Chinese Style Chopsuey

Roasted Duck with mixed greens. Image by avlxyz

Chop suey (literally means "assorted pieces") is a Chinese dish consisting of meats (often chicken, fish, beef, shrimp (UK: prawns) or pork) and eggs, cooked quickly with vegetables such as bean sprouts, cabbage, and celery and bound in a starch-thickened sauce. It is typically served with rice but can become the Chinese-American form of chow mein with the addition of stir-fried noodles.

Chinese Style saucy Chopsuey. Image by SDeluz

Chop suey has become a prominent part of American Chinese cuisine, Filipino cuisine, Canadian Chinese cuisine, Indian Chinese cuisine, and Polynesian cuisine

I love chopsuey! This is my favorite dish of all time and I especially love the way my mom makes it. Unfortunately, it is so hard to do coz of the number of chopping. Here is a recipe that is basically a chinese variation due to the use of oyster sauce. 

Ingredients:

1 pound pork or beef 

Pork / Beef  Marinade:

1 teaspoon soy sauce

2 teaspoons oyster sauce

1 teaspoon salt

Pepper to taste

1 teaspoon Cornstarch

Sauce:

4 tablespoons water or chicken broth

2 teaspoons oyster sauce

3/4 to 1 teaspoon cornstarch

Vegetables:

2 small bunches broccoli

1 big carrot

1/2 cup bamboo shoots, rinsed

1/2 pound fresh mushrooms, washed and patted dry with a paper towel

1/2 cup water chestnuts 

1 large green pepper

2 stalks celery

1 onion

1/2 pound snow peas (optional)

Oil for stir-frying

Preparation:

1. Cut the pork into thin strips. 

• Add seasonings to pork
• Add the cornstarch last. 
• Marinate the pork for 10 - 15 minutes. 

2. While pork is marinating, prepare vegetables and sauce. 

3. For sauce: Whisk together the sauce ingredients and set aside.

4. For vegetables: 

• Cut bamboo shoots into thin strips. 
• Slice the mushrooms and water chestnuts. 
• Cut the green pepper in half, remove the seeds and slice diagonally. 
• For the broccoli, separate each stalk and leaves. 
• Cut the celery and carrot diagonally. 
• Cut the onion in half, peel, and slice thinly.

5. Place the vegetables on a large tray, being careful to keep each group separate, and set aside.

6. Heat wok and add oil. When oil is ready, add the pork. Stir-fry pork until rednes is gone. Remove and set aside.

7. Reheat wok and add more oil. When oil is ready, stir-fry each of the vegetables. The order doesn't matter, but you can stir-fry the onions and celery together, (if desired you can cook these with the pork), and the green pepper and snow peas together. 

8. Add salt to taste as desired while stir-frying each group of vegetables. Add water and cover wok, as it doesn't contain much moisture.

9. Reheat wok and add oil. Give the sauce a quick re-stir. Add and combine all the cooked ingredients in the wok. Make a "well" in the center and gradually add the sauce, stirring to thicken. Once it has boiled, remove the chop suey from the stove. 

10. Serve hot with rice.

There's a Pinoy version of this without the sauce. I will post that some time. Enjoy and stay healthy!

Stuffed Pepper

Image by suavehouse113 via Flickr

Stuffed pepper has different names in different countries. But technically it is a bell pepper (or paprika) that has been halved and stuffed with different choices and baked in the oven until soft. You can use your excess bolognese sauce for this then top it off with loads of grated cheese before popping in the oven. Even chili con carne mixture can be used for stuffing. Its all based on your imagination and what works for your family be they be vegetarian or meat lovers.

My stuffed pepper with chili con carne stuffings. Image by sheyonlinecookingschools

Ingredients:

Different colored paprika (bell pepper) cut crosswise

olive oil

desired stuffing

Procedure:

1. Clean the paprika after cutting it crosswise. Take out the seeds.

2. Preheat oven to 275 deg F (135 deg C).

3. Brush the inside of the paprika with olive oil and pop it in the oven for 20 minutes while you prepare your desired stuffings.

