Chicken Sopas

This is probably the best sopas I've ever cooked.  And the one with the shortest cooking time too.  Haha.  Probably because I used leftover chicken.

ingredients:

• chicken (can be shredded, with bone or chunks so long as it's cut into smaller pieces; breast or fillet is especially superb for this) - we used our leftover black roasted chicken (from fairprice) from previous night's dinner 
• about 4 cloves of garlic  
• half of a medium-sized red onion
• one can of carnation full cream milk
• half pack (or a whole pack, whatever suits you) of macaroni pasta - actually, any kind of pasta will do
• two pieces of bay leaves
• diced carrots (minced is okay, too)
• chicken cubes (i would have used chicken stock, but the one that i got from fairprice for free didn't smell good anymore)
• spring onions - one onion in the kitchen started growing onion stalks, so i just cut them off
• grated cheese
• salt and pepper

shred the leftover chicken into smaller pieces, remove the bones.  if it's fresh, then cut it into smaller pieces.

heat the cooking pan and pour oil into it (olive oil for a better taste). 

throw in the chicken and cook it until the meat has turned white.

add the onions and cook for another 1 or 2 minutes or until they are translucent enough.  then, add the garlic.

when the garlic is done, add the bay leaves and diced carrots.  saute for another 2 or 3 minutes.

add salt and pepper.

add the full cream milk.  allow it to simmer.  stir it every now and then to prevent the milk from curdling.

when it starts to boil a little, add the pasta.  then, add about half a cup of water.  the amount of water actually depends on how much pasta you are going to cook.  it may be one cup.  just make sure the pasta is covered with liquid.  stir it every now and then.

wait until the pasta is cooked.

while waiting, add the chicken cubes.  keep stirring but make sure you don't smash the pasta.

once the pasta is done, add the grated cheese.  stir.  then, add the spring onions.  stir again and let simmer for another couple of minutes. 

done!


if there's more than enough sopas, you can keep the rest in the fridge then re-heat it the next day.  however, the pasta will most probably soak up the sauce or liquid of the sopas.  what i did was mix about half a bowl of milk (doesn't have to be another carnation can; regular drinking milk is okay) and grated cheese and salt.  stir it like you're making scrambled eggs.  then, add it to the leftover sopas while you're re-heating it.

pork nilaga

last night's dinner was pork nilaga.  it should have been sunday's dinner, but sunday was too exhausting.  imagine, we braved the pouring rain (there's no storm in singapore) to get to church.  and then we went to xin wang hong kong cafe in anchorpoint for lunch, and then to my favorite wasteland, ikea, to buy some stuff for our new place.  and then dropped off everything back to redhill.  and then headed to cineleisure to watch x-men: first class.  so, obviously, no cooking for me.

anyway, the pork nilaga turned out to be very very good.  i didn't even have to use patis anymore!

ingredients:

• spareribs and a few chunks of pork belly (depends on how much meat you want)
• 1/2 onion, sliced into small pieces (i used white onion)
• 7-8 pieces of string beans, cut into smaller pieces
• pechay, chop off the end part, but retain a few inches of the white stem part (i sliced my pechay because i don't know why the pechay leaves here in singapore are bigger than my palm)
• 5-6 pieces of potatoes, cut into halves
• salt
• lots and lots of peppercorn or crushed pepper
• knorr pork cube (optional)

before doing anything else, boil the spareribs and pork belly for maybe about 1 1/2 to 2 hours.  season it with salt and peppercorn.

while the pork is boiling, prepare the veggies.

when you think the pork is tender enough, add the potatoes.  let it boil until the potatoes are softer too.

when the potatoes are somewhat mash-able already, add the knorr pork cube.  then the string beans.

then when the meat is really tender, and the potatoes can be easily poked with a fork, add the pechay.  then, simmer for a minute or two.  done!

i should really get a camera!

ginataang kalabasa with chicken breast

i only learned how to cook when i started working here in singapore.  at first, i used to email mama for recipes.  and then, i started to hunt around for food blogs with easy-to-make recipes.  good thing my teammate, din, also likes cooking.  we share recipes and kitchen finds and stuff like that.

