Guam's BBQ Marinade for Beef, Chicken and Pork Spare Ribs

I am originally from Santa Maria, California, known in those parts for Santa Maria Style BBQ. Tri-tip is probably one of our most famous cuts that we use there. But it is not the original cut. Here is a web link for a little history on Santa Maria BBQ: http://santamariavalleybbq.com/.

Anyway, when I moved to Guam in 1986, I was literally taken back by the delicious flavor of the island marinade. You have got to try this out.

Beef short ribs marinaded island style.

Here is the recipe:

1 cup of soy sauce (we use Kikkoman)
1 cup of vinegar, either white or apple cider
1 medium onion, sliced
6 cloves of garlic, minced
1-2 tablespoons of freshly minced ginger (optional)
Freshly ground black pepper to taste.
Allow your meat to marinade....the longer the better.

There are many variations, some will put a little sugar, but it is all about individual taste. It's all good!!!

Marinaded BBQ'd Pork Spare Ribs.

I hope you try this out. I think you will enjoy something different.

Until next time....

Guam Diner...The Guam Food and Restaurant Guide

Just about anyone who has ever visited Guam can tell you two thing....the hospitality is great and so is the food. And when it comes to food, there is no better person on Guam to check in with than the Guam Food Guy himself, Ken Stewart. His web site, Guam Diner, http://www.guamdiner.com/index.php, is the foremost food and dining guide for Guam.

Ken has been reviewing restaurants on Guam since early 2000. He gives a layman's explanation on his experiences. I like layman simple. His pictures tell the rest of the story. Here is Ken's bio, http://www.guamdiner.com/info/about.php


Another feature of his web site that I like and refer to often is his recipe section. You want to cook something island style, chances are he has what you're looking for,  http://www.guamdiner.com/recipe/index.php. Try out the search engine and explore a little.

If you are looking to find out what the Guam food and restaurant scene is all about, you don't have to look any farther than Ken Stewart's, the Guam Food Guy, web site, Guam Diner. Ken is Guam's Food Guru.

Until next time....

BBQ'd Oysters

BBQing or going to a BBQ is one of our favorite pastimes. You get great food, great company and generally have a great time. What's not to like? One of my favorite appetizers at any BBQ are BBQ'd oysters in their shells.

BBQ'd properly, and eaten island style, is a win-win for you and it's so easy. Here is what I do...

Cook the oysters with the larger part of the shell down on the grill. When you look at an oyster, of course the shell has two halves. One is larger and more pronounced than the other. You want to cook it with the larger shell half on the grill so that it will hold in all the oysters natural juices while cooking. If you BBQ it with the smaller, shallow side down, all the juices will drain out.

You will know when the oyster is finished cooking because the shell halves will separate. Do not overcook as this will dry the oyster meat out.

Once done, then pry off the top thinner shell half. Pour a little bit of lemon finadene and suck it all down.

The finadene tastes a lot better if you make it hotter by smashing more hot pepper in the sauce.

Go to my BBQGuam blog site for the recipe and instructions for the lemon finadene: http://bbqguam.blogspot.com/2011/04/lemon-finadene-guam-bbq-dipping-sauce.html

BBQ's oysters are a great sampler, or "chase-sa", as we say on Guam. It goes great with a nice ice-cold "cocktail" as well. Enjoy.

Until next time....

Tostadas for Brunch (Merienda)

Well, it started out as just another beautiful morning on Guam, temperature in the 80s, white puffy clouds, blue sky. It felt good to get out in the yard and do a little tree trimming and general yard cleaning.

My wife and I took a break around 9:30am and we were trying to figure out what we wanted to eat. My wife Lupe recommended tostadas. I knew we had all the ingredients for this quick dish ready to go and of course I was all for it.

Everything was homemade. We had the crispy fried corn tortillas, the pinto beans, refried using bacon grease, the homemade pico de gallo salsa, freshly cut lettuce and a little cheese and cilantro on the side.

We ate 2 tostadas each and that was plenty. The good thing about tostadas are that they are a relatively healthy dish and you are not left with that heavy feeling in your stomach. Unless of course you just can't stop eating, which is probably the hardest thing to do.

They definitely hit the spot. Here are a few pictures:

A typical tostada. But one of the secrets to frying the tortilla is to add a little salt to the oil before frying. This gives the corn tortilla a slight salty flavor. It really makes a difference.

The entire setup. All you've got to do is make your own and chow down.

Though the pico de gallo salsa is made with local hot pepper, my wife needs to add her favorite, Tabasco Sauce.

Pico de gallo salsa. Here is the recipe:
Ingredients and directions:
3 medium tomatoes diced
1 medium onion diced smaller than the tomatoes
Cilantro roughly chopped add enough to taste (you can always add more when you are serving)
The juice of 1 lime
1 teaspoon of ground cumin
Salt to taste
Minced garlic is optional
Mix it all together and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Baked or roasted chicken or other meat topping are optional.

Just about gone!!!

One happy camper.

You can make everything ahead of time so that when you are in the mood, it's all ready for you.

This pretty much fueled us up for the rest of the afternoon in the yard. 

The long but relaxing day is coming to an end.

Until next time....

Firehouse Cook goes to Manila, Philippines

Well, this firehouse cook just came back from the beautiful island country of the Philippines. I went for a medical checkup so unfortunately I was not able to travel outside Metro Manila. But it was still another great traveling experience. I did manage to take a few photos of the city life.