4. After 20 minutes, fill up the paprika with stuffings and top off with loads of grated cheese.

5. Bake for another 35 minutes or until paprika is soft.

I personally like to use the chili con carne mixture for this then putting a dash of maggi seasoning before loading it with cheese. A yummy treat that is great with rice.

Fruit Salad

Image by jcoterhals via Flickr

Fruit salad (also called Macedonia) is a dish consisting of various kinds of fruit, served in a liquid, either in their own juices or a syrup. In different forms fruit salad can be served as an appetizer, a side-salad, or a dessert. When served as an appetizer or as a dessert, a fruit salad is also known as a fruit cocktail. It must have a minimum of three fruits to make it a fruit salad.

Small cups of fruit salad are commonly served for dessert in American public schools. In many cases it is the only dessert offered.

Ingredients:

Peaches

Nectarines

Pluots

Cherries

Strawberries

Blueberries

1 cup crème fraiche

Procedure:

1. Wash the fruits thoroughly. Remove the pits from the cherries and cut them in half. 

2. Cut all the other fruits in small pieces.

3. In the bowl of a standard mixer fitted with the whisk, beat the crème fraiche with one to two tablespoons of sugar. 

4. In a large bowl, mix the fruits with the whipped crème fraiche or place alternating layers of fruits and crème fraiche in short glasses or bowls.

You can use other available fruits at your place depending on the season. Enjoy!

Marshmallow Fondant Icing

Image via Wikipedia

Butterfly Cake with fondant icing.

Fondant  is one of several kinds of icing-like substance used to decorate or sculpt pastries. The word, in French, means "melting", coming from the same root as "foundry" in English.

My First Fondant Covered cake for Christa's 82nd Birthday.

Fondant covered cakes are so beautiful to look at that one would think it is hard to do. In reality it is not though care should be taken in shaping it. One distinguished comment about fondant is that it doesn't taste nice. You just peel it off your cake and eat whats under it. I don't like wasting food, so here is a recipe for fondant icing that uses marshmallow. Who doesn't like marshmallows? So decorate those cakes like a pro using this easy 1-2-3 steps.

Ingredients:

900gms powdered sugar

60ml water

410 gms marshmallow

melted butter

Procedure:

1. Put marshmallow in a microwavable bowl and microwave it at 1 minute 800watts.

2. Carefully stir in the water and microwave again until melted. Be careful not to burn it!

3. Mix the powdered sugar one cup at a time until you have a sticky dough.

4. Rub your hands thoroughly with butter, and begin kneading the sticky dough. As you knead, the dough will become workable and pliable. Turn the dough out onto a working surface dusted with confectioners' sugar and continue kneading until the fondant is smooth and no longer sticky to the touch, 5 to 10 minutes.

5. Form the fondant into a ball, wrap it tightly in plastic wrap, and refrigerate overnight. To use, allow the fondant to come to room temperature, and roll it out onto a flat surface dusted with confectioners' sugar.

Tip: I'm very impatient so I didn't refrigerate it overnight. Just 2 hours and another one hour on room temperature. When it was so hard to knead, I popped the dough in the microwave for 50 seconds to get a working pliable consistency. Also, I immediately added the food coloring with the powdered sugar. This gave me a chance to add more coloring to the mixture until I reached the desired color. Disadvantage in doing that is I have only one color for my whole batch of cake.

Dinuguan (Blood Pudding Stew)

Image via Wikipedia

Dinuguan (also called dinardaraan in Ilocano, tid-tad in Pampanga, sinunggaok or champene in Batangas, and sampayna orchampayna in Northern Mindanao. Possible English translations include pork blood stew, blood pudding stew, and chocolate meat) is a Filipino savory stew of meat and/or offal (typically stomach, intestines, ears, heart and snout) simmered in a rich, spicy dark gravy of pig blood, garlic, chili (most often siling mahaba), and vinegar. The term dinuguan comes from the Filipino word dugo meaning "blood".

