Stuffed Chicken Breasts with Parmesan-Basil Filling

I bought another cookbook last weekend. 

I have about 4 now.

It may be just 2% of all the books I have which, for someone who cooks often, is quite a shame. 

But that is about to change real soon because I have plans to buy a cookbook in every trip to Booksale.

Something I do religiously.

In the past posts, I made up recipes. 

Now, I've decided to adapt and recreate recipes from really good cookbooks.

I just want to know if I can do it.

Inside: Frank Sinatra's favorite dishes

The home kitchen is turning into the diy-eats test kitchen. 

Test kitchen because it seems that things always don't go right the first time.

I've had my share of rock solid cupcakes, runny sauces, a few burnt meat here and there.

Also, garnishing is not my strongest suit.

The learning process never ends. 

The best part is when I open the oven to unravel something great.

Something picture perfect like in the books. Something that tastes absolutely good.

The bestest part is when my dishes get rave reviews from my family. 

Hard to achieve.

Challenge accepted.

The recipe below is from Cook's Illustrated Magazine, a publication I've come to love because of how good they break complex kitchen dillemas down into very simple instructions, even a newbie would find it easy.

I also love how they give a lot of time, careful planning, and two-page spreads to each recipe. A sign that they care about food and the people who tries to make 'em good.

Stuffed Chicken Breasts with Parmesan-Basil Filling

(Adapted from Cook's Illustrated June 2011)

Note: Buy chicken breasts with skin still attached and intact; otherwise the stuffing will leak out during cooking. 

What you need:

4 chicken breasts, skin-on, bone carefully taken out

salt and pepper

olive oil

For the cheese filling:

1/4 cup parmesan cheese, grated 

1/4 cup cream cheese, softened

1/4 cup fresh basil leaves, minced

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 clove garlic, minced finely like a paste

a dash of salt and pepper

How to:

Pre-heat oven to 230 degrees C (450 degrees F)

1. Pat chicken dry with paper towels and season with salt and pepper to taste. 

2. Using your fingers, gently loosen portion of the skin covering each breast, making a pocket big enough for filling.

3. In a bowl, mix all the ingredients for cheese filling and carefully fill each breast under the skin (about 1 1/2 teaspoons). 

4. Brush chicken with olive oil and place on foil-lined baking sheet. Bake chicken for 30-40 minutes. 

5. Serve with a side of salad or rice. 

For the record, this is the first time I've ever baked chicken. 

It turned out a little dry so add a little more olive oil. 

All in all, it was a totally delectable recipe.

I am a big fan of cheese (!!!) and sure enough the chicken skin together with the salty-tangy taste of cheese had a wild party in my mouth.

I made it this morning and it was meant to be for lunch but I think it's all gone before 10am AKA the fam bam loved it.

I live for small victories.

Till the next eats!

Fried Pork Nuggets and Tofu in Chunky Basil Tomato Sauce

Am I in a roll?

Just making up for lost time!

How are all of you doing?

The weekend is here! I'm just going to stay at home and think about what I should cook tomorrow.

Have I become boring? Been asking myself that a couple of years now.

I have to admit, I've mellowed down a lot.

I guess I ran out of energy and interest in partying. Maybe because I've been doing it hard for a decade.

It's funny because when I was a kid, I've always liked playing indoors. Always been interested in what my Ma or yaya did around the house and stuff.

Then puberty! I only stayed at home to sleep and eat.

Then today! At home on a Friday night, deciding whether I should read the latest book I've hoarded or spend  2 hours watching reality TV shows.

Pretty cool. Everything does come full circle.

Does it mean I'm going to be wild partier when I turn 40?

Simbako! or to those uninitiated: PERISH THE THOUGHT.

Some of my friends say I'd be a great housewife by now.

I say I should just focus on being a great houseperson and I'll be fine.

Who hurt you, Basil?

I'm super happy today because I found a pack of (not so) fresh basil in the fridge.

Turns out my Ma brought (and bought!) the list of stuff I need in the kitchen when she went grocery shopping alone. (I usually am with her every time she goes)

Well, my only concern is that this herb easily bruises which makes it hard to work for garnishing.

Other than that, I love it. I love its odor the most! So fresh and delicious.

I was about to just cook a recipe for a basic basil tomato sauce but I checked the time: 5pm.

Time to make dinner. So here it is!


