A scientist in the kitchen

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.

Popularity: 59% [?]

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It was supposed to be Pad Thai for lunch with my friends. But I couldn’t find any rice noodles so I settled for these vegetable noodles from Taiwan. Hence this dish is now Pad Taiwan. For one thing, the noodles were green probably because of the vegetables added such as green peas to the wheat flour in making the noodles. They’re a bit thicker than the rice noodles but works as well if your craving for Asian style sauted noodles.

I actually learned to cook Pad Thai with Thai friends who were students at the university. The funny thing was, they made me be the taster even if I hadn’t tried it before. I like it so much that I started cooking it at home, all the while texting my friend if I’m doing it right. It’s no longer Pad Thai, even if I used the same ingredients and combination of salty, sour, hot and sweet tastes as I vary noodles I used. Vermicelli, rice noodles, wheat noodles, vegetable noodles…

For this latest version, I used vegetable noodles made in Taiwan. Look how lovely they looked like after cooking. These are dried noodles and I cooked them like pasta, till you have that al dente consistency. Drain and cool with water, as the directions for cooking said.

We don’t have tamarind paste so I used tamarind powder which is commonly used for a Filipino dish called sinigang. Chez pim has good recipe for Pad Thai which I just followed. It is easy to understand. I actually got the idea from her to mix all the sauce ingredients to get that combination of sweet, salty, sour and hot taste of Pad Thai. Just head over to Pad Thai for beginners for the recipe.

Aside from the noodles and the sauce, I also included tofu, ground peanuts, beansprouts and cilantro. Depending on the mood, I add meat or simply tofu if I want to go vegetarian.

I’m writing this post, and now I’m craving again for Pad Thai!

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This is my entry for this week’s Presto Pasta Nights as well as to Click, with the theme for this month as noodles and its many forms.

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Here’s a really cool site for those who can’t get enough of eating rice- as a main dish or a dessert. Check out FreeRice.com. It’s a vocabulary game that at the same time allows you to help the hungry around the world. For each word you get right, FreeRice.com will donate 10 grains of rice through the United Nations to help end world hunger. How’s that for mind-filling, stomach-filling and spirit-filling day?

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I have a Little Brother and a Big Brother. This post is about my Little Brother. It’s really a misnomer as I am barely five feet while he is almost a foot taller than me. He is way way younger than me though. Little Brother came to the lab for a few months. He wanted to learn English so he liked hanging out with us. The trick was to give him his “words for the week”, words he doesn’t know and he has to look up in the dictionary. Otherwise we won’t allow him to join us for dinner!

Going out to dinner was something else. Some foods he does’t know or don’t know the Chinese word for. Well, there’s goes another “words for the week” for him. Before he went back to China, he coooked several Chinese dishes for us. This is one of them. Can’t you see, this is another practice for his English - teaching us how to cook. He must have really learned to speak in English since this dish came out well.

This dish calls for lots of green chili, I’m not sure if jalapeños will do. It is really hot! The original Mexican term, chilli (now chile in Spanish) came from Nahuatl word chilli or xilli, referring to a huge Capsicum variety cultivated at least since 3000 BC, according to remains found in pottery from Puebla and Oaxaca. The fruit of most species of Capsicum contains capsaicin (methyl vanillyl nonenamide), a lipophilic chemical that can produce a strong burning sensation in the mouth (and, if not properly digested, anus) of the unaccustomed eater. Although black pepper and Sichuan pepper cause similar burning sensations, they are caused by different substances—piperine and alpha-hydroxy-sanshool, respectively.

Ingredients:

500 gram pork tenderloin
1/2 cup soy sauce
1 cup green chili, deseeded and cut into strips
1 piece red bell pepper, cut into strips
3 tbsp vegetable oil

1. Cut meat into 1 inch strips. Marinate in soy sauce for at at least 10 minutes.
2. Heat 2 tbsp oil in pan. Add the meat. Reserve marinade.
3. Stir fry meat till cooked then remove from pan.
4. Add the remaining oil in pan and heat. Add the green chili and saute for 30 seconds. Add the meat, mix well then add the reserved marinade.
5. Saute meat and chili till marinade is reduced. Add the red bell pepper then remove from fire.

This dish is best served with steamed rice.

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This is my entry to this week’s Weekend Herb Blogging

hosted by Vanessa of What Geeks Eat.

Popularity: 24% [?]