Dinuguan Photo by MVI

It is frequently considered an unusual or alarming dish to most people, though it is rather similar to European-style blood sausage, or British black pudding in a saucy stew form. It is perhaps closer in appearance and preparation to the Polish soup Czernina or an even more ancient Spartan dish known as melas zomos (black soup) whose primary ingredients were pork, vinegar and blood.

Dinuguan and Molo soup by Cook Garcia.

Dinuguan can also be served without using any offal, using only choice cuts of pork. In Batangas, this version is known assinunggaok. It can also be made from beef and chicken meat, the latter being known as dinuguang manok ('chicken dinuguan'). Dinuguan is usually served with white rice or a Philippine rice cake called puto.

Ingredients:

1 k. of pork belly, cut into small cubes

350 g. of pork liver

4 c. of pig’s blood

3 chili peppers

1 head of garlic, crushed and minced

1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, minced

3 onions, halved and sliced thinly

1 pouch of sinigang mix good for 1 liter of broth

1 bay leaf

salt

pepper (optional)

1 tbsp. of cooking oil

Procedure:

1. Refrigerate the pig’s blood until needed.

2. Heat a heavy casserole.

3. Pour in the cooking oil. When the oil starts to smoke, add the garlic and ginger.

4. Saute until fragrant. Add the pork pieces and cook over high heat until the edges of the pork start to brown.

5. Add the onions, chili peppers, bay leaf and sinigang mix and continue cooking until the onions are transparent.

6. Season with salt and pepper. 

7. Pour in just enough water to cover. Bring to a boil, lower the heat, cover and simmer for 30-45 minutes or until the pork is very tender.

8. Add more water, a little at a time, if the liquid dries up before the pork is cooked.

9. Meanwhile, minced the liver.

10. Season more with a little salt.

11. When the pork is tender and most of the liquid has evaporated, take the pig’s blood out of the refrigerator.

12. Transfer to a clean bowl and with clean hands, mash solid masses to a pulp. Pour the mashed blood and the liquid into the casserole. Bring to a boil.

13. Cook over medium heat, stirring, for about 5 minutes. Add the minced liver and cook for another minute or two.

14. Add more salt if necessary.

Serve with puto. Enjoy!

Corn Syrup Substitute

Image by Steven Vance via Flickr

Corn syrup is a food syrup, which is made from the starch of maize and contains varying amounts of glucose, maltose and higher oligosaccharides, depending on the grade. Corn syrup is used in foods to soften texture, add volume, prevent crystallization of sugar, and enhance flavor. Corn syrup is distinct from high-fructose corn syrup, created when corn syrup undergoes enzymatic processing that produces a sweeter compound containing higher levels of fructose.

Its major uses in commercially-prepared foods are as a thickener, sweetener, and humectant (an ingredient that retains moisture and thus maintains a food's freshness).

In the United States, cane sugar quotas raise the price of sugar; hence, domestically produced corn syrup and high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) are less expensive alternatives that are often used in American-made processed and mass-produced foods, candies, soft drinks and fruit drinks to help control cost.

Ingredients:

2 cups white sugar

3/4 cup water

1/4 tsp. cream of tartar

Dash of salt

Procedure:

1.Combine all ingredients in a heavy, large pan. 

2. Stir and bring to a boil. 

3. Reduce heat to a simmer and put cover on it for 3 minutes to get sugar crystals off the sides of the pan. 

4. Uncover and cook until it reaches soft ball stage. Stir often.

5. Cool syrup and store in a covered container at room temperature. 

This will keep for about 2 months. Makes almost 2 cups.

Boat Tart

Image via Wikipedia

A tart is a baked dish consisting of a filling over a pastry base with an open top not covered with pastry. The pastry is usually shortcrust pastry; the filling may be sweet or savoury, though modern tarts are usually fruit-based, sometimes with custard.

