Icebreaker.

Hi! By now, you must have gone through a lot of food blogs and recipe sites (or not). So, what makes diy-eats different from those? Nothing much really. It's still about food. The only thing is, there's nothing in here that's hard to make or expensive to buy, so think of this as a poor man's gourmet wonderblog of sorts. And of course, everything's delicious.

If you're here, you most likely know me already somewhere or have stumbled upon my shameless self-promoting links. (I googled my page and it's not in there. Ha!)
Okay, let's skip all the small talk and get down to business.

Today was our culinary lab class and we were required to experiment on a main dish. We could take recipes off a cookbook or off the net but there's gotta be our very own personal twist to it. For this one, I took all joyous liberty in creating my own recipe, diy stylee. :)

I ran in 30 minutes late because I overslept. When I got to the lab, everyone was busy chopping away. I panicked a little bit.

So here is what I made.

Hickory Pork with Mushroom and Green Bean Gravy

Ingredients for Hickory Pork:

1/2 kilo Pork, cut in bite sized pieces
3 tbsp Soy sauce
2 tbsp Oyster sauce
2 tbsp Calamansi juice, freshly squeezed
1 tbsp Black pepper powder
1 tbsp Brown sugar
3 tbsp Hickory smoke bbq powder seasoning
1 tbsp Cooking oil

Ingredients for Mushroom and Green Bean Gravy:

1 cup Button mushroom, pieces and stems
1 cup Broth of the canned mushroom
4 tbsp Cream of mushroom powder
1 cup Green beans, chopped slanted
1 Red bell pepper, cut into strips
1 tbsp Butter
1 clove (or more) Garlic, minced
1 (or more) Onion, minced

So first you mix all the seasonings for the pork (except for the cooking oil) in a bowl and marinate the pork in it for as long as you like (the longer the better). Heat the cooking oil in a pan and sautee the marinated pork in high heat for 3 minutes. Lower the heat and let simmer for 15 minutes or until the pork gets pot-sticky like this:

Set it aside.

In another pan, saute garlic and onions in butter. Add in the green beans and cook it for about 3 minutes before adding the strained mushrooms.

Let sizzle for another 3 minutes then pour half a cup of the mushroom broth. Use the remaining broth to dissolve the cream of mushroom powder until there aren't any lumps visible.

Pour in the mixture when the stuff in the pan simmers stirring constantly. If it's too thick add some water, if too watery, add a tablespoon of mushroom powder. You can add black pepper and some salt depending on your taste.

My tip is, always taste test as you cook. Taste that piece of vegetable if it's still crunchy, taste that meat if it's tender enough, taste that sauce if it's savory enough. It's the only way you'd get to hone your seasoning skills. :)

I don't adhere much to exact measurements when it comes to seasoning my cooking. I've noticed in following recipes, I always end up adding more of the seasonings and spices out of the list. We all have different tastes and preferences on how our food should turn out. I especially am partial to salty-sweet-tangy flavors and just the right amount of spicy.

So, place the pork on your plate and pour in a ladle of that gravy on top.
It pretty much would look like this:

You can also place it as side dish or on top of the rice, whichever you prefer.

I like the way the smoky flavor of the hickory pork fought with the buttery melt-in-your mouth flavor of the mushroom and green bean gravy in my tongue. It's an explosion of two different flavors in my mouth. Very appetizing. :)

Great for cool evening dinners.
Highly recommended by my lab professor.
She gave me a perfect score for the taste so I'm safe for the pre-finals. *phew*


Til the next eats!
♥Chef Shak