one filipino dish a week

For this week’s dish, I wanted to tackle a classic Filipino dish, sinigang. Many would argue this as a THE Filipino dish right up there with adobo. It’s fairly simple to make but like any classic Filipino dish there’s a whole lot of variations. I’ve quickly realized through these first three weeks that Filipinos like to tweak dishes, even the classics. This could be very much correlated to the fact that the country is disjointed (7,000 islands). What could be abundant in one area might not be in another and necessity is the mother of invention. So some hungry Filipino really wanted a dish but didn’t have all the ingredients and just decided to go with what’s available. It makes it hard to trace back to the original or what is considered traditional.

Sinigang can be made with fish, pork, beef, chicken, or shrimp. Practically any protein you desire. It’s a sour soup and is good on a cold day (perfect for winter, hence the pick). The souring agent can vary depending on what part of the Philippines you’re from which could be tamarind, batwan, or kamias. Other substitutions are guava, tomato or kalamansi. The souring agent helps preserve the dish. Before refrigeration preservation methods had to be creative and is a very helpful thing in a tropical country.

I went to the local Asian store to get ingredients. I got some long beans, Asian eggplant, radish (didn’t realize how big it is), hot pepper, and kangkong (water spinach). I was semi-devastated when I couldn’t find the tamarind. I guess that’s not really a common thing to have but I swear I’ve seen it before in Asian stores.

The Girl convinced me that the powdered mix would work well. I really wanted to make this dish with real tamarind but it just wasn’t there. The one qualm that I had about the mix was that it had a bunch of fakey-fake ingredients (MSG and preservatives).

For the pork, I used pork loin because that’s what I had in the fridge (doing it the Filipino way…using what’s available haha). If I had cut that was bone-in it would’ve made a better soup because the bones have all the flavor.

I browned the pork before I put in the water to give it structure before it gets boiled in the water. After I made this dish I found out that instead of plain water Filipinos use the water used to wash the rice. I’m assuming that this would take the nutrients from the rice of the otherwise wasted water and give off a subtle flavor. It’s great because nothing gets wasted. Once it starts boiling lower the heat and simmer for a while until the pork gets tender. Add the veggies (except for the kangkong), and in this case the sinigang mix. Let it go till the radish and eggplant gets a little tender but not mushy. I seasoned it with a little fish sauce to give it a little bit of Filipino taste but the sinigag mix is already salty so be cautious if you are using the mix. Add the kangkong right before you take it off the heat, just enough to wilt it.

Serve hot! Filipinos usually eat this pouring it over rice. And it is usually served together with the other dishes and not as an appetizer like most soup would be in western dining.

The dish came out great. It had a good sourness. The pork was nice and tender. The veggies weren’t too mushed up. The Girl and the Roommate liked it. I don’t know if I’m just biased but the sourness kinda tasted fake. I would love to revisit this dish and make it again with real tamarind.

For the first week, I decided to start off with a dish that seemed easy- menudo. What’s ironic about this choice is that I’ve never been a big fan of the dish. I promised myself to try everything even the ones that I didn’t like in the past. This is my way of making a statement to myself that this will not be an easy task.
Menudo is pretty much a one stop shop. You have carbs in potatoes, protein in pork and liver, and an assortment of veggies (tomatoes, bell peppers and depending on the version you’re going with raisins, carrots, etc). As with any Filipino dish this works well over plain white rice. Menudo is ubiquitous in the carenderias because it’s really not that expensive to make and it packs a lot of nutrients. Menudo is quite distinctive because all the ingredients are cut into a small dice.

I remember growing up I would not even consider eating menudo and would only eat it when forced to. What I didn’t like about menudo growing up was that it had tomatoes. I never liked tomatoes growing up. I’m still just inching my way to getting comfortable with it. The other thing that I didn’t like about it was the texture, which now I realized was the liver.

I looked around online and cookbooks for recipes and information about menudo. What I found is that menudo is a Filipino derivation of a Mexican dish. This cuisine was brought to the Philippines during the galleon trade when Mexico and the Philippines were under Spanish rule. The Filipinos obviously adopted it to their own and the version that most Filipinos know of as menudo is not very similar to the Mexican version.

I found a recipe in Romy Dorotan and Amy Besa’s book Memories of Philippine Kitchens. The one thing that struck me with this recipe that was different to the others was that it used calf liver instead of pork liver and no tomato puree!! I was convinced. I was imagining that the calf liver probably won’t be as “grimey” and would taste better since the organ hasn’t been used much yet.

The recipe called for pork loin. I did a little bit of googling around to figure out what part of the pig pork loin really is and why it would be used for this dish. What I found out is that a center cut pork loin is very tender but has very mild taste. It absolutely makes sense to me that it would be used for this dish. The mild pork taste of the center cut loin is accentuated by the different ingredients that are incorporated into the dish.

Unfortunately, I didn’t take pictures of the process of me cooking this dish. I’ll learn as I go along (so next time expect pictures). The major mistake I made in this dish is that I diced everything to big. It has to be pretty small. In the end it came out ok. The Girl liked it but I think she just didn’t want to hurt my feelings. I’ll update the post with the recipe.