Homemade Apple Pie Spice

When my mom made her apple pie many, many years ago, she used apple pie spice that she got abroad.  There simply wasn't one available in the local market.  Many things have changed throughout the years, but today, I still cannot find apple pie spice locally.  (In fact, there were spices available before that are no longer being sold these days, perhaps due to lack of popularity or marketability... but that's a different story).

The next best thing?  Make your own!

Here's mine -

And what's cute is the tool that I mixed it with.  A whisk is popular enough and there's lots in the market.  But this is what I found in one of the boxes of my mom's stuff - a "baby" whisk!  I say "baby" because it really is little, so much so that a spoon is bigger!  And I remember it well from my tween years (if I remember correctly my mom had several of them!) and I've never found a practical use for it (except to beat eggs but honestly, I just use a fork!)

These days, however, I realized how useful that little tool could be.  It was absolutely perfect for mixing together a batch of spices to make my proprietary blend of apple pie spice!

Anyway, here are some apple pie spice recipes that I followed - here's one, another one, and yet another one.  Sometimes I add more of one ingredient or less of another, depending on my particular mood.  I guess what I'm trying to say is, you can pretty much blend your own depending on your personal taste!

Dexter's Chicken and Apple Biscuits

In another attempt to find a doggie treat that Dexter will like... this time with the little girl helping me out (I sure hope she doesn't get tired of helping me...)

I found a recipe in one of my doggie cookbooks and made some major adjustments.  The original recipe called for ground beef and diced carrots.  While Dexter likes carrots, he can't have beef - for some reason beef makes him ill, seriously so.  The last time (years ago) that we made the mistake of giving him beef, he was hospitalized for a week and the vet was afraid he wouldn't make it (I was worried out of my wits!!!)  Anyway, since then his diet is largely vegetable with chicken meat, or sometimes (not really that often) minced pork.

I also omitted the baking powder and salt (vet orders - Dexter is on a no fat, low salt, low carb diet) and and substituted whole wheat flour for the plain flour. 

What I did -

1. Preheated the oven to 325F.

2. Sifted 1¼ cups fine whole wheat flour and ¼ cup skim milk powder together.

3. Added an 1 egg white and 3/8 cup cooked ground chicken and 1/4 cup diced apple (diced in very small dices).

4. Mixed the mixture with my hands.  The goal was to have the mixture resemble pie dough.  Not too dry but not wet either, just moist enough to roll out.  (I thought the mixture was a bit dry so I added about 1 to 2 tablespoons chicken broth and mixed until I got the consistency that I wanted.)

5. Rolled the mixture out to about 1/2-inch thickness (use a floured rolling pin on a floured surface) and used my doggie bone cutter to cut into shape.  The little girl placed the cut out dough shapes onto a paper-lined cookie sheet.  We actually stuck the pieces very close together since they wouldn't be expanding anyway.

6. Baked them for about 22 to 25 minutes until the cookies were dry.  Dexter prefers chewy over crunchy so we baked them just about 20 to 22 minutes.  For a crunchy cookie, bake a little longer.  Take care not to burn them though.

7. Cooled the cookies on a rack.

Dexter loved them!!!

Chairman Mao's Red Braised Pork

or 毛氏紅燒肉 (máo shì hóng shāo ròu)

This recipe is by Fuchsia Dunlop, found in her book:  Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook (Recipes from Hunan Province)

(image lifted from Google images)

According to Wikipedia, Hunan is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the south-central part of the country to the south of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and south of Lake Dongting.  It is said to be one of the most beautiful provinces of Chines, being surrounded with the natural beauty of mountains all around the its east, west, and south sides, and by the Yangtze River on its north side.  Its cuisine?  Hot, delicious, and hot!

The name "red braised pork" indicates the method of cooking used - red braising, or red cooking, which is basically a cooking technique where food, typically meat, is browned with caramelized sugar, after which the meat is stewed in a rice wine and dark soy sauce broth, with spices, for some time.

As for the possessive aspect of the title, it is said that this is the favorite dish of Chairman Mao (Tse-Tung, founder of the People's Republic of China).  The dish is so famous that the Chinese government has even issued guidelines for it, otherwise the restaurant or chef/cook making and serving it cannot claim that it is authentic.  One of the regulations involve a specific kind of pork/pig meat to be used.  Interesting, huh?

Anyway, here is my dish:

Still in the pan, final 5 minutes of braising -

And, on the table, ready to be devoured -

The recipe can be found here.

My dish did not come out looking as well as the photo in the book (which is incidentally the book cover photo also) but that may have been because of -

1.  I am not so fond of pork fat or skin, so I trimmed them off.  And I sliced my meat in smaller chunks.  These appear to have the biggest impact since my dish was not "gelatinous" due to the leanness of the meat I used.
2.  I did not have dark soy sauce so I used light soy sauce, which meant that my dish would not have an intense red-brown color.
2.  I braised my dish for about 45 minutes only.  My reason?  I ran out of time because the first time I tried to caramelize the sugar, it ended up being burnt because the little girl kept calling me...  apparently, the longer the meat is braised, the better.

Nevertheless, the dish was really delicious.  Even hubby was impressed!

Yay!

