I'm going to be working from home for the next few days before I officially go on maternity leave. Unlike being at work wherein I just select which food to eat, I ended up opening our fridge and pantry to see what I could come up with.

I found beef steak and bell peppers in the fridge. Some packs of fresh yakiudon from Han Yang Mart (Korean/Japanese grocery close to where we live), shredded nori and bonito flakes from New Hatchin, and shiitake mushrooms. I was missing onions and cabbage to complete the recipe, but I was also hungry enough to actually skip it and proceed with cooking.

Yep, that's today's breakfast. The plating took longer than the cooking. I just added mayonnaise on the egg before cooking it. As for the okra, here's the recipe:

8 pcs okra, sliced (cut off the tips)
6 slices of bacon, diced
1 1/2T garlic, minced (if you love garlic as much as my husband does, you can add more)

Start with a hot pan, render the fat from the bacon. I opted not to wait for the bacon to crisp, so I added in the okra and garlic to cook along with it. That's that.

As for the assembly, using a round cookie cutter, cut out discs from the scrambled egg. The number of discs would depend on the size of the scrambled egg and cookie cutter.

Sandwich the bacon in between discs. Using the round cookie cutter again, hold it above the topmost layer of the egg disc. May not be a good idea to rest the cookie cutter on the egg as the weight of the cookie cutter might cause the egg disc tower to collapse. Just hold the cookie cutter with your left hand and start filling it with okra until the diameter of the cutter has been filled with the okra. Or if you want to do a little cheat to make the okra stick on the egg, spread some mayo on the egg. Pat the okra on the egg and gently lift the cookie cutter.

I decided to drizzle some balsamic vinegar on it more for presentation, it apparently still tasted well with the rest of the dish.

All that effort of assembling it took A a matter of seconds to destroy and a few minutes to eat (with rice). I took that as a complement.

Since I tried this Honey Bagoong Chicken Wings recipe from pepper.ph, we couldn't get enough of it! Of course, it's not recommended to have this on a daily basis with all the shrimp paste going around in this recipe, but worth bringing to a party.

I did some variations on the recipe by using Kamayan Bagoong in the marinade and Korean potato powder instead of all purpose flour. I like using potato flour in frying because it gives a crispier texture. The Japanese variety doesn't burn as fast as the Korean one, but I ran out of the Japanese brand at home. What can I say? I like playing with food.

Sometimes, I don't know what to call my dishes anymore. As I try to teach A how to cook, I try to come up with with easy recipes - usually involves putting everything in one pot. If it's something that he can cook on top of a double broiler while rice is being cooked at the bottom pot, the more he's likely to try to cook it again.

It's pantry cleaning day and we still have some sukiyaki-cut pork that I've brined. Looking at our pantry, we have our usual tomato derivative (sauce, paste, etc.) stocks, but I didn't feel like using it today. Same goes for going soy-based. Digging deep, I found a pack of Mama Sita's Kare-Kare Peanut Sauce Base.

This has got to be one of my favorite sidings to make. It takes quite a lot of prep time because of all the dicing involved, but other than that, it's quite simple to do. 

Ingredients:

8 tomatoes, deseeded and diced
1 mango, diced
1 red onion, diced
extra virgin olive oil
parsley, chopped
juice of half a lemon
salt
pepper

Just mixed everything in and voila!

See my Zwilling J.A. Henckels knife? I love using it as it's very sharp. Kitchen knife accidents are actually more prone to happen to those who are using a dull knife as it tends to slip off whatever it is that you're cutting. So, it's actually a good idea to invest in a set of good knives.

After doing this recipe countless of times, I've learned that parsley actually plays a big role in the overall taste. It adds a certain depth to it.  I've also tried it without the mango, but I prefer having it there. I prefer the salsa cold also. I've only tried hot mango salsa once when we were having our food tasting with Kaye Cunanan. I don't have problems with the taste, I just like it served cold. Either way, it's a refreshing dish to accompany just about anything.