Homemade Pastrami Recipe

I just recently watched a reality cook off battle of the recipes where the host travels to search for dishes that defined a particular place and created longlasting culinary rivalries and then she organizes a blind taste test to settle the food war and to see who is the best. And the episode that I came across is the battle of the pastrami. 

OMG we love pastrami and other deli meat, so while watching the show, my mind travels a thousand times that my fingers need to catch up to search how on earth can I make these pastrami! Good thing technology is at its best now a days so while watching the show on tv, I am also doing a research on my tablet. So I look far and wide lol and all I can see is the meat should be cured first which will take a fair amount of time. Well, for all the virgonian out there, we know for sure that we won't be able to wait that long if we want something. LOL so I read and read and read different blogs and recipes. But I'm still not convince to cure my own meat, not that I'm not up for it but I just want a quick result. 

The next day we went for a grocery shopping and the silversides are on sale! hahaha and that very moment, my light bulb just lit up! You bet I couldn't wait to go home and start my pastrami adventure!

So here we go, I turned the plain old school silverside into something that is more exciting, flavorful and definitely taste delicious pastrami that once you've tried it, you won't buy the ones in the store.

Life is so short and I know good things happens to those who wait LOL sometimes it's hard to wait for too long when you crave for something. We don't need to cure the meat when we can use something else.

Ingredients

Silverside

Brown sugar

Sweet basil

Smoked paprika

Garlic

Black pepper

Ground coriander seeds

Procedure

Make the dry marinade. 

For 1 kg of silverside, the following rub measurement is enough.

Mix: 4 tablespoon of brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon sweet basil, smoke paprika, black pepper

1 teaspoon of garlic and ground coriander seeds

Set aside 

Wash you silverside a couple of times and pat dry

Most of the silverside are so chunky 

so you might want to cut it in half so that the flavor will infuse the meat

Poke the meat both sides with your knife 

Take a spoonful of the dry marinade mixture 

and rub it to the meat

Then press and cover the whole meat with the remaining dry marinade

Put it in a ziplock bag and store it in the fridge overnight

The following morning

 you will notice that the dry marinade has melted, its totally ok

take you meat out of the marinade, save the marinade.

Bake your meat in the lowest temperature of your oven for 3-4 hours

You can baste the meat while cooking with the marinade but not necessary

After cooking let it cool, we like it cold so I put mine in the fridge after cooling.

Slice thinly and enjoy the yumminess with your sandwich 

or if you're like my DH, he ate it on its own hahaha

You might think it's still alot of work but compared to weeks of curing/brining, this is the short cut and definitely worth to try it. Enjoy!!!

 

 

 

 

Free printable 2015 Calendar

Hi guys, I would like to share with you my very own 2015 calendar. 

I will be uploading this every first day of the month. Enjoy!

Barquillos

Barquillos or commonly known for biscuit roll, crispy biscuit roll, crisp biscuit roll, cookie roll, love letter, rolled wafer or egg roll is a type of biscuit snack commonly found in many parts of Asia. It is crunchy and can be easily broken into pieces because it is super thin. 

Awesome to pair it with ice cream, pipe cream inside or just on its own. They are made by pouring thin batter onto a wafer iron (barquillera). Once the wafer is cooked to light brown it is immediately rolled while still hot. It becomes a crisp rolled cookie when it cools. 

Here, I will show you how it's made professionally.  

On the video, you can see the barquillera, the flat iron used to cooked the barquillos, now for us home cooks, we can't have all the gadgets we need to make specific stuff, otherwise our kitchen will be fully packed before we know it but I have found a solution for this. 

We don't need a fancy wafer iron machine nor buy the barquillera as long as we have a sandwich press or a griddle, a skillet and a round baking pan. I know, I've mentioned a lot hahaha if you still don't have anything I've mentioned and still you want to try making this, just look around your kitchen and see what you've got that can imitate how it's cooked.

On this occasion,

 I used a sandwich press 

and the back of my wooden spoon 

to roll the wafers.

 

It looks so easy to make on the video, but believe me, it will take a while to master the rolling part as there's a fine line between rolling it and starting to cool down to crisp. On the video, you see the barquillera, the advantage of that is, it doesn't have any sides so you can freely rolled the wafer with your rolling stick without lifting the wafer from the heat. As soon as the wafer were lifted from the heat even a centimeter away, it will start to crisp because it is so thin.

Don't get disappointed if you break your first barquillos or if you didn't get to rolled it quick and it ended up like a flat wafer as you can see above. Actually it's also good to make it flat like that as it is not messy to eat, but of course the rolled ones are fun to eat. As you can hear its crunchiness as you bite them. For me it brings back my childhood memories.

