Have you done the Loco-Moco?

When I first heard about the Loco-Moco, I was intrigued by the funny name. It turns out nothing to be Salisbury Steak on a mound of rice, topped with an egg and finished with brown gravy all over it. It's a homey food that originates in Hawaii and can be ordered from local mom and pop eateries on the island.

So here's the recipe for the Loco-Moco

Salisbury Steak ingredients:
1 pound (half a kilo) ground beef
1/2 finely minced onion
1/2 cup bread crumbs
2 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce
1 egg

Gravy ingredients:
1 1/2 cup of water*
2 tablespoons of flour
1 tablespoon of butter
1 chicken boullion*
salt & pepper

*(If you have good chicken broth, you can substitute this for water and chicken boullion).

*Cooked Rice
*Cooked Egg, preferably sunny-side

To make the Salisbury steak

1. Put in a mixing bowl all the ingredients.
2. Mix well and chill in the fridge for at least half an hour for the flavors to mix.
3. Shape into patties (This will make about 4-6 depending on the size of the patties that you form)

To make the gravy:

1. In a heavy bottom sauce pan, melt the butter and add the flour when it is fully melted.
2. Cook the flour until it is golden brown.
3. Add the water and chicken boullion or the chicken broth.
4. Continue stirring until the gravy thickens and comes together. Taste it to determine if you need to add more salt. But you definitely have to add pepper.

To assemble:

1. In a plate, add a mound of rice. To make it easier, put the rice into a small bowl, press down and turn upside-down on the plate. It makes the rice nice and pretty.
2. Cook one of the patties and put this on top of the rice.
3. Add the cooked egg ontop of the rice on the plate.
4. Drizzle the gravy around the rice.
5. Serve hot and enjoy.



You can also omit the sunny-side egg if you have a boy who doesn't like eggs. :)

New Eggs and Mushrooms Adobo

I am fortunate to have a good friend who works for a huge poultry farm. Catherine, a poultry vet, is married to the son of a poultry farm magnate. They have about 200,000 to 300,000 chickens at their farms every month. They sell chicks to little poultry farms everywhere in Korea. Once in a while, Catherine comes over to give me two trays of new eggs. What are new eggs? They are eggs laid for the very first time by young hens. They are quite tiny and the yolks are rich and utterly delicious.

So after countless omelets and egg dishes, I thought of making eggs adobo. Then, in a brilliant after thought, I remembered I had a bunch of button mushrooms in the vegetable bin in the fridge. How about adding that too? I've always loved Adobo Mushrooms as an appetizer. Let's go to recipe, shall we?

Ingredients:

6 new eggs (or 12 quail eggs as substitute)
20 pieces button mushrooms
1 whole head of garlic (yes a whole head, peeled and minced)
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup vinegar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
2-3 tablespoons oil

1. In a saucepan, put the eggs and add cold water. Heat up until the water boils and turn off the heat. Cover and set aside for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, drain the hot water and dunk the eggs in cold water to stop the cooking. Crack and peel the eggs and set aside.

2. Wash the mushrooms (trust me, its ok even though the other sites tell you not to do it) and cut the ends off if necessary.

3. In a large wok or pan, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the minced garlic and stir-fry until golden brown. How do you know that the garlic is nearly done? You can start to smell the fragrant garlic. And it is easy to burn it so once you smell it, add the next ingredient right away.

4. Add the button mushrooms and stirfry for about 3-4 minutes (or when the mushrooms begin to exude liquid). Add the cooked eggs.

5. Add the soy sauce, vinegar, salt & pepper. Let it simmer for about 5 minutes. Make sure to stir every once in a while to make sure the eggs get thoroughly coated.

6. Serve hot as a side dish or as a main dish with freshly cooked rice.





For my lunch, I had it as a side dish with meat torta patties. It was wonderful!

Making Flied Lice

Ok, ok I am just kidding. I really mean Fried Rice, specifically Chinese Fried Rice or more commonly known as Shanghai Rice in the Philippines. The neat thing about rice is that leftover rice is great recycled into a new dish - fried rice. One very important thing to remember is that to make fried rice you would need cold, leftover rice. Freshly cooked rice just won't do.

To make Chinese Fried Rice, you would need: chinese sausages (the ones with whole fatty pieces in them), dried scallops (or dried fish), small shrimps, eggs, spring onions, soy sauce and cooking oil.

Ingredients:

3 or cups of cooked, leftover rice
1 chinese sausage, diced
dried scallops, (soaked, squeezed dry, and minced)
small shrimps, peeled
eggs, beaten lightly
spring onions, cut into small circles
1 teaspoon soy sauce
4 tablespoons corn oil

1. In a large bowl, dump the rice. Wet hands and mash the rice until the grains are separated and not clumped up.

2. In a large wok, heat up 1 tablespoon of oil and cook the eggs (scrambled style). Take it out and set aside in a bowl.

3. Put the rest of the oil in the wok and fry the chinese sausage. Add the scallops, shrimps and fry for a minute. Dump all the rice and begin to stir-fry for 5 minutes. Make sure the rice is evenly mixed and keep stirring all the time.

4. After about 2 minutes more of stirring, add the scrambled eggs and continue stirring for a minute and then the soy sauce. Stir some more.

5. Take out the rice and put in a large platter. Sprinkle the chopped spring onions over it and serve hot.

*TIP: Fried rice is not limited to the above ingredients alone. It can be a clean-out-your-fridge type of fried rice. You can add carrots, leeks, cabbages, ham, mushrooms, etc. Anything you find delicious you can add to your rice, make sure that the ingredients are diced or chopped up small. It will make for even cooking when you add it to the rice.

