Fishtek Tagalog

Filipinos love soy-based dishes - adobo and the local bistek. Who would not? It's simple, easy, and flavorful. A quick dish best served with lots of white rice!

This recipe is very easy and uses the healthier option of fish fillet instead of beef. I saw this in the September 2011 issue of Yummy magazine and remembered my last pack of cream dory fillet in the freezer.

Fishtek Tagalog
Yummy Magazine September 2011

• 1/4 to 1/3 cup soy sauce
• juice of 6 to 10 calamansi (about 2 tbsps)
• black pepper, to taste
• 5 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
• 500 grams cream dory fillet
• olive oil
• 3 onions, sliced into half moons

Cut fish fillet into 4 to 5 slices.

Combine soy sauce, calamansi, pepper and garlic.

Marinate fish in the soy sauce mixture. Leave in for about 20-30 minutes. Do not overmarinate.

Heat a nonstick pan over medium heat. Add olive oil.

Remove fish from marinade and fry in pan. Fry till golden brown or fish is cooked through.

Set fish aside in a plate.

Add few drops of olive oil and fry the onions until caramelized.

When onions have caramelized, pour the marinade to the pan and simmer.

Once sauce simmers, return fish to pan and toss with the onions. Turn off heat.

Serve hot.


Pawis rating: 1 of 5 super easy!

Chicken Shepherd's Pie

Shepherd's pie is something I'd always order from one of the restaurants I'd regularly visit near our office. It's an all-in-one dish: carbs from the mashed potatoes, protein from the meat, and fiber from the veggies.

The dish looks pretty easy to make - like baked macaroni in individual ramekins. Searched through the sites I regularly visit and was glad to find this easy recipe.

The recipe is from Home Cooking Rocks, another site that is mostly devoted to Filipino dishes. I love that the author includes her recipes for some non-Filipino dishes as well. This one's a perfect example. From what I have tried so far, shepherd's pie is usually made out of beef. But this one's made of chicken breast fillets - just right for the health-conscious :-)

I think the hardest part in making this dish is preparing the mashed potatoes - scrubbing them, then mashing them is just painful. I say this because I don't have a nifty gadget to do this easily for me. Yes, I mashed them potatoes with my humble fork. I like my mashed potatoes with skin, so this saved me the pain of removing the skin from the hot potatoes before mashing them.

Next, the chicken dish - really good! The dish is very simple but the taste is just good. I didn't follow the recipe to the dot - I used chicken breast fillets and some Hungarian sausages because I don't have smoked ham. This combination worked well. When I started cooking this I thought the sauce would be very thick because the recipe calls for cream. So I had my milk ready. But I didn't use the milk at all. The taste and consistency of the sauce was just right.

Let's cook!

Chicken Shepherd's Pie
Recipe from Home Cooking Rocks

Make the mashed potatoes

• 3/4 kilo potatoes or 5 pieces of medium-big potatoes
• 1/4 cup butter
• 3/4 cup or more of milk
• salt and pepper
• few tablespoons of grated parmesan cheese

Wash and scrub the potatoes clean especially if you're keeping the skin. Pierce with a fork all over and drop in boiling water. Boil for 30 minutes or until you can insert a fork easily into the potato.

When the potatoes are done, put them in a bowl and mash them.

Add the butter.

Season with salt and pepper.

Gradually add the milk. Do not pour the milk all at once. You'd want to put a small amount at a time till you get the consistency you want.

Add the parmesan.

Set aside.

Prepare the chicken filling

• 1/4 kilo chicken breast fillets
• 3 pieces hungarian sausage
• 1 large onion
• 1 small pack frozen vegetables (corn and carrots)
• 1 small can sliced button mushrooms
• 1 cup of cream
• salt and pepper

Thaw your frozen vegetables.

Chop the onions.

Cut the chicken breast fillet into cubes. Season with salt and pepper.

Slice the sausage about a quarter inch thick.

Melt butter in a pan. Cook the chicken until lightly browned.

Add the hungarian sausage and cook for about 3-4 minutes. Add the chopped onion.

Add the vegetables.

Pour the cream and season with salt and pepper.

Assemble the pie

Place the chicken filling in an 8" baking dish.

Spread the mashed potatoes on top of the chicken.

Bake in a preheated 180C oven for 20-30 minutes. The pie is done when the top is lightly browned.

Nice and brown and dripping at the sides :-)

Pawis rating: 2 of 5 very easy! A simple, very tasty, all-in-one dish that even kids will like :-)

Nigella Lawson's Chicken with Lemon and Rosemary

Powerbooks was on sale last week. I went with my daughter to buy a new book for her. She decided on a Fancy Nancy book. While I decided on two - Nigella Lawson's Nigella Fresh and Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa Family Style.

The books are great! I've been enjoying them since I got them. The recipes are very simple and the ingredients are available here. I've been dying to try one of Nigella's chicken recipes because they look so easy. Here's my first try:

Chicken with Lemon and Rosemary
Recipe by Nigella Lawson from Nigella's Fresh

• about 1 kilo of chicken
• 2 tbsp of dried rosemary
• salt and pepper
• 1 red onion
• juice of 1 lemon
• 6 tbsps of olive oil

Marinate your chicken with all of the ingredients.

Put everything inside a freezer bag. Give it a good shake. Place it in the fridge for 4 hours or overnight.

