Cafe Maurice

On our quest to start eating healthier, I have been collecting some meals that have natural ingredients and as little preservatives as possible. One of them is homemade chicken nuggets. Being mom to schooling children, it is always challenging coming up with new food for them to take to school lunches. (and easy to prepare in the mornings too). It’s as challenging as keeping the pool supply in the community gym pool clean for a week!

I found this recipe online and can’t wait to try it:

Homemade chicken nuggets-Tried these and not only are they some of the best chicken nuggets i’ve had, they cost less than a bag of processed nuggets, and I once cooked up and popped in the freezer I have the same ease as store bought nuggets-very excited about this!! Plus there is a great honey mustard dip at the bottom of the recipe .

This book has been a lifesaver for me!

My husband has been complaining that we have not had any “new” food to try for a couple of weeks now. It is true. I have had our help cook the same meals every week. Knowing how little I know about cooking, I call it Divine Intervention when I saw this book at an office supply store (at all places!). We were buying my corkboard and a few office supplies when I glanced upon the magazine rack while falling in line at the cashier to pay. There were a variety of magazines, from health magazines featuring the latest testosterone booster products to gossip magazines and parenting magazines. This was in the top shelf and I knew I had to get it!

What I look about this book is the ingredients are familiar and can be bought at a local market. The recipes are tested Pinoy favorites too!

I got curious how to make this dish when I found out this was a healthy dish made of veggies!

The ingredients are easy to find too. Maybe I can give this a try one of these days:
Ingredients:

2 medium zucchini
1 (1.5 lb) bag of spinach
1 large onion
1 large or 2 small carrots
Sesame oil to taste
Olive oil for stir-frying
Sea salt to taste
2 cups of rice, cooked
1 egg for each person
Go-chu-jang (Korean hot chili paste)

Special Equipment Required:

Large steamer
Medium-sized hand-held strainer
Metal tongs
Mandoline (If you don’t have a mandoline you can just do a lot of chopping with a knife.)

You can read all the instructions here.

Instead of going over the quotes I have with me and decide on the cheapest car insurance for our car, I searched for turbo chicken recipes I can try.

The following is a quick, very common and no-fail way of preparing Turbo Chicken here in the Philippines, using ingredients and spices that are most readily available (read: household staples in this part of the world).

Filipino-style Turbo Chicken

You will need:
* Calamansi (calamondin), 2 pieces, squeezed and seeded
* Toyo (soy sauce), about a tablespoonful will do
* Salt and pepper to taste
* Garlic, a couple of cloves to a full head, depending on your preference
* Sugar (optional)
* a medium-sized raw chicken, thawed
Procedure:

1. Mix all the ingredients (except the chicken) into a marinade. Give the chicken a good rubdown with it, taking care to massage it inside and out. If you prefer a stronger flavor, you can let the chicken soak in the marinade for an hour but this is really not necessary. The strong taste of the soy sauce will already provide it with enough flavor.
2. Place a small baking pan at the bottom of the oven, this will be used to catch the drippings (don’t throw this after the chicken is cooked! You can use it to make gravy, or see the rest of my explanation below). Place the wire rack that comes with the Turbo above the pan and put the chicken on top of it.
3. Cover your turbo broiler. Set the temperature to 180 degrees celsius (or 375 degrees fahrenheit) and set the timer to go off after 45 minutes. The light inside will go on.
4. Keep checking the chicken (through the see-through glass) every 15 minutes or so. If you think it looks dry, get a pastry brush and baste the chicken with some of the drippings.
5. It should be nicely crisp and golden brown after 40 minutes. You can turn it over if you want the underside to be crispy too. Just be careful not to leave it under the broiler for too long.

How to serve Turbo Chicken, Filipino-style
Turbo chicken is usually cut up into pieces, like in the above photo, and served with steamed rice. It’s also commonly served along with the drippings which we Filipinos like to put over our rice (This practice is not very healthy but it’s really delicious. Just be careful not to overdo it.)

Chicken Inasal

Chicken Inasal is a very flavorful chicken dish that comes from Bacolod City, the capital of Negros Occidental which is a province in Southern Philippines. Unlike the usual Filipino-style "barbecue" or grilled chicken that only uses soy sauce, this dish uses a variety of native ingredients and seasonings for its marinade and basting sauce, giving it a delicious spicy-salty, slightly tangy flavor. Inasal is traditionally cooked over a hot charcoal grill and this method is said to enhance the flavor of the marinade, making the dish tastier. This dish is also known for its yellowish color, achieved through the use of achuete (annatto seed oil).
Chicken inasal has since become popular all over the country including the Philippines’ capital, Metro Manila with many restaurants now serving their own version of the dish. It is commonly served in halves or quarters, still on their wooden skewers and lying on top of a banana leaf. Inasal is usually paired with fried garlic rice and a dip of soy sauce, vinegar, calamansi and if you’re brave, some crushed small red chili peppers.
Authentic inasal preparation is quite fussy but who says you can’t enjoy this delicious dish even when you don’t have the luxury of time? Yes, now you can do it yourself in the comforts of your home. the ubiquitous, all-purpose Turbo Oven has come to the rescue once more.
Turbo Chicken Inasal Recipe
Adapted from the authentic chicken inasal recipe
Serves: 3-6 people
You will need:
1 whole chicken
A marinade made of
1 head garlic, macerated
2 tbsps. chopped ginger
1 tbsp. brown sugar
1/3 cup sinamak (native coconut vinegar)
10 pieces calamansi, juice extracted
3 stalks tanglad (lemon grass), juliennes
salt and coarsely ground pepper
Basting Sauce
1/2 cup Star Margarine
1/4 cup achuete (annatto seeds) oil
salt and pepper
large bamboo skewers
charcoal for grilling

