Pseudo Filipino Breakfast

My husband was raised by his great-grandfather, who was Filipino. He grew up eating things like this - delicious, filling, cheap, and did I mention delicious?

The basic formula is mostly rice, a couple eggs, and a little meat. Garlic rice is preferred, where you take day-old cold rice, and fry it with garlic (think Chinese fried rice, but without the soy sauce). But you can just as easily mix fried garlic chips into the rice. Cook your eggs however you want. I like over-easy. Husband likes scrambled. But not really scrambled - pour the eggs into a skillet, poke the yolk, let it cook slowly, chop and flip a little. You want the separate areas of white and yolk, not a homogeneous concoction.

For the meat - the best would be longanisa. Or tocino. If you don't have access to either of those, cube some Spam and fry it in a hot skillet. Or, even better (IMHO), although it does sound strange at first, cube up some hot dogs, and fry in a skillet with a little bit of mustard (plain yellow is fine) and black pepper. Seriously. Something about the mustard and pepper makes it taste...not like a hot dog...

For garnish, add sliced green onions, some Sriracha or other hot chile, soy sauce, a splash of fish sauce, fried garlic chips. Whatever you add, it will be good.

Post #72 - The Not-So-Great Pancit Experiment

Recently I bought some thin egg noodles labeled "pancit", so made up my mind to try making the Filipino dish of the same name. Like adobo, I know there are tons of variations out there, so I consulted my husband, who grew up eating his Filipino great-grandfather's cooking, and a Scotsman I work with that's married to a Filipino lady.

What I ended up with could have been very delicious. But I think my noodles had been sitting on the shelf for way too long. They got mealymushy when I added them to the veggies & sauce, and decided to share their mealiness with everything else.

Bleh.

Anyhow, get yourself some dried pancit noodles that haven't been sitting on the shelf since 19XX, and try this:

1/2 lb lean pork, sliced thin
1/2 lb shrimp, peeled, deveined, chopped
1 package (8 oz) pancit noodles
carrots, julienned (I used a handful of baby carrots)
cabbage, sliced/shredded, 1/2 to 1 cup
1 clove of garlic, minced
3 green onions, cut in 1/2 to 1" lengths
soy sauce, about 1T
chicken broth, about 1 to 1/2 cups

Marinate the pork briefly in soy sauce. Heat your wok on high, add some peanut oil, and cook pork until starting to brown. Remove from wok.

Add more oil if necessary, and stirfry the carrots and garlic, then add the cabbage and green onion, and cook a little longer. Mix in the soy sauce and broth, and bring to a boil. Mix in the shrimp, then the noodles.

Stir everything around gently, moving the mass of dried noodles around so they eventually all get softened. (It looks like that'll never happen at the beginning, but trust me, it does.)

Stir the pork back in when the noodles are done, and serve (with Sriracha of course!).

Post #70 - Adobo

I found free-range antibiotic-free chicken legs and thighs for a ridiculous price at Sprouts. That means adobo.

Now, this adobo recipe comes from my husband, from his Filipino great-grandfather. However, it has tomato sauce and ginger in it, which I have never seen in any "traditional" adobo recipe. But it's scrumptious. So don't be mad.

I apologize in advance for the lack of proportions. Hubby's always (and therefore so have I) gone simply by look and smell to determine the correct amounts of vinegar and soy sauce.

Adobo:
chicken legs and thighs (this time, 6 legs and 6 thighs)
ground pepper
veggie oil
white vinegar
soy sauce
minced garlic
minced ginger
tomato sauce
pickling spice
water

Put about 2 tablespoons of pickling spice in a tea ball (or cheesecloth).

Season the chicken pieces with pepper. Brown over medium-high in a very small amount of hot oil in a very large pot, in batches if necessary. Return all the chicken to the pot, and mix in the garlic and ginger. Lower the heat to medium-low.

Stir in some vinegar, maybe about 1/4 cup, and some soy sauce, also 1/4 cup. Let simmer, tossing the chicken occasionally, until the liquid is slightly reduced.

Add half of a small can of tomato sauce, and toss around. Add water to come about 2/3 of the way up the chicken. (No, it doesn't seem like enough, but it really is.) Place the tea ball of pickling spice in the pot, submerging it as much as possible. Bring to a boil, cover, and lower the heat.

Simmer about an hour, shaking the pan every now and then. Don't worry about moving the chicken around, it'll be fully cooked since the pot's covered and the steam is all over the place. Add a little more soy sauce if you think it needs it.

Serve chicken with rice, with some of the sauce ladled on top.