KITCHEN MISADVENTURE SERIES 18: BAKED CREAMY CHICKEN AND POTATOES

This is one recipe that I got from my favorite food blogger Connie Veneracion at Home Cooking Rocks. It is actually already an old recipe of hers (posted way back in 2006) but the moment I saw this recipe, I knew I just had to try and cook it…well, now I finally did and it was truly delicious and a definite hit with the hubby and the kids! Here’s the recipe – lifted in full from Connie’s blog – I did no tweaking whatsoever – since none was needed!

Start with 8 large chicken thighs (use skinless breasts for less fat), 4-5 potatoes, an onion, a cup of cream, chopped parsley (fresh or dried), salt, pepper, 1/4 c. of butter and about a cup of grated quickmelt cheese. Season the chicken thighs with salt and pepper and let rest in a bowl while you prepare the rest of the ingredients. Peel the potatoes and cut into wedges. Peel the onion, cut into halves and slice thinly.

Melt the butter in a non-stick saute pan. When hot, brown the chicken thighs, turning them for even browning. Lift with kitchen tongs as they brown and arrange on a baking pan. Note that the chicken thighs need not be cooked through at this point. Just brown the outside then transfer them to the baking pan. Brown the potato wedges in the remaining butter and add to the chicken. Saute the sliced onion and sprinkle on top of the chicken and potatoes

Take a cup of cream (substitute yogurt if you’re watching your fat and cholesterol intake) and pour over the chicken, potatoes and sliced onion. You may sprinkle more salt and pepper at this point since the potatoes will absorb most of the salt from the chicken that will get mixed into the liquid as the dish cooks. Sprinkle chopped parsley all over after pouring in the cream. Cover the baking dish tightly with foil, piercing it with a fork in a few places to create steam vents. Bake in a preheated 180oC oven for 20 to 30 minutes (I used a turbo broiler, though). Take the baking pan out of the oven and peel off the foil. Do this carefully since the steam that will escape can burn your fingers. Spread the grated cheese over the cooked chicken and potatoes. Return to the oven and bake for 10 minutes longer or until the cheese melts.

KITCHEN MISADVENTURE SERIES 18: BREAKFAST FRITATAS

For quite some time, I have been seeing recipes of omelets, tortas, and frittatas (from different foodsites I normally browse)…. I really do not know the difference of one from the other but I guess they may be the same since they have more or less the same ingredients although the manner of cooking varies – some are cooked in a non-stick pan, others baked like a pizza. And since, I have been getting a bit bored cooking ham and eggs separately, or bacon and eggs, or tuna and eggs – making an omelet with both or all of the ingredients present is truly a time-saver!

So today, I tried doing my own breakfast frittata/omelet with ham, potatoes, eggs and lotsa lotsa cheese! (my daughter’s favorite ingredient!) And thankfully she enjoyed it! I have also tried using other ingredients like ground pork with potatoes and tuna with carrots…and the verdict is still the same – the kids loved it! And it’s so easy and less time-consuming to prepare pa! My daughter likes to call it a pizza…and I guess in a way it could be --- I guess I’ll just try to do more variations for this truly very basic frittata/omelet/torta recipe.

HACHIKO

We started watching this movie on DVD during our get-together at Lopez farms in Cavite in November of last year. But we were unable to finish the movie because at the time, we were just killing time before going home to keep away from the heavy traffic along Coastal Road. We forgot to continue watching the movie until last week when HBO began advertising Hachiko as one of its featured movies this coming February and so rather than wait for its screening, my kids and I decided to look for the DVD and watch the movie ourselves one lazy Sunday afternoon…

Hachiko is a very heart-warming but TRUE story about a dog who shows undying loyalty to his master. It narrates how Richard Gere, a professor, finds a lost dog at a train station. The next day, his wife compels him to search for its owners since they don’t want to take care of the puppy (but it’s such a cute pup!) So he tries to locate the owners but to no avail so they eventually end up keeping the dog. The succeeding scenes showed how dog and master developed a strong bond with each other with Hachiko going daily with Gere to the train station and returning each afternoon to the station to greet his master returning from work.

