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Recipe: Gandule Rice

Sep10

Gandule Rice and Pastele Stew go together like bread and butter but I don’t know how to make pastele and I don’t think I would ever have the ingredients or patience to make it. I’ll leave that to the pros. But one week, we were having Hispanic foods for a party so I decided to try my hand at making gandule rice. I found a recipe online and tried it out…and oh boy, did it turn out well! Full credit goes to Keeping it Relle, she made the recipe look so easy that I made it! The funniest thing is, I didn’t realize one of my students was Puerto Rican so I was a bit nervous for her to try it but she liked it a lot! She gave me some tips for the future which includes using long grain rice instead. I would definitely make this again!

Annatto Seeds

Have you used this before? Before this recipe, I had never heard of it but I must have been crazy to want to make my own annatto oil but here I am.

I followed the instructions on the package, it’s so fast! And you get this deep red oil from it. Definitely helps add color to the dish.

Annatto oil ready to go for the dish…

Half pack of bacon sizzling away…

Add the pork shoulder…

Add your veggies and herbs…rice and broth and ready to cook! My rice cooker wasn’t big enough so I cooked this in my wok on the stove top. Worked perfectly fine! It takes about 30 minutes to cook through.

Gandule Rice

  • 3 cups uncooked white rice
  • 1 tablespoon achiote oil (annatto oil)
  • ½ pound bacon
  • ½ pound pork tenderloin sliced into thin, short, narrow strips
  • 4 cloves garlic finely minced
  • ½ green bell pepper diced
  • 1 small onion diced
  • 1 bunch cilantro finely chopped
  • 5 stalks green onion thinly sliced
  • 3 cups chicken broth
  • 2 packets Sazon Goya
  • 1 can 8 ounces tomato sauce
  • 1 can 15 ounces gandules verdes, drained
  • 1 can 6 ounces pitted black olives, drained

Instructions 

  • Rinse rice in cool running water until water runs clear. Drain and set aside.
  • Set a large pan over medium high heat. Add achiote oil, bacon, and pork. Cook until browned, about 5-10 minutes.
  • Next add garlic, bell pepper, and onion. Cook until fragrant and the onions become translucent, about 2-3 minutes.
  • Then add cilantro and green onion. Stir to combine and heat through. Remove from the heat and set aside.
  • Pour drained rice into the rice cooker (gotta be at least 10 cup rice cooker). Add chicken broth, Sazon Goya packets, tomato sauce, gandule beans, and olives.
  • Strain oil from pork mixture and discard. Add pork to the rice pot. Stir until well combined. 
  • Set the rice cooker to cook. Once the rice cooker has finished, open and fluff the rice by stirring with a fork.

Full Recipe Credit: Keeping it Relle

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Recipe: Steamed Pork Patty

Aug25

Another recipe that helps me cook to my roots. My mom used to cook this dish for us all the time and I hated making it when I learned how. You could technically use ground pork but that wouldn’t be the same. She would use pork shoulder and chop it down by hand which I hated but now that I’m older and wiser, I realized that having chunks of the pork makes all the different in this dish.

I didn’t have a recipe written for this but can recall certain details. I noticed that online sources have all kinds of variations but I went the super simple route. Remember when I posted this the other week?

Yup, it was to make this dish! I tried to use this recipe as inspiration for my dish but I ended up just improvising. My mom didn’t use water chestnut so I didn’t use that and I wanted shiitake mushrooms in it, so I added that.

I don’t really have a recipe to type up, I used two pounds of pork shoulder that I chopped up. I added about 8 shiitake mushrooms. I rinsed off the salted turnip and minced that small but boy I messed that up. I should have rinsed and soaked the turnip overnight because bugga is SALTY. So salty.

I seasoned the patty with some oyster sauce, sugar, cornstarch, sesame oil, chicken bouillon and white pepper. No salt or shoyu cause it’s so dang salty. I also drizzled some vegetable oil on top before steaming it for about 20 minutes.

