KULINARYA COOKING CLUB JANUARY 2012--HEALTHY BIRTHDAY DISH

Our hosts for this month, Pearl of My Sassy Chef and Thea of Words and Nosh gave us an excellent theme to start the year for Kulinarya Cooking Club. They decided to let us make a dish that we would like to have on our birthday and give it a healthy twist. I will be turning 40(!) on my birthday this year and I wanted something that is definitely over the top and not my usual favorites. I couldn't decide which one I liked best until I had a brilliant idea to combine two--Caldereta and Paella!

I used lamb for my caldereta and brown/black rice for the paella to make it healthier...

CALDERETA

1/2 kilo Lamb Cubes, trimmed of fat

6 cloves Garlic, peeled and crushed

1/4 cup White Wine

2 Tablespoons Lauric Oil (Coconut Oil)

1 medium Onion, peeled and minced

1 medium Carrot, peeled and cut into medium dice

1 Red Bellpepper, sliced into strips

250 grams Tomato Sauce

1 liter Chicken Stock

200 grams Baby Potatoes, washed (do not peel)

100 grams Green Olives, drained

1/4 cup Green Peas (frozen)

50 grams Edam Cheese (Quezo de Bola), grated

Salt and Pepper, to taste

Directions:

Marinate lamb cubes in garlic and wine for 1-3 hours. Preheat pot with oil, add minced onions and lamb cubes, cook until lamb pieces are golden. Set aside the lamb on a plate, in the same pan add the carrots and bellpeppers saute for 3 minutes and add back the meat. Pour in the tomato sauce and the chicken stock. Cook until lamb is tender about 45 minutes to 1 hour. When lamb is almost done, add the potatoes and cook for a further 10 minutes. When potatoes are tender, add the olives and grated edam cheese, season with salt and pepper. Cook until sauce is reduced and thickened.

PAELLA:

1/4 cup Lauric Oil (Coconut Oil)

1 clove Garlic, peeled and sliced thinly

1/2 medium Onion, peeled and minced

4 parts Rice

8 parts Chicken Stock

Saffron

*Notice that I didn't specify the measuring unit I used for the rice and the stock, but this formula works the best for me and is perfect for my 14" paellera.

Boil chicken stock with Saffron, simultaneously preheat the paellera with oil and saute garlic and onion. Add the rice and stir it until rice grains are coated with oil. Pour all the cooked caldereta in the pan, stir until rice is coated with caldereta sauce and pour in the boiling stock. Cover with foil and allow to boil from 15-20 minutes until rice is done.

*You will need 2 burners going, and both are turned up high. This ensures that the paella is cooked in 20 minutes or less.

And there you have it, Lamb Caldereta Paella to celebrate my big 4-0! Thank you Pearl and Thea for the year 2012's first Kulinarya Cooking Club theme.
Kulinarya was started by a group of Filipino foodies (Kath, Trisha and Trissa) living in Sydney, who are passionate about Filipino culture and its colorful cuisine. Each month we will showcase a new dish. By sharing these recipes, we hope you find the same passion and love for Filipino food as we do.If you’re interested in joining our Kulinarya Cooking Club, please visit http://au.groups.yahoo.com/group/kulinarya/, and please feel free to check out and follow our members' blogs. You don't have to have a blog to join -- everyone is welcome.

TAMALES (Filipino Version)

I've just finished the Daring Cooks' January 2012 challenge which was Mexican Tamales, finding ingredients for which was a challenge in itself. Aside from the filling, I don't think I'd be making it again.
Here in the Philippines, we have our own version of Tamales which uses toasted rice flour. Much like the Mexican Tamales, it is also wrapped, steamed and encases a filling. My sister and I were thinking that it was highly possible before the advent of sliced bread and zip lock, this was how they made lunch-to-go in our great-grandparents' time :)

When I was a little girl, I remember eating Tamales and not liking it but when I grew up and developed a more (hopefully) discriminating palette, I rediscovered and liked it. It wasn't something I thought of making myself because my mother found someone who sold delicious tamales. When my mother got sick and eventually passed away last year, I sort of forgot all about it until the aforementioned Daring Cooks' challenge this month. I looked at several recipes and found that this is the one I liked best...

