Crema Pancetta Pasta

I just made that up. It's actually pasta with pancetta and cream, but I just couldn't resist the rhyme :) But this is one of the easiest pasta dish around and you just can't go wrong with it. In 15 minutes, tops.

Pancetta, by the way, is a kind of Italian bacon that usually comes pre-cut into cubes. It's very salty and needs no further spicing up.

INGREDIENTS:
200g pancetta 
500g Spaghetti or Spaghettini
1 cup table cream
Granulated garlic (to taste)
Cracked pepper (to taste)

STEPS:
1. Place pancetta on large non-stick wok/pan over low heat. Stir and cook until browned on the sides and scoop out excess bacon oil leaving only about 1-2 tablespoons of it.

2. Pour cream over cooked pancetta and simmer 2 minutes stirring occassionally. Season with granulated garlic and cracked pepper.

3. Cook pasta until al dente according to box instructions. 

4. Strain pasta out of water and place directly on wok/pan with your pancetta and cream sauce. Mix and serve.

Tada!

Now don't forget your vegetables! You can make this dish a tad healthier by adding maybe some chopped broccoli, peas or maybe some chopped parseley, up to you.

DIY Frozen Food: Beef Pot Roast

This is one of my favorite Beef Pot Roast recipes and it's really quite easy to learn. The only downside is that the cooking time is very long so what you can do is prepare this in large quantities so you can put maybe 3-4 family-servings in the freezer at a time. Best done on a weekend, of course.

INGREDIENTS:

Stewing Beef
Garlic (3-4 cloves)
Onion (1 large)
Celery (1 stalk)
Ginger (1 2-inch piece)
Salt and pepper 

Sauce (from Paula Deen's Pot Roast Recipe)
1 can Cream of Mushroom
2 T Worcestershire sauce
1/4 c. red wine
1 beef bouillon
1/2 c. water


STEPS:
1. Roughly chop garlic, onion, celery and ginger and lay on a baking pan lined with aluminum foil.
2. Season beef pieces with salt and pepper and lay over chopped spices. 
3. Cover/wrap the meat completely with the foil and bake at 325F for 3 hours.
4. In a small sauce pan, combine and mix thoroughly all sauce ingredients and bring to boil.
5. When done, remove meat from oven and allow to rest. Remove meat from baking pan and combine with cooked sauce in a large mixing bowl. Allow to cool.
6. When completely cooled, place serving portions in small disposable baking trays. 

These will keep in the freezer for a while. When ready to serve, just pop them in a preheated oven at 425 for 20-25 minutes. Serve with mashed potatoes and broccoli on the side.

Pot Luck Idea: Chicken Macaroni Salad

Looking for ideas for a pot luck party? How about Chicken Macaroni Salad? Well, yes, it's not quick and easy, there's lots of ingredients and stuff to do so this may take about 2 hours to make but the free time and the delicious salad (this particular recipe, anyway) you get after is so worth it. You can make it a day or two before so you won't have to cook on the day of the party. And so you won't have to take a shower mid-afternoon because your hair smells like you've been cooking right before. And, if not for a pot luck, it's also fabulous to keep on hand in your fridge. Make a snack or even lunch out of it.

I find that in most pot luck Filipino parties I go to -- although I haven't exactly been to a hundred -- people prefer to bring either their most complicated specialties (e.g. kare-kare, caldereta, lengua, etc) or their simplest: dessert (leche flan, buko pandan, or my favorite quick and easy choice: the fruit platter!) And not that I don't want to be outdone, I just don't like to be the one to bring the food that people barely touch on the buffet table and so I too like to bring something "special" as well, like this Chicken Macaroni Salad. I like to think that it's not overly complicated and I have received mildly flattering compliments each time I've made it hence I am sharing this recipe for non-cooks like myself.

I give full credit to my high school home economics teacher for this recipe. It's not the quickest food to prepare but it is simple enough for a non-cook to do (I learned it in highschool, after all). 

INGREDIENTS:

2 Chicken breasts

3-4 cloves garlic

2 large onions

Salt and Pepper

3 stalks Celery

500g Elbow macaroni

1 green pepper

1 large carrot

1 can pineapple tidbits OR 1 cup of raisins

1/2 cup pickle relish

1 cup mayonnaise

1/2 cup vinaigrette (combine 1/4 c. white vinegar, 1/4 cup olive oil, 1 tsp each basil, oregano, salt and pepper)

1/2 cup evaporated milk

2-3 T sugar

STEPS: There are going to be 4 major processes you just need to keep in mind and I'll list the steps accordingly: 1) cooking the chicken breast, 2) prepping the pasta/macaroni, 3) prepping the veggies, 4) mixing the salad together.

IMPORTANT: You will need a very large bowl to mix the salad together.

1) Cooking the chicken breast:

- Place clean chicken breasts in small pot

- Add peeled and squished cloves of garlic, one onion peeled and halved, one celery stalk, about 1 tsp each salt and pepper.

