Cooking Challenge 3: Morcon

I have mixed emotions with this challenge. I'm not sure if I'll give myself a failing grade with this one. Morcon indeed gave me a hard time in preparing this dish. I had a hard time slicing the chunk of beef to flat sheets. Also, I can't find the right strings to tie the meat so I just used a normal thread. I'm prepared to give myself a Fail grade while preparing the dish but thought not to after I've presented and tasted it. I was a bit scared since we've invited our friend, Macky for dinner. It all add up with the pressure. I'm just relieved that they liked it. I'll definitely make this dish in the future so I can improve.



Ingredients:

1 kg kalitiran or round, cut in flat sheets.
1/4 c of calamansi juice
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup reserved juice from pickles
whole sweet pickles, quartered lengthwise
hotdogs, halved lengthwise
hardboiled eggs, quartered lengthwise
pimientos, sliced into lengthwise strips
strip of cheese
carrot, sliced into 1/4 inch thick long strips
tomato sauce
string used for trussing chicken
flour
oil for frying
beef stock
salt & pepper to taste

Procedure:

1. Combine soy sauce, calamansi juice and the pickle liquid. Place beef and rest for a few hours.
2. Lay the marinated beef flat on a board or cookie sheet. Add strips of hotdog, pickles, egg, cheese, carrots, and pimientos.
3. Roll the beef, keeping the filling in the center.
4. Tie the roll with string to keep it together.
5. Roll morcon over flour.
6. Pan-fry the morcon over high heat. Brown all sides, drain of fat.
7. Saute garlic, onion. Place the seared morcon, then fill with beef stock and leftover marinade. Simmer covered for 2 hours or until tender over low fire.
8. 30 minutes before the cooking time, put tomato sauce and simmer. May opt to add more vegetables.
9. Let the roll cool a bit.
10. Slice into 1/2 to 1-inch thick slices.

Presenting my Morcon!

Cooking Challenge 2: California Maki

Maki is not my favorite dish. But since, it's my habibi's fave I decided to learn how to make one. I can still recall when I had my first taste of Maki. Back in college, my friend Donna, now living in Dubai, bought one and had me taste it. I bravely took a bite. Instantly, I tasted the mango, felt strange about it and decided that would be the last time I'd eat one. Then my habibi came and re-introduced me to the dish. Strangely, I loved it. So here is my attempt to make the dish my habibi loved. We decided to have an Japanese themed dinner with the dish. I also cooked poached salmon, recipe below.

Ingredients


Baboo mat wrapped in Clingfilm
2 sheets seaweed paper
sushi rice (refer below for the recipe)
Thinly sliced mango
Imitation crab meat
Sesame seeds
Wasabe
Soy Sauce
Calamansi

Procedure:

1. On the bamboo mat, lay the seaweed paper then cover with sushi rice leaving about 1/2 inch seaweed without rice at the bottom. Press lightly so the rice will stick into place. You may deep your fingers on a bowl of water so the rice won't stick.



2. Turn the seaweed paper and rice over.

3. Place crab meat and mango at about 1 inch away from the bottom.




4. Then carefully, start to roll the mat. Hold firmly to form a roll. Continue rolling until the seaweed and rice is compressed into a roll.









5. Unroll the mat.

6. Sprinkle with sesame seeds.

7. Cut with cold knife.

8. Serve with soy sauce mixed with wasabe and calamansi.



Sushi Rice (This recipe can make 4 sushi rolls)

Ingredients:

2 cups uncooked rice
water

Sushi Vinegar
1 1/2 tbsp. rice vinegar
1 tbsp. caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt

Procedure:

I've read that the secret to a perfect maki or sushi roll is its sushi rice. I thoroughly washed the uncooked rice thoroughly and let it drain for about 45 minutes. Instead of cooking it the conventional way, I cooked it in a rice cooker. :D I'm not that confident in cooking rice. Once the rice is cooked, I prepared the vinegar mixture.