Fried Pork Nuggets and Tofu in Chunky Basil Tomato Sauce

What you need to make the Fried Pork Nuggets and Tofu:

(very much like making meatballs or the local bola-bola)

500 grams ground pork
2 pieces fresh eggs
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 medium onion, chopped finely
2 cloves garlic, minced
a dash of ground black pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon sugar

2 cups cooking oil (for frying)
1 block tofu, sliced into 1/2 inch thick strips (to be fried)

note: I added tofu to add volume to the dish. You can omit the tofu or you can omit the pork nuggets. Either way, both are perfect for the sauce.

How to:

1. Mix all the ingredients (except tofu and oil) very well. Form rectangular bite-size pieces of the mixture.

2. Heat 2 cups of cooking oil in a pan and fry the nuggets until golden brown. Also, fry the tofu.

3. Place the cooked nuggets and tofu on a paper towel or aluminum strainer and set aside.

Let's make the sauce!

You will need:

2 tablespoons olive oil or vegetable oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 medium onion, chopped
4 pieces of fresh basil leaves, cut into long, thin strips (chiffonade)
4 pieces of small local red tomatoes, chopped
2 tablespoons chopped olives (optional)
1/4 cup red wine (optional)
1/2 cup chicken broth (or 1/2 buillon cube + 1/2 cup water)
1/4 cup tomato sauce or 3 tablespoons tomato paste
2 tablespoons sugar
salt and pepper to taste

How to:

1. Heat olive oil in a pan. Saute garlic, onions, and red tomatoes for 2 minutes. Add a little salt, pepper, and sugar and let caramelize for 2 more minutes.

2. (Optional) Add chopped olives and red wine. Let it boil and reduce to half till tomatoes are rich and thick.

3. Add tomato sauce (or paste), broth, and basil leaves and let sauce simmer for about 5 minutes or until the consistency is silky.

4. Season with salt, pepper, and more sugar as you please.

5. Add the pork nuggets and tofu into the sauce and mix well so the flavor of the sauce will seep into the dish.


This is the type of food you'd wanna come home to.

So full of aroma and bursting with flavor.

If you'd like, you can make the sauce in advance and keep it in the freezer and it's still great to be heated the next day!

Serve it over a hot bowl of rice or pasta. Yum!


Till the next eats!

Oh, Smother!

Welcome to the first post of the year. As much as it seem ridiculous to me, I will start assuming that readers aren't as imaginary as I thought because 1. I still get comments and 2. my online counters are still running. Thank you for dropping (and drooling) by! I feel bad for not updating as much as I would like to. I do hope that you tried using some of the recipes in here and enjoyed it.

I've been busy since the New Year up to the Sinulog festivities, cooking as well as roaming around town, as usual. I'm not a stranger to people dragging me around and stuff. If I get my way all the time, I'd be a hermit by now. I would rather lounge around the house in an oversized shirt lugging a book and coffee mug, heating up some righteous grub but I must accept the sweet fact that I have great friends who love to have me around all the time.

Forever alone does not apply to me even if I am actually resigned to the idea of it and I've actually planned how to live my future out: a spinster with cats and one big busy kitchen like this:

Haha. That looks like a desperate episode of Hoarders.

or maybe like this:

Okay, that's more like it. :3

But enough of all that useless crap. The future is bleak and lucky are we if we get there. Let's focus on the now and let's get down to delicious business!

One look at the Recipe Index of this blog and you'd judge me to be partial to pork. I am all for pork. I'm not a big fan of beef unless for Pochero and burgers. Steak? Not too much. There is something neutral about pork that is hard to replace.

I saw this ad campaign by the US National Pork Board last year and I thought HELL YES, IT IS!

You can cook it light to almost mimic chicken and it can be prepared heavy and artery-bursting. That quality is just pretty hard to beat. There is also one reason why in all meats, pork is closest to my heart and that is:

I am partial to quick-fix meals because like most people, I couldn't wait too long to eat (which explains my affinity for fastfood!). So with these facts, I bring to you a really easy, non-complicated savory pork dish that can be prepped and cooked in less than and hour.

Oishii Omnomnom

I flunked Nippongo.  Big deal. 


Well, I didn’t really fail because it was that hard to tackle, what happened was, I dropped the subject mid-semester because I got too caught up with last year’s holidays (my sister and her family flew in from Europe and I got ‘busy’). Still, it wasn’t an easy class; we also had to write Japanese. 


I remember when I took up Fookien and barely made it. My Lǎoshī told all of us, we shouldn’t worry about failing because she totally understands how impossible it is for us to learn the entire module if we only meet 3 hours a week for 5 months. She spoke the truth.

