A Long Break

I sat, staring at my screen for the longest time, and usually the words would flow from my thoughts to my fingers, tapping away at the keyboard. But I just stared. All of a sudden I was unsure of what I should say, or if I wanted to say anything, whether it was important at all. Day after day, I kept drawing a blank, until I finally just turned off completely, and took a break. Although the cooking still continued, I had a bad case of writer's block.

It's been a month or so. I started to miss my blogging world - the photos, the recipes, the comments, my friends, and yes, even the writing. Sorry to have disappeared for a bit, but I'm back. Here's a very hearty recipe for Slow-Roasted Pork Belly, adapted from the traditional Danish technique and a more modern Jamie Oliver.

Slow-Roasted Pork Belly

1.5kg pork belly with skin on

sea salt

2 apples, cored and sliced

5 shallots, sliced

2 sprigs of rosemary

Preheat the oven to 220 deg C. In the meantime, with a small sharp knife, score the skin, through the fat, but be careful not to cut into the meat (or ask your butcher to do this for you). Place pork belly skin side down into a roasting tray and pour enough water just to cover the layer of skin and fat. Bake for 30 minutes.

Remove the baking tray from the oven, and reduce the heat to 180 deg C. Pour out the water from the baking tray and set aside. This can be used for making gravy if desired. Turn over the pork belly so it is skin side up. Rub salt onto the skin and into the grooves.

Add the apples, shallots, and rosemary underneath the pork, making a flavorful nest.

Roast for another 2 hours. At this point, the skin would have started to puff up into a crackling. If not, turn up the oven to broil, carefully watching the pork as the skin starts to puff up, making sure it does not burn.

Remove from the oven and let the meat rest for about 10-15 minutes before slicing.

Serve with pickled red cabbage and a good strong mustard. You can also make a brown gravy from the drippings, and serve with potatoes.

Decadent Food@Kulinarya

Thanks to Lala of Kulinarya Cooking Club, who came up with another challenging theme of Decadent Food. My dish for April is Calamansi Lime Pie, made creamy by the surprise ingredient, condensed milk. The sweet, tart and creamy combination makes you crave for another slice. The recipe is adapted from Jeanne Kelley's wonderful cookbook, Blue Eggs and Yellow Tomatoes.

Calamansi Lime Pie with Blueberry Compote

1 prepared 9-inch pie crust

1 (14-ounce can) sweetened condensed milk

3/4 cup freshly squeezed calamansi limes

(or regular limes)

1 teaspoon lime zest, finely grated

2 eggs

16 ounces fresh blueberries

1/2 cup sugar

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C.

Mix together the condensed milk, lime juice, and zest until well blended. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs and pour into the condensed milk mixture, mixing thoroughly. Pour into the prepared pie crust and bake until filling is set, about 20 minutes.

Remove from oven and let cool completely. Chill in the refrigerator while making the compote.

Place blueberries and sugar in a saucepan and let simmer over medium heat for about 15 minutes. The mixture will thicken and reduce. Set aside to cool. Spoon over the pie slices and serve with whipped cream or creme fraiche, if desired.

Kulinarya Cooking Club was started by a group of Filipino foodies living in Sydney who are passionate about the Filipino culture and its colourful cuisine.

Each month we will showcase a new dish along with their family recipes. By sharing these recipes, we hope you find the same passion and love for Filipino food as we do.

If you’re interested in joining our Kulinarya Cooking Club, please feel free to drop by our foodblogs and leave a comment. We would love to hear from you!

Time Flies

Do you find yourself driving the usual route - to the kids' school, to work, to the supermarket - only to realize that you're already there? But wasn't it just a few minutes ago that you got on the highway, cranked up the radio and started the journey?

And just like that, I realized too that I've now been blogging for a year! What started off as a challenge after taking a writer's workshop, and inspired by a retreat in Bali, my blog now has 72 entries. I've met many like-minded, food-crazy friends and even felt an instant kinship with some of you over our posts. I've travelled around the world vicariously through your blogs, savoring the aromas and tastes that your recipes brought to my kitchen.

So thank you, bloggers, for sharing your world with me, as I've enjoyed sharing mine with you. And thank you, readers, for stopping by to visit. See you again soon.

Saved

I had a panic attack yesterday.

