Showing posts with label melting pot. Show all posts
Showing posts with label melting pot. Show all posts

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Locomoco Deluxe (sans le Spam)














“Huh? Brah, that doesn’t look like a Locomoco!”
Ah, but it is my friend. It is…and I’ll tell you why.

In this posting of Speaking Penguin, I’m taking what the people of Hawai’i call, “Locomoco” and giving it a Penguin dialect.
“Huh?”
Haha! Like I mentioned at the start of this blog, Speaking Penguin is about: using my past cooking experiences, influences from flavors around the world that I have been blessed with being able to experience and putting a spin on the Hawai’i local flavors and Pinoy food that I grew up eating.

If you want, you can call it Pan-Asian-Fusion Cuisine, except for 3 things:
That category is totally played out.
If you haven’t experienced it yet or just haven’t noticed, most of Hawai’i’s flavors are a fusion of Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Hawai’ian, Mexican, Portuguese, other Pacific Islanders, American, English, Irish and which ever other immigrants arrived in Hawai’i during the sugarcane/pineapple industry era.
That means the “fusion” of these flavors have been motion well before the 1900s.

As you can see before the term “Pan-Asian-Fusion Cuisine” was ever created the People of Hawai’i have been enjoying the flavors that they have mixed up for a long, long, long time and continue to do so.
So, you can say that I’m not really doing anything new either and yeah, you’re right. But, what I am doing is taking the flavors that have been created; that have become standards, and (as I like saying) “Giving it a new Dialect.”
Let’s get cooking!

And I Quote: He’ah’s da ingidaments, yah. ~ Aunty Maria Lani/ Rap Replinger. (Translated: Here are the ingredients.)
2” thick USDA Prime Top Sirloin Steaks,
Eggs,
Japanese style rice,
Schillings Brown gravy mix,
Ketchup (what ever is your favorite),
Shoyu (Preferably the Aloha brand, but any Japanese Soy Sauce will do.)
Lea & Perrin’s Worcestershire Sauce,
Salt
Pepper
Olive Oil
Cooking Oil

Prep:
One of the most important things to do when prepping your steak is to let it sit out, unwrapped, and get to about room temperature.
If it is 102 degrees (like it was today, about 90 in the house) you don’t want your steak sitting 90 degrees. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about 65-75 degrees in the house.
Why, because the last thing you want to do is throw your steaks on a +375 degree fire when the steaks are still at refrigerator temp.
That’s just bad, mmm-kay.
I don’t want to go into details, but trust me…and Alton Brown from the Food Networks –Good Eats…and a millions other cooks.
Let the steaks get to about room temperature and then give them a nice coat of good olive oil, then pepper and salt.
I am a firm believer or not over spicing really good steaks. It totally defeats the purpose of appreciating their quality.
Let the steaks sit for a while.

Start your grill.

Make a pot of rice.
No! You make the rice, don’t get some one else to do it! Hehe…
One of the reasons I like to cook by myself is because everything is timed-out.

For instance:
The steaks are sitting…absorbing the olive oil, oxygen and getting to or maintaining room temperature while you are starting your fire.
As you are making your rice, and getting the other stuff ready, the grill is getting hot.
You see?
All timed-out.

Ok, back to cooking.
Where were we…?

Steaks sitting.
Grill getting hot.
Rice being made.

Ok, afterwards….
Get a small pan or pot that is more than 3 inched deep.
Fill is up with cooking oil deep enough poach your egg(s).
Yes, that’s what I said. We’ll get to why later.
And begin heating it up on simmer.

Prep the mix for your brown gravy, but don’t cook it yet.
Let that sit in the water on the stove.

By the time you’re done with all of this, your fire should be prefect and the steaks are ready to be cook.

Cooking:
Grill your steaks.
How you like your steaks is all up to you. I love having them really rare, especially when they are great quality beef.

Don’t worry about anything else at the moment.
Have a beer or a glass of vino, have some tunes going and chill.
That is of course, if you are like me and cook you steaks about five minutes each side and that’s it. Pretty much all I do then is have a smoke and keep and eye on the clock and the steaks.

Plate the steaks and take them in and cover with foil.
DO NOT CUT THE STEAKS BEFORE THEY HAVE TIME TO SETTLE.
This is important. If you do, you ruin the steak.
Just cover them and leave them alone.

At this point, your rice should be done.

The oil that is sitting on simmer should be brought up to medium.
Start the heat on your brown gravy mix.
Just follow the cooking directions on that and you’ll be fine.
When the gravy is ready, add about:
2 tblspns of ketchup,
2 tblspns of Shoyu,
1 tblspn of Worcestershire Sauce,
And a couple pinches of pepper.
By this point your steaks should have settled and released some of their juices.
Put this juice into the grave.
Oh yeah, baby.
This is the SHIZZLE!!
Taste and make adjustments to your preference.
Remove form the heat.

