Not-so-instant noodles

I like having instant noodles back in the Philippines, especially spicy pancit canton. I also occasionally have instant noodle soups, the ones my colleagues and I would have at the end of the day in nearby 7-Eleven. However I have increasingly found instant noodles to be quite salty. And so when we had roast chicken one dinner and we had the carcass lying there ready for disposal, I found inspiration to prepare my noodles the non-instant way.

This is a two-step process. First, make the chicken soup base. And then add the noodles and add-ons.

Although this takes a bit longer to make than instant noodles, you will definitely notice the difference in taste (and salt content!). Actually, you can also just skip the chicken soup base procedure and just have some boiling water, cook your veggies in it, then add the noodles and cook for around 3 minutes more. Even that will make noodles more enjoyable.

Suman and Feijoas for merienda

For my merienda (snack), I had two things that I like the most: suman and feijoas, one natively Filipino, the other a Kiwi seasonal fruit. The suman (rice cake) was bought from a stall right after the Filipino mass last Sunday. Yup, even in small measures we have a bit of semblance of Filipino life here. One thing I truly miss on Sundays is buying rice cakes right after mass. We have Filipino mass once a month in our region, and on this day some enterprising Filipinos sell a variety of food such as chicharon, dinuguan, kutsinta, and loads more. It's a bit expensive (the suman, for example, costs $5.00 for 4 pieces), but sometimes your Filipino tummy gets the better side of reason and you simply have to give in.

The local fruit I found to my liking (aside from the kiwifruit) is the feijoa. I had a taste of this fruit last year and had been looking forward to it ever since. I actually thought it was a summer fruit and was already checking out fruit stands for it since December. I just learned it becomes available in late autumn.

The taste is a combination of two fruits available in our country. The fleshy part resembles strongly of guava. But when you get to the center where the seeds are, you get the taste of passion fruit. I like it a lot!

I'll get some more feijoas when I'm through with this batch. I'll have to wait for another year before I get my next feijoa fix. As for the suman, we can always find an excuse to celebrate and cook some bico!

Technorati tags: musing

Alternative vegetable tempura dip recipe

We had vegetable tempura for dinner, and I was scouring the internet for a dipping sauce recipe. Unfortunately, most of them called for mirin which we did not have readily available in the kitchen. However, I found this one from Cooks.com that was an excellent companion, not only for the vegetable tempura, but also for the roast chicken our friends brought over. But instead of sticking with the original recipe (unfortunately I can no longer find the link), I substituted grated onion with grated garlic.

Chicken potato salad

We recently harvested potatoes from our garden, and there was definitely a lot more than we can consume. So we gave away some, but we also had to think of inventive ways to cook up the rest. Besides french fries and mashed, what better way is there to consume loads of potatoes than to make it into salad? And yummy salad we had!

Here's the recipe for potato salad with chicken.