This is Ed’s forte – cooking oatmeal and spreading it with fresh banana fruit and some dried fruits.

On certain days, we also end up eating fresh fruit salad. On this particular salad, there were too many watermelons. I suddenly concluded that I do not want watermelons in my fruit salad since all I could think of while eating the watermelons was that I’m eating water. Our fruit salad consists of mangoes, bananas and the papaya fruit.

I’ve always seen the café across KFC and thought of paying it a visit since I discovered that they also offer free wifi and price of their food is not that expensive. So yesterday, I tried going there to work instead of at KFC. I ended up ordering their pizza of the day which was tomato based. For $2.50 per slice, I got a pizza as big as Sbarro’s slices. However, this particular pizza has a thin crust. It’s toppings included green and red bell peppers and salami. Also ordered their chilled apple juice priced at $1.50.

Since I was still craving for food, I ordered ice cream too! hehehe. Café de la Paix sells a small cup of ice cream for $2.00 (don’t be fooled by the size of the photo on top) The serving size was satisfactory though. However, I didn’t enjoy this particular ice cream. I ordered this one because I like almonds but the thing is I never expected this ice cream would taste like what I tasted. Maybe I’m too ignorant of what a nougat should taste but on this ice cream, there was too much going on in my mouth once it landed on my tongue. It wasn’t creamy. The ice cream  There were too many almonds? and nougat? I dunno what those were. The one distinctive taste that I didn’t like on this ice cream was the taste of a tangerine-y flavor or peppermint? I really don’t know what it was. I hate any orange-y taste in foods like this. I don’t recall ever tasting any orange-y based flavor on an almond nougat Toblerone chocolate bar so I was really lost with the flavor of this one. If only I could leave my laptop, cross the street and hand-over the ice cream to Ed, which was working at KFC at that time, I would have done so. However, with the amount I paid for the ice cream, I figured I should just shut my mind and taste buds and finish eating the ice cream as fast as I could. I still look forward to eating their other flavors though just to make sure that the taste of this ice cream was an isolated case.

Anyway, today, Ed wanted to try out Café de la Paix too since I really had a wonderful time working there with their fast internet speed. Ever since my arrival in Siem Reap last February, I’ve always had crappy internet service till I tried out the wifi connection at Café de la Paix. I boasted to Ed how easy I was able to access multiple sites for my work. This made us go to the café for our late lunch. We ordered 1 slice of their pizza for the day since there was nothing else worthy to order. Unlike yesterday, they only have less food options today.

The pizza was heavenly. It was so yummy that Ed ended ordering another round. We shared both pizzas and I also ordered their chilled guava juice this time.

While we were working, the network at the café suddenly disappeared. We were forced to use the network at the hotel’s lounge which was only giving us 2 bars where we were seated. Since we couldn’t stand the slow speed, we had to ask the staff what’s wrong with their internet connection. From the look on his face, he had no idea what was going on. He said he would check it.

After some time, I saw this two couple, whom I guess were guests in the hotel, who approached the counter and asked if they could have their Cambodian Riel changed into small bills. The crew behind the counter said they have no change. The couple said they were referred to go to the café to have the bills changed. The lady crew at the counter immediately said “We no have” without looking at her cash register. Her tone was condescending and it sounded like she wanted to get rid of those two guests immediately. I have no idea on what Hotel de la Paix’ policy is towards changing bills and I am not questioning that. What I just witnessed was a display of poor customer service. It wouldn’t hurt if the staff of the café offered more information on where the couple could have their Cambodian Reil bill exchanged for smaller bills. Being frontliners in the hotel industry, they should have been more helpful on that instance.

Anyway, upon assessing that the staff I talked with about the internet service didn’t do anything to attend to the wifi issue, I approached him again and all he said was that they are fixing the problem. *sigh* Again, I hope they display good customer service by informing us that they are already working on it.

After a few minutes, Ed had to ask them this time and they just said we can connect to the wifi at the lounge. Arggggghhh. We didn’t want to transfer to the lounge but had no choice. So we ended up finishing our work at Hotel de la Paix’ lounge. At around 6pm, the wifi was gone again. This time, both networks disappeared. So much for bragging about the great internet connection at that hotel! One guest also complained that he can’t connect online. We left the hotel past 7pm and there was still no internet connection. It was a good thing that our work didn’t rely to much on being connected online all the time.

Ed and I debated on where to eat for dinner. We were thinking to go to Lucky Mall’s shabu-shabu eat-all-you can buffet because of their ice cream but I also wanted to try out a different buffet. We ended up going to this restaurant across the Siem Reap river where they serve Cambodian BBQ buffet for only $4.

This was the first time I tried this kind of food trip so we had to ask the staff of the restaurant to tell us how to cook our food. Basically, we were grilling our own food. The act was tiring since we had to wait for our food to get cooked but it was ok. We got amused at how we got to cook our own food.

