Shirataki Noodles? Hmm... What shall we do with you?

Can I make chika first before delving into the recipes?
Okay folks, this blog o' mine just took a new turn : I'm posting something about food! Kind of. My cooking skills are mediocre at best. Chamba chamba ang timpla (sorry mama, hello husband 😉) so I won't pull off complicated dishes.  But Imma discuss the change in my life in relation to food.

When I decided to cut my sugar and carbohydrate intake last August, I meant just that: to slowly reduce my rice intake and to stop sneaking cookies at midnight or running to the nearest milk tea shop just because.

I did well by the way. I wasn't a fan of soda to begin with so I had no trouble of getting rid of that in my diet. Even the milk tea I was able to cut out. I just had to curb my appetite in the cookies, biscuits and cakes department.

I did well too on that area. I'd imagined it would be a lot harder. But when I imagined the grains of white sugar going into it, I'd be like, nooooooooo!

So, what have I been consuming lately?

Eggs - lots of it. Chicken.Duh. Chicharon (I'm no fan of pork meat, something to do with my upbringing and now that I am an adult it's more of a preference but I am so down for chicharon!)

Fish and other seafoods. Avocado (when it was available). Leafy greens and other vegies.

Decaf coffee/Ricoa Cocoa with Nestle All Purpose Cream as creamer and Equal or Splenda as sweetener. Somehow it got to a point where I didn't even add a sweetener. IKR. Nuts (Almond, Peanuts, Cashews)

At this point, I am not suffering, so don't worry about me. I'm doing the #DirtyLC so they say.

I am not missing rice, thank you very much. I've been eating rice minimally since 2016 anyway so it wasn't hard to let go. It got to a point though when I got bored with eating the same stuff and I just knew I had to explore other ways to get my fix without having to consume too much carbs.

Luckily, my younger brother, another LCIF practitioner added me to a Facebook Group called Low Carb Intermittent Fasting™ and that is how I discovered stuff like shirataki noodles and coconut flour. 

Shirataki noodles are thin, translucent, gelatinous traditional Japanese noodles made from the konjac yam (devil's tongue yam or elephant yam). The word "shirataki" means white waterfall, referring to the appearance of these noodles. Largely composed of water and glucomannan, a water-soluble dietary fiber, they are very low in digestible carbohydrates and calories, and have little flavor of their own. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirataki_noodles

Coconut flour on the other hand is a soft, naturally grain- and gluten-free flour produced from dried coconut meat. It is a natural byproduct of coconut milk production. When producers press coconut for its milk, bits of coconut meat remains. They then dry the coconut meat at low temperature and grind it until it produces a soft, fine powder which is then suitable for baking. Source: https://nourishedkitchen.com/baking-with-coconut-flour/

I bought my shirataki noodles and coconut flour at Shopee, from a seller called Nutrifinds. The coconut flour was Php 98.00 for 1 kl, while the shirataki noodles are Php 85.00 for 200g. 

Here's how I made my Low Carb Carbonara and Pancakes. ;)

Low Carb Pasta Carbonara
Ingredients:
1 200g shirataki noodles cooked according to package instructions
2 tbsp coconut oil
1 small onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 cup chicken breast, chopped
5 tbsp Nestle All Purpose Cream
1 can mushrooms
salt (I use pink Himalayan salt) and powdered black pepper to taste

How to cook:
1. Cook the shirataki noodles according to package instructions. It involves  a bit of boiling and pan fying. ;) Very easy. Set aside.
2. In a pan, heat the coconut oil then saute the garlic and the onion until golden brown.
3. Add the mushroom and the chicken. Cover the pan and let it simmer, until the chicken is cooked.
4. Add the Nestle All Purpose Cream let it simmer.
5. Season with salt and pepper to taste.


Low Carb Pancake
Ingredients:
2 pcs eggs
2 tbsp coconut flour
1 tsp baking powder
a dash of vanilla
1 tbsp Nestle All Purpose Cream
2 sticks of sweetener (but sometimes I don't even use one)

How to Cook:
1. Beat the eggs and add all the other ingredients.
2. Mix thoroughly because the coconut flour tends to get lumpy.
3. Drizzle a bit of oil on a pan so that the pancake won't stick
4. Cook over low fire.

...prepare the banana leaves to be used for wrapping, along with the strings to tie it up. The banana leaves have to be passed over some flame to soften it up and to sort of clean it up too.

The Cooking Process

Once you have your ground malagkit/rice and coconut milk ready, you can move on with the cooking process. These are some of  the ingredients. 

First off, we cooked the white part.  You take about half of the rice/malagkit mixture and half of the coconut milk and set it over low fire until you get a thick consistency. Add about 1/4 cup of margarine and a dash of salt for flavor. Set aside and allow to cool.

Next off, you take the remaining malagkit/rice mixture and cook over low fire it with the remaining coconut milk. Add the sugar, margarine, condensed milk and cocoa powder and continue mixing until you get this think, lump-free consistency. Set aside and cool.

The Wrapping Process

While waiting for the chocolate mixture to cool down, you can start wrapping. You flatten out the white part, as shown in these photos. Afterwards, you can add the rolled chocolate part as the filling.  Adding cheese makes it even better. This is the trickiest part and definitely the most tiring. I myself had a hard time learning it and it took me more than ten tries to finally wrap a good one. Until the end I couldn't make uniform-sized morons. 🌝 While wrapping morons, you get all sorts of sad and depressing thoughts like, "how did I get myself into this kind of trouble?". But....when you start seeing all the morons piling up you get elated and excited. And nothing beats the feeling of scrapping the container for the chocolate morsel to wrap!

The Steaming Process

Bayanihan is a Filipino tradition which is derived from the Filipino word "bayan" which means nation, town or community. Bayanihan is about a community coming together to help one another in difficult situation or just to achieve a certain task. Me and my friends were able to finish off this task because we helped each other out. We had at least six to 7 pairs of hands working out different assignments. And when the wrapping time came, we were gathered in one table talking about joke after joke (sometime green ones) just to entertain us while we were growing tired.

I wasn't able to take a photo of the finished product. What kind of blogger am I? Ha ha I was too excited to eat it probably. When you labor over a food for the whole day, you just kind of forget about picture taking and you go straight to gobbling up the food.