Month: March 2012

CHINA CENTER AT NASCHMARKT (CHINA ZENTRUM AM NASCHMARKT)

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Chinatown in Vienna? The China center and Chinese supermarkets at the Naschmarkt who dared itself already once into the restaurant, we my family and I so with my daughter’s school friends in the China center, at the edge of the Naschmarkts, the impression will have perhaps won the straight national borders behind itself to have left and in the country of the smile have landed. Which does not come from approximate, because not only Europeanized Asian kitchen is offered here, but also autentische traditional kitchen. In contrast to the majority Asian restaurants in Vienna are many guests of the restaurant Zhong Xin of Chinese origin, why there is also a bill of fare in Mandarin.

Today hubby and we decided to have our lunch in this restaurant. I got my seafood soup with 3 pieces of small siopao annd hubby as usual his all time favorite and love of cripy canard with bamboo sprouts and its famous garlic sauce which fits at all. And of course not to forget the savoury sour soup. With my “BUNSO” (doggie) that completes our luch date today…wink!

There are so many dishes within Chinese cooking that it is difficult to narrow them down.
According to Chinese Superstitions, many people also abstain from eating meat on the first day of Chinese New Year … Nothing should be lent on this day, as anyone who does so will be lending all … given little red envelopes with crisp one dollar bills inserted, for good fortune.

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TWO DIFFERENT DINNER

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Yes two different dinner last night! Meal planning is just not that easy, especially with my kiddos!
Pasta (spaghetti) for the kids and Sinigang na bangus with rice for us(hub and I). I am not a mighty meat fun when it comes to food, but my 2 kids ang hubby YES. We almost see to it that almost request from the 2 kids could be suffused in way that they will enjoy their food. There’s a variety and the most important thing is that we have all of the ingredients for all of them. This has worked really well for me. I don’t plan lunches or breakfasts. Most weekends I do something like baked, toast, or cereals with yoghurt or milk but during the week we eat simple things like fruit, a cup of tea with milk or coffee and brunch from leftover. If we don’t have leftovers then no brunch. Didi (my daughter) takes her lunch to school sometimes and I just keep a variety of easy lunch stuff to make hers. It’s usually simple stuff like fruits and veggies, cheese or yogurt, nuts or crackers, hummus and a sandwich or a wrap. A huge part of our grocery budget goes to veggies, pasta fish, meat and fruits.

So this was our dinner last night “Bangus Sinigang”. I love my sinigang with lots of viggies. Did you know that you can eat a lot and still lose weight? It sounds too good to be true, right? YES, and that’s veggies!
Adding a lot of vegetables and fruits to your diet will help you, they keep you feeling full for longer than processed food so you won’t even feel the need to eat loads.

WHY PASTA? It’s versatile: tomatoey or creamy sauces can create the base to all kinds of different dishes. Dried pasta has a long-shelf life and often makes the most of other storecupboard ingredients like tinned tomatoes, olives, anchovies, chorizo or frozen peas. Pasta’s cheap even with recent price rises, quick, easy to make in bulk and a crowd-pleaser that kids generally love, so perfect for time-pressed parents but not me. While pasta (spaghetti) with ground meat, onion, chopped garlic, sieved tomatoes, italian herbs, salt and pepper to taste was kids dinner last night.

Cook the spaghetti al dente in boiling water with a little salt and vegetable oil. Saute 1 chopped onion with 1 finely chopped garlic clove until the onion is soft. Add 250 grams minced beef and fry the minced beef brown and loose. Stir a few minutes. Add 500 ml sieved tomatoes. Let it simmer for 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Serve with spaghetti and if you like add grated cheese on top. Enjoy!

WHAT SHOULD WE EAT FOR BRUNCH?

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Part elaborate breakfast and part hearty lunch, brunch is a wonderfully informal way to gather family and friends on a weekend morning. We have it today eventhough it’s only Wenesday and not weekend!
Hubs at home and my son too. We got up late while our daughter early in the morning already in her school. Brunch can be tricky—you may find yourself thinking, “Is this breakfast or is this lunch? Might as well eat both!”

From a hearty egg dish with bellpeppers, these easy healthy recipes are sure to please the entire family. I served it with brown bread, but hubs ate it with his rice…lol… Take it from me Folks…wink!
For sure the next eating session today will be dinner time, in between we gonna have coffee and something like biscuit roulade which I have in my mind since I got up today.

I just use 3 bell peppers (yellow, green and red, cored and cut into cubes). One onion of medium sized (peeled and cut into cubes), 6 pcs. beaten eggs, salt and pepper for seasoning and I used Becel Omega 3 vegetable oil. Topped with sliced frankfurter.

Becel Omega-3 vegetable oil is a special composition from sunflower, canola (rape) and linseed oil – which selected carefully for oils. The vegetable oil contains valuable several times insatiated Omega-3 and Omega-6-fatty acids, however no hardened fats. Becel Omega-3 vegetable oil is ideally suitable for a heart-healthy nutrition.

