Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Pinoy Food for Dinner: Tokwa't Baboy

As we were grocery shopping last Sunday, mom found a decent sized piece of pork jowl. We already had tofu in the cart, alam na. So I decided to make the tokwa't baboy for dinner today.

Ingredients:

2 blocks Tofu

Oil for frying

Pork jowls (face/snout/cheek) and/or pig ears

For the boiling/tenderizing liquid:

2 pieces Bay leaf
2 tsp      Salt
1/2 tsp   whole peppercorns
5 cloves garlic
enough water to cover the pork in the pan

For the dressing/sauce: (everything is to taste, this is my basic guideline/ratio you can adjust it anyway you want to)

5 tbsp vinegar
1 tbsp water
1 tsp   soy sauce
1/2 pc minced onion
1/2 clove minced garlic
1 1-peso sized slice of ginger
1 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp fish sauce
pepper to taste
1 pc siling labuyo (optional)

Directions:

Wash the pork jowls and/or ears over water. Put them in a pan, together with the bay leaves, salt, water, garlic and peppercorns. Boil for about 15 mins and skim the scum off, continue boiling covered on low heat for about 45 mins to an hour to ensure tenderness. Remove from liquid, and let it cool. Chop into bite sized pieces. :)

The tofu, you can cube the blocks up and fry them, (more crispy sides) or you can fry the blocks whole, and then cube them afterwards,  (like they do in lugawans). Place on a paper towel after frying to absorb extra oil. Set aside.

For the sauce, mix 'em all up. Taste, then adjust to your liking. :)

To eat: take some tofu cubes, some pork and douse with the super special simple sauce. Enjoy.

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

First frickin post... (Chocolate Chip Cookie)



...of course it needs to be about a chocolate chip cookie.

Our go-to, superrrr easy to remember recipe.


Stuff You Need:

.
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup melted unsalted butter
1 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 pc egg (room temperature)
1 pc egg yolk (room temperature)
1 1/2 cups chocolate chips 

Sooooo... How to go about in making yourself some kickass CCC. 

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. (Hirap no?) 
Mix the sugar with the butter. (Pwedeng gumamit ng mixer, o kaya mano-mano na lang.) Then add the egg and egg yolk and vanilla. (the wet stuff)


***The original recipe called for 1 C packed brown sugar and 1/2 C white sugar. That is a lot of sugar. A little too sweet for me so I changed them to 1 1/4 C brown sugar instead. Besides it's easier to just measure just 1 type of sugar. You can adjust the sugar to suit your tastebuds. Pero wag na, promise.

Mix together the flour, baking soda and salt. (the dry stuff) 


Gradually mix in the dry stuff with the wet stuff until the whole thing comes together and looks like a big whopping mound of cookie dough. Mix in the chocolate chips and then EAT! I mean put the mixture in the fridge for about an hour (to prevent them from going flat when baked). 


Scoop the dough using an ice cream scoop (for uniform sized cookies) onto a baking sheet lined with wax paper, and let 'em bake in the oven for about  13-15 minutes depending on the cookie sizes you made (the bigger/fatter the cookie the longer it takes to bake). Remove from the oven when edges start to brown a bit and let them cool completely. Orrr.... have a  cold glass of milk ready and be ready to polish off half the batch in no time. Enjoy. :)