Recipe: Mike's Triple Cheese Macaroni (Mac and Cheese for Adults - It's Easy, We Swear!)

Mac and Cheese.

Macaroni and Cheese? What?! What a horrible dish! 

Mikey insists that Macaroni and Cheese is the stuff what childhood dreams are made of -- the ready to mix and eat box.  I never grew up with mac and cheese and the closest thing to gourmet cheese I had during my childhood years in the Philippines was Magnolia Quickmelt, Cheesefood, Ques-O and for the well-to-do, Velveeta.  For Christmas, the most "sosyal" was the Queso de Bola or Edam cheese.  But that's about it! 

Cheese and cheese and more cheese!!!
The possibilities are endless!

Now, that I am here and the varieties of cheese are tremendous and from different cheese making countries, the possibilities for mac and cheese are endless!  There are different grades of softness, sharpness, sweetness, saltiness, fermentation and melting possibilities.  I appreciate the different cheeses and their qualities amidst the contrast of fruit and bread or even eaten alone but never as mac and cheese. 

Until came Mikey.  I must admit that my first chance with mac cheese was never an instant love affair. First of all, it was made from the box.  But mac and cheese is mac and cheese and therefore what changed my opinion finally came to using the right kind of cheese and never, please never, Velveeta.  I don’t make it myself unless I am asked to and usually, I start with grating the cheeses and with a milk-butter roux mixture. 

Mikey, on the other hand is several things: he hates knives, he hates doing a lot of preparation and he likes to keep it simple. 

When he made it once using our leftover chesses, I brought it to the hospital and again, it was a hit.  So people were asking the recipe. And so, without further adieu, here goes... 

Mikey's Triple Cheese Macaroni (The Easy Way!) 

Ingredients. 

We love rotelle - ridges make the sauce
cling better.

• 1 pound noodle (recommend: rotelle as the ridges hold more of the melted sauce due to the surface area) 
• 1/4 cup butter 
• 1 pound cheddar, small cubes 
• 4 ounces gruyere, small cubes 
• 4 ounces gouda, small cubes 
• 1 can evaporated milk 
• small amount of water for thinning, if needed 
• salt and pepper to taste 

Procedure. 

1. Boil some water as per noodle box directions. Cook until half done.  While cooking, preheat a saute pan on the side. 
2. Drain partially the water from the noodle boil.  Transfer the noodle with some of its water to the preheated pan and add the following in order: milk, butter and cheese. 
3. Stir gently, lower the heat and cover.  Intermittently, remove the cover then stir the mixture as the cheese melts.  Be mindful to stir from the bottom of the pan to prevent over heating and burning the noodles and cheese.  Do not boil to prevent the milk from curdling. 
4. If the sauce is getting thick and some of the cheeses have not melted, feel free to add some water and stir again.  At this point, the noodles are cooking further to a more al dente texture as the cheeses are melting with the milk in forming the sauce.  Add the salt and pepper to taste.  Stir further to incorporate.  If there are still some cheeses that are not thoroughly melted, that's okay but one may cover and turn off the heat to let it settle.  This settling process would further melt the remaining cheeses. 
5. Serve warm. 

Tips. 

• In my version and a point of difference between Mike and myself is that I like to grate the cheeses to easily melt them.  Also, the butter yield is higher to 1/2 pound (a stick) melted over low heat.  To the melted butter, add about 1/6 cup of all purpose flour and whisk well until it bubbles.  This is called a roux. Add gradually, while whisking, the evaporated milk mixed with equal amount of water.  You may also use two cups of whole milk. Cover and  lower the heat to let it bubble gently to a white sauce.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Then while gently whisking, add each of the cheeses making sure each addition melts before adding the next addition - this ensures a smooth sauce.  When the cheese sauce is done, add the pasta (cooked to al dente done) and toss to coat evenly. 
• For a more decadent mac and cheese, throw in some lobster - about a cup will do.  Other suggestions are: shrimp, sliced and sautéed mushrooms in butter or crab.  If mushrooms, try the most decadent of them all - morels! 
• Some bake the mac and cheese (especially the flavored ones) before serving.  For this, put them in small ramekins, top with bread crumbs, broil in a hot oven until brown then serve. 
• Creamier mac and cheeses are done with the use of cream or half and half (which is a less sinful version of pure cream). 

Recipe: How to Make Kare-Kare (Filipino Beef Peanut Stew) in the Style of Aling Edith and Aling Zeny

Kare-Kare - Mmmmmm.

