one filipino dish a week

In this episode: paoix makes dinuldog. A squash soup with bacalao best pour over white rice.

Ingredients:
1 buttercup squash diced
1 cup coconut milk
3 cups chicken broth
1/2 lb bacalao diced
2 inch gingerroot pounded

1. Combine chicken broth, coconut milk, ginger and squash in a pot and bring to a boil. Lower medium heat and simmer for 20 minutes until squash is soft.
2. Add the bacalao and continue to simmer for another 10 minutes. *EDIT* NOTE: Bacalao can be extremely salty so you can either wash it or boil it first before using.
3. Mash the squash to the side of the pot with a wooden spoon to thicken the soup.
4. Simmer for a 2-3 more minutes until the soup has combined and serve.

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Pancit (or Pansit) is Filipino for any kind of noodle dish. It comes in different forms pansit luglug, pansit mami, pansit lomi, pansit molo, pansit Malabon, etc. Each named after the place that it was made, type of noodle used, cooking technique, and just about any variety of reasons. In whatever form it is without a doubt this dish was influenced by the Chinese. According to Amy Besa and Romy Dorotan’s book,  Memories of Philippine Kitchens, pansit comes from the Hokkien words pian-e-sit, meaning something that is conveniently cooked. So it doesn’t necessarily mean noodles. As time passed and meanings lost in translation the Filipinos adapted the word and have claimed it as their own. After searching through wikipedia, Hokkien is spoken in the southern region of the Fujian province of China and in Taiwan and when you look at the map, these two places are very close to the Philippines.

After explaining to you that this dish is of Chinese origin you might be wondering why the name of this dish is pancit bihon guisado. Guisado, which comes from the Spanish word guisar meaning to sautee. Of course, the Spanish would not have allowed something to be prevalent without their influence now would they. And lastly, I didn’t want to leave “bihon” behind because he might get sad. Bihon means rice noodles. Other types of noodles are canton (egg), sotanghon (mung bean), misua (wheat), and miki (whole wheat). And just like the number of islands in the Philppines there are that many variations of how to make pansit.

The way I made it was from a recipe that I got from a cooking class that I took.

This serves a party of 6-8
1lb chicken breast, cut into small strips
3 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 Tbsp garlic minced
1 large onion, julienned
1/2 lb snow peas
1 large carrot, julienned
1 small Chinese cabbage, shredded
1/4 lb straw or golden mushrooms, washed
2/3 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup oyster sauce
5 cups chicken stock
1/2 lb small squid or cuttlefish, cut into rings (optional) - I opted out
1 lb rice stick (bihon)
pepper and fish sauce to taste
lemon wedges to serve

1. Season the chicken with salt and pepper. Heat vegetable oil in a wok and stir fry chicken over high hea until barely done.
2. Add garlic and onion; and continue to stir fr untio onion is soft
3. Add snow peas, carrots, cabbage and mushrooms, continue stirring
4. Add soy sauce, oyster sauce and chicken sotck; bring to a boil
5. Cook until the carrots and oyster sauce are tender
6. If using the squid toss it in the wok until it turns white
7. Remove chicken, squid and vegetables from the pan
8. Add rice sticks, pressing into liquid to soften. Cook over medium heat tossing gently until noodles are just tender.
9. Season to taste with fish sauce and pepper.
10. Transfer noodles onto a serrvice platter, top with the reserved vegetables, chicken and squid and pour sauce over.

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I love lumpiang ubod! Ever since I was a little kid I would devour these like a tornado through a trailer park. The texture and crunchiness of the ubod, the soft wrapper, and the sweetish brown sauce is what I remember. Most people will include ground pork, chicken, or shrimp in their lumpia. But to me I like the freshness of having an all vegetable lumpia and having the ubod shine. So I left out any meat and kept it all veggie.

So what is ubod anyway? Ubod is the heart of palm (the part of the trunk that’s closest to the leaves). Marketmanila has a great picture of fresh ubod here. Unfortunately, ubod goes bad easily and the only access I have are canned or frozen. For this attempt at making lumpiang ubod, I used frozen. The outcome was a mediocre success. It wasn’t bad but it wasn’t the most memorable I’ve even eaten. I will have to try to make this dish again and hope to find fresh ubod.

To make the Wrapper:
3 eggs
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2 cup rice flour
3/4 cup cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups water

Combine all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth, or whisk together then strain. Heat a non-stick pan or a crepe pan. Pour a ladle full of batter and swirl it around the pan (make sure it’s thin coat). cook until bubbly and flip it over. Repeat until you have finished the remaining batter.

How to Make the Filling:
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoons mince garlic
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
2 1/2 cups harts of palm julienned
8 ounces green beans, thinly sliced
2 stalks celery, julienned
3 stems cilantro, chopped
Fish sauce to taste
green leaf lettuce
1 cup crushed dry-roasted peanuts
1/2 cup fried garlic

Saute onion and garlic in oil until soft. (This is where you would add the ground pork, chicken or shrimp in the recipe if using) Add harts of palm, green beans, celery and cilantro. Toss and cook until just tender. Add a little water if needed to simmer. Season to taste with fish sauce and pepper.

How to Make the Sauce:
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 cups chicken stock
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 tablesppons cornstarch
pepper to taste

Combine ingredients and bring to a boil, stirring until thickened.