If it wasn’t so salty, this dish would have been perfect. Luckily I ate this with rice and some squash soup. I don’t know how traditional this is but when we had leftovers of this pork patty, my mom added eggs to make another meal out of it (almost like a meat chawan mushi).

I added a few eggs and some water (I don’t even measure, just eyeball it myself) – topped it with fresh green onions and steamed it for about 10 minutes or just until it is set. And boom, another entree! Ah this was a good dish. I had enough pork mixture to make two pie platters so I froze half for later. If you want a recipe, let me know and I’ll try to type one out next time I make it.

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Recipe: Cambodian Stir Fry Shrimp

Aug20

When I saw this recipe on TikTok (duh), my mouth was salivating already. It’s a simple dish to make but I did have to venture out to Chinatown to grab a bottle of crab paste.

Don’t ask me what is in crab paste, I hope there is crab but I don’t love that it says formula 2 on this bottle lol. The bottle is also kind of pricey, I think this was almost $9.00. I asked the lady the price and she was nice but was defensive when she told me the price because she said this is the good one. Okay, I’ll take your word for it lady!

Funny story, some folks add other seafood like mussels to this but I decided to add squid. Times had baby squid on sale so I bought a box. The cashier starts scanning it and then asks me if I fish. If you know me, you know that I absolutely do not fish. She asks what I’m going to do with it and I was like…”eat em?” and she mentioned that a lot of fisherman buy this to use as bait for fishing. Well come time to make this dish, I regretted buying this box of baby squid with every ounce of my soul. The amount of cleaning and prep work I had to do with the baby squid was insane – it was not worth my time or efforts cause by the time it was “cooked” there was barely any meat. Ugh! No wonder it’s used as bait for fishing.

Garlic and Crab Paste Sauteeing!

Add the shrimp to the sauce and stir fry

Add jalapenos and green onions and continue cooking until the shrimp is cooked through (and look! Where even is the squid! Ugh!)

Cambodian Shrimp Stir Fry

1 bottle of crab paste
2 lb. head-on shrimp, deveined
1 head of garlic, minced
2 T oyster sauce
1 t chicken bouillon
1 t black pepper
1 T chili oil
1 T sugar
3-4 jalapenos, sliced (keep the seeds for extra spice!)
3 green onions, chopped into 2 inch sticks
1 T neutral oil

Heat up a wok and add neutral oil and garlic, fry until fragrant. Add entire body of crab paste and heat up for about 1 minute or 2. Add shrimp, oyster sauce, chicken bouillon, black pepper, chili oil and sugar and stir fry for about 3 minutes. Add jalapenos and green onions and continue to stir-fry for about 6-7 minutes or until the shrimp is cooked through.

Very spicy but very delicious! Definitely a rice thief dish. Chan and I enjoyed it immensely!

Recipe Credit: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8kvRc6S

Post Views: 1,328

Recipe: Taegu Tofu Poke

Aug13

Another TikTok recipe but this time it was harder because she gave ingredients enough to feed a big party. I tried to cut it down to a smaller portion and it still came out to a LOT but I wasn’t about to use a whole jar of furikake and a whole jar of chili oil (LOL). I’ll try to give you folks the ingredients I used and I’ll link her video below too!

Triple Tofu Action!

So much chopping…

Taegu Tofu Poke

1 pack extra firm tofu, cubed
1 pack firm tofu, cubed
1 pack unseasoned aburage, cubed
1 3 oz. container taegu, chopped
1 kamaboko, cubed
1 package vegetable tempura fishcake, cubed
1 container sea asparagus (I bought the container from Don Quijote)
1/4 C Furikake
3 T chili oil
2 tomatoes, chopped
1 sweet onion, minced

Mix all the ingredients together in a big bowl and refrigerate, tastes best as it marinates in the fridge!

Recipe Credit: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8k7322S

This was very good and everyone I shared it with enjoyed it. I liked it too but do you ever make recipes and then after you’re done making the dish, you don’t really want to eat it? That was me, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I wanted. The sea asparagus and sweet onion adds the perfect crunch to this dish, and the taegu and chili oil add plenty seasoning. I think I added a dash of shoyu initially before it got to sit in the fridge but that’s probably not needed.