TAMALES
Banana Leaves (washed, wiped and passed over fire to make them easier to fold)
3 1/2 cups Rice Flour
4 Tablespoons Peanut butter (creamy)
5 cups Coconut milk (soak freshly grated coconut in 5 cups hot water, wrap in cheesecloth and squeeze, set aside liquid)
1/2 cup Annatto water (soak annatto seeds in 1/2 cup hot water for 30 minutes, strain and set aside liquid)
Filling:
Chorizo Bilbao, sliced into rings
Hard-boiled eggs, sliced into rings
Ham and/or Bacon
(Cooked shrimps can also be used, the filling can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be)

Combine rice flour, coconut milk, sugar and peanut butter, mix well. Divide in half and cook one half over medium heat until mixture comes together and thickens, this will take about 15 minutes. Set aside. Cook the other half and mix in the annatto water, coloring the mixture and cook until it comes together and thickens like the other half. Set aside, you will have two mixtures, one is light colored and the other one is yellowish. Cut 4 inch strips of banana leaves and spread with the light colored mixture, arrange the filling and cover with the other yellowish mixture. Wrap carefully with the banana leaves and repeat until mixture and filling is used up. Steam for 40 minutes.

*I usually eat Tamales at room temperature. This keeps well in the refrigerator for about 3 days.

And there you have it, the Filipino version of Tamales!

THE DARING COOKS’ JANUARY, 2012 CHALLENGE: TAMALES

Maranda of Jolts & Jollies was our January 2012 Daring Cooks hostess with the mostess! Maranda challenged us to make traditional Mexican Tamales as our first challenge of the year!

Happy new year to the Daring Cooks! What a great way for us to start the new year..., this is the first time I will be making and tasting Mexican Tamales, it was really exciting! Some of the ingredients however were not available in my neck of the woods but I wanted to participate so bad that I went ahead and substituted. There was no tomatillos here so I used grilled tomatoes and peppers for my filling. I also couldn't find masa harina and so I dared to substitute it with cornmeal just because I didn't want to miss this challenge.

Green Chile Chicken Tamales

For filling:

1 pound (455 gram) tomatillos (can sub mild green chilies – canned or fresh)

*I used red bellpeppers and roasted them

4 – 3 inch (7½ cm) serrano chiles, stemmed and chopped (can sub jalapeno)

4 large garlic cloves, chopped

1 ½ tablespoons (22½ ml) Extra Virgin Olive Oil

2 cups (480 ml) low sodium chicken broth

*I made my own chicken stock

4 cups (960 ml) (400 gm/14 oz) cooked and shredded chicken

2/3 cup (160 ml) (30 gm/1 oz) roughly chopped fresh cilantro (also known as coriander)
For the masa dough:

1 1/3 cups (320 ml) (265 gm/9⅓ oz) lard or vegetable shortening

*I used butter

½ teaspoons (7½ ml) (10 gm/1/3 oz) salt (omit if already in masa mixture)

1 ½ teaspoons (7½ ml) (8 gm/¼ oz) baking powder (omit if already in masa mixture)

4 cups (960 ml) (480 gm/17 oz) masa harina (corn tortilla mix)

*I used white cornmeal

1 ½-2 cups (360 ml – 480 ml) low sodium chicken broth

1. Preheat grill and place washed tomatoes, bellpeppers and chicken. Grill until the skin of the vegetables are almost black and peeling off. Grill chicken 5 minutes on each side. Set aside chicken and flake with fork. Peel the vegetables and take out the seeds. Put roasted peeled peppers and tomatoes with the garlic and process. Heat the olive oil in a medium saucepan over medium high heat. Add the pepper and tomatoes puree and boil, stirring continuously, for 5 minutes (it should turn thick like a paste). Add in the chicken broth, stir to mix well. Reduce heat to medium low and allow to simmer, stirring occasionally until mixture coats the back of a spoon and is reduced to about a cup (240 ml). Stir in the chicken and cilantro, season with salt.

2. Prepare the dough. In the bowl of an electric mixer, on medium speed, cream together the lard or vegetable shortening, baking powder and salt. Mix in the masa harina, one cup (240 ml) at a time. Reduce the mixer speed to low, gradually add in 1 ½ cups (360 ml) of the chicken broth. If the mixture seems too thick (you can taste it for moistness) add up to ½ cup (120 ml) more of the broth 2 tablespoons (30 ml) at a time. (The dough should be a cookie dough like texture). Take a large pot with a steamer attachment. Pour about 2 inches (5 cm) of water into the bottom of the pot, or enough to touch the bottom of the steamer.

*I also used banana leaves instead of corn husks for my tamales.

3. Unfold 2 corn husks onto a work surface. Take ¼ cup (60 ml) of dough and, starting near the top of the husk, press it out into a 4 inch (10 cm) square, leaving 2-3 inches (5 -7½ cm) at the bottom of the husk. Place a heaping tablespoon (15 ml) of the filling in a line down the center of the dough square. Fold the dough into the corn husk. And wrap the husk around the dough. Fold up the skinny bottom part of the husk and secure with a corn husk tie. Steam for about 40 minutes until the dough deepens in color and pulls away from the husk.Thank you Maranda for our first Daring Cooks' challenge for the year 2012, for the other Daring Cooks' versions of Tamales, click here. We have our own version of Tamales here in the Philippines and I will be posting it here soon :)

Hello 2012!