The categories of 'tart', 'flan', and 'pie' overlap, with no sharp distinctions, though 'pie' is the more common term in the United States.

Early medieval tarts generally had meat fillings, but later ones were often based on fruit and custard.

Tarte Tatin is an upside-down tart, of apples, other fruit, or onions.

Savoury tarts include quiche, a family of savoury tarts with a mostly custard filling; German zwiebelkuchen 'onion tart', and Swiss cheese tart made from Gruyere

Here is a recipe unearthed from a long list of favorites due to a query made by a friend. Boat tarts are small pies I remember buying when I was in highschool. It is shaped like a boat thus the name.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour 

1 tbl plus 1 teaspoon sugar 

8 tbl (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into pea-sized bits 

1 piece egg beaten with 1 cup iced water 

Egg Wash: 

2 tablespoon water 

1 tablespoon flour 

1 egg yolk 

Cashew Filling: 

3/4 cup sugar 

4 eggs 

1 cup dark corn syrup 

2 tablespoon dark rum 

1 tablespoon vanilla extract 

4 tablespoon melted unsalted butter

2 cups (10 ounces) roasted unsalted cashews 

Procedure:

1. This is basically the same procedure as blind baking for pies.

Shaped pie crust ready for baking blind. Photo by missbossy

• In a large bowl, sift the flour and sugar together. 
• Using a pastry blender, fork or your fingertips, work the butter into the mixture until it resembles coarse meal. 
• Sprinkle on 3 to 4 tablespoons of the egg-water mixture, and mix it in with your fingers until the dough comes together into a ball. 
• Working on a lightly floured surface, take egg-sized pieces of the dough and smear them away from you with the heel of your hand into 6-inch streaks. 
• Scrape up all the streaks of dough and pile them on top of one another to form a disc. 
• Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least 2 hours or overnight. 
• Set a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 400 degrees F. 
• Lightly butter your boat tart pans (Muffin cup molds will also do)
• On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough. Use a bowl bigger than your tart pan as a pattern. Press on the dough and get the cut circle.
• Fit the dough into the prepared tart pans.
• Trim the excess dough to a 1-inch overhang and double the dough over itself to reinforce the sides (save the trimmings for any emergency patchwork). 
• Refrigerate for 20 minutes.
• Line the tart shell with aluminum foil and weight down with dried beans or pie weights. 
• Bake for 20 minutes. Remove the foil and bake for 5 minutes longer or until lightly browned. 
• Patch any visible holes in the shell with the reserved dough scraps. 
• Brush the shell with Egg Wash and return to the oven for 5 more minutes, until the wash is shiny and no longer runny. 
• Transfer to a rack to cool and lower the oven temperature to 325 degrees F or 160deg C.

2. Spread the cashews in the partially baked shell and cover with the Cashew Filling, making sure the nuts are covered.

3. Bake for 30 minutes or until little bubbles appear around the edges of the tart and the center looks barely set. 

4. Transfer to a rack to cool.

Egg Wash Procedure:

1. In a small bowl and with use of a fork, mix together the water, flour, and egg yolk. Cover and refrigerate.

Cashew Filling Procedure:

1. In a large bowl, lightly beat the sugar and eggs together. Add the corn syrup, rum, and vanilla and beat just to a blend. Mix in the melted butter.

Tips:

You can make your own homemade light corn syrup as substitute for the market brand. For this easy light corn syrup substitute, click here.

To learn the step by step baking blind procedure, click here.

Egg pie is also known as custard pie. Both the pie and filling for egg pie can be used for this boat tart recipe. For egg pie recipe, click here.

I myself find the idea of putting foil and baking beans on each boat tart pan so  tasking. What I do is I stack them all over each other. This works best also for silicon muffin molds. The top most dough is the only one in need of baking beans. Economical and practical.


Here is a video of how to make blueberry lemon tartlets (also known as mini tarts).