Bring the heat for your oil up to high.

Plating:
Plate a serving of rice onto each of the plates and put a couple table spoons of gravy onto the rice.

The oil in your pan/pot should be ready.
Now, one at a time:
Drop an egg into it and poach it, A la Jacques Pépin.
Give it a pinch of salt and pepper.
With a spoon, take some of the hot oil and douse you egg while you poach it.
When that is done, remove the egg with a slotted spoon and drain the oil for a bit before setting it on the rice.
Repeat as need for however many servings you need, or if you or anyone is like my brother, “3 more eggs please!”
Haha! Heart attack!

Take a steak and plate it with your rice and gravy.

*Now, for the sake of the photo, I sliced and fanned the steak for presentation.
Normally, I ONLY slice the steak when I am ready to eat that piece. To me, the steak retains its juiciness and flavor a lot more.

Drizzle gravy over the plate and steak to preference and serve.

Serve with your favorite salad.
Side rant for those who have grown up in or visited Hawai’i:
I don’t know if anyone noticed, but at some of the restaurants the server says and asks you when you are ordering, “Ok, you have a choice of 2 kind salads, yeah. Mixed or Mac?” This means your salad choice is either mixed greens or macaroni salad.
And seriously, Hawai’i’s Mac salad is DA BOMB! Not to mention, a proper choice when eating a Locomoco. But since we’re speaking Penguin here, eat what ever salad that makes you smile.

Eat & Enjoy
Now, for those that have argued about this not being a Locomoco…here’s what you do.

Break the yoke over your rice.
Take a piece of the egg, yoke and gravy covered rice, and a slice of steak, and stick it in your mouth.
Don’t tell me that is not a Locomoco you not eating there FOOL!!
Hahaha!

Oh yeah, you can also eat this with my famous fried rice!
http://speakingpenguin.blogspot.com/2010/04/quick-and-painless.html

Much Aloha and Enjoy!

Monday, April 26, 2010

Shoyu Chicken

If there is one thing that I've learned and live by: is that I will never ever be able to make any dishes the way my mom (or many one else's mom) makes them. But, by that same token, if there is one thing that I learned from my mom about cooking is: "just make 'em taste good, braddah!"
Yeah, my mom talks like that.
And, yes. I do, "make 'em taste good...".
So, with all that said, here is my Shoyu Chicken:
















Ingredient:
1 dozen chicken thighs w' skin and bones
2 cups brown organic sugar (organic -  being optional)
1 1/2 cup of Aloha Shoyu (soy) Sauce
4 cloves of garlic
3-4 slices of ginger
1 table spoon of pepper corn
2-3 bayleaves

In a big pot. Heat about a table spoon of oil and then brown your chicken.
Don't just throw everything in there. Put as much of the chicken as you can fit in there so you can brown and cook you chicken evenly. Brown both sides and then remove and put into a separate bowl.
Drain oil and repeat process until all your chicken is browned.
Don't worry about the chicken being fully cooked. All you want to do is brown the chicken and the pot and cook off some of the chicken fat. But not all of it.

When all your chicken is browned, put it all back into the pot with the garlic, ginger, peppercorn and bay leaves. Cover it and turn the heat down to medium for about half hour.
This will finish cooking most of your chicken and create a broth at the same time.

After about a half hour, drain the broth and fat into a separate bowl and add the sugar, and shoyu (soy) sauce into the pot.
Don't stir it! Just cover it and leave it alone for about 15-20 minutes.
Bring the heat to a medium-low temperature.

Make a pot of rice.

While you are doing that the broth and chicken fat sitting in the bowl will begin to separate.
Once it's separated, slowly and gently remove the chicken fat from the broth.
This should be a slow process. Take your time.

*note~Shoyu sauce is Japanese soy sauce. 
Hawai'i people love using the Aloha brand shoyu, being that it had a lighter flavor than most of the Japanese shoyu sauces, Chinese soy sauces or any other Asian soy sauce out there.
My favorite shoyu sauce is Kikoman, because of it's richer flavor.
Now you know....


Once you take out all of that chicken fat, put the broth back into the pot.

One of my favorite cooking techniques is making reductions. Which is basically cooking a liquid to the point where most of the H2o is taken out of the sauce. This technique leaves you with a thicker and richer sauce.

So at this point, I remove the cover from the pot and bring the heat up to about medium high and basically watch the sauce boil down. Feel free to carefully turn your chicken over one-by-one to ensure that all the pieces are being cooked evenly in the sauce. You should also use a tea or table spoon, to drizzle the sauce over the top pieces.
This could take about 20 minutes or so.

Make what ever kind of veggies you feel like eating.
For some uncanny reason, when ever I make Shoyu Chicken, I always end up having corn with it. I just happens.

Once you sauce attains a slightly syrupy viscosity, your chicken is done.