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Recipe: Chinese Cucumber Salad

Aug4

My original name for this recipe is Chinese Bean Curd, Cucumber and Mushroom Salad. Too much of a tongue twister so let’s just call it cucumber salad. I found this recipe on TikTok and I wanted to make it because wood ear mushrooms are Chan’s favorite but it also looked like such a refreshing salad. I had to type up the recipe and best guessed the quantities from the video and guess what? It came out GREAT. It is so delicious! Do I think the peanuts are needed next time? I don’t think so.

Dried Bean Curd Sticks

I found this at Don Quijote, I’m sure you can find this in Chinatown in any store. You have to soak these in water to rehydrate them. There are many different ways according to different websites but I decided to just soak it in cold water in the fridge overnight and that worked great! I rotated the sticks once just to make sure they got equal exposure to the water.

The wood ear mushrooms rehydrated much faster, I soaked them in room temperature water and it took about 30 minutes to get soft. The recipe calls for you to blanch both of them for about 1-2 minutes.

Garlic, Red Bell Pepper, Crushed Peanuts, Roasted Sesame Seeds and Green Onions ready for the hot hot oil…

Hot oil added! Immediately mix the ingredients so the hot oil can distribute to them evenly!

Cucumbers after my quick sugar pickle!

Fresh cilantro washed, drained and ready to go! Cilantro is a must!

Here’s the sauce with all the ingredients dumped in…so good…!

Chinese Bean Curd, Cucumber and Mushroom Salad

Ingredients

  • 3 Japanese cucumbers, washed and cut into 1 inch sticks
    • 3 T Sugar for quick pickling
  • 2 small packets Wood Ear Mushrooms, rehydrated, rinse and drained (from Don Q – takes about 30 minutes in room temp water to rehydrate)
  • 1 package Bean Curd Sticks, cut into 1 inch sticks (soaked in cold water in the fridge overnight)
  • 1 Red Bell Pepper, diced
  • 1 bunch cilantro
  • 1 handful of shelled roasted peanuts

Sauce Ingredients

  • 3 Green Onions, sliced
  • 5 cloves of garlic, minced
  • 2 T Toasted Sesame Seeds
  • 3 T Crushed Peanuts
  • 3-4 T heated neutral oil
  • 6 T light soy sauce
  • 6 T black vinegar
  • 2 T oyster sauce
  • 2 t salt
  • 2 t chicken bouillon
  • 1 T sugar, to taste

Toss cut cucumber sticks in a bowl with 3-4 T sugar and let sit for 10 minutes. Drain the water. Set aside. Heat a pot full of water, blanch the wood ear mushrooms and bean curd sticks in boiling water for 1-2 minutes. Immediately drain, rinse in cold water and drain. 

Add red bell pepper, green onions, garlic, sesame seeds, and crushed peanuts into a heat safe bowl. Heat up neutral oil in a pan/wok until smoking, turn off the stove and pour hot oil over the ingredients in the bowl. Immediately stir it to distribute the hot oil to all the ingredients.

Add soy sauce, black vinegar, oyster sauce, salt, chicken bouillon and sugar to the bowl and mix well. Taste and add sugar to your taste.

In a big bowl, add cucumber sticks, bean curd sticks, wood ear mushrooms, roasted peanuts, cilantro and sauce, toss. Can be eaten right away but tastes great after marinating for a few hours!

Note: Doubled sauce recipe when I made it compared to the video, doubling of sauce is reflected in this recipe write-up

@langcuisine88

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Mixed Plate Friday

Jul25

Thịt Nướng | Vietnamese Grilled Pork Skewers

It’s summer time so you know it’s time to do some BBQ’s! I wanted to try something a little different so I made vietnamese grilled pork skewers! Never tried making skewers like this before…and using fresh lemongrass before but it was a hit! Perfect food to go with some alcohol too. I had to buy a big pork shoulder chunk and slice it thin manually, that was the worst part of this dish. Other than that, it was good!

