Roast Chicken

(This was inspired by a recipe from Serious Eats which adapted it from Roast Chicken and Other Stories, by Simon Hopkinson with Lindsey Bareham.)

Ingredients

Star Margarine
1 whole chicken
Salt and pepper
Parsley, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced

Procedure

1. Preheat oven. Use your hands to smear the Star Margarine all over the chicken. Season liberally with parsley, salt and pepper. Place chicken in a roasting pan with enough room to spare. Place the extra herbs and garlic inside the chicken's cavity.

2. Roast in oven 10 to 15 minutes. Baste, then reduce oven temperature to 375°F. Roast for one hour and 45 minutes (my oven is gas fuelled). Occasionally baste it with a mixture of olive oil and honey. Chicken should be golden brown all over with a crisp skin and have juices of a brown color in the bottom of pan.

3. When cooked, allow chicken to rest at least 15 minutes before carving. Cover with aluminum foil. This allows the flesh to relax and retain the juices, resulting in easier carving and moist meat.

4. The resulting juices serves as a gravy. Heat the drippings. Add cornstarch. Then add broth or water slowly, while consistently stirring until thick. Season with salt and pepper.

P.S. I poured white wine into the pan at the beginning of roasting. This will give you more of a sauce. You can also add chopped tomatoes, cream, diced bacon, a variety of herbs, mushrooms, vegetables, or whatever else you'd like. In my case, I added celery to ensure moistness and flavor.

My Daughter's Spaghetti

My daughter asked for spaghetti "just like the one cooked by yaya". She wanted something sweet, no fresh tomatoes and no meatballs. So that's what I cooked, omitting my usual tomato sauce (made from fresh tomatoes), wine and meatballs.

INGREDIENTS:
1/4 kilo Ground Beef
2 cloves Garlic
1 tetra pack Tomato Sauce
1/2 tetra pack Tomato Paste
pinch of Oregano
2-3 Tablespoons Sugar
Salt & Pepper

Saute garlic and onion. Cook until the onions are pale. Add the ground beef, to brown it and to render its fat. About 10 minutes. Add the oregano, the tomato sauce and tomato paste. Let it simmer for about 15 minutes stirring occasionally. Add the sugar. Adjust the salt and pepper to taste. When sauce dries up, add some water. Then serve with parmessan cheese.

Something Gold and Red

Chocolates and candies are so irresistible! Especially when wrapped in glittering gold and red. Toblerone is my kids' favorite.

Pommes Duchesse

How many ways do you make mashed potato? Yummy Magazine (May 2008) outlined three different ways. I tried one - Pommes Duchesse.

Ingredients:

1 kilo potatoes
2 tablesppoons butter
2 egg yolks
salt and pepper to taste

Boil (it would be easier to peel if you boil first) and then mash the potatoes. Mix in the butter and then the egg yolks. Season with salt and pepper. Because I do not have a pastry bag, I just formed dollops of mashed potato onto a lightly greased baking pan. Bake at 400F until lightly browned. (Because dinner was already ready, I had to remove it from the oven. I suggest you brown it a little longer than shown in the photo.) The kids loved it! Photo was taken by my eldest son, the Musician.

Heavenly Sausage

This photo was taken by my second son, the Scholar. He took a good picture, don't you think so? Makes you want to dig in immediately and finish off the hungarian sausage. He and his siblings have been taking photos ever since digital camera have been introduced. Me? I am a johnny-come-lately.

Tanglad (Lemongrass) Tea

Tastes very natural, no taste of dryness or bitterness at all. It is an alternative to coffee, good to start the day right. This is produced by the Don Bosco Foundation and was bought by my husband in Davao.

Dalandan Soda and Dalandan Juice

It is such a relief to have an option in this Coca Cola country! We have been turning to Dalandan Fruit Soda everytime soda comes up in the grocery list (it is not available in sari-sari stores). The taste is so refreshing!

The second photo is the real McCoy. To the squeezed dalandan, I added muscovado sugar, instead of the usual refined sugar. It tasted good! But strange to the kids (sigh...it will take awhile before they will take to it).

By the Light of the Silvery Moon...

"By the light of the silvery moon, I want to spoon, to my honey I'll croon love's tune..." So goes the song. Nightfall and the full moon and a cool weather is a perfect setting for this photo op. This was taken against the backdrop of our guava tree two nights ago by my high school daughter, the Artist. Malamig ngayon ang mga araw, lalo na ang mga gabi, sa 'Pinas. Masarap kumanta ng "by the light of the silvery moon..." kapag gabi.

Turbo Chicken

I got this recipe from Market Manila. This chicken was rubbed with olive oil, parsley and salt and pepper. Its cavity was stuffed with half a lemon and parsley and salt and pepper. For the basting, I brushed it with Star Margarine. The result was delicious!

Chicken Siopao

Chicken Siopao is my entry for the leftover photography. This was created out of the leftovers from the Roasted Chicken which we had for dinner.

The leftover chicken was steamed to soften it up and then shredded. Afterwards, it was cooked with garlic and onion and soy sauce and sugar, ingredients for siopao filling. This was put inside ready made siopao bought from Ongpin (sliced up in two sides to stuff it with the chicken filling).