Ginataang Manok, Kalabasa at Malunggay

(Chicken, Squash and Moringa leaves cooked in Coconut Cream)

Nobody ever believes me when I say that there are days when I (definitely) do not want to cook.  And, even when they understand that I have no-cook days, they certainly don't believe that I sometimes take out food from a turo-turo (literally point-point, referring to a small eatery where the customer simply points to the already cooked food to indicate his choice).

This is one of those dishes that I first encountered in a turo-turo...  and I loved it!

I've tried to recreate it a couple of times but failed - somehow the flavor profile had always been wrong.  Until someone gave me the brilliant idea of using patis (fish sauce).  Ok, this is a dish that I would never, ever had succeeded at considering the patis ban in my kitchen.  But having authentic Thai patis is an exception!  It turns out the secret to the dish is the patis!

3 thin slices of ginger
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium Spanish onion, sliced thinly
800 grams chicken legs, rinsed and cleaned
1 cup coconut cream
1 cup chicken or vegetable stock
1 wedge of kalabasa (about 1/8 of a big one or 1/4 of a medium one), peeled and cubed
2 teaspoons patis/fish sauce, or to taste
salt and pepper, to taste
handful of malunggay leaves (Moringa)

Saute the ginger, garlic and onion until fragrant.  Put in the chicken to brown; season with a large pinch of sea salt.  When the chicken is lightly browned, pour in the coconut cream and stock.  When the mixture boils, add the cubed kalabasa.  Season to taste with patis, sea salt and pepper.  Simmer until the chicken and kalabasa are almost done (I like it when a bit of the kalabasa melts into the sauce).  Throw in the malunggay and let simmer a couple of minutes more.  Serve hot over rice!

Pureed Squash Soup with Curried Paneer and Bacon

I just love multi-function kitchen tools...

The little girl apparently likes squash.  And because the little girl is a finicky eater, anything that she says she likes to eat, I will make/cook.  So I bought some squash, and set about making pureed squash soup.

Except that as the squash was cooking, I couldn't find my hand blender.  I knew I had one, because I'd made pureed soups before but for the life of me, I just couldn't find where it was!

In the middle of searching, what I found was a hand blender attachment to a hand mixer that I was no longer using because I felt it was too heavy.  But I took it out of storage because I had no other choice except to use it with the blender attachment.  Well, technically I could use the blender but that meant more things to wash, and more time required!

Anyway, long story short, I really could not find my hand blender and honestly, I did not want to buy another one, so I am happy that my (ex)hand mixer has a new lease on life, as a hand blender!

Anyway, here is my soup...

The cubes are curried paneer cubes... homemade, to boot.  But I don't think that I will make homemade paneer again.  It's rather like tofu and I prefer tofu.  Plus, for a liter of milk, I only got about 110 grams of paneer!  Which means it is very expensive compared to tofu!  In any case, croutons work just as well (or maybe even better) for this soup.

As for the bacon, I found a supplier of no-nitrite/nitrate bacon.  And she has scrap bacon for sale, for almost half the price of the slab bacon.  And since I needed bacon bits, I didn't really need slab bacon!

To make the soup...

about 800 grams squash, hard rind and seeds removed, diced/cubed
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium sweet onion, diced
1 teaspoon dried shrimp, soaked/rehydrated in a cup of hot water
       or about a cup of shrimp broth*
vegetable or chicken broth
cubed paneer or croutons
crispy bacon bits
about 1/2 teaspoon black pepper, or to taste
salt, to taste
cream, to serve, optional

Saute the garlic and onion until soft and fragrant.  Add the squash cubes and a pinch of salt.  Add the dried shrimp with its liquids or the shrimp broth and enough vegetable or chicken broth to just cover the squash cubes.  Cook over medium heat until the squash cubes are very soft.  Blend the squash (with a hand blender on the stove, or a real blender, in which case, take the squash mixture off the heat and let it  cool a bit before whirring in the blender).  Season to taste.  Bring to a complete boil before serving.

At this point, the soup is quite good on its own, but it's better with cubed paneer (toasted, if preferred) or croutons.  And of course, crispy bacon bits!

The little girl ate her soup with a little rice on the side, but not everything else!  I guess this means that squash will be seen often on the dinner table...

Ginataang Kalabasa at Sitaw

Ginataan is a Filipino cooking term that means to cook in coconut milk.  So Ginataang Kalabasa at Sitaw is Squash (kalabasa) and long beans or pole beans (sitaw) cooked in coconut milk.  Like adobo, there's a myriad of ways to cook this dish - spicy, sweet, salty, with a whole new cast of vegetables, with shrimps, talangka, crabs, dried fish (daing) or with pork.  It can even be a sweet dessert stuffed with rice balls, bananas, yams, taro, sweet potato, langka... the list is practically endless!  

In our household, this dish is a favorite such that it's on the table at least once a month!  And while the standard is always with some shrimp and ground pork, sometimes we vary the dish depending on our particular mood.  The more interesting twists that we've made with this dish was with talangka (small crab, which someone said to be shore crab) and with squash blossoms.

This time, however, we made the dish a little more special by  adding bagoong alamang (shrimp paste in English).  But the bagoong I used is no ordinary shrimp paste!  It's the one made by friend M's mom!  In our humble opinion, it is ABSOLUTELY the best one! 

The bagoong is used a seasoning and it brings out a different dimension to the dish - a nice contrast of salty to the sweet coconut milk.  And it is sooooo goooood!!!  Believe it or not, I actually ate the whole dish (see the picture above) all by myself!  Yummmm!

The recipe -

3 pieces thinly sliced ginger
1 small onion, minced
2 cloves garlic, lightly smashed
pinch of chili flakes
2 tablespoons bagoong
100 grams ground or thinly sliced pork
100 grams shrimp, cleaned, deveined
about 200 to 300 grams squash, skins removed and cubed
about 200 grams long beans (sitaw), cut into 2-inch lengths
2 bundles bulaklak ng kalabasa (squash blooms), cleaned
1 1/2 to 2 cups coconut milk
1/2 to 1 cup coconut cream
salt and pepper, to taste

Saute ginger until lightly browned.  Add garlic and onion and stir fry a few seconds.  Sprinkle in the chili flakes and bagoong.  Add the pork and stir fry until halfway done.  Throw in the shrimp, squash cubes and beans.  Stir fry several seconds.   Pour in coconut milk and simmer until vegetables are tender, about 10 to 15 minutes, depending on the cut of the squash.  It may take as along as 20 to 30 minutes.  Add the squash blooms.  When the mixture boils, add the coconut cream and bring to boil again.  Then season with salt and pepper.  Remove from fire.  Serve while hot.

Note - the measures are a bit variable depending on personal preference.  We prefer a dish with a lot of thick sauce (to pour over rice! Mmmm...) so we use the larger measure.  Some people prefer a really thickened, almost no sauce dish, in which case use the lesser measure and cook until the sauce has totally reduced, but note that too long a cooking time may result in the coconut milk/cream to exude its oil (we know someone who prefers that as well!).  Take care also that the squash does not get too overcooked that it crumbles and disappears in the sauce.  Personally, we no longer add salt when we use the bagoong, but this may depend on the bagoong as they are not created equal - some bagoong are saltier than others, and there are sweet and/or spicy variants.