Raphe asked for it this morning and I was happy to oblige. When I’m stressed out, overworked or just a little blue, I almost always make myself fried rice. It’s quick. It’s simple. It’s satisfying.
It helps make a crappy week seem a little bit further away.
Spam and scrambled eggs over garlic rice for breakfast was always one of my favorite things about visiting the Philippines. Maybe it was the musubi, maybe it was just the need to use up the cans of Spam in the pantry; whatever it was, the boyfriend has been converted to the cause.
Here’s our lightened up version with thin cut, crispy Spam and spinach salad instead of fried rice.
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
Roast chicken is a like a little Thanksgiving in September. Or May Or whenever.
One year in the same apartment is a pretty serious relationship by New York standards.
And one year with the same blog? True commitment.
We recommended that you use the injector to get beer into the bird, not the cook.
Our first apartment anniversary came and went with our summer vacations – mine to visit family in Zamboanga City, Raphe’s to visit friends in Seattle. The event passed without fanfare. The blogiversary of Kensington Kitchen, however, will not be treated so lightly. Now, we share with you one of our very favorite recipes – a dish we cook for friends and family, to celebrate small triumphs or comfort small losses.
Let’s go back to the beginning, shall we?
The chicken sits on this can of flat beer, onions, garlic and aromatic spices for two and a half hours
Cooking is what Raphe and I do best together – its been central to our relationship from the beginning (his big line on our first date: “by the way, I make my own barbeque sauce.” I was hooked.) Writing is something that I feel compelled to do. When I found my personal blog overrun by recipes and food musings – mostly inspired by the cooking Raphe and I were doing together – we started talking about offering our food to the world. We settled into our cozy attic apartment, returned to the kitchen, adopted Snowball and somewhere along the way decided to start a blog. Thus, the Kensington Kitchen was born.
Getting the chicken to sit up on the damn can can be a challenge.
Which brings me to today’s recipe: roast chicken. We’ve kept it to ourselves for so long, but it’s time to share. We roast our chicken over a can of cheap American beer, but the result would be equally at home in any number of international cuisines. My Filipino family shared lechon manok with rice and lechon sauce (a sweet gravy made from chicken or pork livers) more than once in the time I visited. A European family might serve their chicken with roast potatoes or ratatouille. South Asian cuisine generally recommends cut up chicken rather than whole for marinating and roasting. Raphe and I usually eat ours southern American-style, with onion beer rice and gravy, spinach, green beans or sweet potatoes on the side. In every version of roast chicken the general idea remains the same: rub down a chicken with oils, flavoring liquids and spices and cook it in dry low heat for a few hours. The process yields crispy, spiced skin and juicy meat for immediate consumption and a carcass for stock afterwards.
Everybody wins.
More meat in the Kensington Kitchen
Prawn adobo and sinigang over jasmine rice
Sometimes, I’m truly taken aback by how spoiled we Americans are when it comes to our homes. I’m specifically thinking about our kitchens here. My kitchen is small by American standards (although large by NYC standards) – four burner gas stove with oven, full-sized refrigerator, large sink and just enough space for a table and chairs. Almost all Americans have a kitchen with a 4-burner stove and an oven. Some of us have six burners and two ovens. We’re hardly accustomed to eating without electricity or municipal gas lines for hours or even days.
Ginormous prawns fresh from the market
We had a bit of a scare this past weekend, with hurricane/ tropical storm Irene heading towards New York. The Kensington Kitchen was not included in any of the evacuation zones, but we decided to high-tail it up to Beacon, NY (70+ north of the city) to weather the storm. Even in Beacon, we prepped for the storm with plenty of water and food, flashlights and candles.
Garlic and shallot smell wonderful while sautéing, but not so wonderful a few hours later - one benefit of the "Dirty Kitchen" set-up
All the while, I couldn’t help but compare our frantic prep work with the laid-back attitudes towards “brown outs” displayed by my Philippine family.
Where the browner half of my family resides *no one* has an oven or four burner electric or natural gas stove. Instead, one or two burner propane stoves are used in an outdoor cooking area or “dirty kitchen.” Electrical outages are commonplace. I saw two in the time I was there – one lasting almost three days. Thanks to the brilliance of the “dirty kitchen” set-up, though, we were still able to cook.
Adding the liquid ingredients after the prawns start to cook
In honor of hurricane Irene and those on the Eastern Seaboard who may be limited a propane camping stove this week, I’m posting a Filipino recipe that is intended for such a minimalist cooking set-up – adobo.
The adobo sauce reduces to a thick glaze over the prawns
Adobo is the national dish of the Philippines. Everyone’s mama makes it differently and everyone’s mama is right. It’s tangy and salty – perfect comfort food for a night hunkering down for a hurricane or typhoon. It can be made completely from pantry items – garlic, onions, vinegar, soy sauce, sugar – and any meat you might have on-hand. Best of all, because it requires only a single burner and a short cooking time, it can be made in the middle of a power outage.
Make a pot while you wait out the outages Irene left behind and contemplate the advantages of a ”Dirty Kitchen.”