A simple word to describe Kare-Kare - Mmmmmm.  Kare-Kare is one dish that evokes a warm feeling inside because it has complex favors that are held together by an earthy essence; that is, peanuts.  Recently, Mike had the chance to make Kare-Kare, as of course, taught by yours truly.  It was a recent visit to the Philippines that we decided to make this video because it would be fun to show him making the dish in the presence of our Manila based family and also, it would be a great thing to use all the natural peanut butter we have in the cupboard which we got from Costco. 

What makes Kare-Kare difficult is its multi-step process from the preparation of the ingredients prior to the cooking and that includes all the cutting, chopping, boiling and tenderizing.  That alone is work! And when  it's time to cook the dish, one has to decide which of the vegetables go first as each has a different cooking time from the other and surely a discriminating lover of Kare-Kare does not want the veggies to be overly soft - "lusaw" as we call it in Tagalog. 

My mother was something like this in the
1940s.  This is Norma Blancaflor, a movie
star during the golden age of the LVN studios.

Now, my mother, who is a product of her affluent Chinese-Filipino background, thanks to her once millionaire father, a shipping magnate in late'40s Manila, never learned how to make this dish.  But we did get the idea from a good friend of hers, a certain Aling Edith (translated as "Madam Edith" in Tagalog) whose family procured pigs for slaughter from us when we had managed a pig farm in the 1980s.  She and Aling Zeny, her sister would hold parties in Marikina, a suburb of Metro Manila, in their house which strangely to say, also doubles as a funeral parlor at the side because their father (Mang Peping) manages that  and is considered as another one of their family businesses aside from selling pork in the wet market.  So, pork monger and a funeral parlor - just how unique is that? So far, I don’t recall that certain body parts got mixed with the other and vice versa - but I digress. 

Now, I have some leftover natural peanut butter from Costco (Kirkland brand).  I love this brand because not only is it already ground which is what one needs in making smooth peanut sauces, but also, it is made from all natural peanuts with no other preservatives or treatments to the oils like hydrogenation and all that. No sugar either which lessens the tendency to add sweetness to the dish when it is not called for.  So, simply stated, it is most recommended for use in this dish. 

This is how I remember Mang Peping's house looked like.
Yes, Virginia.  They held parties in a house with a funeral
parlor beside it.  But the Kare-kare was phenomenal.

And yes, after eating the sumptuous lunch. I would walk in
a room and I would see these. Morbid? As long as the
food is great...well, not really.

Now this is what they did.  But don't worry.  I do not
think I sever saw a human thigh hanging somewhere.

And that's bagoong. Shrimp so small you cannot even see
the heads, or the eyes or bodies. This is fresh.

And this is how they sell them in the
wet market a.k.a. "palengke".

In the olden days, as in turn of the last century, it would have been impossible to get peanut butter; for one thing, peanut butter is a later creation -- think of the George Washington Carver story.  The peanuts would be ground manually with a heavy stone grinder and since they are not finely ground, a thickening agent was needed in the form of rice flour which again is ground using the same grinder.  As one can imagine, this alone is a tedious and time consuming process that by the time one starts to actually cook, the chef has already drained  his energies just producing the ingredient.  So, thank God for peanut butter! 

Then of course, there is the cutting, chopping, peeling and mincing of the other ingredients from spices to vegetables. Oh! Do not forget we have to extract the annatto color from the seeds, you know.  And tenderize - we must tenderize the meats. 

To better describe the method of making a great Kare-Kare; it is just better to demonstrate it.  Our resident white guy, Mike will do that with his broken Tagalog.  We did this video while in Manila and because of the tremendous heat, he was sweating from all crevices and orifices which as I won't expound on so as not to turn off the reader from reading further.  So, I do apologize.  Also, you would see some of our family members participate in the video just to add a bit of variety show like ambiance to the whole affair.  But try it please, the recipe is authentic as it is tasty that despite the stockpot-ful of Kare-Kare, it was literally chowed down by about twenty people in just four hours. 

First, the ingredients. 

Kare-Kare in the Style of Aling Edith and Aling Zeny 

The first thing one should know is that the preparation of Kare-Kare is multi-layered and to facilitate things, divide the ingredients in the following sections: 

Spices. 

• 1 head garlic, peeled and chopped 
• 1 head medium onion, peeled and chopped finely 
• 2 tablespoons atchuete seeds (in US, called as"ahoite")  
• 1/8 to 1/6 cup oil 
• 3 laurel leaves 

Vegetables. 

