A scientist in the kitchen

Lemongrass is one of my favorite herbs and have been using it a lot on soups and roast chicken. I can’t believe I haven’t used it with pork barbecue until I read Katie’s Lemongrass Barbecued Pork recipe. Katie B., of Other People’s Food, is my partner for this month’s Taste and Create event - a brain child of Nichole from For the love of Food.

I used the same ingredients as the marinade but used pork belly instead of boneless pork loin. And instead of lime juice, I used kalamansi, the Philippine version of lime. The family is more partial to pork belly and we love to eat grilled pork belly every week. I love the aroma of lemongrass on the barbecue with each bite I took. I know I must do this again.

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Currently searching over a catalog of MP3 players… something I need for a new project coming up.

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For April’s Grow Your Own, I am sharing with you an age-old practice in my father’s hometown. It is basically a rice growing town, with farmers still practicing traditions handed down for generations. One of these traditions is patilaok or the sharing of rice harvests. It is the practice to share with friends and neighbors the first batch of milled rice from their rice harvest. So often we get a share, a kilo or two, from neighbors. We get to taste different rice varieties as they are really proud of their harvest. Since April is harvest season, we have enjoyed these gifts each week.

We eat rice three times a day. When cooking rice for dinner, we often cook extra rice so that the leftover rice can be cooked as fried rice for the next day’s breakfast. Sometimes, we cook fried for lunch or dinner if the dish calls for it, if there is extra rice and if I feel like cooking fried rice (which can be often).

Cilantro rice

2 tbsp vegetable oil
5 cloves garlic, minced
4 cups cold cooked rice, crumbled to separate grains
a bunch of cilantro, chopped
salt

Heat oil in wok. Add 1 tsp salt, stir to dissolve salt then add the garlic. Cook garlic in oil, make sure it does not get burnt. When garlic is light brown in color, add the rice. Stir quickly to prevent rice from sticking in the wok and to distribute heat evenly throughout the rice. I usually cook it like this for around 5 minutes. When rice is heated through, remove from fire then add the fresh cilantro. Stir again then serve.

I served cilantro rice with fried salted fish. The fish is called espada or swordfish, about 12-15 inches long flat fish with thin flesh. The fish is cut in the middle to open it up, cleaned then salted and dried. This was my first time to eat this kind of dried fish. The saltiness was just rice and it was very crunchy when fried.

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This is probably one of the dishes I would like to make. But whenever I ask my Korean friends how to make kimchi, they would always say “Verrryy difficult!” But how come David Lebovitz was able make kimchi in Paris? One of these days, I’m going to make it! What’s more, this video has easy enough instructions for making kimchi at home.

Based on conversations with my Korean friends (whose wives cook really, really great Korean food), I learned that kimchi varies from one family to the next. The microbiologist in me would assume it has something to do with microbial flora that gives kimchi distinct flavors. It’s a must for Korean eating. I remember shopping with a Korean family and they bought loads of Korean red pepper for their kimchi!

So enjoy the video for now. Next time, it will be my tale on making kimchi in my kitchen.

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Back to my own computer again, my wireless router connection is back to normal.

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Several weeks back, we had a clan reunion with all the members of my grandma’s side of the family invited. The activity was held in our place, tents were put up in the backyard, a videoke machine was rented and a lot of the cousins came. Since we were hosting, we had a lot of cleaning up to do at home and the cooking was left to my dad’s brother and sisters. I like this kind of occasion as most of the foods serve are traditional or locally available. Of course, there are pork stews and noodles. But one of the dishes served was catfish - some grilled and the others fried to be topped with sauteed tomatoes and kinchay (Chinese parsley?).

Tomatoes are sauteed with garlic, onion and black beans. Add some water and squish the tomatoes to make the sauce thick. Then kinchay is added before it is taken off the fire. Some cooks prefer to add the fried fish to the sauce them boil for a few minutes. What my cousin did was to separate the sauce. Which is a good idea as I really don’t like the sauce I prefer to dip the fried catfish in soy sauce and chili!

Speaking of cats, my friends J and K gave me saltshaker of a cat for my birthday the other week. Cute right?

Now, I can add it to my collection of cats! I might need a cat condo for them later on…

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Early this morning, a group of graduate students working on rice research were given a field tour around the ricefields by one of the rice breeders. It was quite exciting for me, as I mostly do laboratory work and greenhouse experiments. There are several species of rice, some grow really tall - most of the energy they turn up goes into growing up rather than producing grains. Some are really tiny and looks like grasses. We even walk through the fields to get an idea of how elite rice lines are evaluated and selected for further advancement. Rice breeders literally screen thousands of rice lines each cropping season (two seasons per year - wet and dry). It was hot and I was sweaty but I had a good discussion on rice breeding in general. Keeps me grounded actually with the work I am doing in the lab.

Then a job interview for a new position (cross my fingers!). It was not too bad…

Well after several weeks of absence from Pasta Pesto Nights, I finally have this chance to share my pasta and noodle cooking in the last few weeks. Got busy with graduate school work, my heart was not so much into blogging but more of eating (what else is new?). TOmatoes are rather cheap at this of the year, sometimes only about 20 pesos (~$0.50) per kilo. At the extreme end, the price could go to as much as $1.50. So I made meaty tomato sauce for linguine, a treat for my birthday two weeks ago.

Linguine in Meaty Tomato Sauce

1.5 kilos fresh tomatoes, chopped
500 grams ground pork
5 cloves garlic, chopped
1 large onion, chopped
salt, pepper and chili flakes to taste
Linguine pasta, cooked al dente

Saute garlic and onion in 2 tbsp oil. Add the ground pork and saute until it no longer pink. Add the tomatoes, mix well then cook over low fire for three hours. Season with salt, pepper and chili flakes to your liking. Top linguine pasta with this sauce. The sauce is good for around 500 grams pasta.

Some notes:

I usually cook around 200 grams first, enough for my sister, mom and me. Dad’s not so much into pasta unless it’s Filipino-style spaghetti so he just shares with my mom. If he likes it, he gets his own plate.

I cooked this over a wood-fired stove, just bringing everything to a simmer and let the tomatoes cook over slow fire.

I’d love to this again!

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Am writing this in a computer rental shop, my internet connection is crazy at the moment…

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