Poached Salmon

This is my second time to cook this dish. I got intrigued with this dish when we ate at Ikea Restaurant. When I ordered for a salmon, I saw that their salmon were just sitting on a container with clear liquid. I'm sure that it's just not water so I searched for its recipe in the net. I found one at elise.com. It was so easy to do. Anyone without cooking skills can do this. I had some leeks and green onions left overs so I used it as a substitute for onions.

Ingredients:

2 cuts of salmon
1/2 cup rice wine
1/2 cup water
slices of onions
fresh parsley
salt
ground pepper


1. Combine all ingredients in a pan. Bring to boil.







2. Place salmon, skin down. Put salt and pepper on top of salmon. Cover and cook for 5 minutes.

Cooking Challenge 1: Pansit Palabok

Yes! The image you are seeing is my cooking! I can't believe it myself. I'm not an expert in cooking but I'm knowledgeable enough to follow recipes and tweak it a bit to my liking. I've been wanting to cook Palabok ever since I was in my school days. But knowing how tedious it will be, I focused on mastering my baked mac dish. Now that we are living in Singapore where the source of Palabok is scarce, I'm forced to face the dish I've been avoiding to cook. Last week, we ate Palabok at Kabayan, a Filipino restaurant in Orchard, to pacify my craving. I personally didn't like it. Maybe, I just expected too much on it. Anyway, when I told our experience to my friend Lia (who apparently works in Korea), she suggested that we learn to cook dishes that we haven't tried yet together. So we agreed to make Palabok first. It's a good thing mamaKaye (my officemate) went home to Pinas so I was able to ask my parents to buy me "atchuete" (annato seeds) for her to bring to us. Since I didn't want to use Palabok mix, I searched the net for some easy palabok recipes I could learn from. Below is the recipe I made based on other four recipes I found in the net. So here it goes!

Pansit Palabok

Ingredients:



100grams Crab meat
2 c. shrimp juice
2 tbsp. annato powder mixed with 1/2c water
2 tbsp. fish sauce
salt and pepper
1 1/2 tbsp. cornstarch mixed with 1/2 c water
1 egg, beaten



Bihon
cooked shrimp
cooked squid
2 hard boiled egg, sliced
bacon bits (in replace of chicharon)
spring onion
calamansi

Procedure:

To prepare shrimp juice:

1. Place shrimp heads of 500grams uncooked shrimp in a bowl.
2. Pound to extract the juice from the shrimp.
3. Put 2 cups water on extracted shrimp juice.
4. Strain shells from the liquid.

To cook noodles:

1. Soak bihon noodles in cold water for 20 minutes.
2. Boil water or chicken stock.
3. Drain noodles from cold water.
4. Put noodles in boiling water
5. Cook for less than a minute.
6. Drain noodles.

To cook sauce:

1. Saute garlic and onion until cooked.
2. Add crab meat, shrimp juice and simmer.
3. Add annato mixture, fish sauce, salt, and pepper.
4. Simmer for 5 minutes.
5. Add cornstarch mixture and simmer to thicken sauce stirring constantly.
6. Add beaten egg, stir, then turn off fire.

To serve:

1. Place noodles on a plate.
2. Put sauce over noodles.
3. Top with garnishes; shrimp, squid, egg, spring onions, bacon bits.
4. Serve with calamansi on the side.

I'm so proud of myself after I cooked this dish. The sauce I made tasted exactly the way I wanted it to be. I'm able to achieve the taste I wanted. And most especially, my habibi loved it so much! The palabok I made is worth all the effort I exerted. As you can see in the text and pictures above, you'll notice that I used and done some unusual things in the recipe. Since we don't have a pestle, I used a clean bottle to pound the shrimp. I cooked the noodles in the water I used to cook the shrimp. Instead of a chicharon, I used bacon bits. We found a chicharon in the grocery last night, but it's too expensive! A pack costs SG$7! I settled with bacon bits and surprisingly it blend well with the sauce! Too bad, I don't think I'll cook this dish again until next year. Hahaha! I'm not sure if I'll have the same enthusiasm the next time. Nevertheless, I'm looking forward to our next challenge! We haven't decided on it yet. If you have some suggestions, we'd gladly appreciate it!

We agreed to learn two(2) dishes a month! Stay tuned!