anyway, ever since we had that incident with the owners in queenstown, i lost interest in cooking (that being their main complaint).  so, i promised myself that i would cook again once we've moved to a new place.  and that's exactly what i did.  early saturday morning, ross and i went to the market ang bought food that, hopefully, would last us for two weeks. 

i cooked ginataang kalabasa with chicken breast first.  it's the easiest and fastest dish to prepare.  (ang olats ko, wala man lang pictures.)  i figured i'll post the recipes here so i would have a copy as well.  i tend to forget stuff :)

ingredients:

• 1/2 kalabasa, peeled, cut in chunks (big chunks are great because they tend to get squished) - better if you get a malagkit kalabasa.  they are more flavorful.
• 1 chicken breast fillet, sliced into strips or cubes or chunks whatever you like
• 7-8 pieces of string beans, cut into small pieces
• 1 pack of coconut powder (because i don't know how to do real gata) - dilute the coconut powder in 1 mug/cup of water.  depends on how thick or thin you want it to be.
• 4-5 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1/2 onion (1/4 is fine if it's a big onion.  for me, it doesn't matter if the onion is red or white, they both make me cry)
• olive oil
• herbs (i use mixed dried herbs, the one that comes in small bottles)
• knorr chicken or pork cube
• salt
• black pepper, ground or crushed
• ground cinnamon - optional (i feel it enhances the kalabasa's taste, and yeah, pangpa-arte lang :))

marinate the chicken breast in olive oil, salt, pepper and herbs.  a few minutes is fine, just enough to add flavor.

add the chicken breast with olive oil mixture.  add more olive oil if the oil is not enough to cook the chicken.

cook the chicken until its water inside drains out or when you start seeing threads of white chicken meat.
add the onions.  saute for about two minutes or until the onions are translucent.

add the garlic. saute.

when the garlic is cooked (not burnt), add the diluted coconut powder.  let it simmer.

when the liquid starts to boil, add the kalabasa.  let it simmer again.

check on it every now and then, make sure there's enough water.  add half a mug/cup of water if necessary. you'll notice the kalabasa will become soft and squishy.  and the liquid will become orange-y in color.

add pepper, knorr cube, herbs (if you want) and cinammon powder.

when the kalabasa cubes are super soft and squishy (not dissolved; you should still be able to see big chunks), add the string beans.

simmer again for a few seconds (string beans are not supposed to be over-cooked). done!

new tea concoction

i decided to try out something new because i was getting tired of the ceylon tea's taste.

i bought this...

Lipton Russian Earl Grey Tea

and blended it with this...

Lipton Cranberry Raspberry & Strawberry Tea

the result is a sweet smelling, citrus-y type of tea.  it tastes like the sugar-coated orange jelly candies that i used to eat when i was a kid, except that this one is not that sweet.  and it's smell?  for me, it smells like the sea.  i don't know why, but it does for me.  you know, the smell of the saltiness of the sea during the early hours of the morning or late at night.  weird, because while there may be a hint of saltiness in the drink, it's not overpowering.

anyway, the label on the russian earl grey tea says it has citrus peels (blueberry and orange and something else).  knowing this, i still decided to blend it with the berries because i thought it might still be as strong as the ceylon tea (the lipton ceylon tea is supposedly mild, but there are times that it almost becomes bitter, especially when i leave the tea bag in the cup for more than a couple of minutes).  but surprisingly, the taste of the two blended teas is refreshing to the palate.  there's no after taste or anything like that.  so yeah, there, i have a new favorite.  yay!

lipton peppermit tea: a sleeping pill in disguise

oh yes.  my new found love for tea is slowly branching out.  i started with the twinings ceylon tea and lipton cranberry raspberry strawberry tea blended together then moved on to the much cheaper lipton ceylon tea and forest fruit teas.  now i'm into peppermint tea!

sleeping pill with a minty taste

i started drinking tea a few months ago because of kenneth.  whenever we had team meetings, he would bring in to the meeting room his tea blender/pitcher or whatever you call it and give each one of us a cup.  the very first tea i had was ceylon and peach blended together.  and i loved it.  i was actually surprised that i loved the taste.  i used to think that it was too bitter that's why i never tried drinking.

