26 January 2010

Apple Cobbler and Inasal

I think I've mentioned in this blog before that I'm no domestic goddess :P but I do dabble in cooking from time to time. I usually search food blogs like those of pinoycook, realmomkitchen, and yummy and when I find something that I'd like to try (or have ingredients on hand), I cook it for my family.

Last week, I had several (about 6) red apples in the fridge that are getting all wrinkly. So I googled for a recipe that will use overripe apples and I found a basic cobbler recipe. It's quite easy - all you need is sugar, flour and butter (and of course, the fruit).

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Basic Cobbler recipe


The original recipe is for a 9x9 baking dish. I used a small loaf pan and just used 2/3 of the recipe. Here's the original one:

1-1/2 cups flour
1-1/2 cups sugar, plus a little bit more for sprinkling (I didn't need to sprinkle since the apples were quite sweet)
1-1/2 sticks unsalted butter, melted
fresh fruit, peeled and cut into chunks (I used our overripe apples which worked perfectly fine)

Combine flour and sugar. Add the butter, mixing as you go, until the mixture forms a soft dough.

Grease your baking dish then put the fruit in the dish. The recipe suggests that the amount of fruit you place should be about a 2-inch thick layer. Sprinkle with sugar, if needed.

Take about a handful of dough and flatten into disks and lay them on top of the fruit. Use all patties to fully cover the layer of fruit. Bake at 350F for about 45-50mins, until the crust is golden brown.

We found the crust a tad too sweet so next time, I make this, I'll try to lessen the sugar. But all around, the recipe was uber simple and truly foolproof!

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Another one I tried out during the weekend was Yummy's recipe for chicken inasal. I found it in their 2010 planner (an officemate has one and I just copied the recipes that I found interesting). Overall, it was good :) The chicken was malasa so their marinade really works. We just had a hard time cooking it because we couldn't get that perfect barbecue - crispy skin without charring it. Next time, we'll work on the technique :)

Yummy's Chicken Inasal



2/3 cup local white vinegar (I used Datu Puti)
1/2 cup soda (I used Sprite)
1-1/2 tbsps chopped ginger
2 tbsps calamansi juice
2 tbsps brown sugar
1 tbsp onion powder (I used finely minced onion, I forgot to buy onion powder hehe)
1/2 tbsp rock salt
1 tsp ground pepper
1 whole chicken, cut in half (I used 6 leg quarters)

For the annatto oil:
3 tbsps corn oil
1/3 cup annatto seeds (I just used slightly less than 1/4 cup because it was mainly for color)
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp butter
2 tbsps local wine vinegar (I used white vinegar because we didn't have any sukang tuba)

Mix vinegar, soda, ginger, calamansi juice, brown sugar, onion powder, salt and ground pepper in a bowl. Add the chicken pieces; rub the marinade into the chicken. Keep at room temperature for 1 hour before refrigerating. Chill overnight.



To make the annatto oil, warm oil in a saucepan and add the annatto seeds. Stir until the seeds release their color (and aroma). Strain to remove seeds. Return the oil to heat. Add salt, butter, vinegar; simmer for 2 minutes.



While grilling the chicken, baste with the annatto oil.

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The recommended cooking time is at least 20minutes. We took about 40 minutes per batch (we had a small grill which could only accommodate 3 chicken quarters each time so we had to do batch cooking).
I'm looking forward to more experiments in the kitchen. Hopefully, I'll get to blog each time. Ciao!

2 comments:

Heidi said...

I'll try your cobbler recipe but I'll probably use pears instead of apples. More happy cooking to you!

BTW, thanks for the greetings for Adam!

BabyPink said...

Hay! Pagka na lang! Kalami! :)