Do you have those regular burger cravings that won’t be satisfied by a quick trip to McDonald’s or Carl’s Jr.?  I do.  Before I got married, those cravings were easily satisfied by a quick trip to McDonald’s, Jollibee and even Tropical Hut.  Then Spouse had to introduce me to homemade American burgers that I once regarded as bland,  uninspired  ground beef slabs of dubious origins.  

For the record, this is not a gourmet burger  made with freshly-ground sirloin or angus beef.  It’s a housewife’s version made for maximum convenience and flavor. I do not ground my own burger meat, yet.  I do prefer a mix of 81% and 96% lean ground beef. The 93% lean ground is just too dry.  I also prefer the meat to be unfrozen.  In a pinch, no one will stop you from making burgers out of ground beef from your freezer of course, and I have done that.  But burger meat that’s been frozen is drier somehow.

I’ve made my burgers more interesting by spicing it up.  I first tried Emeril’s Original Essence with salt and freshly-ground pepper.  I later switched to Luzianne Cajun Seasoning and found it better.

Then, to borrow a phrase from Emeril, I “kick it up a notch” and bury some crumbled blue cheese or feta in the middle of the burger patty before grilling stovetop.  The cheese will melt into the meat and flavor the whole patty. It’s delicious both ways.

Now comes the question of how to cook your burger.  Do you prefer flame grilled or propane-grilled?  Stepson says nothing but flame-grilled will do.  Hank Hill of the cartoon, King of the Hill, will say propane-grilled for sure. I prefer mine grilled stovetop.  

I know, I know…it isn’t an American burger anymore if it isn’t grilled on a barbecue!  But this is a Filipino making the burger and I guarantee, it will come out just as good – even better – after I’m done with it.

Bobby Flay’s Boy Gets Grill

For grilling stovetop, start with a thick stovetop grill or cat iron skillet, brushed with a little cooking oil. Cook your burgers just a couple or more minutes (depending on patty thickness) on both sides to get it medium-cooked.  I cannot take rare burgers.  Pink and a little bloody is fine, but oozing raw is not for me.

I then cook some sliced onions on the grill and top the burger with tomatoes and the sauteed onion, maybe some lettuce and more of the feta or blue cheese.  Serve it with some polish dill pickles and more tomatoes and some french fries on the side.

If your burger is good, there’s no need for ketchup, mayo or mustard.  This particular one was good enough that it didn’t need all the extras.

St. Patrick’s Day will be here in a few days.  But I couldn’t wait wait to have Corned Beef with Cabbage before it came, so here it is.

This dish reminded me of Nilagang Baka and I always cooked it the Filipino-way, boiling it with onion and black peppercorn till it was falling apart.  Then adding in the potatoes and cabbage.

When it came time to eating, I grimaced when Spouse slathered the meat with brown mustard.  I persisted in having some steamed rice to go with my corned beef and cabbage and Spouse even tried that.  Although, he did insist on saving a few slices for a Reuben.

Old habits are hard to break, but when it comes to food, I’ve been known to try almost everything.  After a few years of cooking this dish, I’ve conceded and now cook and eat it the American way.

Corned Beef with Cabbage and Potatoes:

1-1.5 lbs. corned beef brisket

1 large baking potato

4 carrots, peeled and cut in 1 in. slices

1 yellow onion, rough-diced

3 c. water

Place the corned beef in a heavy stock pot and add enough water to cover it about an inch.  Bring to a boil and allow to simmer on low for 2.5 to 3.5  hours.  Don’t touch the meat while it’s simmering to avoid breaking it up. Add potato and carrots.  Cook till almost done, 15-20 minutes.

Add onions and cabbage and simmer until done, about 8 minutes. Transfer vegetables on a serving dish.  Move the beef to a cutting board and allow to cool about 5 minutes.  Slice thinly and transfer to your dish.  Serve with Dijon mustard.

This is not your usual chili.  For one, it’s served “on top of spaghetti, all covered with cheese”.  This one in the photo is known as a five-way.  