Salted Turnip

I found this at Don Quijote the other day and got super excited, really happy to see them branching out and getting more obscure Chinese ingredients. I don’t think I have ever bought this before but I think I was taught how to make a pork hash patty long time ago with it from my mom. Here’s to me cooking to my roots!

Look! This is the first time I ever guessed Wordle on the first try! This was my go-to first word everyday. Now that it’s been used, I am so lost without my first word guess! Gotta keep up with my streak!

Post Views: 2,272

Recipe: Chinese Braised Tofu

Jul9

How do you folks get your recipes nowadays? I have a whole bunch of cookbooks but I never touch them, I rely on social media and YouTube. Been on a Chinese kick, just wanting to cook up comforting Chinese dishes. I found this video on YouTube and it looked so good and it’s actually quite simple to make! I made adjustments from the original (I always do). Check it out!

Chinese Braised Tofu

Ingredients
2 blocks of firm tofu, sliced into 1/2 inch rectangles – drained and patted dry (extra firm okay too)
6 spring onions – white sliced thin and at an angle, greens sliced into 2 inch sections (reserve greens on the side)
5-6 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp chicken bouillon
1 tsp sugar
2 Tbsp light soy sauce
1 Tbsp oyster sauce
1 Tbsp cornstarch
1 C water

1 Tbsp neutral oil for panfrying tofu

For sauce, mix in green onion whites, garlic, black pepper, chicken bouillon, sugar, light soy sauce, oyster sauce, cornstarch and water. Mix well. Set aside.

Pan fry tofu slices – brown on both sides. I had to do this in two batches since my pan wouldn’t fit two blocks of tofu in a single layer.

Add sauce mixture and cook until sauce thickens. Add green parts of the green onions and cook for an additional minute. 

Notes: Perfect dish to serve over rice – a bit salty. I would probably add a maybe 1.5 T of soy sauce next time. Take this with a grain of salt (heh), I’ve been into blander food lately.

Recipe Credit: Linda Guo’s Kitchen

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Recipe: Crab Stuffed Mushrooms

Jun23

Perhaps I should say “crab” stuffed mushrooms because I bought imitation crab but eh…no can really tell the difference. Also, I found the real looking ones at Sam’s Club. Check it out!

Gadré Surimi Snow Leg Style, 16 oz., 2 pk. | $10.88

I think if I served this up in a seafood boil or something, you would not notice the difference but since I chopped it up, you could tell. I followed a recipe that I’ll credit below but I definitely took a lot of liberties. I’ll share my own recipe and the link to the original and let you make your own decision!

Mushrooms de-stemmed and rinsed, hanging out on the baking pan to pre-bake. We are supposed to bake this for about 3 minutes to help get rid of the moisture. It didn’t really lol…maybe I had to put it in longer?

My version of the stuffing, I basically omitted the egg and didn’t do the panko crust. Didn’t feel like I needed it anyway!

Mushrooms stuffed and ready for the oven! Yummy! I served these up at a BBQ and it was nicely enjoyed! I also had some extra for the bros and boy did they like it too. I think you absolutely need to serve it up with lemon slices and tabasco…it needs a bit of the acid/vinegar kick to cut through the richness of the stuffing.

Crab Stuffed Mushrooms

Ingredients

  • 2 – 24 oz Baby Bella Mushrooms (Sam’s Club)
  • 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, for brushing
  • 2 tablespoon salted butter
  • 1/4 cup shallot, small dice (1 big shallot from Safeway)
  • 6-8 cloves fresh garlic, minced
  • 16 ounces imitation crab (snow leg style from Sam’s Club)
  • 8 ounces cream cheese, softened to room temperature
  • 1 cup Italian blend cheese (any combination of mozzarella, provolone, and parmesan)
  • 3 tablespoons fresh italian parsley, minced
  • 3 tablespoons fresh italian basil, minced
  • 2 teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper
  • 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
  • 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes, more to taste

EXTRAS/GARNISH:

  • lemon slices, for serving
  • Tabasco (or you hot sauce of choice), for serving