The start of a new year always makes me look back with gratitude for everything that I have experienced because I know that however unpleasant some of those things may be, I learned something from them.

The year that was 2011 is not so easy to forget...on the second month, I found out that my mother had cancer and in 4 short months, she passed away. To say that the first half of 2011 has been challenging for me is an understatement. After that, everything just passed by in a blur. And now we have welcomed the year 2012...

...I wonder what is in store for this new year. I am preparing myself to face more challenges and to learn more new things. So, hello 2012!

Christmas Leftover Ham Soup

It's the day after Christmas and we are still eating food from the Noche Buena feast! The roast chicken has been deboned and sauteed with celery and red bellpeppers, the cheese we are still eating while having our family tradition of watching The Lord of The Rings trilogy extended dvds. What to do with the ham...I decided to slice it into thin pieces to store in containers inside the chiller. But the bones...hmm what better way to make use of it than in a soup! We received a basket of organic fresh vegetables and I made good use of it in this soup. Carrots, celery, onions...and there were some black beans in the pantry and oh, there was a bag of Penne Rigate that I also decided to use because I had no elbow Macaroni which would have been better suited to this kind of soup. At the last moment my sister requested the addition of milk to make it more like the Filipino sopas that we have not eaten in a long time.

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons Lauric Oil

5 pieces Carrots (small), diced

1 piece Onion, minced

2 stalks Celery, peeled and diced

2 pieces Ham bones

2 pieces Bay leaves, dried

1/2 cup Beans (I used black), soaked overnight

1/2 cup dried small pasta (I used Penne Rigate but elbow Macaroni is better)

Enough water to cover

Salt and Pepper to taste

Milk (optional)

Preheat pot with oil and saute carrots, onions and celery until soft. Add ham bones, water and bay leaves. Bring to a boil and then add in the beans and the pasta. I cooked this for about 30 minutes at a hard boil, then I turned down the heat and seasoned it with salt and pepper.

When it was cooked I added about 1/4 cup of milk and let it simmer for 5 minutes before turning off the heat. Serve hot.

It was a hearty addition to lunch today, and I think I found a new way of making use of ham bone! So how about you? What do you usually do with your Christmas leftover food?

KULINARYA COOKING CLUB DECEMBER 2011--Ensaimada for Noche Buena

"Huli man daw at magaling, naihahabol din"

I got so caught up with the Christmas holiday season this year that I completely forgot the dates...no kidding. So sorry to my fellow Kulinarya Cooking Club-bers, but here is my post for this month's theme. I've always been thinking and planning Christmas Eve Dinner or Noche Buena as we Filipinos call it, but I noticed that it was always the savory items that I prepared...desserts took the backburner maybe because someone always gave leche flan or the ubiquitous fruit salad. But this year I have decided to start giving dessert the attention it deserves on the Noche Buena table. So I tweaked this recipe I found because after baking and tasting, it reminded me of ensaimada, which is a sweet bread that is also part of Christmas in the Philippines. It came out with a tender crumb and the sweetness was just right, not cloyingly sweet as some recipes of ensaimada turn out.

RAISINS AND CASHEW BRAIDED ENSAIMADA
Dough:

1 teaspoon Instant Yeast

1/4 cup Fresh Milk

1/4 cup Water

3 Tablespoons Sugar

1/4 cup Unsalted Butter, softened to room temperature

1 1/2 teaspoons Salt

2 Large Eggs, beaten

3 1/2 cups All-purpose Flour, sifted

Combine milk and water, and heat until lukewarm (I usually do it in the microwave, 30 seconds), set aside. In a clean bowl, combine flour, sugar and yeast. Dissolve the salt in the lukewarm milk-water mixture and whisk in egg, pour mixture into flour and knead with the softened butter for about 10 minutes until the dough is smooth and elastic. Place dough in a lightly oiled bowl and cover with a damp towel and leave in a warm place to rise until double in bulk (it took me 1 hour).

Filling:
3/4 cups Cashew, chopped roughly

1/2 cup Raisins

1/3 cup All-purpose Flour

3 tablespoons Sugar

6 tablespoons Butter, softened

Combine ingredients in a clean bowl mixing well. Refrigerate.