- Add enough water to cover chicken

- Turn on medium heat and cook for about 30 minutes (or check for meat doneness)

- Remove chicken from pot and let cool

- Once cooled, shred or cut up the chicken breast finely. then set aside

2) Prepping the pasta/macaroni:

- Cook the macaroni according to box instructions to reach al dente. (note: Rinse cooked pasta with cold water as you would for cold pasta salads)

- Add vinaigrette to your cooked and rinsed macaroni and mix thoroughly, then refrigerate for about 30 minutes to allow the vinaigrette to cling to the pasta

- Add evaporated milk to the macaroni and refrigerate again for 30 minutes or until you're ready to combine all the ingredients together

3) Prepping the veggies:

- Mince 1 onion, 2 celery stalks and 1 green pepper and place in a large bowl.

- Peel carrot and grate carrot, then add to your minced veggies.

- Add pickle relish and pineapple tidbits or raisins to minced veggies and mix thoroughly.

4) Mix the salad together:

- Take your large bowl with your minced veggies, relish and pineapple.

- Add in your chicken and mix.

- Add in your macaroni and mix.

- Add your mayonnaise and mix thoroughly

- Add your sugar and mix thoroughly

- Taste the salad and adjust to fit your preference (don't skip this step! this is the part where I usually add a little bit more sugar and maybe some mayo if the macaroni looks too dry)

-

DIY Frozen Food: Fall-Off-the-Bone BBQ Ribs

Now this is something that any non-cook should be able to do with the least amount of personal stress and effort as making guaranteed-delicious-and-tender bbq baby back ribs will allow. 

I find that I truly enjoy the convenience of frozen food. I especially like barbeque baby back ribs, and so I do find my refrigerator stocked with store-bought ready-to-cook baby back ribs most of the time, until I (somehow) learned to make it myself!

INGREDIENTS:
Rack of pork side/baby back ribs
Garlic (roughly chopped)
Ginger (roughly chopped)
Onion (roughly chopped)
Salt
Pepper
Bbq/honey garlic Sauce (your choice of sauce like Heinz or Kraft)


STEPS:
1. Lay chopped garlic, ginger and onion on a sheet of aluminum foil big enough to wrap around your pork rack and set aside.
2. Rub your pork rack with salt and pepper all over.
3. Lay the seasoned pork over your chopped spices and wrap in the foil tightly.
4. Bake in preheated oven at 325F for two hours.
5. Remove from oven and foil to allow the meat to cool down, then slather the meat with your favorite barbeque sauce.
6. Wrap in cling wrap tightly then place in a ziploc. Pop it in the freezer and it should keep for a while, just like any frozen food.

Anytime you're ready to serve it, simply take it out of the freezer and unwrap, place it on a baking sheet and bake at 425F for 30 minutes. Best served with rice, baked potatoes or mashed potatoes and some blanched vegetables on the side.

A Decently Complete Brunch: The Humble Tuna Salad

I always feel some pressure to impress whenever I have company over at my house. Regardless of the fact that I only ever invite my closest or, at least, good friends who I know are understanding enough and are not wont to criticize my hosting skills at all, the pressure is always there, especially when it comes to the menu. One  recent "discovery" I had, being your average "cook," was that you can actually serve a decently complete brunch with just the tuna salad as your main dish, and that there's a good chance that your guests will not be unimpressed. The main thing to note is that you do NOT serve your plain old  tuna and mayo concoction, but rather use a recipe which gives your tuna a LOT of personality. But before that, here's how your impressive little brunch service would look like:

With your tuna salad nicely placed in a nice looking serving dish, you can serve your guests the following: 

1. A nice green salad - serve some arugula, sliced tomatoes and sliced cucumbers so your guests can make bake their own.

2. Fried bread sandwich - brush some slices of two kinds of multi-grain bread with butter and fry on a non-stick pan for 2 minutes on each side. Serve this beside your green salad items for your guests' selection as well. This will take your tuna sandwich to a new level of deliciousness. That's just my opinion, but I really feel you should trust me on this ;-)

3. Canapes - lay out a tray of Ritz crackers and top with your tuna salad, garnish with a teeny sprig of cilantro.

Spruce up your brunch spread by adding a pitcher of Lemon-cucumber water on your beverage tray where you have some self-serve coffee and tea and voila! Easy peasy, don't you think? Now let's get back to your pièce de résistance, the tuna salad. 

Ingredients:

Canned tuna, drained

Minced Onions (about 2 Tbsps for every can of tuna)

Minced Celery (about 2 Tbsps for every can of tuna)

Pickle relish (about 2 Tbsps for every can of tuna)

Melted butter (about 1 Tbsp for every can of tuna, melt in microwave)

Mayonnaise

Sugar

Salt 

Pepper

Paprika

Steps:

1. Mix your onions, celery and relish together.

2. Add tuna flakes and mix thoroughly.

3. Pour and mix in melted butter, then mayonnaise. Mix completely.

4. Add salt, black pepper and sugar to taste.

5. Garnish with  a dash of paprika on top.

The best part is you can prep most of these the night before, so you don't have to wake up extra early to get everything ready.

For the lemon-cucumber water, just put slices of one lemon, slices of half a cucumber, and a tablespoon of white sugar in a glass pitcher. Fill it three quarters with cold water and let sit in the refrigerator overnight. Add tons of ice when ready to serve.