Beef Siopao (Beef Hot Buns)

Bistik (Beef Steak)

I was chatting with my lovely friend Lhita who lives in Singapore and told me she still couldn’t get the right taste for Bistik. I cooked this a few times and even my maid in Jakarta, Indonesia knows how to cook this now. I guess I have asked her so many times that she knows it by heart lol.

I would normally buy beef tenderloin for this recipe but saw a “Snitzel Beef” at the supermarket. This is what I get when I want to make a beef schnitzel. According to Wikianswers, a schnitzel is a thin 'escalope' of meat, usually veal or pork that is first floured, eggwashed then breadcrumbed before frying. Nowadays beef and chicken are the most popular for schnitzel.

You Need:

Beef (half a kilo)

Cornstarch – 1 tsp

Worcestershire sauce – 2 tsp

Soy sauce – ½ cup

Lime juice – 1tsp

Garlic – 7 cloves

Whole peppercorns – 20 or more if you like

Onions – 2 big ones

Cooking oil

2 Tbsp water

How?

1. Pound meat with a meat mallet until it’s thin. Be careful not to tear the meat.

2. In a bowl put in the pounded meat, cornstarch, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, garlic, peppercorns and lime. Mix together and marinate for 30 minutes or more if desired.

3. Heat oil in a pan and cook the cut onions. Transfer to a bowl or another container.

4. Heat more oil probably 2 tbsp and cook the meat leaving the marinated juice.

5. Add more oil if necessary if there isn’t enough oil to cook all the meat.

6. Transfer all the meat in a separate bowl or if you want you can just put it on top of the cooked onions.

7. In a low heat, pour the marinated sauce into the same pan (where you cooked the meat) with a fine cooking strainer to get the liquid of the marinated sauce.

8. Put back cooked meat and onions.

9. Cook for a minute or 2 then add the water.

10. Serve hot and enjoy!

Chicken Wings Sinigang

I am having mostly Filipino food these days since hubby is not here to eat it hehehe... I defrosted the chicken wings today and was thinking of deep fry chicken wings for dinner. As I checked the fridge I had some vegetables that need to be cooked or else it will go to waste as I am planning to experiment on some other recipes that I saw while browsing the internet 2 days ago. So I decided to cook sinigang instead made of left over vegetables.

I had:

1tsp cooking oil

1 onion (medium size)

1 big or 2 tomato (chunky cuts)

8 chicken wings

3 cups of water

1 chicken cube

3 big bunches of Bukchoy

1 eggplant (medium)

1 carrot (small)

Fish sauce

Lime juice

How:

1. Heat oil in the pot and sautéed onion and tomato.

2. Add chicken wings then pour the water adding the chicken cube. Cover the pot and let it boil for 5 to 10 minutes or until chicken wings are almost cook.

3. Add carrot, fish sauce (little at a time) and lime juice. Let it simmer.

4. I only used lime juice to lessen the strong smell of fish sauce, although I admit it gives flavour as well. You need to keep adding fish sauce and lime juice until you get your desired taste.

5. Add eggplant and bukchoy. Cover for 3 minutes and the food is ready!

Adobong Manok and Ginisang Togue

Hubby is not fond of Filipino dish so I l eventually learn how to cook most of his favourite food even if I only know how to fry my food when we got married. I only started learning how to cook my native dish 4 years ago in Singapore. I had a group of Filipino friends there who loves to cook! So they became my inspiration to learn more about my food.

For our lunch today (hubby is not here), we had adobong manok and ginisang togue. Adobong manok is also known as “chicken adobo” and adobo means vinegar marinade if I am not mistaken. This is cooked with garlic, whole peppercorns, bay leaf, vinegar, soy sauce and oil for frying. I unfortunately didn’t get the right measurements today to share, sorry. I kept adding soy sauce and vinegar as I go on and it tasted so great! My classmate in college who now lives in Texas told me she couldn’t get the right taste when she cooks her adodo. Reyma if you happen to read this, I recommend that you try adobong manok from Pinoy Cook   http://pinoycook.net/myras-chicken-adobo/ . This is so easy to follow, not our usual version of cooking adobo but I promise that you get the taste you are looking for.

Ginisang togue is a sautéed mung bean sprout cooked in oil, garlic, onion, togue, bukchoy, water, and soy sauce. There are different ways to cook it but I opted for simple ingredients (which I normally do ;) ).

