Cooking Inspiration

When we were at Izzy's house last Friday, we found out about the cooking competitions he had joined and won! oh, just another facet to our multi-talented friend. :)

If you look really closely, the framed poster on the wall behind us in this photo was from his most recent competition. It says "Creative Cooking With Kikkoman" and 

 "Join Kikkoman Best Recipe Contest"

Then he told us about winning the Filipino Nouvelle Category. The objective was to re-invent a regional dish using the sponsor's products. His idea was to elevate the lowly Visayan "apan-apan" into gourmet status. "Apan-apan" is a mildly sweet and sour veggie dish starring the ubiquitous kangkong (swamp cabbage or morning glory).

This was how the winning recipe looked in the Creative Cooking cookbook published after the competition:

"KangKong Ki-ni-kkoman"

*1st PRIZE FILIPINO NOUVELLE CATEGORY 

This is the "borrowed" cookbook :)

And this is the Acknowledgement Page where Izzy's name is right at the top of the finalists of the cook-off

 Izzy was showing it to us and i saw that most of the recipes printed were so do-able, requiring only basic ingredients (always a plus in my book!)...so i "book-napped" it! I want to copy the recipes into this nifty recipe manager I downloaded. It's called Aroma and it allows you to search all your recipes by author, source, rating and ingredient, which is awesome for when you have left-overs or veggie-orphans in the crisper. I wish they'd come up with a mobile phone version so its easy to use it at the grocery or market. :)

Here's the accompanying photo of Izzy's recipe. Doesn't it look tres chic? 

He started by blanching the kangkong stems so they stay green and crisp,then he stuffed a mixture of ground pork, mild soy sauce, garlic, onions and pepper into the stalks and deep-fried them all. But the recipe really becomes sinful with the crab roe (aligi ng alimango) sauteed in butter, garlic, onions, and ginger to which the fried kangkong is added. More soy sauce, teriyaki marinade, calamansi/lemon juice, vinegar, water and brown sugar finish off this savory side-dish! I can just imagine how flavorful this dish is! Next time i see crab roe at the grocery, i'l have to try this out.

The green stuff at the bottom of the plate are just fried kangkong leaves called kernets.

Izzy made it even more classy by plating the kangkong stalks in bunches tied off by spring onions. How ingenious is that...i just know I couldn't have come up with ideas like those, so hats off to you Izzy. You're 1 bad-ass artist, even if you always down-play the talents and abilities you have!

So, i haven't actually gotten around to the "copying" of the cookbook, but I've been lugging it to work so i could look for dinner ideas. And yesterday, I managed 1 dish:

But I substituted pork for the beef since I already had pork tenderloin in the freezer. I just had to buy a mango and spring onions and I was good to go.

This was how it looked from the cookbook, but mine looked almost identical. Too bad I forgot to take a photo of it though, tsk. But the DH said it was yummy, so I must have gotten the recipe right, lol. 

The DH and Mama are huge fans of kangkong, so i also made a side dish of it. I love that my folks are so cheap: a P5 bunch of kangkong plus a dollop of oyster sauce, and they're in veggie heaven, lol!

I also made a salad of cucumber, mango and lettuce with honey-dijon mustard dressing, which I ate a lot of. That and the creamy ham soup the DH with the left-over macaroni pasta  was my dinner. I felt so proud that I was eating healthy!

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I managed to walk again before work yesterday, yay! After logging in analog-style (the biometric gadget had conked out! just after 4 months?! i wonder who broke it, hehe), i headed out down south to get to my Taculing Health Center. I initially planned to walk just half-way, but when i got there, i felt I hadn't even broken a decent sweat, so I braved the early-morning pollution and walked the whole way. Took me 30 mins but boy, was my staff surprised to see me there so early!

I just need to find a better route so I don't pass through the busy streets near the South Market.

After seeing all my patients, i sat down with my BHW's (barangay health workers) to review their techniques on BP measurement. Some of them are old hands, but some of the newly-hired needed re-training. One good thing came out of it though, we found out that our mercury sphygmomanometer has a lispy valve that needs to be replaced.

After lunch, I was happy to take a truly restful nap before we had to see our prenatal patients. We finished pretty late in the afternoon and I had to grab some essentials from the grocery before I could head home.

During dinner though, I accidentally brushed my hand on the right side of my neck and felt a lump! It was mildly tender, about 1.5-2cm movable mass on the posterior neck triangle, midway alongside the sternocleidomastoid muscle. I was really surprised since I didn't have any head symptoms: sore throat or rhinitis that could have inflamed my lymph nodes so. Mama and the DH even palpated it and were concerned too. This morning, it made me look up my physical diagnosis textbook to review the possible illnesses that produces neck masses. But I also contacted my friend who is an ENT (ear nose throat specialist) so I'm seeing her later in the afternoon. I suspect she will start me on antibiotics to see if I'm just having a sub-clinical infection. Hopefully, that will take care of it. The DH is a worrier, poor dear, so i want to spare him the anxiety. So wish me luck!