Coconut Milk Ice Cream with Avocado

This is a submission to the Kulinarya Cooking Club January 2012 challenge. The theme of Healthy Birthday fare was chosen by Thea of Words and Nosh and Pearl of My Sassy Chef. For more information, visit the Kulinarya Cooking Club blog.

 

Creamy and delightful

 

Cake and ice cream.  The only two ingredients necessary for a birthday, as far as I’m concerned.  Sure, like most folks in their late 20’s I’ve been celebrating in a more, um, Dionysian fashion in recent years, but at the end of the day – my birthday! – all I want is cake and ice cream. Coconut ice cream. Preferably with big chunks of avocado.

One of my favorite things about living near Carribean folks: coconut milk is always on sale.

This, as you might predict, gets a bit tricky when you find out you have a wheat allergy.  Bye-bye cake.  Bye-bye maltodextrin-infested grocery store ice cream.  And let’s complicate matters further with a low-carbohydrate eating plan and a craving for a birthday-friendly dessert. Sad face.

Clearly, it’s time to break out the immersion blender.

Fresh coconut is hard to come by in January in my nabe - next best thing is dried

Oh, yes.  This is the point where I throw caution to the wind and embrace my inner DIY-er.  I try to make sugar-free, wheat-free, dairy-free “ice cream” from coconut milk.

And y’know what?  It worked.  It’s creamy.  It’s rich.  It’s sweet (but not too sweet).  I’m happy to forgo the cake in favor of a bowl of this coconut loved heaven with generous slices of avocado on the side.  Birthday ice cream craving satisfied.  Tummy happy.  New year’s resolutions unharmed.  We all win.

It took a lot of will power to take a picture before eating this

Sinigang, heavy on the ginger

This is a submission to the Kulinarya Cooking Club July 2011 challenge. The theme, “Sinigang” was chosen by Trissa of Trissalicious and Trisha of Sugarlace. For more information, visit the Kulinarya Cooking Club blog.

 

By the time this post posts I’ll be on my way to Zamboanga City, Philippines, for some family time.  It seems fitting, then, to begin blogging again with a Kulinarya Cooking Club challenge.   Especially with such a scrumptios theme.

 

A bowl of yummy on a rainy Friday evening

For a while there, soup was just not going to happen in the Kensington Kitchen.  No way.  No how.

When I woke up to a legitimately chilly breeze and grey overcast sky on Friday morning, though, my thoughts drifted towards this month’s Kulinarya challenge: sinigang.

Bok choy stalks are almost like celery in taste and texture - and they smell awesome while sautéing

Sinigang is yet another of those foods I neglected to learn the name of when I was a kid.  I ate it happily and  referred to it vaguely as “that soup with bok choy.”  The association between the two things – bok choy and soup – is strong.  The first time I saw bok choy at a farmers’ market in New Mexico I bought a whole pound for soup – sinigang, as it turns out.

That was the first and last time I made sinigang in the last eight years.

Fish chopped into bite-size pieces.

This week, I called my mom for a refresher course.  We went through the list of ingredients: pork or fish (essential), bok choy (essential), tomatoes (optional), ginger (essential), tamarind (optional), green onions or scallions (essential).

One of my favorite things about “bok choy soup” is that it’s a delicious meal filled with veggies that could easily fit into even a Food Stamps budget (I wish I’d remembered to make it when I was on the government dole).  I made a special run to the Hong Kong Supermarket in Chinatown on the way home from work on Friday, spent $8 and got enough food to make sinigang for 10 people.

Bringing the broth and firm veggies to a boil before adding fish always them to soften slighty

I went with mom’s deluxe version – fish, bok choy, tomatoes, ginger, green onions, tamarind, sea salt – and added some dried mushrooms and soy sauce to round out the broth.  The ginger is what makes the dish sing.  For me it hit home on a rainy night – I inhaled two bowls with rice.  Raphe proclaimed the broth “too fishy” and stopped after one.

Oh, well.  More for me.

Colorful and healthy with a final dollop of tamarind paste

Coconut Lavender Mochiko Cake (Bibingka)

This is a submission to the Kulinarya Cooking Club May 2011 challenge. The theme, “Flores de Mayo” was chosen by Sefie of Sefie Eats and Connie of Home Cooking Rocks. For more information, visit the Kulinarya Cooking Club blog.

 

While even my mom was unfamiliar with the Flores de Mayo fiesta (I guess it isn’t big in Zamboanga?), we did celebrate May Day in our house.  My post focuses on May Day, as it is also celebrated with flowers.

 

Mochiko cake stacked up nice

I:

Every day, on my way to work, I pass a small flower shop. I’ve never gone inside, but I always stare as I walk by. They have all the usual arrangements of roses and baby’s breath, daisies, lilies. They have little ceramic pots housing colorful delicate orchids. They have ferns and cactus. The only thing that ever tempts me to visit inside is a small basket of lavender that sits on a table outside the main door. I smell the perfume as I pass, always thinking “maybe I’ll pick some up on my way home.”

3 eggs, coconut milk, evaporated milk and half a stick of butter

II:

May Day is an ancient European celebration of spring. It has its origins in pagan religious ceremony, but in modern times has become a secular celebration revolving around flowers and dancing observed on May 1st.   My Irish great-grandmother taught me to make May Day baskets filled with flowers and candy. I was to drop them off on neighbors’ doorsteps, ring the door bell and hide from sight. They got the gifts, but I got the pleasure of giving.

