Easy Dinner Date Recipes

February 2014: Of cooking for the family

Hello, dolls!! 🙂 I can’t believe that I will be home in less than 2 weeks!!! Before I left to go back here in Baltimore, I had decided that I will try to cook everyday. I know there will be some factors that will hinder me from doing this, so I added the word “try” — I have a tendency of over beating myself when it comes to cooking so I had to play it a bit safe for my sanity. So I DID, I did cook everyday for the month of February, I DID IT!

One of the things that I always do before cooking something at home is to check what we have available.

It’s always fun exciting for me to come up with something on the spot and I often see it as a “fun self challenge”.

My Dad and I were hanging out on our rooftop one day, and I decided to whip up something quick for him for his afternoon snack — Filipinos eat 5 meals a day so yeaaap.

All of these ingredients that I have on my board are in our fridge.I love impressing my Dad with delish left over meals.

Took photos on my phone to send to A 😉

So I made my Dad an open face salmon sandwich.

Raisin bread from Baguio ; lettuce and cucumber are staples in our fridge because salad makes me happy ; homemade pesto basil made by Mom — basil from our herb garden ; and smoked salmon that I got from Santi’s.

 

This was so easy! I took a longer time taking pictures than assembling it 😉 And it to give that “let’s-enjoy-the-afternoon-on-our-rooftop” vibe for my Dad, I served it on my trusty chopping board! 😉

Filipinos LOVE fried chicken especially my sister! So one day I decided to do a different version of fried chicken.

For this recipe, I brined the chicken in 5 spices with a 8 liters of water for 12 pieces of chicken overnight.

The kitchen smelled glorious the whole time! The aroma of the spices made me excited for our dinner the next day 😉

More spices are added to the flour and then the chicken is fried twice, in 2 different temperatures.

It has a lot of methods to it but it was very worth it! The meat was very flavorful and the skin came out really really crispy!!!!

We typically eat our fried chicken with rice and banana ketchup but this time I made mashed potatoes and spinach salad to change it up a bit.

 

During my almost month long goal, I did a lot of practicing and experimenting with the basics.

Here I made a Braised Boneless Short Rib in Tomato Sauce served with Fettuccine.

 I have to say that during my first year of learning how to cook, I was very afraid to cook beef. I’ve felt that it wouldn’t come out tender as I hope it would be (see how I over beat myself?).

But with the proper techniques and knowing what kind of cut I am working with made me appreciate the art of cooking red meats more.

This one is the boys’ favorite. No wonder because it is on the heavy side.

Usually, we would eat this with rice, but…. naaaah. It’s better with pasta! YUMMMMS!

The night before I left, the piggies and I went to Family Mart. You should know that huge equipments can sometimes eat my “skillZ” and this one in particular, did no justice to me.

Jejekid had to assist me cause I was just doing a horrible job. HAHAHA

What did I do? LOL This is the good side, the other side is a landslide.

xx

R <3