Procedure:
1. Mix together garlic, ginger, sinamak vinegar, a small amount of sugar, lemon grass, calamansi juice, salt, and pepper in a large bowl.
2. Rub the chicken with the mixture. (You can choose to leave the chicken whole or cut it up into pieces.)
3. Place chicken in the chiller and let it sit. After 30 minutes, turn the meat and then let it sit for another 30 minutes. It is not ideal to marinate the meat overnight since the acid of the vinegar will completely break down the enzymes of the meat.
4. Meanwhile heat the margarine and annatto seeds in a saucepan over low fire. Continue stirring for a few minutes until the margarine melts and the annatto seeds are well infused and have developed a deep orange color. Turn off the heat and add a small amount of salt and pepper to taste.
5. When the chicken is done marinating, put it on a wire rack and place it inside the turbo oven. Place a pan under the wire rack to catch the drippings.
6. Set the temperature to 180 degrees celsius (375 degrees fahrenheit) and set the timer to 45 minutes.
7. Baste the chicken with leftover marinade every 15 minutes, turning it over every now and then for an even roast. (Don’t worry you can lift the turbo’s cover every now and then and it will continue cooking.)
Serve your Turbo Chicken Inasal hot together with garlic fried rice and sinamak or soy sauce with calamansi and siling labuyo (small red, very hot chili peppers).

To help me eat healthier, we bought a stove top grill and a turbo broiler. A turbo broiler is a popular appliance in the Philippines. It helps you cook meat and chicken (even fish) without the oil. You can think of it as a cross between oven baking and grilling. This way, I will not eat too much food with oil and would not need hoodia gordonii pills to help me lose weight.

A Turbo Oven is really quite simple to operate but if you want to make sure you knew how to use it properly first, have a look at the following video and see how easy it is to have a beautifully-roasted chicken in just 40-45 minutes!

A Turbo Oven / Cooker / Broiler is a table top oven that uses convection heat and therefore cooks 50% faster than regular ovens so if you’re adapting a regular oven recipe, remember to cut cooking time in half and lower the temperature of the turbo by about 50 degrees fahrenheit. Don’t worry because there will be some examples later in the page.

You can also prepare healthy and delicious dishes with it. There is no need to rub meat with oil or butter for a tender and juicy roast because the circulating hot air perfectly browns and sears the outside of the meat, sealing in the juices to preserve flavor and moisture. You can opt to let the fat drip onto a baking pan, placed under the wire rack in the oven, for a flavorful, delicious and satisfying meal minus the guilt.

• It’s versatile. A turbo oven can bake, steam, broil, grill, roast, and even thaw frozen food.
• It’s very easy to use. Just throw all your ingredients together in a baking pan (or a few sheets of foil), place it on the wire rack that comes with the oven, cover, switch it on, set the temperature and timer and voila! You can go on doing other things while the oven cooks your food.
• It lets you save on time. Because it uses convection heat, it’s hotter and therefore cooks up to 50% faster than regular ovens so you can make more in a lot less time. It also requires no preheating so you can just go ahead, put your food in and relax.
• It lets you save on space. Unlike oven ranges, turbo ovens are portable and can easily fit on a kitchen counter or table top. If you’re short on space, getting one would be a practical solution as you can cook practically anything with it.
• It lets you save money. Turbo ovens are a practical and economic choice for your kitchen, requiring 80% less electricity than a conventional oven. Like I mentioned above, they can cook anything and they cost a fraction of what an oven range does. If you have a small family and don’t do heavy-duty cooking and baking, a turbo is definitely a smart choice.
• It lets you cook healthy. Preparing food in a turbo, like chicken for example, doesn’t require extra fats or oils to guarantee that you’ll always end up with crispy, golden-brown skin and flavorful, juicy meat. The circulating hot air perfectly browns & sears the outside of meat and seals juices inside to preserve flavor and moisture.
• It’s not hazardous to your health. Because the turbo oven doesn’t use the harsh radiant elements of a microwave or a conventional oven, heating is more gentle and more thorough and the flavor of your food is kept intact. Notice that when you cook with a microwave, heating is uneven – hot outside but cold in spots?
• It keeps your kitchen clean and fresh. It’s smokeless, odorless and won’t heat up your kitchen.
• It’s easy to clean up. I usually place the food on a baking pan or on a wire rack (with a baking pan beneath for catching drippings) so my food doesn’t actually touch the inside of the oven. After using, I just take the food out and then wipe the vessel clean with paper towels. That’s it!