This is even better with my famous fried rice: http://speakingpenguin.blogspot.com/2010/04/quick-and-painless.html

Enjoy!

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Cheating can be delicious.

Curry Beef Stew

Cheating is wrong! Just look at Tiger!
But, cheating can also be delicious too.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t have the time to make a traditional Thai Curry Powder from scratch.
(Although, once upon a time…that was a food fetish of mine.) So I know how long it takes to make it.

With many many years of having closet aspirations of wanting to become a gourmet cook, I once took the time and energy to learn how to cook many great dishes the way they are suppose to be made…as in old school or authentic cooking.
How many of you have that kind of time in the everyday grind of life?
“Not me!”, says the Penguin.
With that in the bag, I’ve learned how to cheat in the kitchen. Taking store bought pre-made pastes and sauces, I perfected the art of: DAMN! THAT’S FREAKIN DELICIOUS!

This stew took 15 minutes to prep and less than an hour to cook.

Step 1
2 lbs. USDA Choice Ground Beef
Dump it in a big-ass (cast iron, if you have it) pot with some olive oil that’s already been heating up, med-high heat while you’re chopping your veggies. Cover and leave alone. You want this to sweat so you’ll have all that fat and juice from the beef.

Step 2
The Trinity or Mirepoix:
Half a bag of baby carrots
A few sticks of celery (diced)
One med. Sized onion (diced)
When your Ground Beef is mostly cooked, dump this in there on top of the beef. DON’T STIR IT!! Because I said so…you’ll see.

Step 3
Now put this stuff in:
Approximate amounts of:
1 tblespn. Garlic powder
1 tblespn. Chili powder
1 tblespn. Cayenne powder
1 tblespn. Paprika
1 teaspn. Pepper
1 teaspn. Salt
2 Bay leaves

DON”T STIR IT YET! I know how much people love doing that shizzle.
Cover it. Let it sit. Go have a smoke or something.
You want to give the veggies some time to sweat and cook as well. This sweating process is where the stock is coming from. Get it? Got it? Good.
Start up a kettle of hot water and then smoke or something for 10-15 minutes.

When you come back, turn (not stir) everything in the pot over and add about:
12 oz of water

Step 4
And then dump this in there.
Approximate amounts of:
2 cups frozen peas
2 cups frozen corn
2 cups frozen haricot vert (green beans)
(All from Trader Joe's, they have the best frozen vegetables.)

Cover the pot.

Step 5
Take your 1 box of Golden Curry (found in most Asian markets)
You know how it’s in those candy bar shape? Yeah, take it out and dice it up on your cutting board. 

This will help mix and blend in the pot more evenly. When you done sprinkle it evenly over everything.
And then pour through out the pot:
1 12 oz. can of coconut milk (your favorite brand)
And then, if you have to: Top off the ingredients in your pot with more hot water.
DON”T STIR IT!

Step 6
Cover the pot and go make a big-ass pot of rice, because this dish will feed a family of six. Or if you’re like us, it will feed us for 3 days (or meals) straight. HAHA!
After you make your rice, go ahead and stir everything in your pot and make sure that all that curry paste is well blended.
Cover, turn off the heat and wait for the rice to finish cooking.

Warning: Even though passing out on the couch after you eat is quite enjoyable, it is bad for your health.

KANAK-ATTACK!!

Ingredients:
2 lbs. USDA Choice Ground Beef
Half a bag of baby carrots
A few sticks of celery (diced)
One med. Sized onion (diced)
1 box of Golden Curry
1 12 oz. can of coconut milk
Approximate amounts of:
2 cups frozen peas
2 cups frozen corn
2 cups frozen haricot vert (green beans)
Approximate amounts of:
1 tblespn. Garlic powder
1 tblespn. Chili powder
1 tblespn. Cayenne powder
1 tblespn. Paprika
1 teaspn. Pepper
1 teaspn. Salt
2 Bay leaves
12 oz of water

Monday, March 15, 2010

Speaking Penguin?

"Can you speak some of that penguin?"
It's one of the funniest questions that was ever asked of me.
I think my response was, "WHAT THE HELL?!"
What my friend was asking, was if I could speak pidgin (in reference to being born and raised in Hawai'i).
This has since become an inside joke with us.

Now days...
I think to myself, "It's been a long time since I've moved away from the island where I was born and raised. And I have experienced SO many things in the world."
I still do speak pidgin, but my mouth and heart have learned SO many other languages through the food and culture of many friends and loved ones that I have been blessed to bond with over the years since I had moved away from the Melting Pot of the Pacific to the Melting Pot of the Bay Area.
I've come to the conclusion that the pidgin that I once spoke had transformed into another dialect.
For now,I'm calling it Penguin.
And so, this Penguin's journey continues...

Green Tea or Red Bean IceCream













Why..why not.
Discuss.