry until fragrant.

Add the rice.  Fry vigorously until the grains absorbed all the oil giving off a fragrant breakfasty aroma. 🙂

Serve immediately with any of your favourite meaty or fishy breakfast.

Enjoy!

 

Steamed Sea Bass

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Steamed Sea Bass, photo by Arnold Gamboa

Steamed Sea Bass

This recipe is everything.  It is healthy and it is delicious.

Ingredients:

  • sea bass, scaled and gutted (ask the fishmonger to do this if possible)
  • 250g cherry tomatoes
  • 20g fresh ginger, cut into thin strands
  • 1 medium onion, peeled and finely sliced
  • 300g (ml) hot water
  • 1tbsp light soy
  • 1tsp shaoxing wine vinegar
  • 1tsp fish sauce
  • 1 stalk Spring onion, slice finely on a diagonal
  • 1 red birds eye chilli, chopped
  • 2 clove garlic, sliced finely

Method of preparation:

The process of steaming your fish is entirely up to you.  It can be done using a large bamboo steamer that would fit the wok and then heat over your stove.

Otherwise, use a large roasting tin with rack; preheat the oven to 180C.

Score 3 or 4 lines across the skin of the sea bass at both sides.

If you are using a roasting tin like the one opposite, flip the rack to give height to it.  Then lightly cover the rack with a bit of aluminium foil so that the vegetables won’t fall onto the roasting tin beneath it.  As much as possible use a roasting tin which would fit the whole sea bass.

Stuff the belly of the fish with some ginger and a bit of onion.

First arrange the tomatoes all over the rack, add the in the rest of the vegetables over the tomatoes.  And then carefully put the fish of top of the vegetables.

Now season the hot water with soy sauce, Shaoxing wine vinegar (or rice wine vinegar) and fish sauce. Stir in the chopped garlic as well.

Pour this stock directly into the roasting tray. Cover the whole tray tightly with foil – ensuring to enclose the entirety of the fish and no steam will escape. Cook for 25 minutes. Remove from the oven and take the foil off (to prevent it cooking further).

Carefully transfer the whole delicate fish into a serving plate and arrange the vegetable around it.  Then spoon in the delicious stock over the fish.

To garnish with the spring onions and chilli.

Served with rice and freshly perhaps a salad of blanched bok choy!

Ginataang Kalabasa At Sitaw (Squash & String Beans in Coconut Milk)

Chicken

Ginataang Kalabasa at Sitaw, photo by Rosie Reyes- Barrera

Ginataang Kalabasa At Sitaw (Squash & String Beans in Coconut Milk)

If there was a comfort food, this was it (for me anyway!)

I love this recipe with such a passion.  This is real Filipino home-cooking at its best, again for me anyway! 🙂

I think squash was made to be cooked in coconut milk.  A marriage made in a hot-wok-heaven!  Before I go on to more and more overblown pontification, here is a basic recipe for this delicious dish.

Ingredients:

1 small or 1/2 a squash or pumpkin, peeled, deseeded and cubed

200g string beans (green beans), cut into about 1½ to 2 inches lengths.

1 cup shrimps, shelled and deveined (boil the shells & heads to flavour a cup of water to make a shrimp juice)

1 cup shrimp juice (or just plain water)

2 cups coconut milk

5 cloves garlic, chopped or minced finely

1/4 cup shrimp paste (bagoong na alamang) or 1¼ tbsp fish sauce

1 onion, peeled and sliced thinly

1 cup malunggay leaves of spinach (optional)

1½tbsp vegetable oil

salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.

Preparation:

  • Heat the oil in a wok or large frying pan.
  • Sauté the garlic  and onion.
  • Add the the shrimps.
  • Stir in the shrimp paste, if using.
  • Pour in the shrimp juice or cup of water
  • Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and allow to simmer.
  • Drop in the squash and string beans.
  • Pour in the coconut milk and continue to stir well until it begins to boil.
  • Adjust the seasoning by adding salt and black pepper.
  • Finally add the malunggay or spinach and continue cooking for a couple of minutes more. (optional)

Serve hot with lots of freshly boiled rice.

Enjoy!

TIP:  Instead of shrimps, you can add sauteed pork instead.

Tinolang Lapu-lapu (Grouper Fish Tinola)

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Fish Dish (Fish Recipe)
Filipino Recipe

Tinolang Lapu-lapu, photo by Carol Elep

Tinolang Lapu-lapu (Grouper Fish Tinola)

The Philippines is an archipelago, a cluster of islands surrounded by water and as such, fishing is a major source of living and fish is one of the staple food of the country.

The Filipinos, therefore, have an extensive recipes cook and preserve these lovely fresh delicious fish; many are naive to the country, passed down from generation to the next, some are adapted from international recipes and gave them its own distinct Filipino flavour, and plenty more made up from growing amount of available ingredients in the market.

Tinolang Lapu-lapu is a really nourishing dish.  It is an all-round season recipe, can be enjoyed by all at whatever the weather.

Lapu-lapu is called grouper  fish in English.  Ask your fish monger to clean and cut the fish.

Ingredients:

1/2 kilo or just over a pound of Lapu-lapu (grouper) fish, cleaned and cut
3 stalks spring onion, cut into an inch length pieces
3 pieces lemon grass, chopped
1 inch ginger, chopped finely
1 vegetable stock cube (knorr or Oxo)
1 small marrow or 2 courgettes
6 cups water
Salt & pepper

Procedure:

Bring to a boil the cups of water in a casserole pan over high heat.

Drop in the spring onions, lemongrass, ginger and stock cube. Give it a good stir.

Turn down the heat and leave to simmer for 5 minutes.

Add in the marrow or courgettes slices and the fish, continue to simmer for 8-10 minutes in medium heat.

Season it with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Enjoy the taste of the oriental sea at its best!