Pork adobo is my personal favorite staple ulam - viand (and yours, too kabayan!) only equaled by nilaga and sinigang na baboy. Binagoongang baboy is quite unforgettable with an exotic Pinoy na Pinoy ingredient, bagoong. Pump it up with lots of chili and you have Bicol Express. Pinoy pork barbecue is so tasty and so is grilled liempo, and who would forgo a hot, fresh off-the-grill serving of pork isaw and chunks of pig blood for the more adventurous? I'm sure it's the varnishing of various sauces while grilling that makes it extra tasty. Crispy pork chops might be cooked simply (i.e. deep fried) but when dipped in toyo with kalamansi and sili and eaten with steamed rice is already a feast on its own. Deep fried pork spare ribs, anyone? Dinakdakan, a great Ilokano pork dish, plus dinuguan and bagnet is truly mouth-watering. And then there's still lechon kawali, crispy pata, sisig, menudo, mechado, humba should be more than enough to show how much we, Filipinos, love our pork and how we cook it in great variety and style and flavor.
Tell me how do we keep allowing ourselves to eat in MacDonald's most days? Pinoy fast food in karinderya for the win! Bukas pa sa lahat ng gustong kumain, diba?
Further, we've made sweet and sour pork, siomai, lumpia and garlic pork among other Chinese food imports our own. Filipino processed foods even have pork as the main ingredient: tocino, embutido, longganisa. Even our empanada has ground pork. And a Samareno delicacy Tamalos is sliced pork in ground peanut sauce steamed inside a banana leaf. It's mightily good. The peanut sauce base makes it very similar to the more national dish Kare-kare. Pinoys do not just hang out their pork out to dry and eat it as ham. And could be one major reason why it would be almost impossible to convert us into Muslims, because of our love affair with pork.
I've already named more than 30 pork dishes in two paragraphs and these are the common ones I recounted only from memory. I wonder how many would I come up with when I go back to the Philippines and do a pork food research. I just found out on Google there's a dish called poque-poque but it's a vegetable dish so I shall reserve that for a Pinoy veggie dishes entry. Did I miss a common Pinoy pork dish? Comment box, please if I did. Oink, oink!
In most meat meals around here in Belgium or in France or The Netherlands, beef (steak) is the preferred meat. The only time I noticed restaurants servings a variety of pork dishes here in Europe was in Portugal, and I remember once in Prague when we ordered a traditional dish and we were served a huge slab of pork meat with sauce on top. But we didn't have enough time to explore Czech food though the start looks very pig promising.
I miss pork because eating pork anywhere else is never the same as eating pork in the Philippines. And I mean that shared feeling of bliss when sharing a good adobo or nilaga or sinigang or all of the above! I miss eating the fat of the pork and seeing those around me with the same heightened appetite for pork and shining smear of pork fat around the lips, while one ought to mention "heart attack" along the context of a truly Pinoy philosophy: "life is short", which is really only meant to set aside guilt in the midst of over-indulging, aware and haunted by high blood, hypertension and other (also) very Pinoy diet-related illnesses. Maybe I should come up with health benefits from eating pork. Hmmmm. If you click read more, there's an easy-to-prepare, relatively healthy pork recipe waiting for you. Enjoy!
A simple pork dish recipe: Hongkong Style Pork with Tomato Sauce. This recipe is very similar to the Pinoy dish menudo. Here are the ingredients:
Marinade
1/2 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 tablespoon light soy sauce or 1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
1-2 tablespoons cornflour, mixed with 1 tablespoon water
6 boneless pork chops, pounded evently and cut into pieces
1 tablespoon groundnut oil
Sauce
3 tablespoons tomato ketchup
125ml water
1 tablespoon groundnut oil
2 teaspoons chopped garlic
1 medium onion, chopped
1 shallot, diced
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon black soy sauce
3 beef tomatoes, cut into pieces 1 tablespoon sugar
Main ingredient: pork! This is filet mignon (filey-minyon) or pork without the bones. For price junkies, this pork costs €17.90 per kilo and this pack I used for the dish is 0.654 kilo for €11.71.
To let you into a little secret, Yoann's mother buys all our meat supplies and we just take them out of the freezer when we need to cook them. I think we have 5 whole pieces of frozen poulet de bresse still, beef steak cuts, chicken breast slices, filet mignon, etc. In Yoann's family, saying no is not an option. Good thing, saying yes to yummy stuffs is also my only option. It's a match! :)
I got the recipe from this link. Preparation time is 10 minutes, cooking time of 15 minutes, and extra time 15 minutes for marinating the pork. Final verdict: meal is ready in 40 minutes!
These are the rest of the ingredients: carrots, garlic, shallots or small onions, tomatoes. You can add potatoes, too.Procedures
1) Make the marinade by mixing together the sugar, salt, soy sauce and cornflour slurry. Mix in the pork, let marinate for 15 minutes. 2) In a small bowl, mix together the tomato ketchup and water to make the sauce. Set aside. 3) Heat a large frying pan with 1 tablespoon oil over high heat. Stir-fry the pork until done, about 4-5 minutes. Set aside. 4) Heat the same large frying pan with 1 tablespoon oil over high heat. Stir-fry the garlic until aromatic, about 2-3 minutes. Add the onion, shallot, salt and soy sauce, cook until soft, about 3-4 minutes. Stir in the tomatoes with sugar, mix well until soft, about 3-4 minutes. Add the sauce, stir, cover and simmer for 2 minutes. Adjust the seasoning accordingly and serve. Go!