The pair continued on with this daily routine until one day when Richard Gere suffered a heart attack and didn’t come home…Hachiko waited at the train station until Gere’s son-in-law came to collect him. The next scene showed a funeral service being given for Gere and yet the dog continues with his routine going daily to the station and being cared for by numerous friends he has made along the way (the meat vendor at the street corner, the hotdog seller outside the station, even the ticket seller looks out for his welfare) The family eventually sold the house and Hachi is sent to live with Gere’s daughter. But when they left the gate open one time, Hachi escapes and goes back to the train station where he continues to wait for his master to come home. Gere's daughter and son-in-law soon arrive to take him home once again. One day, however, seeing how restless Hachi seems inside their garden, she decides to set Hachi free and he dutifully returns to the station to wait. He does the same routine for nine more years gaining the attention of the locals who usually see him there waiting at his usual spot. His story even caught the attention of media and the people around the vicinity of the station were interviewed about him.

Ten years later, Gere’s wife is shown with Ken (Gere’s Japanese friend) visiting his gravesite. At the station, she is astonished to find Hachi old, weak…but still waiting patiently for his master to return – to me this is the most tear jerking part of the movie! She talks to the dog and waits with him for the next train to arrive. A few more scenes later, Hachi is shown going to his usual spot and sleeping for one last time at the station… there he is met by the spirit of his master and they are reunited once again to be together – for eternity!

This is truly a must-see movie for the entire family – for it teaches values on faith, devotion, and undying love… definitely not just for dog-lovers!

[photo grabbed from IMDB]

COOKING POPCORN IN A MICROWAVE

My daughter just adores popcorn…in fact, she can eat it everyday and not grow tired of it! Most nights after we had our dinner and we settle in for the night on our sofa to watch our daily dose of telenovelas, she asks her father to cook her some popcorn…most of the time he relents and cooks for her but during moments when he comes home tired, he doesn’t have the energy to cook anymore in the evening and so my daughter gets upset and a silent word war ensues between father-and-daughter which lasts even up to bedtime and before they go to sleep…and so since I could not help them out by cooking her the popcorn myself…(well, most of the time the popcorn I cook ends up getting burnt!) I thought of doing for her the next best thing – teach her to cook popcorn herself! With microwaveable popcorn, of course! Expectedly, it costs double than the regular popcorn that we use but still the aroma it leaves the house when it gets cooked after just 2 minutes in the microwave is just so delicious…it’s like we're in a real moviehouse!

SHOPPING FOR THE KITCHEN

We needed some new items for our kitchen like a new dish drainer because our previous one was bought about ten years ago…when we moved here to Bulacan and so expectedly the plastic cover had become quite brittle and broken in a few places and hence provides no protection at all to the dishes inside. I would’ve wanted my dishes to be organized inside built-in kitchen cabinets (something like the San Jose Kitchen cabinet system)… but alas I don’t think I have that kinda money to buy such cabinets just yet and so I had to settle for the next best thing…

We found the dish drainer from Orocan at the SM Homeworld, they were on sale so the price was something like P999.00 from a previous price of PhP1200, I think…We also bought a new rice dispenser with a 25 kilos capacity because our old dispenser could only hold 10 or 15 kilos and so most of the time the rice left in the sack would be infested by rats. Finally, the hubby decided, too, to replace our old thermos since the one we had been using couldn’t keep the water hot for an entire day so we had to heat water again if we wanted to have another round of coffee in the afternoon. We bought a few other knick-knacks like some black bowls and some water jugs so our total bill amounted to about PhP4,000.++ The clothing allowance we were expecting since early January is yet to be given to us so I used my credit card for the meantime – thank God for plastic!

NEW LANGKA FROM OUR TREE

Finally, after almost three months of waiting our langka is finally ripe for picking…the first pic was taken on October 3 last year when I saw that this



particular langka fruit has already gotten a bit bigger than my hand and is in no danger of falling off (like the others before it)… this is the second time already that our langka tree has borne fruit and this is the first langka from this batch that became ripe. We all hoped that it would be ripe in time for Christmas for our espasol but alas it did not… so now we have an almost 20-kilo langka and we don’t know what to do with it?!? Halo-halo season is still two or three months away – so I guess we’d be able to give some to our neighbors and friends, make langka preserves, langka shakes, langka maja, maybe even pastillas, or whatever dessert we may think of …anyway, this is just the first fruit that became ripe…we still have five more fruits to wait for … yum..yum!

RED

I started watching this movie on DVD (pirated, of course) and it was truly a very engaging action-comedy film with a powerhouse cast of characters led by Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren among others. One review I read compared it to another recent movie, The Expendables since both films had a cast of actors of very high caliber (although a bit aging…so to speak) but the reviewer gave the film Red a better review because of a better plot. Well, I haven’t really watched The Expendables yet so I truly can’t compare…but I do agree that the movie has a riveting story since it tells of the lives of RETIRED but EXTREMELY DANGEROUS (hence, the title R.E.D.) CIA agents already living sedate and lonely lives who suddenly found themselves marked for liquidation.

