on the menu

Last year I was busy on Monday and Wednesday evenings learning French. Now that those classes are done, the hubby is occupied on those evenings. So, we're back to Friday evenings as our time together night. In the meantime, I'm busting open the America's Test Kitchen cookbook and hoping to put something on the menu every other week or so.

I like cooking deserts (I would love to learn how to bake, but will stick with the mini-bread maker for now), and can do a decent vegetable stir fry with oyster sauce. Once a year we usually try to learn a new Filipino dish which have included attempts at pancit, lumpia, paella.

The hubby tends to cook the Filipino dishes as he grew up learning the palate of a proper peanut butter balance in karekare. I know how to cook Ninong Abe's Filipino desert with the flan topping and my aunt's mochiko and a friend's beloved leche flan recipe. I still have to learn my grandmother's biko. I once assisted Ninong Abe in a pot of lechon paksiw that lacked the key ingredient of lechon sauce which could be found no where in the house and I began to understand the art of creating that subtle balance of sour and sweet.

On today's menu:

Roasted Cornish Game Hens
Roasted baby yellow potatoes
Sauteed asparagus

On Wednesday (dessert):
Apple Pie (still not up to actually learning to make the pie dough, so I just use the store bought roll out kind)
homemade whipped cream

In regards to the clean up afterwards, baking soda paste with water does create a great solvent for degreasing an oven. Ok, so it will take more time to get to the subsequent layers of oil and blackened grease but it was nice to not feel woozy from inhaling stuff in a confined space. The only odors I want coming out of the kitchen are yummy delicious ones.