TODAY’s QUICK LUNCH AND YESTERDAY’s DINNER

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It’s time for a little midday magic! Forget that same-old lunch I keep serving and try something new. My recipes make it easy with hundreds of fast, fresh and tasty lunches the whole family will love. Today I’m alone with my 2kids. Coming back home from University of Technology the 2 kids were so hungry, no wonder because they don’t have breakfast today.

I just boiled cured boston butt in salted water until tender. Then sliced it. Served with mashed potatoes and sliced pickled cucumber from glass which I got from Supermarket. Boston butt is a cut of pork that comes from the upper part of the shoulder from the front leg. For mashed potatoes recipe check old entry.

Using Maggi Gourmet product for my sauce that makes it so juicy and tasty. Simply add 1 pouch of this to 3/8 Liter of hot water and stir constantly while cooking/ medium heat/ don’t cover for 2 minutes. Then pour over sliced boston butt, so that was today’s lunch!

While this one above was yesterday’s dinner. Pan-fried pork belly with pickled cabbage and cucumber of course with rice too. We are Pinoy remember…wink!

Most people had been conditioned to think that cooking food without oil doesn’t taste good. In reality, food cooked without oil can taste just as good or even better. In fact, many five star or high class restaurants cook their food with little or no oil.
Use water instead of oil to cook your food. Cook at lower temperatures to prevent the water from evaporating too quickly, this will also prevent the food from sticking to the pan. Using a non-stick pan will also help prevent stickiness.

As you could see, I pan-fried the pork belly without any oil. I just add a little liquid. You won’t get the crispy browning as you would with fat in the pan. One way to deal with it is to use non stick pan. The water cooks away and then the tiny bit of oil from itself (pork belly) brown the food.

I don’t invest a lot in teflon pans because, no matter how careful you are, the surface develops tiny scratches. I find that my better cookware (caphalon stainless steel) doesn’t stick as long as you get the pan hot enough. But for things like eggs, I have a couple of inexpensive Teffal teflon pans. When the non stick surface wears out, I replace them.

It pays to invest in a few silicon spatulas for stirring or wooden spoon. They are easier on the surface than wooden or plastic spoons. In this way you are cuting the high calories you could get from oil, and butter and with the calories wasted on fat in a pan because butter and oil can be so high.

BREAKFAST AT VIENNA’S ANKER

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“Unless a tree has borne blossoms in spring, you will vainly look for fruit on it in autumn.” — Hare Charles

“If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.”
— Anne Bradstreet

“An optimist is the human personification of spring.”
— Susan J. Bissonette

GOOD MORNING WORLD!
Say hello to SPRING weather! Time to enjoy your breakfast or lunch outside!
Once spring time approaches, I love to have my breakfast outside. “nice place, especially during spring time……have a seat outside on the terrasse and just enjoy good food”. This was taken while my daughter and I having our first breafast in this season outside at Anker.

Breakfast at Anker is for us so rich and dainty. Dauhgter and I we had this so called VIENNA BREAKFAST, which includes 2 pcs. of croissants, caffe llate, butter and marmalade. My dauhgter got “Kornspitz”!

Reading books and magazine always includes in my daily routine. If I don’t get to it on day time I see to it that I get before going to bed. But today so perfectly!
Enjoying the silence while reading my magazine, after a healthy breakfast from Anker.
Managing schedule so important for me that I can live free outlines a straightforward, step-by-step approach to controlling schedule and ensuring the important things don’t fall through the cracks. It helps me accomplish not only what’s on my to-do list today, but what’s on my to-do list for life. One is I’m sure giving time for myself to seat down and get through to my magazine or any book that I use to read aside from Bible. These help changing my life. Seriously! It’s been years since life has felt so peaceful.

YESTERDAY’s DINNER

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We came back home around 6 pm from our General Assembly yesterday a little bit tired and hungry. Hubs decided to prepare our dinner. We still have baked dessert from my baking but nobody wants to eat it alone without having soup. This is not something new, actually we often have soup for dinner either with bread or any baked dessert.

So Hubs cooked Chicken-Rice Noodle Soup. What he found in refrigerator and cupboard that’s all he used for this soup!
He raided the leftovers of chicken breast (cut into flakes), added some carrots (cut into a little bit fine stripes), 1 red onion (peeled and sliced), half cloves garlic (peeled and crushed), some chopped parsley, 1 chicken broth cube, 3 tbsp. dark soy sauce, 3 tbsp. vegetable oil, 300g rice noodle, some salt and 1 liter water for the soup. This yields 4 person!
I use to have my soup with a few drops of Tabasco sauce. Why, I don’t know but it gives me this satisfying taste of a soup if there’s a little hot in it. My daughter loves it too. Sometimes she buy this hot-chili sauce from chinese shop the green which is very hot while the brown one is with garlic.

And these are the rest from my baked dessert which we brought to MS-HFC General Assembly yesterday afternoon. A sort of Almond Nuts Cake. I adapted from an old recipe, also with other kind of nuts is suitable to use. If you are asking for Recipe check it out from another entry…My amateur baking:-)

SATURDAY’s LUNCH AT HOME

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I’ve not been very good about keeping up with my writing these past couple of weeks. Some of these entry was only transfered from my old blog. But today hubby had got a day off from work. And luckily, my kitchen is always here for both of us a comfort in times of stress and a stage for when there’s celebration.

