Red Snapper Fillet with Lemon Butter Sauce and Spinach Cucumber Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing

So it has been 5 months since my last post…yeah, yeah…I have been neglecting my blog and I have not written anything…not even drafts for what to post next.  Well, I have been busy alright?  I was overwhelmed by the silly GD diet, celebrated the holidays including Halloween (when I was on the silly GD Diet) when I couldn’t eat sweets…yeah, a pain, I know… Mom and Only Sis arriving last December (Yay!), celebrating Christmas, New Year, Valentine’s Day, my birthday…and Oh, yeah, having a baby. 

Nope, I didn’t commit a typo…it is indeed Pekig.  Well, actually it’s Peking Canteen but their sign says PEKIG, so we call it that.  This is one of those chinese restaurants that line one of the smaller streets nearby Psah Tmei in Phnom Penh.  We used to eat there when I was in Cambodia and I believe Mom and Only Sis still do whenever they feel lazy to cook.

Whenever we go there, we always order the same dishes – stir fried bok choy, boiled dumplings, guts soup and yes, the ever simple Onion Noodles…oh and the occasional Yang Chow Fried Rice.  Anyway, this post is about my craving for Onion Noodles one day and so  decided to try to recreate it.  It is quite simple and ingredients are so easy to come by – save for the hand-pulled noodles they use.  Oh well , I can always but the fresh noodles they sell at the supermarket.  It isn’t the same but its better than nothing.

What is Onion Noodles, you ask?  Its a meatless kind of noodles with just a little bit of sauce made out of onions and spring onions.  A boiled soy egg can be added if desired.

ONION NOODLES

Ingredients:

1 pack of fresh flour noodles

a bunch of spring onions

1 onion

2 cloves of garlic, minced

soy sauce

sesame oil

about a teaspoon of canola oil

soy sauce egg (boil eggs in water with soy sauce)

For the sauce:

soy sauce

vinegar

garlic (minced)

chili oil or chili paste

Procedure:

1.  Mix the sauce  according to taste and set aside.

2.  Peel and slice onions for sauteeing. 

3.  Roast spring onions until fragrant but not burned.  Cut into 2 and set aside.

4.  Boil noodles till tender.

5.  In a wok, heat up the canola oil and saute the garlic till about golden.  Add the onions and stir till onions are tender and translucent.

6.  Add soy sauce and let it simmer.  Add noodles and roasted spring onions.  Drizzle with sesame oil.

7.  Cook for about 2 more minutes.  Serve with soy sauce egg on top and sauce at the side.  Enjoy!

 

 

Chopsuey

Back when I was a young growing girl in Daet, I had started learning to cook and ate home-cooked meals….most of the time.  But there were times when we would feel lazy to cook anything for dinner that it gave us the opportunity to go for take-outs.  And given the variety of choices available, we could have whatever we wanted. Small Mom-and-Pop” Turo-turo” (which literally means point-point ) just around the corner of any street set up their small tables and showcase their fare in covered kalderos (pots) and customers can sniff, peruse and choose whatever they wanted and just point at it and the Manang Tindera would obligingly measure the food in plastic bowls lined in plastic cellophane bags, inverting the bag to hold the yummy viand afterwards.  Carinderias (Small Eateries) with their permanent stalls go a bit more organized and display their food in glass counters with net covered doors to prohibit flies from going to the food.  Suki (Regular customers) would sit in front of the built-in counter/table on low bangko (benches), sitting elbow to elbow with other customers and order “turo-turo” style and eat their food, then and there. 

It’s not even cold here nor anybody is sick but suddenly I had the craving for misua and patola soup.  It must be my rising hormones due to the pregnancy that I have been craving food that are sometimes unattainable, causing my mouth to water, some of which I can only get from Cambodia, others from the Philippines.  And since Sushi is such a no-no, I have to refrain from thinking about it. 