It’s served with the chili or meat sauce, beans, cheese (I used provolone so you can hardly see it in the photo) and chopped raw onions over spaghetti noodles.  It’s a fantastic combination.

Another thing that makes this chili different are the spices for flavoring, including:  cinnamon, allspice and even cocoa powder….not your usual chili, like I said.

I found this recipe in Jeff Smith’s “The Frugal Gourmet Cooks American” years ago and have made it several times.  Like most of my regular recipes, it’s evolved from the original with the changes I’ve introduced.

My cooking skills were unexpectedly put to the test when I cooked this for an office get-together, not realizing one of my co-workers was originally from Cincinnati.  He recognized the smells as I was getting it ready for serving.  I knew he was skeptical at first, but I also saw his eyes light up on his first bite. And then all he said was my chili was “not bad” which, according to him, was an observation that was “not bad at all”.

Apparently, he’d tried several chilis puporting to be Cincinnati-style, which totally unimpressed him.  He even said some of the others he’s tried were downright bad and not at all like the original.  To make me feel better, he said this was not an easy dish to do if you were NOT from Cincinnati and mine was the closest one to the original he’s had – outside of Cincinnati, of course.

A couple of weeks later, he generously brings me a can of Skyline Chili, which his father ships him regularly. “So you know what the REAL Cincinnati Chili is supposed to taste,” he tells me. 

My officemate worked at the original Skyline when he was a kid and let me in on some secrets on how to cook this famous chili.  Before you know it, he was telling me about another Cincy favorite, goetta, which he said I should try cooking next time. I have yet to do that.

The closest I’ve come to Cincinnati, Ohio was to cross the Ohio River somewhere in Indiana when Spouse and I missed our turn on the way from Colorado to Orlando, Florida.  I hope to make it to Cincinnati someday and try the real thing.  For now, this will do for me…

Cincinnati Chili

2 tbsps. vegetable oil

1 lb. ground pork

1 lb. ground beef

4 onions, chopped

6 cloves garlic, minced

1 tbsp. whole cumin seeds (A MUST)

4 -6 tbsps. hot chili powder

3 whole bay leaves

2 tsps. cinnamon

2 tsps. allspice

2 tsps. Tabasco

4 tbsps. cocoa powder

2 tbsps. Worcestershire sauce

4 tbsps. white vinegar

1 28-oz. can pureed tomatoes

2 tbsps. tomato paste

1 tbsp. oregano

2 lbs. kidney beans, soaked and cooked

salt to taste

Heat a large heavy stockpot and add the oil.  Saute the meats, onion, garlic, cumin seeds, chili powder adn bay leaves until the meat is browned.  Drain the fat and discard.  Add the remaining ingredients, including the beans and bring to a simmer.

Cook, covered for 1-1/2 hours.  Make sure you have enough water in the pot.

TIP:  What you’re looking for is a meat sauce that’s been cooked down to a fine consistency, not an overly thick sauce.  The color should be more red than brown, and the cumin will give it a very Southwest flavor.

To serve, pile spaghetti noodles on a plate, top with the meat sauce, then the beans, cheddar cheese (or any cheese of your choice) and some chopped raw onions.Very good with beer, preferably the Colorado brew, Fat Tire Amber Ale.

Sinigang refers to the dish you cook using the “sigang” method.  Cooking sigang style is to cook with broth and other condiments according to the online Tagalog dictionary.  I always thought the term meant sauteing without oil.  Sorry about the picture, I guess the steam rose and fogged up the camera lens.

Sinigang is a very versatile dish.  There are different versions of sinigang:  beef, pork, chicken, fish and shrimp.  Sinigang with beef, pork or chicken starts out the same way, which is, sauteing the meat with the onion and tomatoes without any oil, then adding a spoonful of fish sauce.  It’s the perfect dish for the rainy season….warm and satisfying.

You can also put in a variety of vegetables:  sigadillas(winged beans), bataw, eggplant, sitaw (long beans) and the green, leafy vegetable could be kangkong (swamp cabbage), or mustasa (mustard greens)  or even turnip greens as I’ve discovered living in the US.

