Pansit Canton

Bihon or pansit?  Ask my family and for sure, they’ll always vote for the former. I guess the latter is perceived more common over the other hence the preference to serve bihon whenever there’s an occasion.

Personally, I find pansit noodles tastier compared to bihon, so whenever it is just self-craving I need to satisfy, I go for pansit!

For me, making this dish involves two steps - cooking the veggies ala chopsuey and cooking the noodles – combine all together and there you’ll get a mixed pansit noodles!

Ingredients:

• 1/4 kg chicken breast
• 1/2 kg packed pansit noodles
• 1/8 kg cabbage, cut roughly, discarding the tough stem
• 50 grams green beans, cut into about 1-1/2 inches length
• 50 grams snow peas
• 1 medium carrot, julienne
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• salt & pepper to taste
• 5 tablespoons soy sauce (add more if darker noodles is preferred)
• 5 tablespoons vegetable cooking oil
• lemon slices
• You may add:  deveined shrimps, broccoli or cauliflower.

Cooking direction:

1. Boil the chicken for about 10-15 minutes or till tender.  Remove the chicken from the broth, let it cool a bit and tear into pieces, discarding the bones.  Set aside the chicken broth.
2. In a hot wok, add cooking oil and sauté onion till translucent.  Add the chicken (and shrimp if you have) and stir fry for about a minute. Drop in all the vegetables except the cabbage.  Add soy sauce, season with some salt & pepper.   Add the chicken broth, bring to a boil, then drop in the cabbage and continue cooking till veggies are half-cooked through and still with crunch.  Remove the vegetables using a slotted spoon and set aside.
3. In the same wok, bring to boil the broth (add more water if necessary). Adjust the flame to low-medium heat.  Drop in the noodles,stir occasionally until all the water is absorbed.  Add hot water if more liquid is needed to cook the noodles.
4. Once the noodles are cooked, bring back in the vegetables and mix with the noodles.
5. Plate and serve with lemon slices.

Chicken Embutido

While planning the media noche menu, it suddenly popped out in my mind an attempt to make an embutido which I am sure will be something new to share to my sous-chef-hayati.

Way back my high school days, I had seen how my aunt made embutido (which she sold out to the neighborhood and friends as her means of income).  I started to recall the ingredients bearing in mind two things: (1) I will not be using pork meat, but will use chicken as a substitute; and (2) baking instead of steaming procedure.  By the way, I always make sure that all ingredients I use for cooking is labelled “halal” so I can share the dish with hayati.

Complete ingredients I used for this dish are:

• 1/2 kg ground chicken
• 1 cup chicken vienna sausage (I actually used only 3 pieces as I got the spicy flavored sausages)
• 1 small size carrot, chopped (I find it easier to just grate the carrot)
• 1 medium size onion, chopped
• 1 clove garlic, minced (you may use 2-3 cloves if you don’t have any issue with garlic, I just don’t like my foods to be garlicky)
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 2 tablespoons pickle relish
• 1 cup grated cheddar cheese
• 1 egg, beaten
• salt & pepper to taste
• 8 pieces hard boiled quail egg (I wasn’t able to find quail eggs so I used instead 2 pieces of hard boiled eggs, sliced into quarters)
• 2 tablespoon vegetable cooking oil

Direction:

1. Except for the last three ingredients listed, put all the other ingredients in a big  bowl and season with pepper & salt (taking into consideration the saltiness of the cheese).  Mix till all the ingredients are thoroughly combined.
2. Divide the mixture in 2 portions. Put one portion in the center of an aluminum foil and flatten the mixture.  Arrange 4 egg slices in the bed of the mixture and fold both sides of the mixture up to completely cover the egg slices. 
3. Roll the aluminum foil to form a firm log of about 2.5 inches diameter.  Twist both ends of the foil to seal the whole log.  Do the same step for other portion of the mixture.
4. To be able to save gas, I baked the logs while roasting a chicken at 200 degrees for about 1 hour and 30 minutes.
5. When cooked, let it cool for about 15 - 20 minutes.  Remove the aluminum wrapper.
6. Heat the 2 tablespoons of oil in a non-stick frying pan and sear all sides of the embutido till it turns slightly brown.
7. Slice the log diagonally into desired thickness. Plate and serve with catsup.

Roasted Chicken

My media noche menu was planned only 2 days before the occasion.  Roasted chicken was part of the list which I initially thought of buying a ready cooked one. But then…I felt hayati prefers roasting our own chicken so I took out my apprehension of ending up with an awful dish.

It was not my first roasting experience but my first attempt to roast a whole chicken… I was so delighted with the outcome – a tasty, juicy perfectly roasted chicken! Glad I changed my mind and decided to cook instead of buying a cooked one.

Ingredients:

• 1 kg whole chicken
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, at room temperature
• Salt & ground black pepper
• 1 medium onion, cut into quarters
• 1/2 lemon
• 3 cloves garlic,peeled
• 1 teaspoon thyme (use fresh thyme if available)
• 2 medium size potatoes, cut about 1-1/2 inch cubes.
• 1 tablespoon olive oil

Direction:

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees.
2. Clean the chicken, removing the giblets and excess fat from the cavity. Wash thoroughly and pat dry with paper towels.
3. Sprinkle generous amount of salt & pepper, both outside and in the cavity.
4. Spread the softened butter over the entire surface of the chicken.  Lift the skin to separate it from the breast meat, then rub butter in between. 
5. Put in the garlic cloves and slice of lemon in the cavity.  Make an incision on the skin covering the cavity and tuck in the legs crosswise.  Sprinkle some more salt & pepper.
6. In a roasting pan, arrange the onion and potatoes. Add salt, pepper and olive oil.  Place chicken in the roasting pan, over the bed of onion & potatoes.  Cover with aluminum foil and bake for half an hour.  Uncover and roast further for 1 hour until the skin turns golden brown. The chicken should be done if the juice runs clear when pierced.
7. Let it rest for 10 minutes before cutting.

And there we had a perfect roasted chicken served in our media noche table!!!  Happy New Year!