Today we decided to cook together for our lunch and also bake something for merienda for our General Assembly in the afternoon (MS-HFC) the community we belong. As usual if I’m in the kitchen my “BUNSO” (Riyadh, my dog) join me always and of course not to forget my Laptop! (yes, you read it right MY LAPTOP…hehehe…)

Pork liver and radish with balsamic vinegar. Most people, especially those who grew up in the cities, may be reluctant to eat meat dishes with liver. But not me, I love this palatable taste!
According to studies, liver is excellent sources of vitamins like; A, D, C, thiamine, riboflavin, and niacin and other nutrients like pantothenic acid, pyridoxine, choline, biotin, and folic acid. The internal organs are even richer sources than the actual animal meat. But we don’t have it off in our weekly menu plan…wink!

Today’s lunch pinakbet one of my favorites, in which I’m obsessed particularly when it comes to vegetables cooking!

Fried tofu is great on it’s own or dipped in just about any kind of sauce. You can also use fried tofu in a vegetable stir-fry, fried rice or noodle dish, or just about anything. I like to add fried tofu to vegetarian soups and salads for extra protein and a bit of crunchy texture. My daughter loves it just dipped in toyomansi with crushed garlic!

At the end I did my baking for the community in the afternoon while seating down with my laptop
Fret not, I am staying true to my writing and the pleasures of food. Sometimes I think cooking is the only thing that keeps me somewhat sane in this crazy world:))

CORNY CHICKEN FILLET WITH GNOCCHI

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GNOCCHI is the Italian name for a variety of thick, soft noodle or dumpling. They may be made from semolina, ordinary wheat flour, potato, bread crumbs, or similar ingredients.

The word gnocchi means “lump”, and comes from nocchio, a knot in the wood. It’s been a traditional Italian pasta type of probably Middle Eastern origin since Roman times. It was introduced by the Roman Legions during the enormous expansion of the empire into the countries of the European continent. In the past 2000 years each country developed its own specific type of small dumplings, with the ancient Gnocchi as their common ancestor. My GNOCCHI is made out of POTATOES!

YOU NEED…….

* 3 pcs. chicken fillet (breast)
* 1 tbsps. brown sugar
* salt and pepper
* olive oil
* 500 g Gnocchi
* 1 carrot
* 1 onion
* 1 cube Maggi
* corn kernel half a can, drained
* 300 g tomatoe sauce
* 2 tbsps. butter
* 2 tbsps. chopped parsley
* 4 tbsps. milk

HOW TO…….

1.) Cook Gnocchi in boiling water with salt for about 2 to 3 minutes, drained and set aside.

2.) Saute onion, chicken breast over high heat for 5 minutes. Add brown sugar, lower on medium heat,
add salt and pepper, Maggi cube, carrot and corn kernel stir and cover until chicken is done.

3.) Add remaining ingredients: butter, parsley, tomatoe sauce and parsley, stir and simmer for 5 to 10
minutes. Serve with Gnocchi while hot.

PORK BABY BACK RIBS “TINOLA”

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A soup served as a main entree in the Philippines, tinola is traditionally cooked with chicken, wedges of unripe papaya and sili leaves. I cook tinola with chayote instead. Should it be chicken tinola every time? No, of course not. I tried cooking tinola with pork once and I’ve done it several times since. My family loves it too. It is a good idea to use a cut of pork with bones like ribs. It would yield an even richer broth. But, since you will get less meat, you will have to increase amount (based on weight) of the pork. This time I used pork baby back ribs.

YOU NEED…….

* 1 kg baby back ribs- cut into serving sized-pieces
* 1/2 head garlic, crushed and discard skin
* 1 thum-sized pc. of ginger, peeled and sliced thinly
* 1 onion, sliced
* 3 chayote (sayote)- peeled, cut into wedges
* 1 bunch of young onion leaves or spring onion
* salt or patis (fermented fish sauce)
* pepper corn
* 1 tbsp. vegetable oil
* 5 cups of water or broth

HOW TO…….

1.) Heat vegetable oil n large pan or casserole, over high heat. Saute onion, garlic and ginger until fragrant (about 1 minute). Add pork ribs and stirring, cook until no longer pink on both sides. Season with salt or patis ( I used patis) and pepper corn. Pour in the water or broth and bring to a boil. Lower heat, cover and simmer for 30 minutes.

2.) About 15 minutes before the pork is fully cooked, increase heat to high and add the chayote wedges. Adjust seasoning if necessary simmer until chayote is cook. Add young onion leaves on top cover for 5 minutes. Serve hot.

SMOKE ROLLED ROAST WITH MASHED POTATOES

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Many people just learning to cook are often a bit hesitant cooking a large piece of meat. It seems so intimidating! Well, it doesn’t need to be, at all.
My version of mashed potatoes with smoked rolled roast and onion rings.

YOU NEED…….

* 1 Smoked rolled roast, about 500g to 1 kg
* 1 cup fo milk
* 1 onion, cut into rings
* some flour
* butter
* salt to taste
* 500 g potatoes, peeled and boiled

HOW TO…….