Day 22: Pork Steak

My mother wanted to eat bistek tagalog but we didn't have any beef in the freezer. I used the next best thing to accommodate her request i.e. I used pork tenderloin instead. It actually tastes great.

Slice 500 grams of pork tenderloin into thin strips and marinate the pork in equal parts of soy sauce and calamansi for an hour. In this case, it's 1/4 cup each. Then fry the pork pieces in oil till they brown and remove it from the pan. Arrange the pork strips on a serving platter. Fry slices of a large onion in the same oil on which you cooked the pork. Arrange the cooked onions on the platter of cooked pork. Pour the marinade into the hot oil and simmer the it for a few minutes to make a sauce. When done, pour the sauce on the fried pork and onions. Serve hot.

Day 14: Skinless Longganisa, Garlic Fried Rice and Salted Egg with Tomatoes

Try throwing your family a curve-ball for dinner by serving up breakfast treats. This will surely be a welcome surprise especially if you pair your ulam with the ever so fragrant garlic fried rice! There's something about the aroma of garlic fried rice that just whets the appetite :)

I was thinking of fying ready-made tocino for this dinner, but where's the challenge in that? So I made my own longganisa; but since I'm a bit queasy about using the traditional animal casings, I used the kitchen-handy wax paper/cling wrap to form my longganisa sausages.

I learned making skinless longganisa from a summer cooking class way back in high school. The recipe required the use of praque powder, which is not readily available in grocery stores. Cute as it looks with it's cottony pink color, a lot of people have some misgivings in using this partifcular ingredient - myself included - because, as far as I know, praque powder sounds and looks like a chemically generated aritificial preservative. If anybody wants to correct me, please do! So I haven't really used the recipe that was taught to me in cooking school... as in, never.

Instead, I often use the recipe taken from a recipe hand-out from Del Monte Kitchenomics which makes use of tomato sause to flavor the longganisa. This time though, I made use of the Vigan-style recipe posted on the overseaspinoycooking blog post, which tastes really good. Please check it out at www.overseaspinoycooking.com/2008/03/vigan-longganisa-homemade-skinless.html.

I paired the longganisa with garlic fried rice and sliced tomatoes and salted egg. Yummy!

Day 10: Sinarabsab & Inihaw na Talong

Making Sinarabsab - the Ilokano version of Inihaw na Baboy - requires a marinating mixture of vinegar and other condiments to make flavorful grilled meat. But I read an interesting Sinarabsab recipe on the internet sometime ago that utilized tamarind/sinigang powder in order to simplify the marinating process. I took note of the idea and decided to apply it to my own recipe. Here's how:

I made a dry rub by mixing one (1) 25g packet of Sinigang sa Miso mix to a tablespoon of brown sugar and half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper. I rubbed the mixture all over half a kilo of pork liempo. I set the meat aside in the refrigerator for thirty minutes to develop the flavors. I grilled the pork till done and chopped it to bite-size pieces. It is good served with a relish of tomatoes, garlic and spring onions.

I also grilled a few eggplants and served them with bagoong alamang and chopped green mangoes.

Day 8: Sinigang na Baboy

Whenever I have sinigang, I always end up overeating. I can't help but reach out to the rice bowl for seconds. The delicious tart flavor of the soup that contrasts with the saltiness of the patis requires more than your usual modest scoop of rice. There are many variants of sinigang and for this recipe, I made the most common i.e. Sinigang na Baboy sa Sampalok.

Being an urbanite certainly has its conveniences, one of them being that you won't have to slave too long in the kitchen to come up with delicious comfort food. In Manila where I live, it's no longer a crime to make use of packed mixes and preparations to expedite cooking; in fact, it is more the norm these days to avail of packaged mixes, pastes, concentrates & powders rather than make the tamarind soup from scratch. But if you're a stickler for slow-food cooking, just boil a third of a kilo of unripe tamarind fruits in water till the pulp gets soft & mushy when you pierce it with a fork. Pass the tamarind fruit through a seive and try to get as much pulp as you can, removing the skin and the seeds. This is what you'll be using to flavor your soup.

But for this sinigang, I used tamarind powder. There are lots to choose from at the grocery so choose your brand and just follow the instructions as seen on the package. What I do, however, is choose the add-ins well.

I use a kilo of pork bones to add extra flavor to the soup and add half a kilo of pork cubes with a good amount of fat ( I use liempo). I simmer the pork bones and meat with an onion that has been quartered and two (2) tomatoes that have been halved; I also add about two (2) pieces of green finger chilis and four (4) bulbs of gabi that have been cleaned, peeled & cut into the size of the pork cubes. When the pork is almost done, I then add the sinigang mix. I also add two (2) eggplants that have been sliced thick diagonally. When the pork and the vegetables are tender, I add a bunch of kangkong leaves with their stems. I reduce the heat to a simmer until the vegetables are done. I also add patis for more flavor.

Day 4: Paksiw na Pata

I love using the pressure cooker especially on a busy night which is perfect for this paksiw na pata recipe. All I need to do is dump my ingredients into the pot, stand back and just let the contraption do its magic. No fuss at all.

I pulled out a one (1) kilogram bag of pata slices from the freezer and dumped it into the pot. Then I filled the pot with water just enough to cover the pork. I also added 3/4 cup each of soy sauce and packed brown sugar, 100 grams of banana blossoms (bulaklak ng saging), two (2) bay leaves and two (2) teaspoons of whole peppercorns. I pressure-cooked it for 45 minutes (but thirty minutes is good enough if the meat isn't frozen) till the meat is cooked tender. Serve with hot rice.