Thursday, June 28, 2007

Cooking with Citrus

The local variety of citrus that is very prevalent throughout the year here in Manila is calamansi. A small green-colored citrus barely half an inch in diameter. It may be small, but it packs a very sour juice. Even tangier than a lime.

For our dinner tonight, I had a citrus theme since I have tons of them in my fridge.

For starters, I made a cilantro coleslaw made from some julienned carrots, shredded cabbage, lettuce and cilantro (from the soft tacos I made the previous night). It would have been prettier if it had purple cabbage in it :-) The dressing is just olive oil, sugar, salt, pepper and of course calamansi juice.



When hubby first saw the salad, he asked me what it was. Coleslaw after all usually has a mayonnaise-based dressing and we've never had cilantro coleslaw in any of the restaurants that we've dined in. He was doubtful of the salad to say the least. To him, it looked like rabbit food or something. Although, he didn't have the guts to say it to my face :-)

After taking a bite...hubby loved it and pronounced it to be my signature salad. I was so pleased that he liked it. We ended up finishing the whole thing and it was a big batch too!

For the main course, I opted to simplify Giada de Laurentiis' Roasted Chicken with Balsamic Vinaigrette. I've foregone the part with the chicken stock and lemon zest. Well, you can't exactly zest a calamansi, now can you?

Hubby, sadly mistook it as another version of adobo. Frankly, it was good but needed more sauce and the breast part was a little dry. Next time, I'll make more sauce and bake it for just an hour in the oven. I suspect this recipe will go very well if it was grilled over hot coals instead of roasting it in the oven.



Dessert is just chilled orange wedges that we've purchased from SM for P90 per pack of 8. They were very sweet and juicy. Almost like eating ice candy. Hubby even asked me to slice some more after he ate more than his share of the wedges :-)



A refreshing ending fitting for a citrus-themed dinner for two.

3 comments:

Random Possum said...

i just had my dinner, and oh boy after reading your blog uhm im hungry again!

btw, i followed your recipe for the chicken fingers, and it turned out great...very tasty, and your technique "F-E-B" is the best ever...definitely will come handy when i make chicken parmesan...you and kuya eric are invited.

and lastly, i want to just stuff my mouth with those pastillas de leche...ahhhh sinful...but YUM-O!

Leica said...

Thanks! Looking forward to your parmesan chicken.

The F-E-B thing also applies to fish fillet, just add a bit of milk to the beaten egg.

Enjoy! Looking forward to seeing you soon!

ericbau said...

I initially had my doubts, I'll tell you, but the cilantro coleslaw salad is way too good to waste on rabbits.

Purple cabbage or not, its going to be the flagship salad of our future resto. Copycats, beware!