Instructions

  • SAUTE THE SHALLOTS AND GARLIC. Heat the pan over medium/high heat. Add the butter, and when it’s melted, sauté the shallots for a couple of minutes, then add the garlic and sauté for another minute. Set this mixture aside to cool.
  • COMBINE FILLING INGREDIENTS. The stuffed mushrooms with crab filling is best when it’s chilled for 1 to 24 hours, to allow the flavors to meld together. To a medium bowl, add the crab meat, cream cheese, Italian blend cheese, egg, fresh parsley, fresh basil, salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes. Mix well. Once the shallot/garlic mixture is cooled, fold that into the crab mixture.
  • PREPARE THE MUSHROOMS. Preheat the oven to 375° F (190° C). Remove the mushroom stems (any stems and pieces can be frozen to use for stock later). Thoroughly rinse the mushrooms under cold water then pat them dry. Place the mushrooms cap side down on a baking rack placed over a sheet baking pan. Prebake them in the oven for 3 minutes to remove most of the excess moisture. You can turn the oven off for now.
  • OIL THE MUSHROOMS. Pour some olive oil into a small bowl, and using a basting brush or your hands, lightly coat each mushroom cap with oil (inside and outside). Place the prepared mushrooms into the biggest baking dish you have (you may need to use two depending on the size, which is okay).
  • STUFF THE MUSHROOMS. Fill each mushroom with about a tablespoon of the filling (this small scoop makes it easy). Use more or less of the filling depending on the size of each mushroom.
  • Preheat the oven again to 375° F (190° C) then bake in the preheated oven for about 20 minutes. The mushrooms should be tender, and the filling fully warmed through.
  • SERVE AND ENJOY! I recommend serving lemon slices and hot sauce (vinegar based) with stuffed mushrooms with crab. It adds a lot of flavor and acidity.

Recipe Inspiration/Original: Heavenly Spiced

Post Views: 1,854

Recipe: Healthy Rotisserie Chicken Cabbage Salad

May7

I saw this recipe on TikTok and it didn’t really have like a full blog recipe for it so I won’t be able to post any credit links. I really wanted to try it because it seemed easy enough and I love using rotisserie chicken breast in salads!

Recipes always sound easier than they are. A lot of chopping and prep work goes into this dish. Chan and I enjoyed it! Nice low carb option for you that is healthy and easy to make!

Rotisserie Chicken Cabbage Salad

Salad Ingredients:

  • 2 C shredded chicken breast (Sam’s or Costco Rotisserie Chicken Breast, all of it)
  • 1 large cabbaged, shredded
  • 2 medium carrots, julienned
  • 5 mini cucumbers, sliced thick matchsticks
  • 1 medium white onion, sliced
  • Pumpkin seeds (or any nuts you prefer), optional topping

Dressing Ingredients:

  • 6 T oyster sauce
  • 4 T soy sauce
  • 1 large lemon, juiced
  • 2 T honey
  • 6-8 garlic cloves, minced
  • 1-2 t grated/minced ginger
  • 2 T sesame oil
  • 4 stalks green onions, sliced

Instructions

  1. Combine dressing ingredients, okay to make ahead. Best overnight!
  2. Combine all salad ingredients except the chicken into a big bowl, top with chicken breast and pour salad dressing over the ingredients (this way the chicken breast soaks up all the dressing goodness first!). Top with nuts if you prefer and serve!

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Mixed Plate Friday

May2

OG sign from Kaimuki

Anyone remember this sign? This picture must be like 2 decades old but I was always so amused by this sign. Pidgen but straight and to the point. Just no do em k?

Chinese Chicken Wing Seasoning

Don’t even ask me where I bought this. I forget already but I always saw this on random videos online and it always made the chicken wings look so delicious so I decided to try it. Well all the instructions are in Chinese and Google Translate wasn’t very helpful so I really just improvised. I think I added too much water to the marinade but I let it sit overnight and then baked it in the oven. The taste wasn’t bad! My brother loved it so it’s big kid approved. Would I make it again? Sure! Wish they had English directions haha.

Post Views: 1,719