It's a thick batter, but whisk-able the whole way through

III:

One May Day when I was very young, I came home to a mochiko cake (bibingka) cooling on the counter. I made a basket with paper and tape and filled it will dandelions, lilacs and lily-of-the-valley. I wrapped a slice of warm cake in foil and place it in the center like a jewel. I dropped the basket on my favorite neighbor’s doorstep, rang the door bell and dashed back to my house.

Lavender flowers show through before adding the coconut flakes

IV:

I compromise. No fresh lavender, but I spring for dried lavender from the food co-op. The dried lavender blends into sugar and I beat the sugar into another May mochiko cake.  The cake is chewy and dense, rich but not too sweet. The edges are pleasantly crisp straight from the oven. Lavender flower fragrance laces the cake underneath a crunchy coconut crust. A gift for all this May!

Fil-Am Pulled Hamonada Sliders

This is a submission to the Kulinarya Cooking Club April 2011 challenge.  The theme, “decadence” was chosen by Lala of This Little Piggy.  For more information, visit the Kulinarya Cooking Club blog.

Fil-Am Pulled Hamonada Sliders: Heaven on a Bun

When it comes to home-cooking there’s a fine line between decadent and wasteful.

It feels just heavenly to set out food for 30 when you have 10 guests. But what happens to the 3-layer devil’s food cake after the guests leave? What happens to all those expensive fresh herbs and vegetables that don’t make it in to the Easter roasts and salads? What happens to the 10 pounds of leftover ham?????

This hamonada sat in our fridge for 6 days. No way we were letting it go.

As it turns out, those leftovers can come together to create something even more delicious, something even more visually stimulating, something to satisfy cravings for salty, sweet, bitter, sour and savory all at once.

Let’s go back to the beginning.

Remember this bad boy?

Last weekend we shared a lovely hamonada with new friends and old. You see, if all we wanted was savory, sweet and caloric we could have stopped there. What’s not decadent about a rich, fatty cut of ham, slow-roasted in sweet pineapple and apple juices? What’s not indulgent about chunks of fall-off-the-bone tender pork served over rice and drizzled with a syrupy fruit juice reduction?

Adding ketchup makes the pineapple BBQ sauce

But we wanted more. More flavor. More texture. More heat. More pineapple sauce dripping down our palms with each rich, tangy bite.

We wanted… a sandwich.

We turned that leftover hamonada into pulled pork in pineapple BBQ sauce by adding our homemade ketchup and Habanero oil for heat.

Halfway between pickles and cole-slaw. No mayo. Extra ginger.

We raided the last of the red cabbage and carrots (previously seen in our Easter lumpia) and marinated them in rice vinegar, sugar and ginger for tang and crunch.

Not-quite gluten-free rolls.

We rolled out a glorious bunch of golden rice-flour buns with tender crumb and crunchy crust.

Pretty. And pretty spicy.

Then, we sent these sandwiches over the edge with just a few crumbles of creamy bleu cheese and Habanero slices soaked in olive oil.

This, my friends, is the making of decadent and, dare I say, orgasmic, Filipino-American Pulled Hamonada Sliders. Not only are these delicious, but they required absolutely no additional grocery shopping and made effective use of what was already sitting in the fridge.

80% re-purposed leftovers and pantry items. 99% homemade. 100% decadent.

Yes. I ate six of these for dinner.

Notes:

1. As this isn’t our usual kind of “from scratch” recipe, we don’t list local sources for some of the items below. Instead we’ve provided links to our inspiration or previously posted recipe.
2. Yes, the bleu cheese is necessary.  It’s the bleu cheese and hot peppers that tie the sandwich together.

*****

Fil-Am Pulled Hamonada Sliders
makes 16 sliders with leftover meat and cabbage (delicious over rice)

Ingredients

Pulled Hamonada in Pineapple BBQ sauce
1-2 lbs leftover hamonada (recently posted here)
1 cup hamonada pineapple sauce (cooking liquid from the same post)
1/2 c. ketchup (we recommend homemade or low sugar, like Trader Joe’s)
Hot pepper oil to taste (once again, we recommend homemade, like this one from Ms. Adventures in Italy.)

Ginger Red Cabbage Slaw (inspired by Munch+Nibble)
1/4 large red cabbage, thin sliced
1 medium carrot, grated
1/2 c. rice vinegar
2 T. sugar
1 T. minced garlic
2 t. powdered ginger
1 t. salt

Sandwiches
Pulled Hamonada
Slaw
Bleu cheese, crumbled or sliced
Habenero slices in oil
Rice flour rolls

1. Bake Rolls

• I used rolls similar to these from Art of Gluten-Free Baking, but without dairy and cut like pandesal.

2. Make Red Cabbage Slaw (inspired by Munch+Nibble)

• Shred cabbage and carrots. Mix vinegar, sugar, ginger, garlic and salt.
• Pour vinegar mixture over cabbage. Mix well.
• Refrigerate until needed.

3. Bake pork

• Combine pork, sauce and ketchup in an 8×8 baking dish. Bake at 300 for 1 hour.
• Pull pork apart with forks.  Mix well with sauce.

4. Assemble Sandwiches

• Slice rolls. Layer pork, then bleu cheese, then slaw.   Top with Habanero slice and oil.