Adventures in the Kitchen #1

No, this is not strictly a food blog, but from my latest posts, I suppose it would seem so. Yes, food is a big part of my life and I will always celebrate it on this bloggie blog. But I intend there to be much more discussed here other than my culinary adventures. But with no job at the moment, I've been spending a lot of time in the kitchen, which I tell myself to appreciate. When -- note when -- I find a job, I won't have the time to explore and cook new recipes as much as I've been doing now. So, each week, I'll keep weekly updates on the different dishes I'll try in the kitchen, and I'm enjoying every minute of it!

1. Longanisa - A sweet and somewhat spicy pork sausage. It's typical Filipino breakfast or merienda food. Cooking Longanisa is...interesting.  Simmer the links in an inch of water until the water has dried and then fry the links in its own juices, fat and sugar that have oozed onto the pan. Sure, your pan takes a merciless beating (expect a cake of burnt sugar to form), but the results are worth it. Just be sure you have a sturdy sponge on hand.

2. Chicken Parmesan - With 2 pounds of boneless chicken thighs in the freezer, I needed a chicken dish. Wandering Chopsticks was again my go-to recipe site, and although the recipe calls for chicken breasts rather than thighs, this turned out just fine. Family loved it, although I'd like to cook real Italian food someday. I can imagine all the true Italian chefs out there curling their lips at my corrupted take on Italian cuisine -- canned Prego and melted Parmesan cheese, and presto! I have chicken parmesan! Please forgive me, I'm poor and somewhat lazy.

3. Chicken Afritada - I'm feeling a lot like Iron Chef right now. My mother-in-law gave us a bag of potatoes and now I must figure out what I'm going to do with them. The first recipe that came to mind was chicken afritada. Or ah-pree-tah-dah, as Pinoys call it because they can't pronounce their f's. It's one of my favorite comfort foods. Unfortunately, this didn't come out exactly as I wanted...I only had boneless chicken breasts on hand and the chicken was somewhat dry. Alas, you win some, you lose some.

3. Chicken and zucchini stirfry - Sorry I don't have a photo of this one. Maybe I was sooo disappointed with the color and look of this dish that I decided that a photo would do a great disservice to it, since it was actually pretty tasty. I used dark soy sauce because that's all that we had (recipe calls for just regular soy sauce) and boy...did it make my stirfry dark!  I don't think you could make out the zucchini or the mushrooms I put in it because they all looked like dark brown pieces of meat. Why is it that food seems to taste better the morning after you cook your food?

4. Itailian breaded porkchops and potato salad - I don't have a picture of my porkchops...it was gone, just like that! I thought there'd be some left over after dinner for my usual photo shoot, but nope, none left. I suppose it's a good sign when the family gets seconds...and thirds and fourths. But I did have some potato salad left over to take a photo of that. I had to double up on the measurements and I added green peas and a sprinkle of paprika for more color.