A scientist in the kitchen

I’m writing a paper on pathogens of rice and for the life of me, I cannot seem to go past the hemibiotrophs. So I’m taking a break, catch up with the blogging, and show off these veggies.

A salad is easy to make. Get some greens like lettuce, reds like tomatoes and yellows like pepper. And the dressing? I just mixed up mayo and mangoes, and a dash of chili flakes. Puree all three, and they’re ready to go.

Mangoes again? Last week it was mangoes and greens, now it’s mangoes mixed with the dressing. What’s special about mangoes?

Mangoes from Maharashtra, India

It can be eaten in many ways!

1. Unripe mangoes can be eaten with fish paste. It is sour and the saltiness of the fish paste neutralizes the sourness.

2. Of course, mango is usually eaten ripe, Just slice the cheeks from the seeds and you have a wonderful dessert. Or mix it with greens to make an appetizing salad. Mix with apples, grapes, kiwi and cream and you have a delicious dessert.

3. Ripe mangoes can be candied, too. It is a primary export in the Philippines.

4. There’s a variety of mango which we call “pajo”. It’s very small, only about 1-2 inches long and eaten unripe. It has a pungent smell similar to cilantro. So when it is in season (which is just a few weeks of the year), we use it for making salsa instead of cilantro.

5. Mangoes are rich in vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. In some areas of the world, it is an aphrodisiac!

Here’s the recipe:

2 cup of shredded lettuce

2 large tomatoes, sliced

1 large yellow bell pepper cut into strips

100 gram light mayonaise

2 cheeks of ripe mango

a dash of chili flakes to taste

To make the dressing: In a blender, mix mango, mayonaise and chili flakes. Chill.

To make the salad: In a bowl, toss lettuce, tomatoes and bell pepper. Serve in individual bowls, and each person can add the dressing according to taste.

And since it’s another great weekend for herb blogging, this is my contribution for WHB # 111 with Kalyn hosting this weekend.

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Whenever we have guests at home for lunch, noodles is always in the menu. Now, traditionally, for lunch or dinner, noodles are served sauteed and not in soups. And it is not the only dish served, there are usually other meats and of course the ubiquitous rice, steamed or fried. If noodles is in the soup, it usually serve during snacks. Sauteed noodles are usually mixed with chicken or pork, sliced vegetables such as carrots, cabbages and green beans.

For this week’s PPN entry, I’m presenting my own pancit canton. Pancit is noodles in Tagalog and Canton is a type of local dried noodles. Nope, they are not made in China. I like to tweak my pancit canton a bit. I like it chunky so vegetables are not sliced thinly. I like to add mushrooms, whether dried or fresh, which you would not normally find in pancit canton anywhere.

This dish I prepared when long time friends from high school and college came over to visit me at home. It felt good to see them all over again. Much better was the getting to know each of our families making one big extended family for all of us. Here are the ingredients:

200 grams pork belly
a large onion
lots of minced garlic
one large carrot
300 grams of cabbage
mushrooms
soy sauce
salt and pepper to taste
3 cups broth
300 grams pancit canton/dried noodles

1. Boil pork till it is tender. Reserve the broth and fry the pork till golden brown. Chop into one-inch pieces.

2. Saute garlic and onion until onion is caramelized and garlic starts cook.
3. Add the sliced fried pork belly and 2 tbsp soy sauce. Mix thoroughly
then add the carrots,
cabbage, and mushroom. Saute very well. Add a little bit of water at a time till the carrot is half done. Remove the vegetables from pan.
4. Add the remaining broth. If you are using dried mushrooms, reserve the water for soaking and mix later witht the pork broth.
5. Add a tbsp of soy sauce, a pinch of salt and pepper to taste. When boiling, add the dried noodles and mix well.
5. Add the cooked vegetables and mix well. Your pancit canton is now ready to serve.

PS- you may add as much vegetables as you like.

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We don’t celebrate Thanskgiving here in the Philippines so turkey dishes are not as popular. And they are so expensive here as well. But my dad happens to raise turkeys so on special occasions we serve turkey to our guests. It is usually cooked roasted or as caldereta, a kind of stew. For this post, here’s how we roast turkey at home.

One of the things you will notice with Filipino cooking is that we don’t bake as much. Hence Filipino kitchens usually don’t have ovens unless one is into baking. So if we want roasted or lechon turkey, we do it the traditional way like the picture below. Instead of wood charcoal, we use dried coconut husks to cook with our grills because it is more abundant and cheaper in our place. To hold the turkey in place, we use a pole from a coconut frond, remove the leaves and cut it into desired length.

We cook it for 2-3 hours depending on the size of the turkey and someone has to turn it so it is roasted evenly. Now, I’ve got this handy meat thermometer that gives me an idea if the meat nearly done.

The roasted turkey below is what I served during my dad’s birthday early this year.

To prepare the dressed turkey for roasting, I marinated it first in a mixture of Chinese five spice (50 grams), crushed pepper and rock salt. I rubbed the mixture all over the turkey, under the skin, the cavity and make slits in the breast and thigh and fill them with the rub. I wrap this in saran wrap and marinate for 30 minutes (though longer is better, but I was in a hurry then). Then we roast it as above.

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This post is also submitted to the Grow Your Own blogging event.

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A scientist in the kitchen is my foray into food blogging. I’m a molecular biology major about to finish my PhD. I love to cook and it helps me relax away from the lab. Science and cooking? You bet!

Laboratory = Kitchen

Chemicals/enzymes = Food ingredients

Protcols = Recipes

Pipettors = Cooking utensils

Lab gown = Apron

Burner = Stove

Vortex mixer = Food mixer

Agarose gel = Jell-o

Agree with me?

Popularity: 17% [?]

When it’s mango season in the Philippines, around March to June, we usually eat ripe mangoes all the time from morning to night. So I’ve come up ways to eating mango in different ways. We usually make mango refrigerator cake (I’ll talk about this in another post) or make them into shakes. There are two types of shakes, ripe mango shake and green mango shake. The green mango shakes uses unripe green mangoes for that sweet-sour shake and all the goodness of sweet mango you can find in the ripe mango shake. A Japanese eatery here made kani salad with mangoes, lettuce, cucumber and crabsticks. This gave me an idea to make a simple salad with cucumber, mango and lettuce and topped with Japanese mayo.

For this dish, you will need one medium size cucumber sliced thinly, a cup of shredded lettuce and slivers of mango from two ripe mangoes. Just layer them and add Japanese mayo according to your taste. Another dressing would be to mix half a cup of cane vinegar, 1 tablespoon of sugar and freshly milled black pepper and pour onto the salad mixture.

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This is my contribution to this week’s Weekend Herb Blogging hosted by Truffle of What’s On My Plate.

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