Tuesday's Chicken Pot Pie

Pies are ridiculously easy to make, I mean if you have store-bought pastry you can literally turn anything into a pie. A pie is essentially just two things- the pastry case and the filling.

Don’t bother making your own though the only argument for that is if you’re doing large rounds and the square-shaped sheets just don’t cut it (you can roll them out again though).

And you can have literally any filling though make sure you have a binding sauce like cheese or maybe even a roux. I got one of the last two packets of chicken breast and minced them with onions, seasoning and oregano. Cooked it with a can of Campbell’s mushroom soup and two fistfuls of frozen spinach.

Put in the oven at 180 for about 40 minutes.

24 Wednesday: hungry

I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I’m always hungry- craving for flavour.

Restaurants are opening soon and I’m thinking, Filipino- pork sisig, crispy pata and pork barbecue. This photo was taken exactly a year ago when we had dinner at a Filipino restaurant called Kalye Manila.

I’m also craving for something sweet like cheesecake; peanut butter cheesecake.

KFC Saturday & Aneesha finds a weapon that could kill the aliens

We finally gave in.

Too blah to cook. I had to wake up early to recreate the goddamned corrupted 3D file which was easier the 2nd time around because now I knew where all the elements went in. And I used objects in actual scale which didn’t make any difference as I belived it would, but shaved off heaps of time in scaling them down to size.

But the program did become noticeably slower as I added more and more objects into the 3D space and I was thinking, if I only had the new MacBook Pro with the M1 Max chip, mmmmm ($6,054!).

So it’s episode 6 already in Apple TV + Invasion and the slowness - while it’s done really well mostly- is making me ask a lot of questions with no answers in sight. Like what happened to Sam Neil’s retired sheriff character way back in episode one?? Is he dead or not? If you remember, he was digging around the strange crop circle in a farmer’s field when the aliens somehow ‘stabbed’ him with something. The last shot is of him somewhat looking either stunned or dramatically dead with his eyes open. But judging by how a slew of soldier’s bodies were shown mangled and mutilated in episode 6, there’s still hope that Sam was merely temporarily incapacitated. But it’s strange that it’s this far into the series and that story arc has been totally abandoned.

Going back to Aneesha, she manages to go back to the house and arrives to find it barricaded against something. Her family and the couple who took their family in Patrick and Kelly, are hiding in the attic and this is expectedly where the friendly, sympathetic atmosphere evaporates as everyone panics.

Aneesha declares that they were leaving, and this is where everything goes south; the daughter falls through the attic floor and Aneesha follows to rescue her. The noise alerts the alien, and we see for the 1st time what it looks like- a sort of octopus with tentacles and bristling, camouflage-like skin. Kelly falls through the same underlay flooring, but manages to hold on- but the alien gets her as Patrick desperately tries to hoist his wife up.

Aneesha and Ahmed make it downstairs but Ahmed is attacked while trying to move the furniture they used to barricade the door. Aneesha and the kids escape through a window in the basement and try to make a run for it using Patrick and Kelly’s car. But the alien rams itself through the windshield and takes its time to eat/kill/spit at Aneesha with its multi-layered mouth. Aneesha shoots it (no use), then rams a stick-thingy into its mouth (no use), then throws what looks like a phone-book at it (no use), before finding the weird, stone-age like spear flint that Luke had found and stabs the thing with it- success!

My theory is that while conventional weapons can’t kill it, material from their world can- like the way Kryptonite affects Superman. Because why would it be a special kind of weapon?? It doesn’t look like one and was most likely a shard of something that crashed/exploded when the Malik’s neighbourhood was attacked in episode 2.

The philandering Ahmed survives the attack after all and limps out of the house. Aneesha is relieved to see him, but had he not survived, she would have moved on, but I guess when everyone you know is dying around you, it’s probably comforting to have familiar people around. At this point, whatever they’ve done to you pales in comparison to the life and death struggle you all face.

It's not embutido or a meatloaf

You didn't use pork-mince. There’s no eggs, raisins, carrots, Vienna sausage or a boiled egg in it. So it’s not embutido, not really. And the classic meatloaf uses ground beef and bread crumbs.

But it’s using the same principles of some ground protein and seasonings and is either cooked in a bain-marie or baked in the oven. It’s wrapped like an embutido too, and like meatloaf, there’s going to be a gravy sauce for it, probably a butter-based mustard sauce.

Because what do you do with 20 packs of chicken breasts in the deep freeze? We bought them in bulk at Gilmours and much as I want to make Korean fried-chicken every other day, I can’t. On one hand, prepared chicken mince at the supermarket for 500 grams is like $8. The Gilmours bulk buy turned out to be something like 800-1kg per pack at $6. So all you need is a food processor really.

For this- okay let’s call it chicken roll- I used a bunch of frozen spinach, a whole red capsicum, a large white onion and heaps of cheese which I guess acts like a binder.

Pictures of it cooked and served tomorrow.

What's for dinner? Roast pork loin

I wish it was Doyet’s lechon pork belly but..

A roast is so Western and so ubiquitous that you can buy it like you would lechon manok at a roast shop with all the trimmings like roast potatoes the size of tennis balls and pork-crackling on the side, which is the only thing I buy from a roast-shop if I had the chance. A dollar for a long strip of crackling.

I find it dry most of the time which is why I rarely ever buy it or make it. But this was before I’ve overhauled my cooking habits so when I got a small (about 800grams) pork loin by mistake- the people at the supermarket substituted it for pork belly- I thought this was my chance to cook it correctly.