• 1 small head cabbage, sliced lengthwise with stems intact 
• 1/2 kilo Bokchoy, traditionally the Baby White variety although the Broad Napa Cabbage is also acceptable. 
• 1/4 kilo long string beans ("sitaw" in Tagalog) 
• 4 pieces Asian long eggplants, sliced diagonally (may use 1 big Italian eggplant but cut lengthwise then sliced diagonally) 
• 1/4 kilo okra, washed and stems removed 
• 1 small or medium banana heart, cut into 2 to 3 inch pieces) 
• 1/2 jar natural peanut butter (about 20 ounces) 

Meats 

• 2 kilos beef tripe cut into four inches squares 
• 2 kilos ox tails or beef hocks with skin (or even both) 

Bagoong condiment 

• 1 small jar raw shrimp bagoong (about 8 ounces: in the absence of bagoong in some parts of the US, may substitute with 8 ounces fresh or cooked salad shrimp, minced finely added to about two to three tablespoons of salt, mix and knead well) 
• 1/2 cup brown sugar (to taste) 
• 1 tablespoon black pepper, freshly ground 
• 1/2 cup vinegar 
• 1 head garlic, peeled and chopped 
• 2 laurel leaves 

Procedure. 

1. Boil enough water in a stockpot that would cover the meats to simmer.  To this add  the laurel leaves and leave under medium heat to tenderize the meats - usually taking four hours.  Once this is done, separate the broth from the meat using a colander and set aside.  Discard the laurel leaves. 
2. In a large stewing pot, heat the cooking oil and once it begins to smoke, add the achoite seeds and lower the heat.  Mix and using the end of a cooking spoon, grind the seeds into the oil to extract the color which lie on the surface of the seeds.  This Is a slow process so be patient.  One would notice that the oil becomes deep orange as the seeds slowly become brownish from red which means that the seeds are showing its colors on the underneath of the color layer.  Separate the seeds from the oil using a small colander and discard the seeds. 
3. With the achoite oil, sauté the garlic and the onions until brown and toasted but not burnt.  Add the broth and cover to boil. 
4. Once boiling, lower the heat and gradually add the peanut butter.  Because peanut butter has a tendency to settle and congeal making it difficult to incorporate in the broth, one may choose to blend together some broth and peanut butter in a blender.  Blend at the highest speed and add this to the boiling broth in the stockpot. 
5. Lower heat and stir occasionally to boiling taking care not to let the bottom burn.  Add the vegetables, stirring then covering and simmering them once in a while to cook in the following order:  cabbage, banana hearts and string beans, then okra and eggplants, then napa cabbage and bokchoy last. The whole point of this stage cooking process is to cook the vegetables according to their toughness without overcooking some compared to the rest. The meats could be added with the bokchoy at the same time taking care not to vigorously stir the meats as it might disintegrate them.  Simmer a bit then turn the heat off. 
6. Do the bagoong condiment. 

• Starting with 1/8 cup oil in a hot wok, sauté the garlic until brown, then add the pepper.  Once fragrant, sauté the bagoong until the proteins are a bit caramelized and then add the sugar.  Saute some more until the sugar is melted and caramelized as well.  Add the vinegar and laurel leaves.  Boil then lower the heat as the sugar and vinegar reduces into a thick paste. 

Tips. 

• Achoite color is lipophilic, and therefore extracting them by sautéing in heated oil is more efficient than the traditional way of infusing the seeds in hot water and manually rubbing them as the water turns red.   Besides, this will lessen having red fingers. 
• Always brown the garlic and onions.  It adds a more well-bodied flavor to the kare-kare that blends well with the peanuts. 
• No salt in the stew please.  This is the point of using sautéed bagoong which is not only a salting agent but rather it also adds the complex briny smack on the creaminess of the dish.  Kae-kare is a multi layered dish in flavor and texture that blends well amidst the blank backdrop of white rice.  This is what makes it so exciting! 
• Feel free to add liquids if the sauce is too thick.  But another reason why it's a good thing to add the vegetables first in the stew rather than the meats is the stewing would extract the liquids of the vegetables making it thinner.  It is fine; however, if one chooses to stew the meats further in the peanut sauce before adding the vegetables and the rationale for this is that the peanut flavor get to integrate first with the meat. 

Recipe: Ginataang Sigarilyas (Coconut Cream Winged Beans)

Guinataang sigarilyas. Mmmmmm. I haven't had it for so long until I went back home to Manila and had it at the Kanin Club in Technohub in UP Diliman. I know how the vegetable looks like and of course, we all know it from the "Bahay Kubo" song. I gave Kanin Club's version a great review and even described it as a "delight" because of its creaminess mixed with the brine flavors associated with bagoong.