I thought about how incompetent I am at anything Japanese. I’m not into anime like 90 percent of the population unless if it’s in the general category of cute (i.e.Totoro) and kikay (i.e.Sailor Moon). You hate me by now. I do like Japanese cars, noodles, Meiji chocolate, engrish.com and was crazy about the perfumed stationery collection of my childhood aaaand my most favorite soy sauce in the world is Kikkoman. 

Fish are friends.

Some months ago, I decided my meals to consist mainly of fish. Not purely though, but I wanted to get by and look back at my weeks with fish at least in one meal each day. I requested my ma to go shop for fish. I want to eat fish. I've never been a picky eater all my life. I love meat and I love fowl and fish and vegetables, it's all good to me, it's just that I've become a lot more conscious with what goes into my mouth lately.

This family is carnivorous.

Y'all want it.

Y'all know how our African-American brothers and sisters want it. Smothered and deep fried. Every time I watch their movies and there are scenes of them dining and stuff, aaaaah! I want to stuff that chicken in my pie hole and drown in gravy. Oh yes, I've been wanting that a long time. I usually just bread my chicken but since I'm from the South, I want authentic "southern" experience even if it's actually from a million miles away.

As the saying goes, once you go black you can never go back!

Layered Love

Even with clothes, I love layers. If not for this Philippine weather, I'd have owned an extensive collection of  overcoats and plaid flannel and tapestry jackets and corsets and lace-y camisoles to be worn on top of the other. But no, we are born naked and are set to strip down for life. (Haha. Rant!) Sorry, it's just that I'm kind of frustrated with the fact that it's already October and I still feel as sticky as March.

As for food, layers are great. The textures aligned, the flavors of each ingredient perfectly recognizable. For example, the taste of a burger depends on how it was prepared and put together. Some burger chains in the U.S. are known for this creative layering of condiments and patties and cheese and junk. I don't know why, I'm no burger connoisseur (even if it is my favorite food) but I can sometimes sense a difference when I eat in different branches of the same fast food chain. I got the burger sense. Haha.

The first beef.

This is the first beef recipe I'm posting because we don't eat much beef at home (other than corned beef). Choice cuts are quite expensive and the beef we always have are soup bones which are my favorite. Nothing can beat beef soup bones for Pochero (meat stew) but that alone deserves a whole other post. 


So yesterday, ma requested me to cook Beef Kaldereta (beef in tomato stew or sauce) for lunch. She bought beef chuck cuts, some potatoes and pineapple chunks. The chuck section which is located at the neck and shoulder is probably one of the most flavorful and cheap parts of the beef. It's not a tough cut and is ideally slow-cooked under low fire in simmering liquid. 

Once a Week Veg

The internet gives you so many ideas that sometimes, it doesn't matter if you can evoke your own ideas anymore. You can just wait around, be resourceful in the blogospheres - click and click and you will eventually find a lot of relevant stuff. Just like this video that I found through a friend who found it through his friend's facebook wall or something like it.





So this guy right? His idea is awesome. If you can't give up bacon, why should you? Like me. I can't give up meat. My life will be meaningless without it. I live for meat. I love meat - almost all kinds.

But a part of me wants to become veg for health reasons. And yeah, if it should help save the world, going veg is totally worth it. I have tried it for about 5 months. Imagine me. Imagine someone who lives for adobo and cheeseburgers. I know. I know. It's heartbreaking.

So this guy, Graham Hill is a weekday veg. But I couldn't even do that. Not while living with my family. You have no idea! And weekend veg is kind of impossible too because the weekend is the only time we actually sit down together for meals. It's also the favorite part of the week because we get to eat out or cook out and be rowdy and messy and oily and loud.

Those Deep Fried Dreams

The most satiating and satisfying food is deep fried. No contest. I have tried the Ketogenic Diet in the not-so-distant past (and slowly coming back) and that was the time I experienced first-hand how sinfully good and beneficial artery-clogging food really is. Trust me, I checked my blood pressure everyday and it was systolic: 120 over diastolic: 70 and was told it was perfectly low for eating out. I lost 15 lbs in a month.

Now, I'm not urging everyone to go on a deep fried food binge but really, if you crave for it, I am living proof that it's totally fine. Just leave the sweets and the carbs out.

So here I am. It's a Monday that everybody despises but not me. I do despise the fact that it is the first Monday I'm not going to work at the restaurant anymore. . since I have completed my on-the-job training last Saturday. I woke up at 7am despite sleeping at around 3am. My body got used to it and I greatly miss work and everybody. So in the spirit of me firing up dishes at the saute station, I fired up a dish at home. Ransacked the fridge and voila!