September 25, 2013

Not being satisfied with my pale dish, I went out and bought dark soy sauce and made the dish again.  This time, I kept the skin on the pork and sliced the pieces bigger... and I cooked the dish in my magic cooker for about 4 hours...

I like the result.  The color is lovely, and the meat was sooooo soft...

Double yay!

Spicy Coconut-Red Curry Soup

It's been raining non-stop the whole day. Blame it on the southwest monsoon, influenced by the recent category 5 typhoon... The winds were horrible (imagine how bad it was in Batanes, where it was signal number 4!!!)

In such a weather, soup is always a winner. And if hubby is involved, it would have to be a spicy soup...

The base of the soup is red curry paste and coconut milk. And a bit more chili.  Serve with sambal sauce (yes, spicy still!) on the side.

The recipe, roughly -

thin ginger slices
3 tablespoons red curry paste, or more as desired
2 cups coconut milk
2 cups chicken broth
6 pieces fish balls
6 pieces shrimp balls
about 100 grams fresh shrimp
sliced leeks
wansoy leaves
lemongrass, trimmed, peeled, tender part pounded
80 to 100 grams sotanghon (glass/mung bean) noodles, softened in water, drained
soy sauce or fish sauce, to taste
salt and/or pepper, to taste

Saute ginger in hot oil. Add curry paste. Stir fry until fragrant, a couple of minutes. Add coconut milk, broth, fish and prawn balls. Bring to a boil. When the balls float, add shrimps, lemongrass, leeks and wansoy. (Add chillies, if desired.) Add sotanghon. Season with soy sauce or fish sauce, and salt. Cook until boiling, stirring once in a while. Adjust seasonings as desired. Serve with sambal sauce on the side.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

This time, the recipe is by David Lebovitz, which I found here.  The only variation I made was to lessen the chocolate chips to 1 cup and since I didn't have any nuts, I added some of B's peanut MM candies (I chopped them in half or so)

Then, I had some dark chocolate buttercream left over from some cupcakes so I decided to make cookie sandwiches!

To be honest, the cookies were good, but I still prefer my favorite...  The cookie sandwiches, however, were really yummy! 

Lechon Lomi

There was a time when I twiddled my thumbs and wondered what to do with left over lechon.  You see, it has been a tradition for us to have a whole (big) lechon at Christmas time.  And no, it's not just for us, we share it with the people we are close to everyday.  But almost always, there would be left over lechon - mostly the head, feet and rump parts - which we inevitably make into the traditional paksiw.

Not that I'm complaining - don't get me wrong, I love paksiw na lechon - but at the back of my head, there's this thought:  there must be some other dish that lechon can be part of OTHER THAN PAKSIW!!!

Well, thing is, I've been seeing lechon stalls in food courts with offerings such as:  lechon sisig, lechon sinigang, lechon dinuguan, lechon lugaw, and this:

LECHON LOMI

The recipe is pretty much the same as my usual lomi except that I used 500 grams of lechon in place of all the "meats".  The revised recipe -

500g Lomi noodles, parboiled, rinsed and drained
shallots (at least 6 pieces), sliced
4 slices of ginger
8 cloves garlic, minced
about 6 cups chicken stock
500 grams lechon, chopped
1 medium carrot, julienned
1 stalk celery, sliced diagonally (celery leaves to be used too)
Baguio pechay or shredded cabbage, shredded
2 to 4 tablespoons soy sauce
salt and pepper, to taste
cornstarch dispersed in water
2 to 3 eggs, beaten lightly
For the garnish:
1 to 2 stalks leeks, green part only, sliced diagonally

Heat oil over low heat and brown the shallots (keep heat on low).  When the shallots have browned, remove them from the oil and increase the heat to medium-high. 

Saute the ginger and garlic (add more oil, if necessary).  Pour in the stock and let it boil.  Add the lechon, carrot strips and celery leaves.  Season with soy sauce, salt and pepper, to taste.  Let the mixture boil again then add the noodles and pechay leaves.

When the mixture boils again, thicken with cornstarch water.  Check seasonings again.  Then, while stirring constantly, slowly pour in beaten eggs, while stirring.  Remove from heat immediately.

Before serving, garnish with leeks and browned shallots.  Serve with calamansi and fresh ground pepper on the side.

It's yummy for such a day like today...

Ham and Cheese Roll Ups

Sometimes we get little (or no) notice of guests arriving.  And I've had to be creative in finding fast and easy food to serve.  Here's one.

I wish I could take credit for thinking of these but the truth is, I saw these at a function that we attended some time ago.  And I'd been meaning to make them since then.  Of course I don't know the actual recipe that the function organizers (or caterers) used but here is my version...

Take a piece of sandwich bread and cut the crusts off.  Then flatten the bread (this is a very important step, see next paragraph for the reason).  Smear mayo or butter on the flattened, crustless bread.  Then place a piece of cooked ham and a cheese slice (square slices are best) on the bread.  Roll the whole thing up and secure with fancy picks.  Slice into 3 or 4 mini-rolls.

At this point I have to stress that it is crucial to flatten the bread.  I discovered (the hard, experimental way) that if this step is missed, the whole thing crumbles and breaks - the resulting rolls are just plain ugly.

Well, our guests were impressed (whoo hoo!) and the best part was that it was easy, really easy, to make!