Great for snacks, 
for your kid's lunchbox, 
to bring to family and 
friends visit. 
It will also make an 
awesome gift 
made with love.

Just giving you all the idea about Barquillos. These are super thin rolled wafer, very delicate, crunchy and it breaks easy. If you are not careful biting them, you will have lots of crumbs on your clothes, hahaha just a friendly reminder especially to those who have OCD about cleanliness and crumbs on the floor. But please no offense meant I too have this madness of the crumbs all over the house. But with a kid and a kid at heart, spreading crumbs will be my last concern when I can see my daughter enjoying what I've made.

You can 

make it look neat 

if you fold 

both sides first 

before rolling 

them

There are many recipes 

found on the internet for 

Barquillos.

All Recipes 

Filipino Recipe

Recipe Corner

I would also like to share to you how it is made in the streets of Shanghai.

Now we've seen how it's made by human hands, below witness how a machine do the action.

DIRTY HARRY - Best ever cocktail

Here's a quick and easy recipe for the best cocktail you will ever taste. Refreshing and Dirty Harry has never been this good! For a girls night, chix flix, family and friends gathering or simply just for yourself especially when you have those pick-me-up moments...

An award winning cocktail recipe of SodaStream NZ. I was so lucky my cocktail recipe won the first prize which is the Limited Edition SodaStream Crystal machine covered with Swarovski Crystals! And what more amazing is there is only two of this mean machine in the whole NZ! 

Dirty Harry

SodaStream Cocktail Recipe

Ingredients

 Ice

a shot of gin or vodka

1x lemon

1 tsp honey

SodaStream Lemonade

Procedure

Fill a highball glass with ice

pour one shot of gin or vodka into the glass

add 1 to 2 pieces of lemon squeezed, include the pulp to make it look dirty

add 1 teaspoon of honey

fill with SodaStream Lemonade

stir and serve

garnish with a round lemon slice if desired.

Just found out that my name was once all over internet wayback when I won this cocktail recipe competition. Amazeball!

Double Chocolate Crinkle Cookies

As promised, these cookies are so easy to make, perfect for snacks, sweet treats for little ones, to finish off your meal or for personalized gift made with love.

You can find the recipe here click here

Notes: Just removed the red food coloring 
and make the unsweetened cocoa to 2/3 cup instead 
and add chocolate chips 1/2 cup to 1 cup

Here's how it will look like

Red Velvet Crinkles Recipe

 

incredibly fudgy and chewy...

 

  easy and delicious

Red Velvet Crinkle

cookies

huge hit for family and friends any time of the year

more or less makes 3 dozen

Ingredients

1 2/3 cups all purpose flour

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

2 tbsp buttermilk

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tbsp red food coloring

Icing sugar 

Procedure

Preheat an oven to 375°F or 190C

Line your baking tray with baking paper

or if it's a non-stick baking tray just spray it with baking spray

Put the icing sugar into a bowl and set aside

Sift together all purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda, 

cocoa powder and salt, set aside

Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy

  Add the eggs one at a time

Then beat in the buttermilk, vanilla and red food coloring

Turn off your mixer and add the flour mixture

Beat on low speed just until blended

Cover your mixing bowl with plastic 

and refrigerate for an hour or until firm

With clean hands, form dough into balls and roll in icing sugar

I find it more easy if you can use an ice cream scooper scooping the dough 

or you can use your 1 tbsp measuring spoon so you can get an exact size 

and they will bake evenly at the same time

Line dough balls into your baking tray an inch or two apart from each other

Bake until cookies are puffed and cracked on top

- about 10 minutes- 

but this will depend on your oven

 so I recommend that you should keep an eye on the first batch

you can use a skewer to test if the cookies are already cooked

when the skewer comes out clean when you poke them

cookies will be soft 

so leave them on the baking tray for a while 

(but not for too long as the baking tray is still hot and the cookies will continue to cook

over cooking will affect the fudgyness, chewyness of the cookies)

before transfering them to the cooling rack

Note: If you don't have buttermilk 

you can make it easily by adding 1 tablespoon of white vinegar or lemon juice

into 1 cup of milk and let it sit a for 5 minutes. Allowing the milk to curdle.

Here's my daughter helping me make this delicious cookies. A good thing to do to bond with your kids. But be sure you have something to give to them while making these as the dough itself is so irresistable otherwise you won't have anything to bake at all hahaha