Preheat oven to 425F. Line your baking pan with aluminum foil. Place your chicken and all of the marinate on the baking pan, making sure you distribute them evenly. Cover with aluminum foil.

Bake for 30 minutes. Remove the aluminum foil cover and return to the oven. Bake for another 20 minutes.

Check for doneness and serve warm.


Pawis rating: 1 of 5 super easy!

Fish Fillet with Cheese Sauce

Making packed lunch is a very tedious task. Imagine cooking before going to work. You cook, then you pack, then drive or commute and after that you work for 8+ hours. Exhausting!

But really, where can you get homecooked meals at work? The office vendor sells "carinderic" (read: oily and barely touching the plate) food mostly loaded with salt and MSG. First, the food is bitin that I think I need 3 servings to get full. And second, the serving size is not worth the price. Grrr!

Thank God Yummy released a Baon Specials issue! The recipes are easy to make and takes little prep and cooking time. Another good thing is that the recipes do not have a long list of complicated ingredients. The things you need are readily available in your pantry!

Time to cook and pack your lunch! Tip: Cook the night before you go to work. Or if you're like me who work at night, cook in the morning. This way, you're not too sleepy to cook or too tired to work after.

Fish Fillet with Cheese Sauce
from Yummy Magazine

2-3 pieces of fish fillet (I use cream dory)
2 tbsps flour
2 tbsps butter
1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup quick melting cheese
2 tbsps cheese spread
salt and pepper
spanish paprika

Cut each fish fillet into 3 pieces

Season with salt and pepper on both sides

Heat your olive oil in your frying pan. I use nonstick pan so I don't have to use too much oil.

Fry your fish for about 3-4 minutes on each side.

Prepare your cheese sauce.

In a sauce pan, put your flour and let cook for about 2 minutes. Be careful not to burn your flour.

Add the butter and cook until it melts.

Slowly add the milk and water while stirring continously.

Add the quick melting cheese and cheese spread. Let the cheeses melt. Keep the cheese sauce warm.

Pour the sauce over the fish and sprinkle with paprika.

Serve with some greens for a healthy meal!


Pawis rating: 1 of 5 super easy!

Healthy Eating: Tuna Farfalle

I'm one of the least fashionable people I know :-) but I love looking at pictures of well-dressed people. I indulge in a long list of bookmarked fashion blogs.

One of the blogs I frequent is Jenni Epperson's. Hers is a mix of fashion, family, food and shopping. I'm amazed at how much work she does and she still manages to look well and cook well. I loved it when she started her Meatless Fridays series. Her recipes are very easy to make with ingredients that are readily available. Plus, she encourages her readers to use healthy and organic ingredients. I'm trying her recipes recently (and will try switching to organic later :-) ).

She has a new website now which has its own section for food!

Here's my version of Jenni Epperson's Century Tuna Farfalle

Tuna Farfalle

• 1 can Century corned tuna
• 1 cup farfalle
• fresh basil
• Parmesan cheese
• Chili powder

Cook pasta according to package directions. Reserve 1/4 cup of pasta water.

Heat tuna. Season with chili powder.

Add pasta, fresh basil and pasta water. Cook for about 3 minutes.

Put in a plate and generously top with grated parmesan cheese.

Serve warm.

Pawis rating: 1 of 5 super easy!

Healthy Eating: Fish and Tofu in Black Bean Sauce

I must admit that my husband cooks WAY BETTER than me. He is Kapampangan which explains why he's good at the tantya method of cooking. He cooks by taste not by measurement.

I, on the other hand, knows how to do any household chore except to cook. This explains why I google recipes, watch cooking shows and youtube videos and read food blogs. This also explains why I started baking first before cooking. With baking, everything needs to be exact - you need to follow the recipe down to the last details. Which I like. Because I don't know how to estimate ingredients. You have a fixed measurement of all the ingredients so ideally you can never go wrong.

It's actually my husband who saw this recipe in the Quickfire TV show. He did not took notes, he just remembered all the ingredients and again, he just estimated everything while he cooked.

My turn to try this recipe. I wasn't able to watch the episode of Quickfire so I googled the recipe. Lucky me! Quickfire has a Facebook page with most of the recipes from the show! Yey!

Fish and Tofu in Black Bean Sauce
Recipe from Quickfire Facebook Fan Page

• 1 sili labuyo, chopped (I did not use this because I don't want this to be spicy for my kids)
• 1- 7 Grams AJI GINISA SHRIMP (I didn't have this so I used Maggi Magic Sarap)
• 1 thumb sized ginger, minced
• 1 tablespoon black bean sauce
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 tbsp white sugar
• 1 tbsp slurry (This is just cornstarch dissolved in water)
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 300g cream dory (Cut into squares)
• 1 pack firm tofu, drained and cubed
• ½ spring onion, sliced (I didn't have this)

Heat up your pan or your wok and add vegetable oil. I used canola oil.

Fry ginger, garlic and labuyo (if using) until aromatic.

Add the fish squares and stir fry for a 2 minutes. Add the tofu cubes and season with Aji Shrimp or Maggi Magic Sarap.


Add the black bean sauce, soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil and stir fry until the fish is cooked, about 5 minutes. Season with a dash of pepper.

Add slurry slowly, checking to see that the sauce does not dry up. If it does, add a little water.

Toss chopped spring onion, if using.

Serve hot.

Pawis rating: 2 of 5 very easy!