Overseas Pinoy Cooking

Vigan Cathedral and Bell Tower Another fruitful year for Overseas Pinoy Cooking has passed, the site is now three years and six months. During this time of the year it has been the tradition to make the Year End Round Up . Last year was a good year for Overseas Pinoy Cooking , several M ilestone have been achieved. The site has broken the 1 Million Visitors threshold last 25 August, 2010. As of this writting the total visitors has reached 1,292,829 hits and steadily growing at a rate more than my expectations. The average daily visitors have now reached 2,500 hits per day and has gone as high as 5,000 plus hits per day a couple of days before Christmas and New Year. The 4 Million Page Views threshold was achieved the succeeding month (September, 2010) and to this date is now few thousand short to cross the 5 Million Page Views mark, 4,988,165 page views as of this writting. The 10,000 daily page views to date which have reached as high as 18,000 plus page views per day a cou

Pinoy Roast Pork, Tocino Style is my New Year special , it is another innovative dish that is uniquely Pinoy. Roast Pork is commonly serve in special occasions including the Christmas Season in the West and other parts of the World. Today I want to share to you a Pinoy version of a roast pork , that will surely get your attention. As I said this is another one of my innovative dish and it’s my first try of the recipe. As expected it did turn out great and I would strongly recommend to all and give it a try. For the pork roast ingredient I started with the smallest pork roast I could find. In fact I wanted a rind less pork roast but I could not find one. The 4 ribs pork loin roast was just perfect except of course it was with the rind on so I have to take the skin out, I wanted to leave some fat on but I was not able to skinned it uniformly as you can see on the photo. To prepare the skinned pork roast , slit cut the fats in diagonal patterns about half an inch diamon

Quick Stirfried Bihon . Pansit is one of Pinoy’s favorite food during special occasions including the Christmas and New Year celebrations . There will always be some kind of noodle dish in most household during the Yuletide Season . There are several pansit recipes on the archive which I lost count already should you are looking for a particular type of pansit that you would like to cook this coming New Year Celebrations ( Click here to check all pansit resipes on the archives ). Today I would like to share a quick and easy stirfried bihon. It is quick in the sense the chicken ingredients was from roast chicken leftover and the vegetables are from a stirfry vegetable pack I bought from the supermarket. I have also some leftover Chinese Sausage and some prawns to complete the ingredients. Here is the recipe of my Quick Stirfried Bihon. Ingredients: 200 gram rice vermicelli, soaked in water and drained 1/2 roast chicken breast, shredded 2 Chinese sausa

Lechon Arroz Paella Valenciana.  It has been the tradition of Overseas Pinoy Cooking to post the paella dish which is traditionally served at our Noche Buena every year whether it is arroz valenciana or bringhe . This is now the fourth year of the Christmas paella post which started in 2007’s Pinoy Seafood Rice Cooker Paella Valencianna , then on 2008’s Seafood Pinoy Arroz Paella and last year’s Seafood Bringhe Valenciana . For this year’s Noche Buena it is Lechon Arroz Paella Valenciana, it’s an all meat version topped with home baked lechon. The dish is similar to the basic recipe of bringhe, to make the dish I used one part glutinous rice and one part regular rice sautéed in garlic, onion, pork, chicken and Spanish chorizo slices using the oil used in stir frying some diced bacon which I added on the last part of cooking the rice. Broth from pre-boiling the pork rind and thick canned coconut cream is added to the rice and simmered until the rice started to absorb the b

Pinoy Puchero, Pochero with Eggplant Sauce . I have tried to cook this pochero dish as close as possible to the version of Nora Daza from her cook book titled Let’s Cook with Nora Daza . Incidentally this is my first cook book which help me honed my cooking knowledge. I find the recipe’s cooking method laborious with all the individual boiling of the meat and vegetable ingredients. I have to revised it to an easier to follow cooking method including the eggplant sauce where raw garlic is mixed to the broiled eggplant. On my version I boiled all the meats (chicken, pork and beef) together in a big sauce pan, this way I can scoop out all those scum that normally rises when boiling meats in one step. The meats do not become tender at the same time either therefore once the chicken gets tender it was to be removed from the pan then the next meat either the pork or the beef it defends which one get tender last.  I did not also boil the bananas, potatoes and the vegetable

Crispy Sisig . Today I want to share a fried version of the sisig. The ingredients are deep fried instead of the usual grilling. The basic ingredient and cooking method are similar to my previous sisig recipe (click here to see the previous sisig post) except of course the pork and liver ingredients are deep fried instead of grilling. The frying method may not mean a lot in terms of ease of cooking compared to grilling because of the added danger of hot oil splashing during frying. It is however more convenient if you live in an apartment or a condominium where there is no place for outdoor barbecue . And hate the smoke that seems to clink to the walls forever. Not unless of course if you have an oven but that will require another separate sisig post in the future. Here is the recipe of my version of Crispy Sisig . Ingredients: 1 pig head, cut into four parts 1/2 kilo chicken liver 6-8 large size onion, chopped 6-8 pieces green chili, chopped 2-3 pieces birds eye c