It was late in the afternoon, and as I was walking to my car in the basement parking lot, I picked up my iPhone, did the habitual click and swipe, and then again and again, but my fully-charged phone remained black, and silent. How could it be? Like a crazed woman, I raced home, plugged it into its lifeline - not a peep. It was gone. Kaput. I googled "dead iPhone", called the Apple store, followed the tips, but still no luck. Hysterical thoughts started rushing through my head like scrolling headline banners - What if My Class Schedule Was Changed? Is Teenage Son Stuck Somewhere? The Physiotherapist Can't Make it Tomorrow and Can't Reach Me! (And to think just a couple of years ago, I threatened to throw my husband's Blackberry overboard while on our cruise holiday, accusing him of being too obsessed! Oops...)

Then Teenage Son arrives home, listens to hysterical blabber from Panicked Mom, grabs the phone, and a few simultaneous clicks later, hands it back revived and alive, walks into his room, and shuts the door. Order is restored!

I even had time to make dinner of Prawn Cakes with fresh shitake mushrooms and wasabi vinaigrette, adapted from an old clipping I saved from Gourmet Magazine's October 2002 edition.

Prawn Cakes with Wasabi Vinaigrette

500g medium prawns, shelled and deveined, finely chopped

150g skinless cod or any white fish fillet, finely chopped

2 tablespoons minced carrots

1/4 cup minced onions

1/2 cup minced fresh shitake mushrooms, caps only

1 egg, lightly beaten

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon soy sauce

2 teaspoons sugar

Oil for frying

for Wasabi Vinaigrette:

1 tablespoon prepared wasabi paste

3 tablespoons mayonnaise

1 tablespoon mirin

1 tablespoon rice vinegar

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 tablespoon sugar

Saute carrots, onion and mushroom in a bit of oil until softened, about 2-3 minutes. Set aside to cool.

In a large bowl, mix together minced prawn and fish, carrots, onion and mushroom mixture, egg, salt, soy sauce and sugar. With your hands, knead the mixture until well combined. Cover and chill in the refrigerator for about 1 hour.

In the meantime, make the wasabi vinaigrette by whisking the wasabi paste, mayonnaise, mirin, vinegar, soy sauce and sugar until well blended.

Take the chilled prawn mixture and shape into 1/2 inch cakes. Heat oil in a pan over medium heat and fry cakes until lightly golden, about 2 minutes on each side. Drain well over paper towels.

Serve over mixed greens. Drizzle wasabi vinaigrette over the prawn cakes. Top with sesame seeds and pea sprouts.

Overdrive

Nurses and Caregivers, I have one word for you - RESPECT! Teenager no. 3 came home from the hospital last weekend, and I have tagged on an addendum to my multi-hyphenated job description of Mom. I am now Mom-Nurse to my son, who is lying in bed, cranky, in pain, and temporarily immobile. His needs have gone on overdrive. I've only been a couple of days on the job, but I am exhausted! I am either going to make myself a cocktail, or something good to eat. So I made noodles.

This recipe is adapted from The Taste of Thailand by Vatcharin Bhumichitr, substituting red curry paste with sambal.

Curry Noodles with Sambal

200g fresh Asian egg noodles

2 tablespoons oil

1 garlic clove, minced

2 tablespoons sambal paste

(or 1 teaspoon red curry paste)

1/2 cup coconut cream

125g minced pork

250ml chicken or pork stock

1 teaspoon curry powder

1/4 teaspoon turmeric powder

1 tablespoon fish sauce

1/2 teaspoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

Blanch the fresh noodles in boiling water for a few seconds, separating the strands. Drain and set aside.

In a wok over high heat, add the oil and fry the garlic until just golden. Add curry paste, stir well, then coconut cream. Lower the heat and simmer for a minute. Add the minced pork and saute until it turns opaque. Add the stock, curry powder, turmeric, fish sauce, sugar and lemon juice. Stir well. Increase the heat to high and continue stirring for about half a minute.

Add the noodles and mix until the sauce is well incorporated.

Garnish with julienned cucumbers and carrots. Sprinkle with sesame seeds or ground peanuts. Serve with additional sambal on the side.

Vegetables@Kulinarya

This month's Kulinarya Cooking Club challenge is Vegetables, Philippine Style. Thanks to Erika for a refreshing theme!

Ask a fellow Filipino what their favorite home cooked dish is, and most often you'll hear them craving for adobo, kare-kare, longganisa, or lechon kawali. We're a carnivorous bunch!