Punch down dough and knead for about 2 minutes. Roll out dough into a rectangle. Place filling in the middle of dough and roll up starting from the long side, pinch edges to seal. Slice down the middle and lay on the worktable with the cut side up with the filling and braid the bread, tucking down the ends. Put on a greased baking sheet. Leave to proof (rise for a second time) for 20 minutes. Brush with a beaten eggs and bake in a preheated 350 degrees farenheit oven for 30 minutes.

I baked a batch of this bread and gave it to some friends as Christmas gifts and got rave reviews. I will also bake another batch for our Noche Buena and experiment with Majestic Ham for filling. Thank you Joy and Sherilyn for hosting this month's theme! Maligayang Pasko!
Kulinarya was started by a group of Filipino foodies living in Sydney, who are passionate about the Filipino culture and its colorful cuisine. Each month we will showcase a new dish. By sharing these recipes, we hope you find the same passion and love for Filipino food as we do.

If you are interested in joining our Kulinarya Cooking Club, please feel free to drop by our food blogs and leave a comment. We would love to hear from you!

The Daring Cooks’ December, 2011 Challenge: CHA SUI & CHA SUI BAO

Our Daring Cooks’ December 2011 hostess is Sara from Belly Rumbles! Sara chose awesome Char Sui Bao as our challenge, where we made the buns, Char Sui, and filling from scratch – delicious!

I was very excited when I read this month's DC challenge, making Cha Siu from scratch...awesome! However I didnt want to use maltose and artificial coloring for my Cha Siu so I chose Sara's alternative recipe and it came out tasting great!

CHA SIU (Cantonese BBQ Pork)

Ingredients

1 teaspoon (6 gm) salt

1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
1 teaspoon (3 gm) ground white pepper
2 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons (30 gm/1 oz) sugar
2 tablespoons oyster sauce
1 tablespoon shaoxing cooking wine
1 teaspoon (3 gm) five spice
*(1 tablespoon=15 ml, 1 teaspoon=5 ml)

Directions:
Trim the pork loin to remove fat and tendon and slice lengthways so you have two long pieces, then cut in half. Place in container that you will be marinating them in.
Combine all the other ingredients in a bowl and mix well to combine.
Cover pork well with ⅔ of the marinade mixture. Marinate for a minimum of 4 hours, I find it is best left to marinate overnight. Place the reserved ⅓ portion of the marinade covered in the fridge. You will use this as a baste when cooking the pork.
Follow the desired cooking method.

*There were several cooking methods suggested and I chose to sear the cha siu on a hot pan and then roasted it in a preheated 350 degrees farenheit oven for about 20 minutes.

STEAMED CHA SIU BAO(Cantonese Pork BBQ Bun)
Makes 20 Servings
Filling Ingredients:
350 grams Cha Siu (finely diced)
2 Shallots (finely diced)
1 Tablespoon Dark Soy Sauce
2 Tablespoons Oyster Sauce
1 teaspoon Sesame Oil
1/4 cup Chicken Stock
1 teaspoon Cornflour
1/2 Tablespoon Vegetable Oil
Heat vegetable oil in wok or pan. Saute shallots for one or two minutes until soft. Add diced cha siu to wok/pan and stir. Add oyster sauce, dark soysauce and sesame oil to the pork mixture. Stir fry for one minute. Mix cornflour and stock together and add to pork mixture. Stir well and keep cooking until mixture thickens, 1 or 2 minutes. Remove mixture from work/pan and place in a bowl to cool. Set aside until ready to use.
Bun Ingredients:
1 cup Milk, scalded
1/4 cup Sugar
1 Tablespoon Oil
2 1/2 teaspoons of dried yeast
3 cups plain Flour
Scald milk and stir in sugar, oil and salt. Leave to cool until it is lukewarm. Once it is the right temperature, add the yeast, leave until yeast is activated and it becomes frothy 10-15 minutes. Sift flour in a large bowl. Add yeast-milk mixture to flour. Mix flour mixture together with your hands. Place dough on a lightly floured surface and knead 10 minutes. The dough should be smooth and slightly elastic. Place in a lightly oiled bowl and cover with a damp cloth. Leave to rise until it is doubled in size. This will take 1-2 hours depending on the weather condition. Punch dough down and divide into 20 equal portions. Roll each dough into a 7-8 cm round. Place one tablespoon of filling in the middle, gather the edges together at the top and place on an 8 cm square of baking or wax paper. Repeat until all dough is used up. Cover and let rise for 20 minutes. Place buns in steamer, leaving space between the buns. Heat water in a pan or wok and place steamers one on top of each other. Place lid and steam for approximately 12 minutes.

I made a simple sweet-salty sauce for my cha siu bao. Everyone at home liked them. Thank you Sara for this awesome challenge! Do check out the other Daring Cooks' versions, you won't be disappointed!