Pinakbet

Six servings of fruits and vegetables a day, said the doctor.  Be careful with the fish, some of them are not so good for the baby…steer clear of the albacore tuna, she said.  Ok, Doctor…I thought.  Veggies aren’t a problem for me, I love them and I eat them without any worries.  Just don’t give me any squash…I don’t particularly care for it. 

So we’ve been cooking different kinds of veggie dishes…some of them served as salads or sometimes steamed or stir fried or added into soups.  I don’t get tired of eating veggies as long as it is not served the same way each time.  If I can avoid it…no reheating please!

After the long hiatus, Only Sis woke me up from my non-blogging slumber and enthused me to blog again.  Not that I am not blogging at all…I am just Not Food-blogging.  In my other blog – MULTICOLORED INK – I have written a few paragraphs that are more about my other adventures. 

Anyway, back to Loklak…which is a beef stir-fry that is laid on top of fried potatoes, carrots, beans, onion rings, fresh tomatoes and lettuce and is drizzled with a lime-pepper sauce.  You will be surprised to know that this food is Cambodian.  It doesn’t come with any of those spices that usually flavor the typical cambodian dish.  Sometimes it is topped with a fried egg but it doesn’t appeal to me so I won’t include it here. 

  This is the Loklak  I made last week.  It will now be part of the Only Sis cooking challenge. 

My Beef Loklak

And this is how I made my own version of beef loklak…

Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

I have always loved cakes and pastries ever since I was a little girl.  Mama Mitti had taught me a lot of recipes for baked goodies that could help me get over a craving for something sweet.  I have made chocolate cakes of all sizes and shapes, brownies with different kinds of nuts in them, different flavored cakes piped with colorful icing and even breads that were more savory than sweet.  But sometimes you crave for something simple, sweet and could bring you back in time not just to satisfy the longing but reminisce memories of  childhood and worry-free days.  My mind goes straight to Pineapple-Upside Down Cake…simple…sweet…and endearing to my heart.

Everybody knows that my biggest weakness are Early mornings…prefering to miss the first glimpse of sunrise to hitting the snooze button one more time.  I don’t know, it’s just soooo hard for me to get up in the morning and an interruption of the last few minutes of my time in bed would cause me to be grumpy the whole day 9or a few hours) or if not for the whole person who did the disturbance.  Still, a sour-faced looking Pinchette is someone you wouldn’t wanna encounter in such a bright and sunny day…dark clouds would surely loom over your head if you do. 

But every year (that is when I am around), January 26th mornings are an exception.  This is the day that early-mornings-hating-me would go to all lengths to restrain myself from heading back to bed and hitting up more ZZZZs.  This is Mom‘s birthday, and as always, I would whip up a homemade breakfast for my one and only Mom, and this year ain’t no different. 

I have started several blogs before but I have neglected all of them as well.  What with all the things going on around me…my work in the school, househelp that needed to be trained, re-trained and reminded from time to time, dogs etc., all took time away from writing.  Added to that, I had to move from one place to another when I got to the U.S. to be with Hubby.  And although we had been married for 3 years now, that was just the beginning of our life together…so adjustments, adjustments, adjustments. 

Married life is far from singlehood.  And life in the United States is farther away.  The difficulties of having no househelp is a big, big change for me.  Thankfully, Hubby is very supportive of me and helps me with my adjustments and luckily my cooking skills are not that bad, so at least Hubby will not go hungry with all his efforts to help me…hehehe! 

So this blog that I am starting again is all about my adventures…in the kitchen, in my travels, in life.  And this time, I am planning to keep writing, no matter what.  So…Happy reading!

 

Saturday is marketing day for me (especially when I am in the mood…tee-hee). As usual, I was making my rounds at my favorite (?) wet market. I don’t have a list of what to buy and I usually walk around and get the things that ‘inspire’ me. I was looking at some fresh fish ahead and I didn’t see this lady sitting at a low stool, busy with preparing her wares. Good thing, my pace was very slow that when I looked down, there she was…slicing away these fresh bamboo shoots. And my, did she inspire me to cook Guinataang Labong.