Stinky Tofu Stew (Lunch with My Friends)

I was invited to lunch by my best friend Catherine, along with Imelda (one of my English tutorial students) and a couple of women from Catherine's church. We went to this traditional Korean restaurant that specializes in set menus. The rice served with the set menu is barley rice or called "boribap" (rice and barley grains cooked together).


Here's Catherine and Imelda. Catherine has been my closest friend for several years now. She's a veterinarian and specializes in poulty medicine. Imelda was referred to me by a Filipina friend for English conversation studies. Imelda runs a private dog shelter and she was the one who gave Buttons (our adorable Yorkie) to us to adopt.



Catherine's church members (busy preparing their boribap bowls). They helped identify most of the dishes that were served in our meal. They were interested to see my reaction to the Chongukjang stew that is one of the side dishes served. The latter is made out of "natto" or fermented tofu beans. It has been describeda s a funky mixture of old sweat socks marinated in cabbage juice with a sprinkle of sewer gas.

Our Meal

The boribap bowl. I love barley rice. There's a certain nuttiness to the flavor of the rice, added by the barley. I was surprised that the boribap was given to us in a large mixing bowl. Then one of the ladies pointed out the ceramic bowls for us to put the rice in.





This is called "keran jjim" which is literally Egg Stew in Korean. I love this steamed dish, with some restaurants' version that comes with fish roe on top.







This spicy mixed green salad came with small snail meat. It was a pleasant surprise and gave a nice chewy twist to the spicy-crunchy salad. Even if it added a nice burn in my mouth, I keep going back and getting bites of this wonderful salad.








The namul or veggie side dishes. The key is to take small portions of each mound and add to your rice bowl. You then add a little red pepper paste (gochujang) and mix everything up. The mounds (starting on the upper right, going clockwise) are eggplants slices, soybean sprouts, braken and spinach.





The cooked cabbage and raw green chili peppers are to provide a nice crunchy contrast throughout the meal. Imelda showed me how to dab a little mixed seasoning paste (I shall delve more on this later) on the cabbage and then eat it. It was wonderful! I am still intimidated by the chili peppers since some can be fiery hot even if they are green.





The chongukjang stew. Oh yes, it did um, reeked but it was tolerable (for me). My husband would have fainted or gagged. The first taste was not bad. Then I saw Catherine add some to her rice bowl and mixed it up. I did the same and ate a spoonful. It was great! I begged my friends to teach me how to cook it and Imelda promised to show me how to make it.





Here's some seaweed laver (wrapper cut into strips) to sprinkle over the rice and some lettuce if one wants to wrap up the rice in it. The mixed seasoning paste here is made up of soybean paste, red pepper paste, garlic, sesami oil and some sugar. I love this seasoning, especially on grilled korean barbeque meat.




Pickled slices of radish. There are about a hundred ways that Koreans pickle radish. There's the tiny raddishes complete with their leafy tops, huge radishes that are bigger than my thighs, cubes of radishes in spicy sauce and even slices of radish in clear pickling liquid. I love the last one the best.




Lastly, here's a shot of my bowl and some more veggie dishes. The one on the farthest right is made out of peeled sweet potato stalks. I swear I will learn how to prepare this dish as it is so simple but taste so delicious.



It was a wonderful lunch with good friends and good conversation. I heartily recommend this restaurant in Icheon City to whoever wants to try the Boribap-Chungukjang experience

Binagoongan Baboy (Stewed Pork with Fermented Shrimp Paste)

Filipinos have this stinky condiment called "bagoong" or fermented shrimp paste. My hubby, an American, cannot stand it when I cook with it. It smells like dirty socks stewed in armpit juice. Well, you get the picture. But for someone who grew up with it, it smells like heaven, gastronomic heaven.

Different Asian cultures have their own version of bagoong. In Indonesian, they have "terasi", in Thailand they use "kapi", in Malaysia shrimp paste is referred to as "belacan", "mắm tôm" in Vietnam, and "hamho" in China. In Korea, they also have salted shrimp fry but not that fermented like "bagoong" or "belacan".

One of my favorite viands for lunch is "Binagoongan Baboy" which means stewed pork in shrimp paste. It's quite easy and very flavorful. Here's how to make it.

Binagoongan Baboy

500 grams fatty pork, preferably from the belly or spare ribs cut in 2-inch cubes
1 tbsp minced garlic
1/2 onion, minced
1 medium tomato, minced
4 cups water
1/2 cup bagoong (shrimp paste)
1 tbsp oil
2 pieces of green chili, stemmed and cut into two

1. In a pot, add water and pork and bring to a boil. Cook until the pork is tender. When the pork is cooked, take it out of the pot and set aside the pork stock.

2. In a large wok (with a cover), add the oil and heat until hot. Add the pork cubes and cook until all pieces are golden-brown. Make sure to cover the wok since the pork would make the oil splatter.

3. When the pork cubes are golden-brown, take out the pork pieces and take out the rendered fat/oil but leave about a tablespoon in the wok.

4. Heat the oil again in the wok and add minced garlic. Fry until golden-brown. Add the onion and fry for a minute or until they are translucent. Then add the tomatoes and stir-fry for about2-3 minutes.

5. Add the bagoong to the wok, stir thoroughly. Add the pork cubes and stir-fry for a minute. Add a cup of the pork stock and let simmer. Lower the temperature and let the pork cook until the sauce has been cooked down to half the amount.

6. When the sauce has thickened, turn off the heat and serve the binagoongan baboy with freshly cooked rice. Plenty of it.