Kitchen Diary recipes: Soups & Sauces
On to the soups and sauces from my cookbook:
Chicken Broth from Scratch
Who doesn’t love chicken soup? This chicken broth is good for chicken sopas and other recipes that require chicken broth. It is also a good way of stretching the budget because you use chicken parts that would
otherwise be thrown away. Save the chicken bones from boiled chicken in the freezer as well as the bones taken from deboned chicken. You can still feed these chicken parts to your pet cats afterwards, if you have cats. My three 10-pound tomcats usually park outside the kitchen when I cook chicken broth, serenading me with their expectant meows.
INGREDIENTS
1 cup chicken hearts
1 cup chicken giblets
250 grams chicken necks
250 grams chicken ribs
1 kilo chicken bones
4 liters of water
1 small bunch parsley
2 stalks celery
1 small carrot, peeled
2 medium onions, peeled
1 large, whole head of garlic
4 tablespoons dried rosemary
1 tablespoon peppercorns
Salt to taste
PREPARATION
Tie the parsley, celery, and carrot together and leave enough string so you can pull the bunch out of the stock pot easily. Simmer all the ingredients together in a large, covered stock pot over a low flame for four hours, adding more water as needed.
Regularly skim off the scum that forms on the surface of the broth until no more scum appears.
Gradually add the salt towards the end of the cooking time, tasting the broth until you are satisfied with the flavor.
If you wish to use the broth immediately, remove the chicken bones, giblets, hearts and vegetables, strain the broth and serve or use for cooking.
*To store the broth, allow it to cool, strain it and pour into tightly sealed containers. Keep this broth refrigerated or freeze it. Refrigerated, the broth must be used in three or four days. Frozen, it will last a week and a half.
Beef Broth from Scratch
Like the chicken broth, beef broth is a scrap-saver. Yes, my cats park and serenade when I am cooking this, too. You can have the butcher chop the marrow bones into smaller chunks for you so they fit better into your stock pot. You may save the litid (tendons and sinews) scraps you cut from beef prepared for other dishes and save them in the freezer until you have a kilo of the stuff, or you can buy litid from your butcher.
INGREDIENTS
2 kilos beef marrow bones & joints
1 kilo beef litid scraps
6 liters of water
1 small bunch parsley
2 stalks celery
1 small carrot, peeled
2 medium onions, peeled
1 large, whole head of garlic
4 tablespoons dried rosemary
1 tablespoon peppercorns
Salt to taste
PREPARATION
Tie the parsley, celery, and carrot together, as is done for chicken broth. Simmer all the ingredients together in a large stockpot over a very low flame for four or five hours. Regularly skim off the scum that forms on the surface of the broth until no more scum appears.
Gradually add the salt toward the end of the cooking time, tasting the broth until you are satisfied with the flavor. Add water as needed.
If you wish to use the broth immediately, remove the beef bones and scraps and vegetables, skim off and discard the oil that floats to the surface of the broth, strain and serve or use for cooking. Save the marrow bones for bulalo.
*To store the broth, allow it to cool, strain it and pour into airtight containers. Keep this broth refrigerated or freeze it. Refrigerated, the broth must be used in three or four days. Frozen, it will last a week and a half. Before using frozen or refrigerated broth, be sure to scoop away and discard the lard that will solidify on the surface of the broth.
Bulalo Pick-Me-Up
Having made up for my nerdiness in grade school by going on all-night drinking sprees at least thrice a week in college, I learnt the hard way how the morning-after’s cheap rum hangover can hurt worse than being soundly beaten on the sparring mat. My sage eldest brother pointed me in the direction of a hole-in-the-wall carinderia that served a mean bulalo after one such all-nighter and, thus, saved my life and helped me do decently well in my final exams just hours later. The carinderia that enabled me to survive to finish college is no more, but here is the closest reconstruction of their heavenly bulalo as can be made.
INGREDIENTS
2 liters beef broth
1 kilo of marrow bones*
1/2 kilo beef cubes or kalitiran
1 star anise flower (and only one! This is strong stuff.)
1 large bunch pechay (bok choi), chopped
1/2 cup spring onions, chopped
2 onions, peeled & quartered
1 whole head of garlic
1/2 teaspoon crushed peppercorns
PREPARATION
Tie the garlic and star anise flower together with string long enough so you can yank them both out of the pot easily.