You see as Chinese Filipino we may be, we are also a "Bicolano" family. Okay, so we are not in the depths of Bicolandia like those that in Camarines Sur (Naga), Albay (Legazpi) or Sorsogon (Irosin) and more so in the towns between these major cities of the region. But my father grew up in Labo, Camarines Norte -- so that must count for something though "hard-core" Bicolanos criticize us that we are more in Tagalog skirts rather in "real" Bicol. But we still love our coconut cream based dishes and such account for a significant number of the dishes served in our household.

I finally found Sigarilyas or commonly known as "Winged Beans" (Psophocarpus tetrogonolobus) in an Asian store recently and since the taste somewhat lingers on in my taste memory, I just have to make it. With newly steamed white rice, coconut cream sigarilyas is perfect. Imagine a meaty mixture of mildly caramelized coconut cream (latik) with shrimp paste, green chillies and ginger, rightfully reduced with the crunch of sigarilyas with its mildly bitter yet pleasant taste. This is what this dish is all about! It's a Bicolano wet dream!

Ginataang Sigarilyas (Winged Beans in Coconut Cream flavored with Shrimp Paste and Chilies)

Ingredients.

• 1/2 pound Sigarilyas
• 1/4 pound pork (preferably fatty cut such as shoulder of belly) 
• 1/2 head garlic, peeled and chopped
• 1 thumb sized ginger, peeled and flattened with the side of a heavy knife)
• 2 tbsp. bagoong
• 1 package frozen Philippine Coconut milk (available in the freezer aisle as Masagana brand), thawed
• 1 green chili sliced diagonally (can also use jalapeno)
• Salt and ground black pepper to taste

Procedure.

1. In a very hot wok, with 1/8 cup of oil, sauté the garlic and ginger together until mildly brown. Add the meat and sauté further until almost done. Then add the shrimp paste and the coconut milk and simmer until mildly reduced and the coconut oils are beginning to appear.
2. Add the sigarilyas and the green chilies, cover and further simmer until the vegetable is done to desired crispness. Serve with hot rice.

Tips.

• The kind of coconut cream is important! Being a resident of the United States, it is difficult to get good coconut cream and what I mean by this is that when it is reduced in heat, two things will be produced: oil and the caramelized solids (latik). I notice that powdered coconut cream does not do this, nor do the canned ones from Jamaica, Puerto Rico or Thailand. I even tried to grate coconuts from Puerto Rico which look like the reject coconuts that fall off the tree in Bicol and appear like shrunken heads from a voodoo ceremony -- with pointed tops and bottoms -- just so I could extract the milk and hopefully get oils and latik. Not only is it rancid, but there was not much milk nor oil. Truly a disappointment despite my best efforts procuring the equipment. But hooray for Masagana! I just found out that for double the price of canned Thai coconut milk, even less, I could get frozen Philippine coconut milk and the freezer aisle of the Asian store and guess what?! It's perfect!!!
• I could not emphasize the sautéing process needs to be in high heat using a wok. The smokiness of a very hot wok is helpful in giving out flavor.
• I reduce the coconut cream a bit before putting in the vegetables because I do not want to have so much liquids that might make the vegetables soggy during the sauce reduction. However, if one wants a softer sigarilyas, one is welcome to put in the vegetable earlier. 

Recipe: Sauteed Rice Cake (Mochi) in the Style of Filipino Pancit

Philip and I share the same pastime: food!

My best friend, Philip Wong King (b. 1965) and I must have been born mentally conjoined at the hip.  Note - I said, "mentally" and we are not conjoined literally like Chang and Eng of the original Siamese Twins fame.  But Philip and I have been classmates in Prep E in Xavier School and we were classmates likewise for most part of Grade and High School.  We shared the same love for music and art.  We were both in the "de facto" faction of the drama guild and starred in the same High School production of "The Mousetrap".  We were both fat and chubby in our teenage years with me getting into the fat mode earlier than he did as we are both in the medical field with him becoming a doctor earlier than I did.  You see, Philip is way smarter than I am making him a part of the prestigious seven-year Medical track of the UP College of Medicine.  Me?  I'm just a pseudo intellectual, though I have my own moments - blonde moments, that is.  Anyway, I digress.  As much as we grew up very much enjoying similar things, ahem, Philip and I decided to part ways with me in the East Coast while him in the West.  But otherwise, we are still somewhat in the same latitude since he is in Washington state as I am in Pennsylvania.  At least, I thought, that we have vacation properties in either side of the continental United States.  Well, good for us. 

