Appetizer: crispy chicken croquettes

I learned to love croquettes from eating them in restaurants and parties. I still have to make them at home. The crab croquettes in Italianni's is really tasty. Here's another croquette dish I sampled from the cooking class of Mandarin Oriental Executive Chef Rene Ottlik at The Maya Kitchen. He demonstrated a number of tapas dishes and this was one of them. Looks easy to make too!

 Ingredients:

 400 grams chicken, boiled and finely shredded
200 ml olive oil
100 grams MAYA All-Purpose Flour
300 ml milk
30 grams garlic roasted
30 grams shallots roasted
salt, pepper, nutmeg
50 grams parsley, finely chopped
additional MAYA All-Purpose Flour
1 egg, beaten
400 grams bread crumbs
oil for deep frying

 Procedure:

Boil the chicken well in advance and keep the cooking liquid. Heat up in a pot the olive oil and stir in the flour, sauté for a while. Add slowly the milk and keep whisking until mixture is thick. Keep simmering for 20-30 minutes while continuously stirring. Add the shredded chicken, roasted garlic, roasted shallots and season with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Simmer for 10 minutes and add the parsley. Pour on a tray and place into fridge for several hours or overnight. Cut rectangular and roll to cylindrical shape. Roll in flour, egg and bread crumbs. Chill for an hour and deep fry golden crispy and serve on the side with garlic alioli dip. To make garlic alioli: Combine chicken stock, garlic, lemon juice and olive oil.

Lasang Pinoy 17: Squash Yema

squash yema.

Thanks to Angelo of Eat Matters who is hosting this month's Lasang Pinoy, a Filipino food blogging event with focus on any egg-based recipe, I had to rummage through my best culinary memory for a dish that can truly be considered Egg's a Deal!

The result is this simple but great-tasting yema; not just any yema, mind you, but a squash or pumpkin yema that my veggie-hating kiddos relished with gusto. Kids always love sweets and so entranced were they with the taste that they forgot it's something they wouldn't eat otherwise if the squash was sauteed with other vegetables or simmered in coconut milk.
A yema is a Filipino round-shaped candy of Spanish origin which counts among its main ingredients egg yolk and condensed milk. The mention of yema evokes memories of my childhood since I always happily munched on this sweet treat and/or cooked this in home economics class.

The recipe for the candy I adapted from "Filipino Cuisine," my favorite local cookbook published by Centro Escolar University.

How to prepare -
toast 1/2 cup pinipigchop three tablespoons of jackfruit or langkaopen one can of condensed milktake out two tablespoons of butter or margarine from the refrigeratorboil and mash one cup of squash, chopped into piecesprepare six pieces egg yolks by using egg separatorchop two tablespoons peanuts or cashew nutstake out three-fourth cup sugar

For the final countdown -

"Mix pinipig and langka in condensed milk. Set aside.
In another bowl, combine butter, squash, egg yolks and cashew nuts. Add to the pinipig mixture and mix thoroughly. Transfer to a heavy saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring constantly. When thick enough to hold its shape, remove from heat. Cool mixture. Form 1/2 tablespoon mixture into balls and roll in sugar. Wrap each in cellophane."

Cook's Notes:
1. Toast the pinipig enough only so as not to burn.
2. The reason why I shy away from buying squash and thereby cooking pinakbet is that it's so difficult to chop. Save kitchen time by buying chopped squash pieces in the market, but make sure it's freshly prepared.
3. The nuts are optional. I omitted them from my recipe and it was still able to hold its own. You can add more pinipig and more squash though.
4. Make the candy more attractive to kids by buying multi-colored wrapper. Enjoy:)