Assembly:
To serve, place a lettuce leaf on a wrapper, the leafy part extending over the edge. Place a large spoonful of filling on the leaf and wrapper, fold in the edge opposite the lettuce, then carefully roll the wrapper around the filling. Arrange on a platter, pour the sauce over, and garnish with fried garlic and peanuts.

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This is my ideal summer salad. It’s refreshing, simple yet complex, balanced, and most importantly delicious. I’m not quite sure where it got its name but this is the recipe from my aunt and that’s what she calls it. She makes this for parties and it’s the one that’s always gone first.  It’s really quite hard to get too excited over a salad but this is good. I suppose that’s where the ‘jolly’ part of the name came from. The ‘jiffy’ part is a little bit of a misnomer because this isn’t so quick to make. Maybe it’s just that this salad makes you so happy that you eat it quickly — jolly jiffy. Even better!

Here’s how I made it (serves 20 ppl):
4 cucumbers julienne
2 jars pickles julienne
3 carrots julienne
3/4 lb cooked ham strips
1 can pineapple tidbits
2 fuji apples julienne
sharp cheddar cheese strips
1 cup mayo

If you’ve never julienned anything in your life and you make this salad you’ll be an expert by the end of it. Julienne all ingredients make sure they all look uniform Combine ingredients, dress with mayo, salt and pepper to taste. Serve immediately. The sourness, sweetness and saltiness all play together very very nicely. The balance of flavors takes the edge off of the summer heat.  I made this for a church picnic and it had a good response. The next party you have try something different.

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In my previous lumpia post I didn’t have much luck with the wrapper. I was at the Asian store and decided to try out the different brands that they had. I think the right wrapper AND sauce will make this dish amazing.

1. Wei Chuan - I think this is the brand of wrapper that I see everywhere in Asian stores and pretty common. As I looked into the details of the wrapper it’s made in the USA so that explains it. This is a fairly decent size wrapper with a pretty good thickness that looks like it will hold up.

Ingredients: enriched whear flour, water, salt, soybean oil, sodium of pholyphosphate & carbonate, mono and di-glycerides, polysorbitan esters of stearates, lecithin, citric acid.

2. Spring Home - I was very interested that this was smaller size. I wanted to figure out if making smaller rolls will affect how it cooks and in effect the taste. I looked more closely at the label and this is made in Singapore by Tee Yih Jia Food Manufacturing Ltd. The wrapper itself was pretty close to what the Wei Chuan was but not as “strechable.”

Ingredients: wheat flour, water, coconut oil, salt

3. Pacific Isles - I’ve never seen this before until now. It says “Lumpia Wrapper” in HUGE letters so there’s no way I wasn’t going to try this one out. This is actually made in the Philippines. These kinds of things may be more common in the West coast but I don’t see this often here. This is the wrapper that stands out from the rest. It is not like any of the other two. It is round and not a smooth texture.

Ingredients: wheat flour, water and salt.

What I found extremely interesting is that out of the 3 wrappers the one made in the US is the one that has the longest list of ingredients. and preservatives? Probably explains the strength of the wrapper. I don’t really know what all those other “non-food” ingredients are. I wonder if it’s just that the FDA requires them to label and the other countries don’t have to. In any case to wrapping we go…

I made the vegetable lumpia similar to my previous post but without the tofu. I made a few of each wrapper. In terms of being consistent the Wei Chuan and Spring Home we comparable. Each wrapper had the same size and the quality of each wrapper was pretty much the same. The Pacific Isles however was pretty much all over the place. The wrappers were sticking to each other and they were not all the same size, they tear easily and the wrapper was not smooth. Even at the small size picture you can clearly tell the difference.

I also wrapped a couple of the small wrappers a different way. In the lower right hand portion of the picture I wrapped two of them straight on and not the “diamond”.

I deep fried them in a pot of canola oil at 350deg F. I finally figured out that having consistent oil temperature is the key to deep frying. Yay! Time to Eat!

Spring Home - as I was cooking the spring home the way I wrapped it the roll kept on rolling on one side and it wouldn’t cook evenly on the other side. The wrapper was good. Pretty consistent. But I don’t think it was as good as the other two. I think it was just too small. It didn’t get as crunchy as the other two. This may be better for other things but not vegetable lumpia.

Wrapping it in two different ways didn’t make a difference. It came out the same and didn’t add any crunchiness.

Pacific Isles - I did not have high hopes for this wrapper. Especially with all the problems I had with the wrapper tearing and etc. But this turned out to be pretty good. It was the crunchiest out of all of the wrappers. It had great depth. It had an almost flaky texture. Even the one that I messed up wrapping didn’t break apart and crumble into pieces. I was quite impressed at how it turned out.

Wei Chuan - No frills. And I think this is pretty consistent. I don’t think it added anything to the experience of eating the lumpia. It was ok with the crunchiness. It held up pretty good with in the deep fry.

The verdict… surprisingly I really liked the Pacific Isles but I did not like the inconsistency of the quality wrapper to wrapper. If they can have better QA and keep it consistent I would go for that wrapper. The Wei Chuan is a good solid go-to wrapper for your everyday lumpia needs. The Spring Home was a little bit too small and didn’t get the crunchiness that I would’ve liked. In the end, I ate a lot of lumpia so I’m happy.

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