Cooking with Bits and Pieces in the Fridge

Today, August 14, 2010, our lunch is made from the bits and pieces I found in the fridge as I was defrosting it. The freezer is a mine for small quantities of various meats leftover from the past week's purchases. What I do kasi is if I buy say, a kilo of pork or beef or chicken, I don't cook it all at once. I leave some 200g or so para pang gisa or for future use.


And today is the right time for that because I wasn't feeling excited about going to the market and so I had to make do with what I already have. And would you believe that I was able to pull off a decent, even grand, lunch out of it?!!


For the kids, I made some chicken nuggets or (fun shots, if you will). I cut up into cubes half a chicken breast that's been around in the freezer for a week now; breaded it with flour, egg and milk and voila! Chicken Nuggets. One down.

Next, I found around 250g of beef cutlets--leftover from the batch which I made into Nilaga last night; 2 pcs pork chops that was supposedly Jeiel's baon the other day but their class schedule was cut to half day due to a teachers' meeting; around 4 pcs chicken liver leftover when I made Sotanghon Guisado last Saturday for ate Cielo's Birthday. Easily, I could make Mechado out of that, I figured. And so I did! With some items from the pantry like tomato sauce, pickle relish and soy sauce, I was able to turn what would have been prito-bound items into a fabulous dish. Absolutely amazing (if I may borrow Kylie Kwong's expressioin)!




Mechado

500grams Beef Cubes
1 pack 250g tomato sauce
1/4 cup pickle relish
1 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 big onion
3 cloves garlic
2 small bay leaf
1'4 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup water
1 medium size red bell pepper
1 medium size potato, cubed into quarters and fried.
salt and pepper

Marinade beef cutlets in soy sauce, oyster sauce and pepper. Saute tomato paste, onion and garlic in hot oil. Add the beef and tomato sauce and saute a little longer for a bout 10 minutes. Add pickles, bay leaf, and beef stock or water. (At this point, I pressure cook it).

Once the meat is tender, add the bell pepper and fried potato cubes. Simmer for 5 minutes and it's done!

Note: Pressure cooking not only tenderizes the beef easier, it also gives a consistency to the sauce that you won't get from just simmering.


And for some soup, leftover from last night's dinner which was Nilagang Baka! Ayos!