Seafoods are different.  You start with a broth of onions, tomatoes, the fish sauce, maybe rice rinse water (the second rinse please), then add the seafoods and other ingredients when it comes to a boil.  This is a dish for the dry season, when the sun is strong and rain, sparse.  Fish sinigang with miso (similar to the Japanese miso) is another variant, fantastic with mustard greens.

For any Sinigang you need a souring agent or “paasim” as it’s called.  The most common for pork and beef  is green tamarind.  You put it in a strainer over your boiling pot and dunk it into the hot liquid until it softens.  Keep dunking your strainer while mashing the tamarind and pretty soon, the light green pulp from the tamarind will seep into the broth.  A chinoise strainer would be perfect for this.  I remember my mother had her favorite bamboo strainer.

Here’s an interesting trivia related to “paasim”:  the Indonesians have their Sayur Asem, which is basically a vegetable stew using the ripe tamarind to give it a very mild acidity.  Filipinos can take more acidity and use the unripe green tamarind.

For chicken, the usual souring agent is the young leaves of the tamarind.  This is chopped and put in last minute.  This gives a milder acidity, with a slight bitterness of the young leaves. The leaves also turn the broth milky.

For seafoods, the best souring agent is the “kamias” or bilimbi.  Sun-dried, this fruit gives yet another layer of flavor to sinigang.

The trick is not to put in the souring agent before your vegetables are cooked. Otherwise, they won’t cook properly. This is a rule of cooking sinigang I have yet to break, so I can’t really say if it’s just an old wive’s tale or whether there is some real chemical reaction of the acid to the vegetables.  I hate to ruin a good sinigang for the experiment…and haven’t so far.

For convenience, I have turned to using the instant sinigang mix availabale in most Asian stores. It’s very good, very similar to the original.  I would advise to adjust seasonings after you put it in because the mix does contain salt.

Ingredients:

1.5 lbs. beef chuck, cut in 2 in. cubes

1 onion, diced

2 roma tomatoes, diced

2 tbsps. fish sauce

1.5 c. water

1-2 green siling haba (I use the Italian pickled pepper commonly used for salads)

5-7 small gabi (taro) tubers, peeled and cut in half (peel with dry hands and do not wash immediately after or you will develop a mild and temporary itch – this is not an old wive’s tale)

1 medium-sized daikon raddish, peeled and sliced in half-inch rounds

1/2 c. longbeans, cut 1-inch long

1 med. sized Japanese/Chinese/Filipino eggplant, sliced in 2 inch. strips

2 c. swamp cabbage (kangkong) leaves (I used fresh turnip greens)

2-3 tsps. sinigang mix

salt to taste

Dry saute your beef, onions and tomatoes until the meat’s redness is gone.  Add the fish sauce and stir for another 3 minutes.  Add the water and the pepper and bring to boil.  Bring down heat and simmer till meat is almost tender.  Add more water if you want more soup.

Bring to a boil and add taro tuber. Add the daikon, bring down heat  and simmer another 15 minutes.   Add the longbeans and eggplants, cook 3 minutes.  Add turnip greens and cook 2-3 minutes more depending on how tender you like your veggies.

Meanwhile, put a few tablespoons of the broth in a bowl and stir in the sinigang mix.  Pour this mix into your pot gradually, adjusting to your taste as you go.  Some like their sinigang very sour, some prefer it milder.

Serve with steamed rice.

Filipino Homestyle Dishes

I’ve been cooking a lot of heavy dishes the past few days.  ‘Tis the season for all those rich recipes to come out and Osso Buco served over plain-boiled polenta sounds perfect for another cold, snowy day in Colorado….

Yesterday morning, Spouse and I went up to Denver and drove through the beautiful and cold fog in Monument and Larkspur.  I can say “beautiful” cause I wasn’t doing the driving.  It was another story when we got to the city.  Driving in this weather means freezing slush and mud on the road that all stick to the whole car, including your windshield…ugh!

We were supposed to stop for lunch at our favorite Italian restaurant in Denver, Cucina Colore but changed our mind at the last minute.  I still had Italian on my mind today and dug into my freezer…guess what I found…beef shanks!