So the group of retirees had no choice but to reassemble themselves once again (with the help of an old enemy – a KGB agent who happened to be an ex-lover of Helen Mirren’s character, Victoria) to find out who is trying to kill them. The film has many funny moments with John Malkovich’s crazy character providing most of the gags while Morgan Freeman keeps them all in check with his wise words and actions. I was already right smack in the middle of the engrossing film when the film suddenly faltered and just stopped altogether! You can just imagine my consternation! I felt so bitin!!! (serves me right for wathcing pirated huh!) So I had no choice but to try to find a video streaming site and thankfully, it was available in tubeplus although downloading was a bit slow. But at least, I was able to finish the movie and found that though the storyline became a bit thin through the end (since it turned out that an ex-CIA agent was behind everything and the earlier nemesis they fought – the guy running for Vice president was just a mere pawn) …it was still quite entertaining! Even the romantic angle brought by Willis and his phone pal was just enough to keep the movie balanced – definitely one of the few good films I have seen for quite some time!

(photo grabbed from IMDB)

KITCHEN MISADVENTURES 17: COOKING WITH A TURBO BROILER

After Christmas, we bought a new turbo broiler because we planned to cook crispy pata for media noche...and since we were all quite apprehensive with frying the pata in lots of oil (due to health issues and the possibility of scalding from oil splatters), we decided to use a turbo broiler instead. Sad to say, the crispy pata did not come out as crisp as we expected it to be. Although it was still quite delicious and tasty!



This time however, I decided to try cooking lechon kawali since I figured if the heat of the turbo couldn't make the large chunk of pata crispy maybe it would be able to do so with the much smaller slices of liempo...and thankfully it did! I started boiling the liempo the day before in salt, pepper, garlic and tanglad; refrigerated the meat overnight and placed the liempo in the turbo broiler at around 7 pm, last night. After 30 minutes and with much time to spare to prepare some waldorf salad - my liempo was done!

MISSING DITSE...

Since mid-October of last year our regular companion in the house (my husband's sister,whom we fondly call Ditse) who takes care of the kids and cooks our dinner left us (temporarily, I hope!) to join her son, a vendor in Divisoria. She does this every year, during this time of the year because this is when sales at Divisoria's streets are brisk with numerous shoppers swarming the place looking for bargains during the Christmas season.

It is also during this time of the year that we are left to fend for ourselves every night and sometimes end up buying cooked food that either tastes too bland, or may be too expensive. There are times when despite being tired from a long day's work, we had to buy food from the market and cook dinner ourselves upon arrival home ... and so I am missing her terribly! I miss her cooking...and her chitchat about the life and loves of our neighbors...I miss the times that I could just put my feet up to rest upon arrival home and simply wait for hot dinner to be served...

What's worse is that even if she left her daughter here with us to look after my sons and daughter - she's not much of an authority figure because she's only eighteen. And when my pesky daughter insists on not eating anything for lunch - she just lets her have her way - so my daughter is looking so undernourished now more than ever...I guess she needs Ditse here more than I do so she'll be well-fed once again...well, it will only be a few days from now and she promised to come back here(after the Santo Nino fiesta)... I just wish she'd come home soon!

MY NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS FOR 2011

Started the year by looking back at my previous year's resolutions and realized something really really bad --- I HAVE NOT ACCOMPLISHED EVEN HALF OF THEM! Oh dear, so I guess my very first resolution for the year 2011 will be - TO STOP MAKING NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS ALTOGETHER SINCE I NEVER GET TO KEEP THEM ANYWAY!!!

SO there...I guess I'll just take each day as it comes...enjoy every moment...and live life to the fullest...after all I am turning forty this year (ugh!) so I might as well start living my life the way I want - no daily schedules... nothing at all to hold me back from enjoying each moment as if it were my last... nope I'm not waxing nostalgic here because I feel my life is about to end (hope not!) But rather I just want to set my mind free to wander and explore the numerous experiences out there that I still have not tried--- so here's hoping that the new year would bring me more exciting places to visit; more exotic restaurants/food to taste; more people to meet and bond with (both old and new friends)and a whole lot of new experiences to savor!!!