It is traditional to cook chicken in white wine but, for the life of me, I couldn’t locate the bottle of white wine last night so, throwing tradition to the wind, I grabbed the unopened bottle of semi-sweet red wine and cooked the chicken with it. The result was surprisingly great as the red wine…
This dish was inspired by a recipe called tangerine beef which I found in one of my cookbooks. I don’t have access to fresh tangerines but I like the idea of adding nuts to deep-fried meat coated in a sweet sticky glaze. I substituted lemon for the tangerine and chicken for the beef. If you…
Last night, there was a replay of the No Reservations episode shot in Singapore and, suddenly, I missed Singapore. I love the vibrancy of that city-state the food stalls where the food is so good it seems silly to go to pricey restaurants, the shops in the air-conditioned underground tunnel, the food, the train, the…
I love Chinese-style stir fries! They’re fast to make, they’re so pretty with the explosion of shapes and colors, and they’re perfect when you have only a small amount but several varieties of vegetables. The chicken had been fried earlier in the day so the stir-frying part to complete the dish took less than five…
When a recipe calls for butterflied chicken, where do you cut down the back of the breast? See, I always cut down the breast. You can see that in the chicken piri piri and chicken inasal recipes. Then, I saw Jamie Oliver butterflying a chicken by cutting down its back. And that made me think….
At the Sun Moon Lake area in Taiwan, there is a restaurant set in a magnificent garden where the trees twinkle with tiny lights. The restaurant’s specialty fruits. Meat cooked with fruits, seafood cooked with fruits, fresh mushrooms cooked with fruits… I loved the food so much that, since then, I have consciously tried to…
A few weeks before the school year ended, I bought a kilo of boned chicken breast to make chicken salad sandwiches for the kids to bring to school. I boiled and flaked all the chicken to save time. The following day, the kids were bored with a chicken salad sandwich. I was stuck with all…
Here is a recipe that originated from China. The Chinese introduced noodles, noodle-making, and noodle cooking in the Philippines centuries ago. We have adopted and improvised Chinese noodle recipes and integrated them into our cuisine using locally-available ingredients. Just like Italian pasta, oriental noodles come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, fresh and…
What do you do with the water in which you have soaked dried mushrooms? Throw it away? Don’t. It has just as much flavor as the mushrooms themselves. Just get a clean cheesecloth (kata, or any similar fabric), fold it in half, and set it over a bowl. Strain the mushroom in soaking water with…
A cross between the Chinese mami and the Vietnamese chicken and vegetable noodle soup, this very oriental dish is cooked with flat rice noodles in chicken broth and topped with chunks of chicken breast meat, carrots, and leeks. If you’re in a real hurry, you may use canned broth or even bouillon cubes. Note, however,…