We left the restaurant smelling like grilled pork and dragging our butts off with a heavy belly due to the countless barbecues we chewed plus some longans that I secretly hid in my bag

Tomorrow, I’m chaining my feet on my bed to avoid another food trip…or maybe not

Meals around Siem Reap cost $2 and up. Some of the servings on those restaurants doesn’t even give you ample servings. And if you want to be on the practical side, it is best to eat at KFC for you will definitely get your money’s worth.

KFC’s 1-pc chicken meal consists of pickled vegies, 1 serving of sunny side up eggs, 1 piece chicken and 1 cup of rice. All of this you get to eat for only $1.50 + 10% tax. I paid $1.65 for this meal. That’s approximately 70 pesos.

The only downside to that is you might smell like chicken if you eat here everyday

The wifi in our guesthouse sucks big time so we decided to hang out at KFC today to work. And because we are cheapskates, before heading to KFC, we cooked our own rice! If we buy a cup of rice outside, it would cost us 1000 Cambodian Riel ($0.25 or ~Php11.00) If we bought one at KFC, it’d cost us $0.30 or ~Php13.00.

We have rice in our guesthouse and we planned to camp out at KFC for the rest of the day. Cooking 2 mugs of rice only cost us 1250 Cambodian Riel ($0.31 or ~Php14.00) and that’s already good for 2 meals for 2 heads. We also brought our own water

Their 1-piece chicken costs $1.00 + 10% tax. Adding the cost of the rice, we only spent $1.18 or ~Php50.00 for today’s lunch! Sans the eggs and pickled vegies, which am not thrilled to eat anyway, we get to save Php20.00 (~$0.47) for today’s lunch!

I just hope we don’t leave this fast  food smelling chicken later after we have our 2nd chicken during dinner time

So while our minds are confused, our tummies need a lot of pampering. Since we have access to our guesthouse’ kitchen and fridge, we have the liberty to choose the food we wanted to eat. Here’s a couple of those foods I have prepared to satisfy my tummy and ego

D-I-Y brunch and dinner ($2.15 good for two meals)

2-sided bacon sandwhich with sunny side up egg and strawberry jam

Since I cooked 4 pieces of bacon, I set aside the other 2 and ate them for dinner. Cooked that when Ed went to Bangkok to meet up with his gf. That day, I never left the guesthouse and didn’t spend a single cent!

$2 meal good for two

On another day, thought I’d cook bacon and eggs again. Ed preferred to have scrambled eggs. I preferred the sunny side up.

Here in Siem Reap, their breakfast meals like this cost around $2-$5 and you can’t customize them. This is the reason why having access to a kitchen would become beneficial when you encounter those days where you’re fed up eating out.

]]> http://doispeaks.com/addicted-to-food/feed/ 0 http://doispeaks.com/ginataang-kalabasa-sitaw-recipe-squash-coconut-milk-long-beans/ http://doispeaks.com/ginataang-kalabasa-sitaw-recipe-squash-coconut-milk-long-beans/#comments Wed, 21 Mar 2012 12:06:11 +0000 doi http://doispeaks.com/?p=6335 An ex-colleague posted a picture of sticky rice (biko) in Facebook. The food was so tempting to the point that I thought I should make one even if I never cooked it before. Then I had to retrace my thoughts as I do not want to waste my money on an experiment that I am not confident I could make. But then something lit up on my head. Light bulb!

I still had left over squash from the previous day’s dish and I was supposed to cook sauteed squash just like the previous day but the sticky rice inspired me to be more creative. After learning how to cook chicken curry, I knew cooking any meal that involved the use of coconut milk was not going to be difficult.

So after battling with my mind and feet, I decided to go to the Old Market here in Siem Reap to buy the ingredients for what I prepared for dinner – Ginataang Kalabasa.

Bisaya 101: Ginataang Kalabasa is Tinunuang Kalabasa in Bisaya. Tinunuan {ti-nu-nu-an} comes from the root word ‘tuno’  which means “gata”

Prior to going to the market, I checked online for the ingredients that I needed to buy. I know I still have onions and 1/4 kilo of squash inside our shared fridge. The websites say I need to have shrimp paste, ginger, tomato, pork, coconut milk and more.

After 30 minutes of searching for my ingredients inside the Old Market, I ended up buying 1 clove of garlic, 1 tomato, 3 long peppers, 1/2 kilo of long beans, 1/2 kilo of squash, 100 grams of baby shrimps, 1 small ginger and a 1/2 kilo of fresh desicated coconut (kinudkod na niyog). The vendor of the long beans added 2 stalks of onion leaves and 3 red chili peppers on my purchase free of charge.