Put the broth, beef cubes marrow bones, onions, crushed peppercorns garlic, and star anise into a large stock pot and bring to a brisk boil over a high flame. Once the broth boils, bring the flame down to the lowest possible setting and simmer for two hours, adding water as needed.
*For those not initiated into the cult of bulalo worship, the best part of this dish is the marrow tapped out of the bone. Eat it while steaming hot, with a few drops of fish sauce and kalamansi (Philippine lime) juice. Beware of the cholesterol, though. Overeating bulalo marrow may cause your blood pressure to shoot up. Eat moderately and at your own risk.
Chicken Sopas Elixir
This has to be my all-time favorite version of chicken soup. Steaming hot chicken sopas chases away the doldrums of a cold, rainy day and restores one’s sense of well-being. It also fills the belly, as a good merienda should. It is a wonderful comfort food and is my elixir for a bad breakup. No man could depress me so badly that I would lose my appetite for chicken sopas.
INGREDIENTS
1 liter chicken broth
2 cups raw shell macaroni
1 cup shredded cooked chicken meat (leftovers are great here)
1 200-gram packet of frozen mixed vegetables
1/2 cup evaporated milk
2 small onions, quartered
1 clove garlic, peeled & mashed
1 tablespoon butter
PREPARATION
Melt butter in the pot where you will cook the soup and sauté the garlic and onion there over a medium flame. Add mixed vegetables and sauté for five minutes more.
Pour in the broth and milk and turn up the heat until the soup boils, then bring the flame down to medium again. Drop in the chicken meat and macaroni and simmer for 20 minutes. Serves four people (perhaps
two on a rainy day).
Misua & Meatballs
Almondigas is a dish for cold weather and straitened means. This misua dish is not strictly almondigas, however, since I removed the minced shrimp and shrimp juice because of my allergy to shrimp. The result is this hearty but cost-efficient soup.
INGREDIENTS
1 liter chicken broth
1/2 kilo ground beef or pork
1 large white onion, minced finely
2 cloves garlic, minced finely
1 egg
1/4 teaspoon rock salt
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/8 teaspoon Spanish paprika
Oil for frying
2 cups patola*, peeled & diced
2 cups malunggay** leaves
1 bunch green onion, minced
2 liters beef or chicken broth
1 small pack misua noodles
PREPARATION
Thoroughly combine ground meat, onion, garlic, egg, salt, paprika, and black pepper in a mixing bowl and form the mixture into meatballs.
Heat oil in a wok and brown the meatballs in the wok. Remove meatballs from the wok and put them in a colander so the excess oil will drip away from the meatballs.
Bring the broth to a boil in a large saucepan. Add the meatballs and patola. Simmer for five minutes and add the misua noodles.
Simmer for 20 minutes, then add the malunggay leaves and turn off the heat. Cover the saucepan and leave it on the stove for five minutes. Serve the misua and meatballs with the minced green onions as topping. Serves six to eight people.
*patola is also known as loofah gourd — before they dry it to make it into loofahs.
**malunggay is also known as moringa.
Creamy Tuna Sauce for Pasta
For those seeking some innocent pleasure in their pasta, this creamy tuna sauce skims the line between sinner and saint. My twin daughters and nephews love eating it and I love watching them go through the full-body experience of consuming this dish. It is memorable because my Brina and Sasha once surprised me by having it ready for supper on a night I got home late from work, with a love note tucked under my plate.
INGREDIENTS
3 strips of bacon, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced finely
1 medium white onion, chopped
1 can sliced mushrooms, drained well
1 small can tuna flakes in brine, drained well
1 small bell pepper, cleaned, de-seeded & minced
1 tetra brik (200ml) cream
1/4 teaspoon Italian seasoning
Rock salt & pepper to taste
PREPARATION
Cook the chopped bacon in the saucepan where you will cook the sauce until the bacon bits are crisp.
Remove bacon from the pan and drain on paper towels. Set aside.
Sauté garlic in the oil left in the saucepan until the garlic is golden brown and add the onions, which you will sauté until they are translucent.
Add the peppers and mushrooms and sauté for two minutes more. Stir in the tuna and cream and simmer for five minutes over a low flame.
Season with the Italian seasoning, salt and pepper and simmer for five minutes more.
