Chili Toyo-Mansi Noodles

It has been a looooonnnnngggggggg time since I've last had instant noodles! With all the bad reviews (health-wise) for instant noodles and other processed food, I've been trying to avoid them as much as possible.

Good thing that it's so easy to make my own instant noodles-inspired dish at home, so there's really no need to buy the MSG-filled instant noodles packs from the supermarket anymore.

My favorite instant noodles flavors before were Toyo-Mansi (soy sauce with calamansi- a local citrus fruit) and Chili-Mansi. So I combined them together to make my very own:

Chili toyo-mansi noodles topped with ground chicken, chorizo (chinese sausage) and oyster mushrooms. Yummy!

Recipe follows...

Sweet Indulgence: Baked Leche Flan

If you ask any Filipino- what is your favorite native dessert? The answers might be halo-halo, maja blanca, ube... and definitely, leche flan will be part, if not on top, of the list.

I love leche flan. In fact, if I remember correctly, making leche flan was my very first attempt in cooking. I was still in high school then. I didn't have money to buy the ingredients, so I had to make do with what was in the house. Instead of evaporated milk, I used Nido Full Cream Milk. Instead of condensed milk, I used Nido Full Cream Milk with lots and lots and lots of white sugar.

I then steamed the concoction... it did form into a flan, but the taste was very far from the other yummy leche flans I'd tasted. At the end, whenever I wanted to make Nido leche flan, I would put in scoops of Ricoa cocoa powder... only then did my family say that it's good. But still, it was not the original leche flan I wanted to make.

After those several episodes, I didn't attempt to make leche flan for a long time. I don't know, maybe I was traumatized? :P Or maybe I just thought it was time to move on to other desserts.

But once in a while, I still get a craving for leche flan. And it's really expensive to buy leche flan in restaurants! A very small leche flan in Max's Restaurant (the least expensive one among those included in the Top 10 leche flan list) would cost around P50.

So I decided to give leche flan another try. But this time, I wanted it to place it in ramekins to make it more classy. So I googled if I can make leche flan via baking. And as it turned out, yes, I can! :)

Curry Couscous with Shrimp & Zucchini

I love the couscous in Cyma... it's flavorful and I feel like I'm eating healthy! But of course, with the prices in Cyma, you cannot eat there often.

Couscous is definitely healthier than white rice and pasta. I got the information below from Wikipedia:

Couscous is among the healthiest grain-based products. It has a glycemic load per gram 25% below that of pasta. It has a superior vitamin profile to pasta, containing twice as much riboflavin, niacin, vitamin B6, and folate, and containing four times as much thiamine and pantothenic acid.

In terms of protein, couscous has 3.6 g for every 100 calories, equivalent to pasta, and well above the 2.6 g for every 100 calories of white rice. Furthermore, couscous contains a 1% fat-to-calorie ratio, compared to 3% for white rice, 5% for pasta, and 11.3% for rice pilaf.

Sizzling Beef in Special Sauce or Beef Salpicao

When I cook Salpicao, I always substitute chicken for the beef as my dad is not allowed to eat beef. I usually use chicken thigh fillets without the skin and then cut them into cubes.

For the sauce, I just combine worcestershire sauce and Knorr liquid seasoning with a bit of sugar. Then I would cook the dish with lots and lots of minced garlic and pepper! It's an easy and yummy dish! :)

Yesterday, during our Star Margarine Cooking Demo in our office, we were taught this recipe that seems very similar to my Chicken Salpicao, but with one additional ingredient that made the dish tastier... The pepper steak sauce!