My parents have been busy these past few weeks because they went for a long trip into our provincial town over some particular errands. They just told me to order some delish vegetable soup and foods from the eatery nearby, but this evening, I never expected that the eatery would close. Eager to eat something delish and not to just order something from fast food chains, I quickly ran into my refrigerator, looked for decent ingredients to experiment with, and pretended that I could think of something as delicious as my mother would cook. Yeah, such an ambitious teenager I am.
Well, I think I did well feeding myself, lol.
(1) dessert (left): sweetened leftover bread// (2) main dish (right): chicken on a tomato bed with spicy and milky sauce
In fact, it wasn't as disastrous as I expected it to be, but for everyone's safety, I wanted to say that I am not fully suggesting what I cook here to be prepared in your houses. It's dish of mine that could have more rooms of improvements.
Anyway, without further ado, here's the process!
#1: Sweetened Leftover Bread
Sweetened leftover bread is actually inspired of Filipino 'minatamis' cooking culture and caramel bread popcorn, but I failed to make it crispier like a popcorn. Luckily, the minatamis vibe of it dominated more to save its taste from being a trash.
Trivia: 'minatamis' is a a Filipino dessert made with a certain fruit (usually, saba banana) cooked in a sweet syrup made with muscovado sugar and water. This is usually done for the purpose of preserving the fruit.
Ingredients
There's nothing really special for this dessert's ingredients.
Leftover bread, brown sugar (5 spoons), powdered milk solution (1/5 of a glass), and oil (1 spoon) are all you need. There are, however, some instances that I disrupted the planned proportion because of my tansya-tansya (meaning: a gut feeling of what seems lacking and how much of an ingredient there should be).
Mini-Tutorial
I sliced the leftover pieces of bread into 'sheets' that are as thin as they could possibly get, but in the process, I had to consider the fragility of the bread without breaking them into smaller chunks accidentally, thus making me slower. When I managed to gently finish slicing, I placed the slices into my heating utensil, heated their bottom until it got crispy, and flipped them to do the same for the other side.
While waiting for the bread to be all ready, I started preparing the sweet syrup through adding, stirring, and heating the brown sugar, oil, and powdered milk solution altogether. These ingredients would eventually become more of a milky, sugary solution by taste.
I put the crispy slices and the solution together in a flat surface and waited for five minutes to let the bread absorb the syrup. After that, I separated the soaked bread to heat it again until it was sufficiently way drier and crispier for consumption. I had to admit that I could have avoided this extra step if I only did make the solution more viscous, so it could just solidify on the bread instead.
The finished product:
#2: Chicken on a Tomato bed with Spicy and Milky sauce
Chicken on a Tomato bed with Spicy and Milky sauce, is a pretentious gourmet dish of mine that randomly came up after watching the youtuber Akidearest's gourmet challenges. This is not associated with any gourmet ideals from high-class economy that you could be well familiar of. I just tried to mock what seemed a gourmet dish would look like to me, but I didn't expect this experimental dish would come closer to being 'edible'.
In this dish, I tried to find a combo line between milk, Gochujang paste, Jinhan noodle powder, and Gochugaru powder and added a bed of peppered tomato under the chicken meat for this. Plus, the rice has some extra add-on's in it. Here's how:
Ingredients
Chicken meat, leftover rice, and tomato are basically the very main solid ingredients in this meal.
Meanwhile, powdered milk solution, pepper powder, salt, Jinhan noodle powder, Gochujang paste, and Gochugaru powder are the main taste key players.
Mini-Tutorial
1.) Rice
The very first thing that crossed my mind for this meal was to start with the rice.
I poured 1/5 glass of milk into the leftover rice, which is enough not to oversaturate the amount of solid I had; and added two pinches of salt. Using a cup, I molded the mixture into this cylinder shape, keeping it together and looking more organized.
2.) Sauce
Later on, I proceeded with the making of the sauce. I mixed a cup and a half of powdered milk solution, a spoon of Gochujang paste, half a spoon of Gochugaru powder, half a spoon of Jinhan noodle powder (or add more if the amount doesn't suit your taste buds), three pinches of salt, and three pinches of pepper. This would eventually lead to a white solution dotted with red powder. If I could have mixed it better, the solution would turn redder due to the Gochujang paste submerged in the solution.
3.) Peppered Tomato Bed
While frying, I had to assemble the bed of tomato by simply slicing the tomato into flat 'sheets', adding salt and pepper into it, and putting it as a little 'podium' near the rice. Later, the chicken would be placed into it.
4.) Frying the Chicken
The sauce would not be heated yet because the chicken meat had to be fried first. Put some oil and garlic into the heating utensil to free that aroma and to add more taste into the chicken.
5.) Heading to the End
When the chicken turned to be sufficiently fried, I put the sauce along with it and heated them together until the Gochugaru powder seemed to be dissolved completely.
Upon the completion of heating, the chicken meat would be removed and placed on the top of peppered tomato bed. Using the spoon, I smudged the sauce into the plate following a curved motion, then the rest of sauce was poured into the chicken meat and tomatoes.
The finished product:
End!
This meal satisfied my craving that night of being hungry and having no parents to look for. I admit, however, that the meal could have turned better if did more research and had more planned proportions for the ingredients.
