Because of its crazy bone structure (i.e. there be bones everywhere!), much effort is usually necessary before Bangus (AKA Milkfish) can be fully enjoyed--either its hundreds of bones have to be removed during prep, or the bones have to be picked through while at the dinner table.
Sure, you could ask your fishmonger to "debone" your bangus for you, but he will more than likely just remove the backbone and leave the other pin bones for you tussle with. In fact, I've read that a full-grown milkfish can have up to 300 pin bones throughout its flesh. That deserves an "Egads, man!" And although I've braved the bones of Bangus before, it isn't something I like to do very often.
But during a recent visit to my parents house, I discovered what is perhaps the greatest thing since sliced pan de sal: Frozen Boneless Bangus! Yes, I know, I'm probably late to the party on that one--but finding a frozen butterflied and deboned milkfish in my mom's freezer was a new discovery for me at least.
So what did I do with this discovery? I took it home for myself is what I did. Although it's been a while since I've been a bachelor, and even longer
since I've been a college student, I'm not above pilfering and ransacking my
mother's freezer and cupboards--even at my advanced age.
During the lifespan of this here Filipino Food Blog, I've made some
food that I never thought I'd have the skill, chops, or know-how, to
make. I'm not saying any of this food has been perfect, I'm an
inexperienced hack
after all, but I've at least been able to avoid self-induced food
poisoning that could have been caused by my overwhelming lack of said
skill,
chops, or know-how. But it turns out that with a little research, and a
lot of patience, seemingly difficult dishes can be prepared with
relative ease.
Take for instance, the Filipino pork sausage known as Longanisa (also spelled longanissa, longganisa, longannisa, and everything in between). Almost 2 years ago, I made my own homemade Longanisa from scratch. This initial foray into sausage making, while daunting, resulted in some dang tasty pork links. Overall, it was a satisfying enough experience that I had to pat myself on the back a la Barry Horowitz.
However, after a visit to the Philippines last year and sampling the awesomely fatty Ilocano sausages of Batac, and after Josh Bousel of Serious Eats adapted my longanisa recipe with fantastic results, I realized that there was still much room for improvement in my original recipe (let's call that one Homemade Longanisa v1.0, or HL1).
So after some tinkering and fine-tuning here at the Burnt Lumpia Worldwide Headquarters, I've finally devised a better sausage--a tastier, fattier sausage more evocative of the Longanisa I enjoyed in the Northern Philippines last summer. Ah yes, by streamlining a few ingredients while simultaneously adding more pork fat(!), I was able to evolve my old recipe into a new and improved version: Homemade Longanisa v2.0!
And with this New and Improved (Now with 50% MORE Fat!) version of Longanisa, I am happy to add it to my personal list of Porky Pinoy Pavorites...
As mentioned in my previous post, I will be introducing, one at a time, 5 utterly fatty Filipino pork dishes I have deemed as the Five Point Pork Exploding Heart Technique. The first fatty pork dish I'd like to present to you in this series is Spicy Sizzling Sisig.
Sisig is a spicy and sourish Filipino dish usually comprised of pig ears, snout, and cheeks (and sometimes brain!) that have been boiled, grilled, and fried (yes, it's cooked thrice) with spicy chilies and then served on a hot sizzling platter. In other words, it's a platter of sizzling pig's face (and sometimes brain!).
Before any of you turn your own noses up at this dish, let me say that after I've had it in the Philippines in Boracay, and after making it myself, I can certainly attest that Sisig is a damn fine and tasty dish. (Market Manila also has some great Sisig posts here, here, and here.)
Ok fine, you'll give Sisig a try, but how does one obtain a pig's face you ask? Well, if you happen to have access to a severed pig's head, you yourself can easily butcher the face off, as shown in the following Gourmet Magazine video that shows Chef Chris Cosentino butchering a pig's head to make the Italian dish, Porchetta di Testa. Warning: the following video can be disturbing if you don't like to see meat being butchered, but it's pretty awesome and informative nonetheless:
See, Filipinos aren't the only ones to eat pig's face!
Of course, many of us probably don't have access to the severed head of a little piggy, let alone are we willing enough to butcher it ourselves. So making Sisig sans snout with just pork ears and jowl is the next best thing.
If you happen to have some pork ears with hair on them, just shave them with a razor and/or burn them off with a blowtorch as was shown in the Gourmet Magazine video above. Luckily for me, the ears I purchased were already clean-shaven.
To make my Sisig, I first boiled some pork ears for a couple of hours in some water along with a couple of dried chipotle chilies and bay leaves (the chilies and bay were more for aromatic purposes as I didn't want my place smelling like boiling pig ears).
Are you listening to me?
Some Sisig recipes I've seen say to grill the ears first to get rid of any stray hairs, and then boil them. But that seemed counterintuitive to me in that the boiling would probably wash away any desired char and smokiness from the grill.
I also took one of my pork jowls and trimmed away much (a whole friggin lot) of the fat because I thought it would be a shame to waste all the delicious jowl fat to the flames of my grill. Don't fret though, there was still plenty of fat left on the jowl and I saved the trimmed fat for another use down the road (another post for another time).
Fatty Jowl
For those of you unfamiliar with pork jowl, it is used to make the Italian cured meat called Guanciale--which is basically face bacon (rather than bacon made from pork belly). Luckily I ordered two jowls, one for Sisig and one for Guanciale. As soon as the weather cools down around here, I will be curing my own homemade Guanciale with the other pork jowl I have (yet another post for another time).