Plum Pudding with Vanilla Custard

We wanted to have plum pudding as a dessert for Christmas dinner, however we were not able to eat it  because everyone is full. I was hoping to serve it the following day which is another celebrated day in Australia; they call this day “Boxing Day”. Oh no, they don’t fight inside the ring with their boxing gloves on lol. I asked hubby and my in-laws why it’s called Boxing Day and unfortunately most of them have no idea why it was called boxing, they said there were a few stories blah blah blah . So, I went to find it myself instead.


According to the Wikipedia, this day is also celebrated in United Kingdom, New Zealand and amongst other countries. The traditional recorded celebration of Boxing Day has long included giving money and other gifts to those who were needy and in service positions. The European tradition has been dated to the middle Ages, but the exact origin is unknown and there are some claims that it goes back to the late Roman/early Christian era; metal boxes were placed outside churches used to collect special offerings tied to the Feast of Saint Stephen.[4] In the United Kingdom it certainly became a custom of the nineteenth century Victorians for tradesmen to collect their "Christmas boxes" or gifts in return for good and reliable service throughout the year on the day after Christmas.[5] However, the exact etymology of the term "Boxing" is unclear, with several competing theories, none of which is definitively true.[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxing_Day

So there.


Going back to the pudding, we invited my Mum in-law, Mum’s sister who happened to visit her so they can spend a New Year together (how sweet!), my brother in-law and his wife for dinner the 2nd January. A few minutes after dinner my hubby approached and asked me what I prepared for dessert so I told him “pudding”! He agreed right away! So I started boiling the water in the pot because it takes 45 minutes to get a warm pudding. All I did was boil enough water in the pot to make sure the tin is almost covered. Once we put the tin inside the pot let it simmer in a low heat. The photo below has been simmering for 35 minutes so most of the water had evaporated already. Instructions are on the back of the tin so you will be alright if you want to try the same brand next Christmas. Just let me know if it was in fact 45 or 50 minutes because I am not sure now lol. We had 2,000 grams of vanilla custard in the fridge but the seven of us only used half of it, that’s 2 small bottles of custard. We had a bit of left over because I believe this is good for 10 people.

My verdict is this.... it was the nicest plum pudding I have tasted from a can! It was moist and simply perfect! I will never hesitate to buy the Big Sister brand again next Christmas and paired it with Oak Vanilla Traditional Custard from Dairy Farmers.

Now if you excuse me, I need to run around the house to get rid of the excess fat I have gained since last month hahaha...

Eggplant in Honey and Soy Sauce

My husband’s Christmas gift is a new camera hurray! That means I can capture the food that I cooked, if I am not too hungry to put them in my mouth first before I can grab the camera lol. Well it happens most of the time just like our lunch and dinner yesterday. Today though I managed to take a photo of this dish that I cooked for lunch, I was very hungry but I told myself it will only take a few seconds hehehe. Now I like my eggplant to be soggy and brown in colour for this dish so if you prefer to see a little bit of whitest colour in your eggplant you may do so. This dish is for 1 serving but if you don’t eat as much as me then guess what the left over tasted much better.

By the way, I don’t normally follow the exact measurements of any recipes unless I am intimidated in the dish like my disaster roast turkey for our Christmas dinner last month. I am not going into details about that hehehe.. So may I suggest that you add a little bit of water and honey first, and then keep adding more of each until you are satisfied with the taste? I eat this with steam rice and a grilled salmon. Yummy!

You need:

1 tsp Olive oil

1 clove garlic

1 small Onion

1 big tomato or 2 medium size tomato

1 Eggplant – medium size – cut into bite size

¼ cup Soy Sauce (I always use Kikkoman)

½ cup Water

1 ½ tsp Honey

1. Heat oil in the pan then sauté garlic, then the chopped onion once garlic is almost brown.

2. Add tomato then the eggplant and sauté for another minute or so.

3. Add the eggplant stirring for a minute then pour the soy sauce over. Cover the pan and leave it until it boils in a medium heat. Please do check to make sure the soy sauce doesn’t dry up.

4. Taste it and add a little bit of water if the taste of soy sauce is too strong for you. Add more if you wish then let it simmer for another minute.

5. You can then add honey probably 1 tsp to start with. If you think the soy sauce was still strong add more water. Let it simmer again for 3 minutes.

6. Keep adjusting the taste by adding more honey and water until you are satisfied with the taste.

7. Serve it hot.