What's For Dinner?

Been thinking of another simple, yet delicious dish for dinner. I listed 3 choices : 1) Chopsuey; (2) Bulalo; (3) Estofado.

However, when I went to our little supermarket, they had so little to offer for my first 2 choices. So I ended up choosing the Estofado dish. I decided to use chicken because we didn't have any pork meat in fridge. (I thought we still had it. Turns out I was wrong. he-he!)

Chicken Estofado

Ingredients:

1/2 chicken meat (or pork meat)
2 tbsp of brown sugar
2-3 pieces of potatoes, cut in big chunks
2 pieces carrots, cut in big chunks
5 cloves of garlic (if you want), minced
1 onion, sliced
1 tomato sauce
*saba banana, quartered & fried
1/2 cup water
cooking oil (you can use olive oil, vegetable oil, anything that suits you
soy sauce
vinegar
2 tbsp cornstarch mixed in water
1 bay leaf (optional)

Procedure :

1) Marinate chicken in vinegar, soy sauce, brown sugar, onions, and garlic for an hour. You can marinate the meat for 30mins if you don't want to wait that long.

2) Heat oil in a pan or skillet. Remove pork from marinade and set the marinade sauce aside (to be used later). Fry chicken until lightly brown. Pour excess oil in a container, leaving at least 2-3 oil in the pan.

3) Pour the remaining marinade sauce & 1/2 cup of water over the chicken. Simmer for 15-20mins or until meat or chicken is tender. (Chicken cooks easily)

4) Add tomato sauce, potatoes, carrots, & bananas. Cook until vegetables are tender, but still crunchy when you eat one.

5) Pour in cornstarch with water & bay leaf (makes your dish smell better & yummy!). Mix for 2mins.

Serve while still hot. Eaten better with rice.


*saba bananas - we call this cooking bananas because it is firm enough to mix in different dishes like Estofado.

(photo taken from Market Manila blog)