Liver Lover

I eat liver. I eat pork liver, chicken liver and a few times, beef liver. I know a few people who wouldn't even touch it. I really think they're missing out a lot in life. Liver is one of the most appetizing and gratifying animal products I have ever tasted and there are so many ways to cook it. 


My mom does the grocery shopping for home and liver is not a staple really. It's a luxury! There are just occasions when she brings home a little package of that creamy rose-colored stuff and it delights me all the time. Aside from chicken skin, chicken liver is one of my most favorite kind of barbecue. 

The pork liver couldn't even match the chicken liver's savory goodness and its mouth-watering softness that melts in your mouth. 

Hunger brings the best [recipes] out of people.

I was starving a couple of hours ago so I fixed myself late dinner. Early this evening, I did a 4km walk around the sports center oval and just had water. Last year, I started walking 4 to 5 km a night for almost 2 months then stopped in mid-December when my sister and her family flew back into the country for a month's vacation. It was all downhill from there. Last night, after 3 months of being a couch potato, was my first time back on the track. Tonight, my second time. I'm pretty much determined to keep it up since school is almost over and work is about to begin (hopefully next month). I missed the tracks. The hour's worth of freedom and free-thinking just going round and round the oval. It's priceless.

This recipe right here, is so good and so simple, I asked myself why I haven't thought of it before. It reminded me of ages ago when a friend and I wrote a song. It was around lunch time and we could seriously eat a horse but we opt to finish the song. In 30 minutes, we've written an awesome pop song. After eating though, we tried to make another one, something even better than the first. It took us the whole afternoon to come up with something we didn't even cared to keep. Also, there are times when I wouldn't eat before a test. I find my mind work better when my tummy is empty. I have never looked it up before but now, I did and here's what I found.

The Chunk of Life

It's hot here in my side of the planet. I sometimes wonder if it's as hot anywhere else, but today I'm not giving you a recipe for a cool dessert. Last Monday was our final culinary function in school and it was quite a charming night. We got rave reviews from the guests which warmed our weary and sleepless hearts.

It does feel good when hard work pays off.

Yesterday, we get to clean up the kitchen and I get to bring all the leftover ingredients. I lugged home almost 2 kilos of white onions and thought up a good use for it since I love its sweet, juicy and biting taste. Found some chicken and coconut milk in the fridge and felt it's a perfect time to make a diy-eats comeback after being out of content for a month.


Here's my treat!

Leftover Makeover -- Well, almost!

Sorry! I know this is such a late post that I am pretty certain all your holiday leftovers are either long gone to the sewers or the waste disposal units. But hopefully, this recipe will be useful someday. January will be over in a couple of days. Oh how time flies! And now that the midterms are done with, I've been busy prepping for 2 major events coming up for my Banquet and Catering Class. The first one is on February 10 which is a pre-Valentine dinner. Here's the poster I made for Group 3 which my best friend, Mimie, is a member of.

Pretty sweet. For next month, the group I'm in, is in charge of the final event. I can't disclose the details just yet until the plans are finalized but we'll get there. I am super pee-in-pants excited.

So here goes my too-late recipe. I hate to be late. It's my pet peeve and now I'm doing it. Blah!

Meatballs on a tree.

I don't know about you but when I set up a Christmas tree I always fantasize about a gigantic edible peppermint or white chocolate tree with food decor.

Meatballs as Christmas balls and bacon trinkets, candy canes and twister fries all over, chocolate truffles stringed and gummy bears tied and hanging up there as well and then a huge star made out of pizza.

Perhaps, it's a lousy idea and I don't think food will last that long if you put it up as decor. Not in our house. It doesn't even last that long in the fridge, if you get my drift. Haha!

At parties, the best representation of Christmas, in my opinion, are not the gifts you bring home. It's always the food served on the table and when lucky bountiful enough, the leftover food you get to bring home as well.

I'm lucky to have a very festive family.

Curry up!

"Once you get a spice in your home, you have it forever. Women never throw out spices. The Egyptians were buried with their spices. I know which one I'm taking with me when I go.”


-Erma Bombeck (U.S. humorist, 1927-1996)

Just thought I should add a random quote about spice for today's post. I'm not a big fan of curry but I don't hate it either. It's just there is something so strong about it that sticks with you all throughout the day.

The way it clings to your breath and a hint of it every time you burp when you had curried food - it's distracting! But really, in a sweet way like when an old flame crosses your mind on a random Tuesday morning as you throw out the garbage. Haha. What in the world am I talking about?

Two weeks ago, I created a curried dish. It was a self-dare somewhat, because I've never had curried pork. It's always chicken anywhere. So I did it and it was pretty yummy. It was a hit in the dining table.

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.