Category Archives: Cooking

Filipino torta, quiche style

I love me some torta, a Filipino dish akin to a stuffed omelet. But there’s a technique to it that I just cannot master — the pan flip. It scares the hell out of me, so I’ve avoided cooking it for years because I cannot do the pan flip. Above, on the left, you see an intact, traditional torta. Here’s what one of my fails looks like:

IMG_2072See the break toward the right? It is an offense to my Filipino heritage. So when I finally figured out, a few years ago, what a quiche was, I thought to myself — that doesn’t sound so far from a torta; why can’t it be made like that?

I have finally developed a recipe for a quiche-style torta. It’s a combination of the recipe my sister developed from the memory of my mom’s torta, and a crustless mini quiche recipe from Will Cook For Friends.

Continue reading

Slow cooker Kalua Pork

After posting this picture on Facebook and Instagram, I’ve gotten quite a few requests for the recipe. Honestly? It was a super simple recipe I found on Allrecipes.com (here’s the cached version; Allrecipes was down for maintenance while I was writing this post). It consists of a 6-pound pork butt roast, 1 1/2 tablespoons of Hawaiian sea salt (we found this at Cost Plus World Market) and a tablespoon of liquid smoke — we opted for the mesquite.

First pierce the roast all over with a barbecue grill fork (you know, the massive fork that comes with your grill set?), then rub the sea salt all over (get inside those crags!), then rub the liquid smoke all over it. It is very effective smokiness.

We then set the roast to cook at low for 10 hours. At the 10-hour mark, we turned it, then let it cook another six hours. After the roast came out, we separated as much fat as possible from the drippings, then added the shredded cabbage to the slow cooker until it was a little bit wilted. After the cabbage was cooked, it was mixed in with the shredded meat!

My personal recipe for munggo (mung bean soup)*

My munggo, or mung bean soup, contains both shrimp and pork, FYI. There was some interest in my recipe on Facebook, so I decided to put my recipe here.

Ingredients

  • 1/2 pound of mung beans
  • 1 Tbsp of vegetable oil
  • 1 lb pork, sliced into thin strips
  • 1/2 lb shrimp
  • 3 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 3 tomatoes, chopped
  • 3 cups chicken stock (if you use more, its fine — I hate wasting half a can of chicken broth)
  • Patis (fermented fish sauce) to taste
  • 1 bunch of spinach

Before you begin cooking, soak the mung beans in water for at least a couple of hours before boiling for faster cooking.

Boil mung beans in water until soft and easily mashed. Set the mung beans aside.

In a pan, heat the oil, add the pork and cook until the meat turns slightly brown. Then add the garlic, onions and tomatoes. Saute until the tomatoes are wilted. Add the shrimp until they’re just pink. Pour in the chicken broth, then add the boiled mung beans. Bring it all to a boil and let it simmer until thick. Season with patis to taste, then fold in the spinach. Cover and remove from heat. Serve hot over white rice.

*I’ve been keeping track of what I eat lately, so I was interested in finding out what the nutrition info on my recipe was. Check it out. (I estimate that this recipe yields 10 servings.) What I’m hearing from my fellow Filipino moms is that this is great dish to eat for milk production.

munggo nutrition info

Filipino eats: Torta and munggo

Munggo (mung bean soup)Post-partum eating is supposed to be high in protein, to help with losing the baby weight and also to keep you going because you’re losing 500 calories a day while nursing. So both these recipes are handy for those purposes.

I have another reason for learning these recipes and posting them. These are comfort foods that my mom used to cook all the time. And, unlike most American comfort foods, these are actually pretty healthy.

Continue reading