Squid Black Soup
Topic: Soup
Black soup, sounds weird and yucky but taste yummy!
Many people don’t include the black ink sac of the squid when they cooked it, even me, I only include it when I miss my Mother’s way of cooking it, she always include the black ink sac, the good taste hide behind those blacks, she said. And I knew she was always right. I only cooked this recipe once in a blue moon because I don’t like those black liquid sticking on my fingers, lol!

Here’s the one I cooked the other day:

Ingredients:
350 grams squids (big variety), cleaned and sliced thinly, reserve the black ink sac
3 cups water
1 medium onion, sliced
1 medium ripe tomato, sliced
1 tbsp. grated ginger
2 cloves garlic, crushed
10 peppercorns
1 bay leaf
1 tsp. fish sauce
1 long green pepper (optional)
2 tbsp. cooking oil
Green onions, chopped
Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions:
1. Heat oil in a pan. Saute garlic and onions, add tomatoes and ginger and stir well.
2. Add in the squid, peppercorns, bay leaf and fish sauce. Then add water , the black ink sac and green pepper. Simmer for 10 minutes.
3. Garnish with chopped green onions. Serve hot.

Eggplant Omelet
Topic: Vegetables
To make and Eggplant Omelet or Tortang Talong in Filipino, the eggplant must be pre-cooked either broiled, steamed, boiled or grilled. The last one is my favorite method. Basically, the batter is made of egg and flour, you can also add ground meat or tuna flakes to taste even better. But me, whenever I cooked this recipe, I didn't use flour because I don't want my vegetable to taste like pancakes! hehe...

Here's the simpliest recipe of eggplant omelet,

Ingredients:
3 medium size eggplant (long variety), pre-cooked
2 eggs, beaten
1 small size tomato, chopped
1 small size onions, chopped
1 tsp. fish sauce
1/4 tsp. ginger powder
1/2 tsp. black pepper
1 long green pepper, chopped
1/3 cup of cooking oil
salt to taste

Directions:
1. Peel off the skins of the eggplant, leaving the stems on. Flatten the bodies.
2. In a bowl, combine all the ingredients except the eggplants and oil. Blend together until smooth.
3. Heat the oil in a skillet until its starts to smoke. Hold the eggplant in its stem and dip it in the batter. Fry it in the hot oil until golden, turn once to cook the other side. Cook only 1 eggplant at a time to have perfect omelet.

Vegetable Chopsuey
Topic: Vegetables
My husband always likes to eat mix vegetables, he said he likes to eat different tastes in one dish. That's why when I cooked vegetables, I always add many ingredients. Sometimes I combined all the vegetables in our fridge and stir-fried it, and you know what? he still likes it.
Chopsuey became one of our favorit vegetable recipe in the house because it's very easy to find its ingredients here in Kuwait. Here's one:

Ingredients:
2/3 cup shrimp, peeled leaving the tails on
2/3 cup squid, sliced
1 medium carrot, sliced
50 g snow peas / baguio beans
1 small head of cauliflower, cut into florets
100 g baby corn, cut into halves
2/3 cup button mushrooms, quartered
1 large green bell pepper, sliced
1 large onion, sliced
4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 cup chicken broth
3 tbsp. oyster sauce
1 tsp. sugar
1 tbsp. cornstarch
2 tbsp. cold water
1 tsp. black pepper
1 tbsp. fish sauce
2 tbsp. cooking oil
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
1. Heat oil in a pan. Stir fry the carrots, cauliflower and peas/beans. Set aside.
2. Saute garlic and onion in the remaining oil. Add shrimps and squid. Add in the fish sauce, broth and sugar. Let it boil and simmer for 2 minutes, then add the mushrooms and baby corn. Simmer for another 2 minutes.
3. Stir in the previously stir-fried vegetables. Add the bell pepper.
4. Blend the cornstarch to the cold water and mix with the oyster sauce.
5. Pour in the corntarch mixture to the vegetables and stir, cook for 2 minutes.
6. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve hot.

Rice with Vegetables
Topic: Rice
Looks like almost the same with fried rice but it taste deliciously different!
We always have plain rice leftovers during lunch time, Donna cooked too much rice, that's why I always make a way to cook it in some other way in the evening. By the way, I only cooked dinner meals because I have no time to cook our lunch, our office time off is 3:30 pm and we took our lunch at home,we only ate snacks here in the office, hence Donna is the one in-charge in cooking our lunch. So, I always got a phone call from her daily asking me what she will cook because she don't know how to cook the menus I labeled on the chickens,seafoods and vegetables in the fridge. "What I knew here are only the fried fish, chicken adobo, grilled fish, paksiw and chicken tenola", that was her common message to me. Ooh, it seems that I talked a lot already, okay here's the recipe anyway:

Ingredients:
4 cups cooked rice
1 medium carrot, grated
10 pcs. baguio beans, thinly slice
3 pcs. dried mushrooms, soaked in water then sliced thinly
1 medium onion, sliced
1/4 tsp. ginger powder
1/4 tsp. black pepper powder
1 tbsp. soy sauce
butter cooking spray

Directions:
1. Heat the the non-stick frying pan in a medium-heat and spray the butter on the surface.
2. Add in the onions, carrots. mushrooms and beans. Add soy sauce and stir for 2 minutes.
3. Add rice stirring constantly to blend well with the vegetables.
4. Add the ginger, pepper and salt. Stir, cook for 5 minutes.
5. Remove from heat and spray the rice with butter again. Mix well.

Serve hot.

Shrimp Suman
Topic: Shrimps
I called this recipe shrimp suman because traditionally it is being wrap with banana leaves like suman but since it's very hard to find banana leaves here in Kuwait,I wrapped it with aluminum foil and it tasted almost the same.

Ingredients:
1 cup shrimp, ground or mashed
1 cup dessicated coconut ( freshly grated coconut taste better)
1 tbsp. tomato paste
1/4 tsp. garlic powder
1 small tomato, finely chopped
1/4 tsp. ginger powder
1/4 cup shrimp broth
1 small size onions, minced
1 stalk of green onions, chopped
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
1. Mix all the ingredients together.
2. Scoop 1 tbsp. out of the mixture and flat it in a 7x7 inches aluminum foil, the flattened batter should be around 2x3 inches size. Wrap carefully. Repeat this procedure until all the batter are done.
3. Bake in a preheated 250o oven for 15 minutes.

Usually yields 10 pcs.