Life in the time of Covid - 19 Apr 2020

What I've learned and made over the week

1)  I learned how to skin peanuts easily 

I needed to skin a batch of freshly-roasted peanuts so that I could make them into peanut butter. To do so, put the peanuts in a sieve or colander, then gently massage the peanuts until the skin separates from the nut. Sift. Do it again until all the peanuts are naked. That's it. 

Tip: Use food-grade rubber gloves so that the skin could stick on the gloves while you're rubbing them together.

Peanuts on a shallow tray before roasting

Peanuts on a colander

The skin separated from the nuts

2) I learned how to make peanut butter

This is something that is surprisingly so easy.  You just have to put your roasted peanuts about one cup in a food processor. Pulse until it is coarsely ground. If you want some chunk in your peanut butter, take a quarter from it. Continue grinding the rest until the oil from the peanuts come out. If it's too thick, add a bit of melter butter. Season according to taste -add salt, or sugar, or chocolate power. Mix the chunky bits back into the paste. Done!

3) I learned how to make Pandesal

This is the most difficult one because it is multi-stage and it takes a bit of baking knowledge to get it right. One needs to know how to knead or what a good dough feels like. If you know basic bread making, the technique is fairly easy but the time and process itself are still long. You can also make different kinds of bread using the same dough just like what I did.

dough from 4 cups of flour

Bread 1 : cheese and minced pork filled rolls 

sealed at the bottom 

finished product. the cheese came out from some of the rools

proofed pandesal. i need to work on my rolling skills. the rolls shouldn't be visible 

proofed cheese roll. i didnt expect they would grow so big

finished product. the pork buns is missing 3 pieces which we have already devoured :)

4) I made kare-kare from scratch

I didn't use any kare-kare mix. I roasted and made my own peanut butter. I made annatto seed oil. I toasted ground glutinous rice. These are the things I could only do if I have a loooot of time.

Whole foods 

Sliced version. Counterclockwise (from lower left hand) 1) banana blossoms, 2) diced onion, 3) diced garlic, 4) annato seed oil, 5)bok choy, 6) string beans, 7) toasted glutinous rice, 8) home-made peanut butter, 9) ground nuts, 10) annatto seeds in water (in case i needed more color), 11) eggplant. Beef is not in the picture. 

Boiled beef with hardened fat. Throw that fat away. 

Sautee beef in garlic, onion, annatto seed oil, and beef broth. Boil.

Add vegetables one by one. Banana blossoms first. Then boil. Add the eggplants next. Boil again. Add the string beans and bok choy and beef last. Boil and mix. Thicken the sauce with the toasted rice flour. 

Serve with shrimp bagoong. 

5) I made tom yum pasta

This is the best tom yum pasta I made so far.  The secret I think lies on the fresh lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves. I also sauteed the prawn shell and head, boiled them in a bit of broth, threw it into a blender and use the rich broth in making the tom yum paste. Adding a bit of cream and squeezing a wedge of lime also made a big difference!

fry the prawn separately

Clockwise from the top: 1) straw mushroom, 2) coriander, 3) kaffir lime leaves, 4) lemongrass, 5) onion

What a good sauce looks like. 

Finished product

6) Tocino and tapa

This is good for breakfast.

Beef tapa

Pork tocino

Finished product

7) Dalgona coffee 

I jumped into the bandwagon

Hers and his. The left one had coffee at the bottom because the froth failed. The right one had the pooped-looking froth

Random thoughts for today

We now see a lot of news reports about China's alleged cover-ups of the actual number of COVID-19 infections and deaths. At the risk of being labeled as negative or toxic, this to me is a manifestation of how reports need to always be factual, regardless of how toxic it is.  Covering up the toxicity of a fact could result in fatality.