And I sure succeeded. Just two key things really- cooking time and resting time.

Is your tooth sweet?

In 2020 and putting aside the chaos and heartache of Covid aside, I watched with envy how Filipino foodies bloomed; a culinary feast amidst the blight of the pandemic, and all at a tap on your digital screens.

While in New Zealand, there was uhm KFC and your neighbourhood Indian takeaway (ground-breaking).

Not that I would end up binging and spending hundreds of dollars on non-essential, processed food- but it was sad that there wasn’t much choice in a country with so much abundance.

But now, good Lord- it must be the frustrations from last year, boredom, or simply inspiration, but we have a flood of sweet goodies- don’t have a sweet-tooth I must admit, but here’s a couple I’d shell out some good dollars for:

Meaty Friday

I had a work lunch at Little Jimmy in Epsom with some office staff and our web dev guys. Though I was eyeing a fish starter and a veggie side, I ended up with their Wagyu Beef Short Rib fillet with celeriac puree and some bokchoy. It was the size of my fist- and I have a small fist.

Luckily, one of the guys offered to share his curly fries. It needed a side, just saying ( and I was really hungry that day). It was labelled as a large plate too which was not accurate. To compare, Sarah from work ordered a small plate of trevally ceviche, and the ‘small plate’ was actually a condiment bowl. I know that the restaurant industry is struggling but…

Dinner/ Blue Ox Babe BBQ
Continuing our fortnight eating-out runs, we put aside Korean for a change and tried out this Texas barbecue joint in Pukekohe with the strange name of Blue Ox Babe. If you’re not sure of how much meat you’re supposed to order you can ask them to make that decision for you. We ordered the brisket, pork belly, sausages and the ribs and skipped the chicken. With four adults (Matt was still at work), they recommended doubling the ribs to a full stack.

For sides, we had two curly fries (there’s a loaded one slathered with pulled pork), slaw and the pickled cucumber (the total bill was just under our magic number of $200).

They were spot on with the quantity though I would be happy with just the brisket and the ribs. The ribs were great- firm with a nice even layer of fat on top (I loathe ribs with the meat falling off) and unslathered with sickly sweet sauce which I also hate. I would’ve wanted rice for a side- or something plain, like maybe corn on the cob or even bread buns. The curly fries were a disappointment; they were under-seasoned and hard.

The hero side was the obviously home-made pickles - actually crinkle sliced Lebanese cucumbers with just the right combination of tang, crunch and acidity to freshen your palate for another forkful of meat (and no forks!).

We were in agreement that next time, we would do takeaway and eat it at home with rice.

Burnt Basque Cheesecake

I bought a block of Philadelphia cream cheese nearly a month ago intending to make peanut butter cheesecake and thought that now was the time to make one. However, I came across a cheesecake that I had always seen at cafes but assumed that it was known simply as a baked variant- I honestly have always preferred the non-baked kind- but this one had a proper name; burnt Basque cheesecake (Tarta de questo).

And in spite of a name that somehow implies it goes back a long way, it was actually invented by a Spanish chef, Santiago River of the La Viña restaurant in 1990 who wanted a custardy cheesecake.

And to achieve this texture, the oven has to be really hot (400 degrees) with a cooking time of exactly an hour. The top after this is that deep shade of brown that is 5 minutes away from being burnt, and the cake has that jiggle that is just a tad shy of being firm, but not too wobbly. Some recommend clocking it at 40 minutes for that soft, custardy consistency and I’m glad that I didn't, because I think, it would’ve tasted too eggy (this Bon Appetit recipe calls for 6 large eggs.) which I would hate; if I wanted eggy, I’d make an omelette.

It’s recommended that you let it cool completely (like 3 hours), but we ate it anyway just two hours in and it was still slightly warm. I drizzled maple syrup (Nigella Lawson has a recipe where she serves it with licorice sauce) on it and that was a good idea because it isn’t exactly too sweet.

I had another taste of it after it had been chilling in the fridge for about 2 hours and it tasted even better, like the marriage of a regular cheesecake and an egg flan, airier and less dense than a New York cheesecake which I’ve always found to be stodgy (that’s because a New York cheesecake is normally baked for an hour and a half, cooled inside the oven and doesn't use heavy cream).

Cooking pork belly #1,001,000 (this one works!)

If I could eat pork belly everyday I really would. I’ve cooked it so many times but I still could not find the one fool-proof, consistent way that would serve me meat that would have the following characteristics:

  1. Intact, crispy skin

  2. Nearly falling apart, flavourful flesh and fat

I’ve boiled, brined, dried and salt-crusted with varying degrees of success and what’s annoying is that the next time I boil, brine, dry and salt-crust, the results are different again.

But this one worked right off the bat:

But the meat could’ve been more tender. Maybe the ratio of fat to meat makes the difference. I got the pork from the supermarket and the fat was on the thin side.

Next time - #1,001,001 - I’ll try the butchers.

12

Yup. Another Korean restaurant. And we’re starting to see a menu pattern:

  1. All serve fried chicken dishes

  2. They all have a version of steamed or boiled pork belly (my favourite)

  3. They all serve some version of beef

  4. The price points are on the average, the same, but the quantities vary

  5. This one is more on the pricey-ish side ($200 for five dishes)

Twelve is at 1 Courthouse Lane, Auckland CBD, Auckland.