Well, okay, it’s not veal shanks like what all Osso Buco recipes call for….but I like beef shanks better than veal shanks anyway.  It’s more robust in flavor and robust is perfect for the season.

Osso Buco

1.5 lbs. beef/veal shanks

1/4 c. flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/8 tsp.  ground black pepper

olive oil/Olivio margarine

1 small carrot, chopped

1 small onion, chopped

1 celery stalk, chopped

1 bay leaf

1-14 oz. can diced tomatoes

1/2 c. water

1/4 to 1/2 c. white wine

2 garlic cloves, small bunch parsley, zest of 1 lemon – chopped together

Procedure:

Season the shanks with salt and pepper.  Heat oil and margarine in heavy skillet over medium-high heat.  Dredege shanks with flour and brown in the oil.  Add celery, onion, carrots, white wine and allow to boil for a couple of minutes.  Then throw in the tomatoes, bay leaf and water and simmer for an hour and a half over low heat.

Transfer shanks to a separate bowl.  This is the time to adjust seasonings and the thickness of the sauce (boil longer without the lid). Put in the chopped garlic, parsley and lemon zest and boil for another 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, cook about 1.5 cup polenta in 2 cups rapidly boiling, salted water.  I used instant polenta to save on time.  Lower the heat to medium and cook 5 minutes or until you get the consistency you prefer. Finish it off with a handfull of parmesan cheese and a dab of butter.

Ladle a few spoons of the polenta onto a plate, a beef shank on top, with some of the osso buco sauce and serve hot.

Rao’s Cookbook: Over 100 Years of Italian Home Cooking

Sop Buntut is one of those favorite Indonesian dishes of mine, which I have never tried to cook before.  Now that I have this blog,  I thought it would be a good idea to to try cooking Indonesian dishes.  I lived for a very short time in Jakarta years ago and experienced real culture shock soon as I stepped out of the plane.  Even if I was in still in Asia, things were so vastly different from the Philippines.  The sights, the smells, the food….ohhh the food.

Several countries, have their own version of an oxtail dish.  Most of them are heavy, rich stews.  I’ve tried the South African Oxtail Potjie which my mother learned from a friend.  The Italians have several versions.  Then of course, there’s the Philippine Kare-kare, another rich stew with vegetables and a ground, toasted rice and peanut sauce.  Sop Buntut is different in many ways, it’s a soup and not a stew for one thing.  And it has aromatic spices like nutmeg and cloves that gives it different layers of flavor.

Years have passed since I last had this dish, years that stretch to more than a decade, truth be told.  The last time I was in Indonesia, the internet had not taken off and I never got myself an Indonesian cookbook, hence the years passed and I never tried cooking anything Indonesian.  I got this recipe off an Indonesian woman’s website and I hope to try the other recipes she has there.  The recipes are in Bahasa Indonesia so I had to wrack my brains to translate the recipe.  For some strange reason, I was still familiar with the Indonesian ingredients and cooking terms.  I think I got it right, the tastes and smells of my dinner brought me back to Jakarta.

Sop Buntut

Start by boiling about 1.3 lbs. cut-up oxtail  with a couple slivers of ginger root, salt and about 5 black peppercorns in enough water to cover the meat.  I pressure cooked my oxtail for about 30 minutes on medium-low heat after the cooker was ready.  Transfer everything to a bowl. At this point, you can refrigerate the meat and broth, then  easily take out the hardened fat that will settle on top.

Using the same pot, saute 2 cloves of crushed garlic in a tablespoon of margarine till almost golden.  Add 1 chopped onion and cook till translucent. Return oxtail and broth to the pan.  Add a teaspoon each of nutmeg and cloves, about a quart of water, quartered red potatoes (leave skin on) and sliced carrots.  Allow to simmer until potatoes are tender.  Throw in some sliced celery with leaves, a diced tomato and chopped green onions and bring it back to a boil.  Adjust seasonings.

Turn off heat immediately so your celery is still crunchy and the tomatoes still discernible.  Serve in bowls and top with crisp-fried onions.

Ayo, makan!

Indonesian Regional Cooking