So the crucial process of preparing the dish began. It took me so long to finish peeling the squash since its skin was so wrinkled. I didn’t buy meat too as I figured I’d use bacon meat instead. Also, I had to extract the juice from the coconut milk.

So here are the steps I did to cook my first Ginataang Kalabasa at Sitaw (Squash and Long Beans simmered in Coconut Milk) dish.

1. Sautee garlic, ginger, onion, tomato, onion stalks.
2. Add the shrimps and bacon.
3. Add salt and ground pepper.

4. Continue sauteeing till the shrimp and bacon gets cooked on their own juice.
5. Once the sauteed ingredients are almost dry, add the coconut milk and add the long green chili peppers. Check if there’s flavor in the dish. If none, add more salt to your taste.

6. Lower your heat to cook the meat. Once the meat are tender, add the squash.

7. Once the squash is almost tender, add the long beans. Continue letting it simmer until the squash and long beans are tender.

There you have it! Ginataang Kalabasa at Sitaw! This dish is best served with hot rice.

Am so happy with this experiment. When Ed saw what I cooked, he reacted negatively. He didn’t know that this was what I was going to cook. He thought the dish was going to be soup-based. I thought so too but it didn’t turn out that way. Nonetheless, I was still happy with the outcome. Ed was disappointed and sad because it’s going to be another failed diet for him

P.S.

1) If you can’t find fresh desiccated coconut, you can buy coconut milk in cans.
2) Ed complained the dish tasted like burnt something (lasang naay napaig). I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about till I realized it must be the taste of the smoked bacon so you might want to use real pork meat this time. You can also use [left over hinimay na] fish as an alternative to pork
3) Am not really a professional/expert cook so pardon my use of amateurish words on the instructions on how to cook Ginataang Kalabasa at Sitaw

P.S. I rarely interfere with our kitchen affairs but it doesn’t mean I don’t know my way in there

So for today’s lunch, I saw a bag of fresh ground coconut (“kinudkud nga lubi”) and a whole chiken being defrosted in our kitchen sink. My mom summoned me and told me to prepare the ingredients for the chicken curry. It was my first time to extract juice from the coconut to be used for dish. The last thing I remembered, I was using that coconut’s milk eons ago as hair treatment. ahahaha. So I had to ask my mom for instructions since I was lost.

Extracting the Coconut Milk as per my mom’s instructions:
1. Remove the coconut from the plastic bag and transfer it in a bowl.
2. Add 2 glasses of water
3. Start squeezing the coconut to extract its juice (considering you already washed your hands, k?)
4. When the color of the extract turns to white after a couple of squeezes here and there, you can stop now and strain the milk to get rid of the coconut pulp.
5. Set it aside since this will be your broth for the chicken curry.

It was almost 12noon and my mom tried to ask me to hand her the whole chicken so that she could slice it but I simply denied her request and told her I know how to cut the chicken and that she should just rest or take her lunch (since she’s not gonna eat this dish anyway – she’s allergic to chicken).

So I grabbed the whole chicken and started cutting it in half. We’re not gonna cook all the chicken since we’re only 4 in our household. I placed the other half inside the fridge and started slicing the other half. I was able to slice the chicken into 7 parts. I washed them with water and then added some salt to marinate them. After this, I resumed straining the pulp out of the coconut milk and then crushed 3 cloves of garlic and sliced 1 whole onion. And then I started cooking…

Cooking the Chicken Curry
1. Heated the pan and added oil.
2. Sauteed the garlic and onion until golden brown
3. Dropped the marinated and sliced chicken in the pan
4. Added ground pepper
5. Sauteed them altogether till the outer portion of the chicken gets cooked
6. Just before the sauteed chicken ran out its own juice, pour in the coconut milk
7. Drop 2 pieces of finger chilies (siling espada)
8. Let everything boil
9. When you see it boiling, add curry powder. The amount? enough for you to see the entire broth turn yellowish
10. Let it boil some more till the chicken is cooked and the broth evaporates? hahaha (sorry. no idea what the term is)
11. Just before it rans out of water, turn the stove off and voila! you have your chicken curry!

And here’s my own version of the dish they call Chicken Curry. Mind you, this isn’t spicy since my pop is not allowed to eat spicy foods. But if you want to try cooking this dish, you can modify the steps and perhaps even slit the siling labuyo to release the spice in it.

I was happy that I was able to cook this dish. And to think I thought it was so difficult to cook this! Well, extracting the coconut milk could be tedious but that wasn’t difficult. To me, difficult would be making tocino, chorizo, embutido, kare-kare, dinuguan, laing and rellenong pusit! All of which are my mom’s specialty. Hmmmmm…made me think I need to ask her to teach me how to prepare those dishes too!

Now mentally adding Chicken Curry to the few dishes I know how to cook!