While waiting for the next film screening and for my shoot that will happen middle of this month, I’ve decided to write about something I think I’m quite respectably good at – and that’s cooking. Specifically, cooking traditional Filipino dishes.
For the maiden issue of this series (Series??!) I am posting here a simple recipe for Sinigang na Baboy (roughly Pork Sour Soup.)
Sinigang is Tagalog for stew or stewed dish, from the root word sigang which means to stew. Anything stewed is “sinigang” or has been stewed (“nasigang”, past tense.) The base is the sour broth, traditionally made from boiling tamarind (“sampalok“) but other souring agents can be used such as vinegar or sour fruits like guava (“bayabas“), camias (“balimbing“), or unripe green mangoes. In the Visayas region of the country, a sour fruit called batwan is used for a beef version of the dish called cansi (one of my favorite Filipino dishes.)
The protein in the dish can be almost anything from pork, beef or seafood. The most common are pork, shrimp (solely), seafood (a mix of shrimp fish and mussels), or milkfish (sinigang na bangus). “Sinigang na baka” (beef sinigang) isn’t usually called as such, as it is called by another name when beef is used. Cansi is one sample.
Typical vegetable ingredients include radish (labanos), water spinach (kangkong), aubergine (talong) or any eggplant variety, string beans (the shorter Baguio Beans or habichelas variety) and okra. I completey forgot to get okra for my dish today, but I intentionally didn’t buy the string beans.
Sometimes the meat is completely removed, and is exclusively vegetable., in which case it is simply “sinigang na gulay” (vegetable sinigang.)
For today’s lunch, I boiled 1/4 kilogram (a little more than 1/2 pound) of pork ribs. For pork sinigang, the usual portion used is either belly (liempo) or the shoulder (kasim.) But my supermarket had pork ribs on sale at half the price, so that’s what I got. Plus I’m only feeding my lone self here, no need to make a huge batch. This recipe will last me three meals already.
This dish
- 1/4 kg pork ribs, in cubes
- washed leaf tops of kangkong (water spinach). some of the stem may be added.
- labanos, peeled and sliced (daikon radish)
- a few pieces of talong, sliced (small aubergine)
- kamatis (tomatoes), quartered
- sibuyas bumbay (red onion or large shallot), quartered
- a few cloves of bawang (garlic), crushed
- pack of sinigang sa sampalok powder mix, dissolved in half cup of water
- long green chili, 1-2 pieces
- one bay leaf
- salt to taste
- patis (fish sauce) to taste (optional), can be dipping sauce
- whole peppercorns (optional)
In a pot, boil the pork, onion, garlic and bay leaf in water for about 40 minutes or until the pork and pork fat is tender. Since I used pork ribs, It took me almost an hour to boil the pork tender.
(Intermediate step: skim the surface of the boiling liquid to remove the scum, which will make for a cleaner broth. This step is optional. The scum is mostly fat which is flavorful but adds to the fishy odor.)
Add the flavor powder mix (either dissolved in water first in a separate cup or poured directly into the boiling pot. I prefer to completely dissolve the powder first), followed by the radish. Boil for another 5 minutes.
A slight caveat on the powder mix: these instant flavor packs don’t contain completely natural ingredients. They inciude in small quantities MSG, fish powder, shrimp powder, artificial thickeners and yeast. So if you’re allergic to shrimp even if you’re making pork, be aware that these mixes have allergy causing ingredients.
Radish takes a while to get tender, so it may take more than 5 minutes to see some tenderness. Then add the kangkong. Boil for another 3 minutes.
Kangkong has a tough stem so this also takes some time to tenderize which is why I’m boiling them here slightly ahead of the rest of the vegetables. While one can eat kangkong uncooked as in a salad, it is not usually served that way, since it has a slight bitter taste on its own. The spinach will reduce its volume by 50% when cooked, so depending on how many servings you intend to serve, add more or reduce the volume as needed.
Add the other vegetable ingredients after the kangkong is cooked tender – the eggplants, tomatoes (okra and string beans if you have them). Add peppercorns, salt and/or patis (fish sauce) to taste. Boil for three minutes. Top with the green chilli. Boil for a minute, then turn the stove off. Serve right away.
So long as most of the ingredients are covered in the soup, you’ll be safe. But if you think the soup has turned thin with too much water, add vinegar to make it sour, then salt again to taste.
A version of sinigang would include a powder or paste of taro as thickener to the soup. Doesn’t change the flavor much, mainly just thickens the soup consistency.
I learned how to cook from watching my father cook when I was young. He was the chef of the family. I learned that ingredients have properties, and knowiledge of those propoerties can determine the success of the dish. Later on, I would learn more dishes and technique when the family moved to Silay in Negros province (that’s the name of the province.)
Pro tip: remove the vegetables from the pot before serving. That way, you can reheat the soup in the pot as you like without reducing the veggies to mush.
Additional tip: fish sauce can be intense, but we pinoys like it that way. Add only a litte to the soup when cooking. OR, the way we do it is that we have it as a dip with chopped red chillies. Adds punch to the meat (as a dip, not INTO the dish).
Meanwhile, Filuipina Alex Eala just defeated defending champion Iga Swiatek at Round 3 of the Wimbledon Championships. Amazing Alex!
Total prep time: about an hour. Enjoy!
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