Baked Leche Flan , I was reading a lot of baking technique for making a leche flan which are normally cooked by steaming. Most involved complicated use of double baking pan with water barrier between the mold or llaneras. Today I tried to make it easier by simply baking the leche flan straight from the mold. I just baked the leche plan custard in a small cake pan at 300ᵒF to 325ᵒF for about 1 hour and the result was good it is comparable if not better with steam cooked leche flan . I could not compare the result with leche flan baked on a baking pan with water bath heat buffer for the reason that I have not tried such technique. The recipe of leche plan( See my previous Leche Flan recipe )is standard the only deviation you could do is adjust the sweetness buy adding more milk or using more eggs. Some recipes call for using whole eggs. Flavoring defends on your own selection you can always use flavored essence or just the rind of some citrus fruit. For presentations I topped th

Pinoy Ham and Cheese Bread Roll . This Pinoy version of  bread roll  is not new. I have had this on several times, served as meryenda by friends. It is one of Pinoy’s kitchen ingenuity, where slices of loaf bread are turned into bread rolls with ham and cheese stuffing. The cooking method is simple all the ingredients are common in most Pinoy kitchen . But on my version I made some twist, I spread some honey on the bread. If you do not have honey, jams may do or just sprinkle some sugar instead. You may omit it all together if you are not into sweets. I also cut off the outer skin of the bread for cleaner rolls but again you may leave them as it is, if you do not want to waste anything. As I said cooking is fairly easy. It is a lot more easier compared to my other roll recipes below. Fried Pork Lumpia Roll with Ham   Fried Pork Lumpia Roll with Bacon   Cheesy Lumpiang Shanghai   Lumpiang Isda, Lumpiang Galungong   Lumpiang Gulay, Lumpiang Togue   Lumpiang Isda, Lumpiang Galungong  

Fiesta Fresh Fruit Salad . One salad that is always in our must Christmas food is fruit salad. It doesn’t matter if it’s canned fruits or fresh fruits. In our household I usually make the fruit salad out of fresh fruits that are available at the time of making. Some fruits tend to become bitter or sour in time that’s why if you are planning to make some fruit salad this coming holidays just prepare enough quantity that can be consumed on that day. You can always make another one on the next or succeeding days. You can also rectify shortcomings or adjust the ingredients the next time you make the fruit salad. There are no exact quantities and combination of fruits to be used, you can even use leftover fruits or fresh fruit cocktails where variety of different chunks of are already included. You can have them mixed with sweet creams, canned milks, and other similar ingredients as you please. For this Fiesta Fresh Fruit Salad recipe I just mentioned the general ingredient, you c

Pork Loin Pina Hamonado . Pork hamonado with pineapple is another popular Christmas dish that I want to share. My pork hamonado version is easy to prepare there is no rolling, tying or even wrapping. The pork that I used for the recipe is the loin part (lumo). To prepare you will need a whole pork loin, any other whole pork cut may also be used. Trim the ends of the pork loin to make it square as I call it, this is to facilitate easier insertion of stuffing. Using a thin knife make several stab cuts at the pork loin ends where you could insert the carrots, sweet pickles and pineapple stuffing . The depth of the stab corresponds to the strips of carrots and sweet pickles. Do these at both ends of the pork loin for easier insertion. The only hard part is inserting the pineapple stuffing , just force them with your finger will do the job. Here is my version of Pork Loin Pina Hamonado . Ingredients, 1 large size pork loin, ends trimmed 4 slices of canned pineapple, 2 slices cut into chunk

Chicken Embutido is an alternative to the more popular pork embutido that is usually served on special occasions including the Cristmas Noche Buena or New Year’s Media Noche Celebrations . There is nothing special cooking method with this chicken version of embutido . I have baked the embutido rolls for the reason that I wanted to check the suitability of baking embutido instead of steaming . As expected the result was positive, and in fact I could tell that embutido rolls wrapped with aluminium foil is more convenient cooking method than steaming. When the embutido is wrapped with aluminium foil the mixture is totally sealed thereby only the heat from the hot steam is used to cook the embutido , and I could safely say that any aromatics in the steaming water has no effect. Of course if sinsal is used as a wrapping then it should be cooked with steam with all the additional aromatic ingredients added to the steaming water. See my Special Embutido recipe with sinsal w