According to Encyclopedia of the Nations, the country's main agricultural crops are rice, corn, coconut, sugarcane, bananas, pineapple, coffee, mangoes, tobacco, and abaca (a banana-like plant). Secondary crops include peanut, cassava, camote (a type of rootcrop), garlic, onion, cabbage, eggplant, calamansi (a variety of lime), rubber, and cotton.

My featured dish is a grilled eggplant salad, which is a perfect accompaniment to all that meat we're craving! The tanginess of the dressing comes from calamansi, or Philippine limes. Adjust the sourness according to your taste, and if calamansi is not available, limes or lemons can be used. A drizzle of coconut cream rounds out the flavors. Add some crushed peanuts, chopped cilantro and more chili to the dressing for a Thai twist.

Grilled Eggplant Salad

1 Asian eggplant (long)

2 cloves garlic, minced

3 shallots, minced

1/2 tomato, diced

1 chili, minced

2 tablespoons fresh calamansi juice

2 tablespoons fish sauce

1 teaspoon sugar

2 tablespoons coconut cream

Grill the eggplant until skin is blackened. Let cool for a minute, then peel off the charred skin.

Dice eggplant and place in a serving dish. Top this with the diced tomatoes, shallots and minced garlic (which can be pan-fried in a bit of oil until lightly brown for a milder flavor).

For the dressing, combine the calamansi juice, fish sauce, sugar and minced chili. Mix well until the sugar is dissolved.

Pour dressing over the salad and drizzle the coconut cream over to finish.

Fish Tales

There was a point in my childhood where I wanted to marry a fisherman. During my summer holidays, we would visit my grandparents who lived by the river. My Dad would take me on a little canoe with an old fisherman called Mang Tino, and we'd row out to the bay in the cool, dark and quiet dawn. The soft ripples of waves, the gentle splash of the oars as they cut through the still water was hypnotic. No conversation. This was Dad's downtime. We stopped a bit by the river bank, where our fisherman scooped up tiny shrimp for bait. We fished for a couple of hours, until the hot morning sun came bearing down on us. That meant it was time to head for shore, where twigs and branches were collected to make a fire to cook our breakfast. Our catch of the day, tiny silver fish, were put into a clay pot, with some onions, garlic, ginger and salt. The sweetness of the fresh fish over hot steamed rice was the best breakfast a little girl could share with her Dad, sitting under a shady tree, by the riverbank. This was serenity.

Here's a recipe for Grilled Fish (adapted from Terry and Christopher Tan's Shiok cookbook), using fillets you can easily find in your neighborhood supermarket. In Singapore, the ideal fish used is Stingray, on the bone, and of course, the fresher the better. It is served with a sweet-salty-spicy sambal and slices of calamansi, our local limes. The sambal recipe yields about a cup. I plan to make more dishes using this condiment, so watch out for it in my future posts.

Grilled Fish with Chili Sambal

500g sole or any white, firm fish fillet

2 tablespoons kecap manis (thick dark soy sauce)

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon sugar

fresh calamansi or limes, halved

for Chili Sambal:

6 cloves garlic, peeled

4 candlenuts

(closest substitute would be cashew nuts)

2 large onions, chopped

8 dried chilies, soaked for about 30 minutes to soften

2 tablespoons tamarind pulp

3/4 cup water

4 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 tablespoons tomato paste

1 tablespoon shrimp paste

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon sugar

Preheat oven to grill (you may also use your barbecue grill).

Pat dry the fish fillets with a paper towel and place in an oven-proof dish. Mix together kecap manis, pepper, salt and sugar. Brush liberally over fish.

Place in the oven and grill for about 3-4 minutes (4-5 minutes for thicker fillets). The fish is cooked through when the meat can be flaked with a fork. Serve with cut limes and chili sambal.

To make the sambal, finely grind garlic, candlenuts, onions and chilies in a food processor to make a moist aromatic paste. Add the tamarind paste into the water and knead until a pulp is produced. Strain into another bowl.

Heat the wok and add the oil. Reduce heat to low and add the aromatic paste. Stir constantly for about 10 minutes to ensure that the raw ingredients are thoroughly cooked.

Add the tomato paste, salt, sugar and stir well. Add the strained tamarind liquid a little at a time, stirring well, and continue until all liquid has been added and absorbed, and the sambal has turned a deep, rich red.

Serve with grilled fish, or as a condiment to your favorite meat, noodle or rice dishes.

The cooled sambal can be kept in a clean, airtight container for a few weeks in the refrigerator.