Toss with hot, buttered pasta and top with grated cheese. Herb-garlic toast is a wonderful addition to this dish. Serves four.
Kalamansi-Butter Sauce
I adore seafood and used to hanker after lemon-butter sauce as a perfect counterpoint to fish fillets, prawns, crab, and grilled squid. Since lemons were beyond my limited budget as a greenhorn journalist, I experimented with kalamansi. This sauce is very good and goes very well with seafood and, even, with skinless, broiled chicken breast.
INGREDIENTS
1 stick butter
Juice of 8 large kalamansi
1/4 teaspoon flour
PREPARATION
Melt the butter in a small saucepan over a medium flame, stirring carefully so the butter does not turn brown.
Add the flour and keep stirring. Cook the flour for about 30 seconds. Add the kalamansi juice and stir well, until the sauce thickens. Serve hot as a dip or sauce.
Mushroom Sauce
I keep the ingredients for this sauce handy in case I need to jazz up a plain dish. It is best with Salisbury steak and good with steamed vegetables and poultry as well.
INGREDIENTS
1 can condensed mushroom soup
1 can sliced champignon mushrooms
1 cup sour cream
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 clove of garlic, minced finely
2 tablespoons butter
PREPARATION
Melt butter in a small saucepan and sauté the garlic in the butter over medium heat until garlic is golden brown. Add mushrooms and sauté for five minutes more.
Add the condensed mushroom soup and Worcestershire sauce and stir well. Simmer for five minutes.
Add the sour cream and simmer over the lowest heat possible for five minutes. Remove from heat and serve as gravy or sauce for fried or grilled meat and poultry or over steamed vegetables.
Geraldine’s Ballistic Spaghetti Sauce
My favorite cousin, Geraldine Tan, makes a very nice spaghetti meat sauce — though there was one time when she cooked it that the uncovered sauce in the pot erupted and spattered everywhere. Since then, we have referred to her spaghetti as “ballistic.” Turning the sauce into an inciendary device is not a requirement for the recipe — and only Geraldine has ever managed to turn spaghetti sauce into an IED (improvised explosive device).
INGREDIENTS
1/2 kilo ground beef or ground pork
750 milliliters tomato sauce
1 large onion, minced
5 large cloves garlic, minced finely
2 tablespoons butter or olive oil
1 bay leaf
1 minced chorizo de bilbao sausage
1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning
Salt & pepper to taste
PREPARATION
Brown the ground meat in the saucepan you will use for cooking the sauce, using medium heat. Drain off and discard excess fat. Set aside the cooked ground meat.
In the same saucepan, melt butter (or heat olive oil) and fry garlic over medium heat until it is golden brown. Add onions and fry with the garlic until onions are transparent. Add minced chorizo de bilbao and fry for two minutes.
Return the meat to the saucepan and stir well, until the onions, chorizo bits, and garlic are well blended in. Add the tomato sauce, stir well, and simmer for five minutes. Add the bay leaf and Italian seasoning. Stir well, adding salt and pepper.
Reduce the heat to the lowest possible setting and simmer the sauce for at least 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Turn off heat and serve over hot, buttered noodles with grated cheese and herbgarlic toast. Makes six to eight servings.
Jose’s Hell Sauce
My brother, Jose, once had a girlfriend of Indian ancestry who was overheard at a Mexican restaurant issuing the claim that he was “more Bumbay than I am” as he emptied the tiniest hot sauce container at their
table. Here is his hell sauce.
INGREDIENTS
1/2 kilo fresh labuyo* peppers, cleaned & chopped
1 kilo dried labuyo peppers, ground
1/2 kilo red onions, chopped
10 heads garlic, peeled & chopped
2 liters cane vinegar or white wine vinegar
1 liter soy sauce
1 cup fish sauce
250 grams raisins
250 grams whole peppercorns
Use a funnel to put all solid ingredients into an air-dried glass gallon jug with a plastic screw-cap. Add the liquid ingredients and cover the jug tightly.
Shake the jug vigorously while dancing to a conga beat. Keep up the shaking and dancing for five minutes then keep the hell sauce in a cool, dry place.
Allow the hell sauce to ferment for at least one month.
Serve with a clear warning that the hell sauce is strong stuff — especially the fattened and tempting raisins that act like tiny nitroglycerin bombs inside one’s mouth.
*labuyo is also called bird’s-eye chili.