Shanghai Style Rice Cake

I decided to visit Philip last year and stayed in my Washington State vacation property, also known as, Philip's home.  Philip, the gracious host that he is, insist that he take me to these restaurants that the Seattle-Bellevue area has to offer.  Once we enjoyed the meal, he will end the experience with, "Now, if you happen to LIVE here, YOU could probably enjoy...." never ceasing to entice me that one day, I would finally decide to move in the same area as well. 

I haven't been convinced so far.  BUT, at least I could say that this chain of Chinese restaurants is a reason to frequently visit Bellevue, WA if not to relocate.  Originally from Taiwan, Din Tai Fung has only three restaurants in the United States, as in, three in Los Angeles and one in Bellevue, WA; thus accounting for Philip's enticing statement above.  The dishes are simple as what Chinese should be but the flavor is clean to the palate with new textures that are so unfamiliar to the American who has eaten Chinese.  So yes, please, do not ask for General Tso's chicken in Din Tai Fung. 

Tikoy but this is not what it is in this dish.

What impressed me was a new way of serving rice cake as a savory snack.  To start, what I meant by rice cake in this regard is similar to the dense sticky solid kind that we call "tikoy" in the Philippines.  If one sees the box of "tikoy" being sold in the Chinese bakery, the Chinese words say, "ti ke" (Hokkien) or "tien kao" (Mandarin) which in means "sweet cake".  I found out that to a native speaker of Mandarin Chinese, there is actually no such thing because this "tikoy" as it is customarily being sold during the turn of the New Year, is actually known as "nien kao" or "year cake" and I do not think the Filipino-Chinese Hokkien community call it as "ni ke".  So when I was explaining the "ti koy"- "ti ke"- "tien kao" concept to my Beijing doctor colleague, she didn't understand what I was talking about. 

See? They also call it "rice cake".

But this "nien kao" is actually the mochi of Japan and though it is called that, "nien kao" does not have the mental association that it has to be sweet.  In other words, "nien kao" is referred to as what it is - a glutinous rice cake not necessarily sweetened with brown or white sugar as in the Philippines; and definitely, there is no pandan or ube or chocolate flavor either like in new versions of the tikoy. 

Din Tai Fung uses this rice cake, still called "nien kao", unsweetened, to saute in a savory mix of flavorings that might include pickled vegetables and meat or seafood.  What resulted is a different take on rice based noodle that the carbohydrate involved has a chewy feel much like eating tikoy with meat with a savory flavor. To illustrate how it looks like, see the picture I have above.

In this dish, I am using the traditional flavors of Filipino pancit coupled with the texture of "nien kao".  It is therefore a different take on the Pancit Bihon.  I hope you readers would try and enjoy it as I have. 

Sauteed Rice Cake (Mochi) in the Style of Filipino Pancit 

Ingredients. 

• 1 package Rice Cake (in the freezer or refrigerated section of the Asian store, labeled as "Rice Cake", about 1.78 pounds) 
• 1/2 head garlic, peeled and chopped 
• 1/2 head onion, peeled and sliced 
• 1 carrot, peeled and sliced or julienned 
• 1/8 kilo snow peas (sitsaro), tips removed and sliced 
• 1/4 head cabbage, sliced thinly 
• 1/2 ounces "tenga ng daga" (Auricularia polytricha), rehydrated in water 
• 1 Shanghai bokchoy, sliced 
• 1 bunch spring onions, chopped 
• 3 Cantonese sausages ("lap chong"), sliced 
• 1/4 kilo pork, sliced thinly 
• 1/8 kilo shrimp, peeled and sliced 
• salt and pepper to taste 
• sesame seed oil to taste 

Procedure. 

1. In boiling water, blanch the mochi for less than a minute.  Drain and I suggest to mix in a tablespoon of oil to prevent them from sticking together.  Set aside. 
2. In a hot wok with about 1/8 cup of oil, saute the garlic until mildly brown.  Add the onions and saute further.  Then add the sausages, shrimp, pork and carrots and saute until almost cooked. Salt and pepper to taste. 
3. Add the cabbage and saute further.  Add the mochi until well mixed. 
4. Add the Shanghai bokchoy, tenga ng daga and spring onions. 
5. Before serving, pour in some sesame seed oil to taste and mix well. 
6. Serve warm. 

Tips. 

• The mochi should be blanched for a short time to prevent melting and sticking with one another.  It may be necessary that the mochi is immediately thrown into the saute once it is done blanching to prevent this. 
• As with pancit Filipino, serving with kalamansi or lime juice enhances flavor.
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