What's Cooking for Dinner?

I'm in the mood to cook Restaurant style food for dinner tonight. Typically, when we eat out we have to spent a minimum of 1,000 pesos or roughly $20. We'll, this still depends on what type of restaurant we are going to eat. So what I normally would do, when a saw a blog about a certain restaurant I would try it out if possible. Look for the best in their menu, taste it and back home cook it similarly. In that way, I would able to serve my family a restaurant style home-cooked meal.

Tonight I made two special Filipino dishes that are mostly a best seller in few restaurants around the metro. These are Pinaputok na Tilapia and Aristocrat style Chicken Bbq.

Pinaputok na Tilapia, is simply half fillet tilapia seasoned with salt and pepper. Then coated with cornstarch and deep fried. It is essential to me and my kids that this tilapia comes out crispy the way they like it. I like to pair it with Filipino Style Tomato Salsa, which includes chopped tomatoes onions mixed with shrimp paste. Try it and you can't get enough of more rice please.

The next dish is the very famous Chicken Bbq of Aristocrat Restaurant. It is one of the oldest and best known restaurants way back. You can check out their site and menu here . A very simple dish but has been the most raved Bbq chicken in town.

What I did is I marinated the chicken in lemon juice, soy sauce, brown sugar and banana ketchup, and seasoned with some pepper. It is important to marinate the chicken for a few hours before grilling them. While grilling make sure that you brush the remaining sauce on the chicken. The left over sauce on the other hand will be use for the peanut sauce.

While grilling the chicken, I cooked some java rice from left over rice. Just saute some onions, garlic and Bell pepper, mixed the rice and add a teaspoon of ground turmeric. To add color to your java rice you can either use atsuete oil or ketchup. I used a little of both here. Them season with salt and pepper.

When done with grilling and cooking the java rice, it's time to whip up our peanut sauce. This Bbq would not be complete without it. Like I said from the left over marinate sauce, just add one to two tablespoon of creamy peanut butter. Mixed it all up until melted over low fire. You can add a little more water to help you with melting the peanut butter. The taste will depend on you. You can choose to leave it as it is or add more salt or sugar. Viola! Our Aristocrat Style Chicken Bbq is done. Now it's time for us to eat.

Bon Appetit!