anyway, i decided to buy my own.   surprisingly, it was good.  the ceylon tea was a bit strong, but it was neutralized by the sweetness/tanginess of the berries.  i drank a mug (yes, a mug.  simply because we don't have cups at home.) every night, after dinner as it helped calm my stomach and relieves me the feeling of being bloated.  my bladder also "felt" better.  doing number 1 feels so much better now. :)

i'm going off-topic.  so, after i finished the box, i tried the fruit floral flavors of lipton.  i blended it with their ceylon tea too (i cannot afford to buy twinings anymore.  it just so happened that the first box i bought was on sale.), which is milder than twinings.  the fruit floral flavors felt a little weird at first as it felt like i was eating flower petals.  but the taste and the aroma grew on me.  so i went back to my habit of drinking tea after dinner.  in fact, i started loving tea so much more that i drank, at most, three mugs a day.  ross warned me that tea can cause stomach pains because of its acidity.  luckily, i never had that problem. 

so, the latest box that i bought was lipton peppermint.  last sunday, i tried one pack and blended it with ceylon again.  (i don't know why, but i love the smell and taste of ceylon tea.)  it smelled like an herbal medicine.  ross said it reminded him of lagundi (an herbal medicine for asthma).  but the taste it minty (of course, it's peppermint) and refreshing to the palate.  halfway through my mug, i started feeling sleepy.  i was playing on ross's iphone and my eyes were literally drooping.  i put the iphone down and slept for more than an hour.  when i woke up, it felt like i slept for almost half a day.  it was one of the best sleeps i've ever had.  while waiting for ross to finish speaking with his mom over skype, i drank what was left of my tea.  and yes, i started feeling sleepy again.  the same thing happened after we had dinner and i drank another half-mug full of tea.

so what's with peppermint tea?  for one, it doesn't have caffeine so it's not really an upper type of tea.  but the other teas i've tried before do not have caffeine either.  whatever it has, i like its calming effect on me.  while it makes me feel sleepy, it doesn't make me feel as if i'm tired or worn out.  it's pretty much similar to the chinese medicine that mama made me take before when i wasn't sleeping so much because of work and school. 

the only downside to this is i can't drink peppermint tea at work.  navpreet will probably kill me if she sees me sleeping :)

post-valentine post

i almost forgot.

ross and i watched zsazsa zaturnnah ze musikal last valentine's. it was sooo funny and so good. i loved everything about it. the cast was very good. i especially loved the guy who played didi :)

it was a good thing we got good seats. i believe the P700 ticket (for the front and center seats) were worth it.

they will be presenting the musical again on march 7.

(photo from here)





oh, but before that, we watched push. the movie was okay. i agreed to watch it because i liked the trailer, and i was curious to see the change in dakota fanning's character. but, the movie was quite a drag. and somehow open-ended. so....
it's okay.



(photo from here)

and because it was valentine's day, sm cinemas gave coupons to claim cupcakes from frostings. they are so so good. the cupcakes that came with the coupon were mini cupcakes. ross got the smores flavor, i got the swiss chocolate. oh my god. the bread was so soft, but it didn't crumble when you bite into it like the other cupcakes. the flavor was so good. they're quite pricey thought, especially the regular-sized cupcakes.

(the first one was banana peanut butter, then smores, then swiss chocolate... more pictures here)

healthy dinner

Ross and I have somehow agreed weeks before that we're not going to eat rice anymore. This is one of our so-called sacrifices so as to lose weight.

But who wouldn't be tempted to eat rice when you find out as soon as you get home that you have kare-kare or kaldereta or steamed lapu-lapu or steamed crab for dinner? And so, for the past two weeks (although it wasn't an everyday thing) I've been eating rice at night.

Tonight is different though. Before I headed home, I dropped by Kenny Rogers and bought their sandwiches for dinner. At first, I was thinking of getting their traditional roasted chicken meals, but I wanted to eat something different. This was my first time to taste their sandwiches. I bought their Salmon and Cream Cheese Grilled sandwich and Tomato, Pesto and Mozzarella Grilled sandwich for mama.

The salmon sandwich was heaven. For P158, it was worth it.