The trip started in Guam, where I live. Took of on Philippine Airlines from Guam's A.B. Won Pat International Airport. After about a 4 hour flight, we arrived at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila, Philippines. This is a relatively short flight for me considering it takes about 12 1/2 hours to fly to California from Guam, and this doesn't count the layover in Hawaii.

I won't give anyone a history lesson of the Philippines. You can Google that if you like. But I was in the Philippines for about one week. I was driven around by a hired driver ($35/day). I had a driver that was recommended to me. Its what he does so he has to behave himself as his reputation and livelihood depends on it.

My driver took me to the Market Market Super Mall in the Fort Bonifacio, Taguig City area adjacent to Manila. This is a 5 story mall with each floor splintering off into 4 different wings, all full of every kind of store that you can think of. The place is huge. Here are a couple of links for Market Market:
  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market!_Market!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE8nJ3z6s8E  

Market Market Mall

The next day we went over to the Ayala Shopping Center, Makati. I thought Market Market was big, this was even bigger. This is a higher end shopping mall. All the designers have their outlets here. But there are many other great shops also.

This shopping center consists of at least 8 different shopping areas. I could only manage to walk through about 2 of them before I said, "No Mas, No Mas!!!" You would be hard pressed to walk through this shopping complex in one day. Here is a web link to the Ayala Center:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayala_Center

The following day was the most interesting. I went to the street bazaar in Chinatown. A typical, crowded, exciting shopping area where you can find great deals, interesting eats and all this time you better be holding onto your wallet or purse and camera. Believe me this adds to the shopping experience. I found my wife a Marc Jacobs purse, brand new mind you, for 650 pesos, which is about $15.75 U.S. Now whether it is authentic, I don't know, but the quality is just like the real thing. Anyway, you can find just about anything you want at this street bazaar. Here is a pic of the crowd and this is just one street of the bazaar. There are many others and also in-building shops. It is a maize of shopping opportunities:

Chinatown Street Bazaar

After the shopping experience of Chinatown, my driver then recommended that we go over to the Mall of Asia for the last item on my list (actually my wife's list).

Now the Mall of Asia used to be the largest shopping mall in the world until another was built, also somewhere in Asia, according to my driver. Now, I could not believe that there were larger shopping malls than the others that I had visited, but sure enough seeing is believing. The Mall of Asia is so big, I couldn't even see the other end from where we were standing. To describe this megatropolis of shopping ecstasy as huge or gigantic does not come close to doing this mall justice. Here are a few links for the Mall of Asia. It truly is an amazing shopping mall:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM_Mall_of_Asia

http://www.smmallofasia.com/moa/index.php?p=1097

http://www.google.com/search?q=mall+of+asia&hl=en&prmd=ivnsum&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=zw6uTZOlBNTQiALajNXQDA&sqi=2&ved=0CDcQsAQ&biw=1366&bih=667

I wasn't about to kid myself. I was already tired from the Chinatown adventure so we just went to the shop that I needed to go to, bought what I was looking for, walked around for about 20 minutes and left.


It was a full day for me. Some of you shopaholics out there would probably just be warming up. But not me. By this time it was around 3:30pm. After running around in the heat of tropical Manila all day, I was drained, finished, through and ready for some R & R in the air con.

Here are just a few more photos:

Leaving Guam. Looking down on Tumon Bay.

Flying over the countryside in the Philippines going towards Manila.

Closing in on Manila.

Outskirts of Manila.

Part of the Manila skyline.

A little blurry but this shows just one of the types of neighborhoods in the Manila area.

Driving to the hospital without lanes. It is jungle rules and a lot of use of your horn. It was quite an adventure. That is a "Jeepney". Jeepneys are like mini privately owned buses. They are modified jeeps. They can be quite colorful.

This is an outside male urinal. First time I have ever seen one. The gentleman using this urinal just parked his car at the curb and did his business. It gives "Park and Ride" a whole new meaning.

Approaching Global City, location of St. Lukes Hospital

Front of St. Luke's Hopital. It goes up to 16 floors.

Nighttime in Manila.

Daytime view outside my window.

Spanish Church circa 1500s

One of the smaller high rise buildings.

These are some of the shorter high rise buildings that I saw.

All the chain restaurants are located all over the place as well as great local cuisine.

 Reyes Barbecue Chicken Brest, Red Rice, and Papaya-gingered Salad. The dipping sauce is a combination molasses, soy and ginger.

 Butterscotch Bananas. These bananas are a type of Palau topped with brown sugar and butter, then baked until the top is caramelized. A fairly light but delicious dessert.

 Jack Black's Huevos Rancheros from Heaven & Eggs Restaurant, Ayala Center. This dish is explained in the menu below. I had my doubts when I was served, but it really works and I enjoyed the meal. Served with freshly squeezed orange juice.

H & E's Menu (partial).

Chicken and Pork Spare Ribs Adobo plate from Cafe' Via Mare', Global City. The ribs and chicken are cooked separately in a soy, vinegar, fresh ginger marinade, then served with the dipping sauce, soy based.

As it was, I didn't really get a chance to get out and search for more local cuisine due to my hectic medical check up schedule, but I plan on going back in July and my wife and I plan on doing some traveling.........and of course some eating.


Sorry about the links, my link button wasn't working for me today. Probably operator error.


Until next time....