I then marinated the boiled ears and the trimmed jowl (no need to boil the jowl) in some soy, vinegar, kalamansi juice, garlic, and red pepper flakes overnight. After marinating, I grilled the ears and jowl over high heat until they were nice and charred. I tasted the ears and jowl at this point, and they were so good already--especially the 'qued jowl:
The pork ears were no slouch either, as they seemed to take up a lot of the flavor from the marinade. Although the ears are, of course, all cartiledge, they weren't tough to chew on at all as they were rendered tender from the earlier boiling. Although I used four pork ears for my recipe, feel free to tone it down to two ears.
Soft ears
After I removed the pork from the grill, I chopped everything up into small pieces. Along with some chopped onions and some thai and serrano chilies, I sauteed the pork jowls in a hot skillet--some of the fat renders out from the jowls and ends up caramelizing the onions into sweet bits. I added the chopped ears to the pan at the last minute, then presented everything on a hot sizzling platter as Sisig should be served. Sisig, it's spicy, smoky, tangy, and utterly porky delicious.
Sizzle fer shizzle, home skillet!
And that friends, is the first dish for my Five Point Pork Exploding Heart Technique. Use it with caution. Although there are four more dishes to go, I won't reveal them all here at once because there is indeed a rather effective defense against the lethal Five Point Pork Exploding Heart Technique: Moderation.
Spicy Sizzling Sisig
Serves 4-6
2-4 pork ears, cleaned and rinsed 2 dried chipotle peppers 2 bay leaves 1/2 cup soy sauce 1/4 cup cane vinegar 1/4 cup kalamansi juice (or a mixture of lemon and lime juice) 3 garlic cloves, smashed 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes 1 pound pork jowl, trimmed of excess fat (save trimmed fat for another use) 1 onion, diced 1 thai bird chili, sliced 1 serrano chili, sliced 1/4 teaspoon smoked paprika (pimenton)
Place the pork ears, chipotle peppers, and bay leaves in a large pot and cover with water. Bring the water to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer. Cover the pot and continue simmering for 2 hours until the ears become tender. Drain the ears and allow to cool to room temperature.
Combine the soy, vinegar, kalamansi juice, garlic, and pepper flakes to make a marinade. Place the pork ears and jowl in a large zip-top bag, or in a shallow dish, and pour the marinade over the pork. Marinate the pork overnight.
Remove the pork from the marinade then discard the marinade. Pat the ears dry with paper towels, then brush them with oil (no oil is needed for the already fatty jowl). Place the ears and the jowl on a very hot grill and cook for a total of 15-20 minutes, turning the ears and the jowl frequently. Remove pork from grill and allow to rest until they are cool enough to handle.
Chop the pork ears into small pieces and set aside. Chop the pork jowl into small pieces and set aside, making sure to keep the jowl separate from the ears.
Add the pork jowls to a large skillet over high heat and saute for 3-5 minutes. At this point, you can pour off some of the rendered fat that collects in the pan, but I left it in there. Add the onions, chilies, and paprika to the hot pan and cook until the onions soften. Add the chopped ears to the pan and mix everything to combine. Cook for 1 more minute, then place the Sisig on a pre-heated sizzling hot platter.
Provide some fresh kalamansi (or lime or lemon) on the side for spritzing onto the Sisig. Serve the Sisig with rice and an ice cold beer.
The Rachael Ray 30-minute approach to cooking meals is completely lost on me. It's not that I don't think cooking a weeknight's dinner in a quick and efficient manner is a bad idea--it's brilliant actually--it's just that I am molasses-slow in the kitchen. Constructing an entire meal in 30 minutes or less would be somewhat of
a miracle for me (heck, it sometimes takes me longer than that to drop
a deuce).
I like to move at my own pace and take my sweet lollygaggin' time when I'm in the kitchen. I may look up at the green digits on my microwave clock one moment, look back down at whatever I'm chopping, stirring, or cursing at, and then look back up at that clock an hour later not realizing how much time has lapsed (or that my wife is hunched over on the couch with a painfully grumbly tummy).
And this is why the wife cooks a bulk of the meals during the busy work week, and on the lazy weekends I'm on kitchen duty. When we do plan meals during the week that I will be cooking, I usually have to do the prep work the day before so that we can eat at a decent hour the following evening.
But I've recently discovered a Filipino dish that seemingly allows me to bend the space-time continuum so that I can feed the wife and myself on a weeknight. I don't even have to fake "the gout" and take a half-day at work so I can have more prep time in the kitchen (not that I've ever faked "the gout" before, ahem).
This dish I speak of is Bistek--which is just beef marinated in soy and kalamansi and then cooked with onions. That's it. No, seriously. That's all Bistek is. Just take some meat, soak it in some soy and kalamansi juice for half an hour, then throw everything into a pan (marinade and all) with onions, serve with rice, and enjoy.
Saucy
I realize I'm probably the last Pinoy on the planet to discover the quickness (the quickness!) with which Bistek can be made, but better late than never I say. I've also read that the word "Bistek" is a Filipino corruption of the English word "Beef Steak". But I don't believe this explanation of nomenclature considering there are numerous Latin dishes that go by the name "Bistec Encebollado" (also steak and onions). So, like many other Filipino dishes, I'm pretty sure our Bistek, at least in name, is of Spanish origin as well.
Considering this connection to Spain, I found another use for Bistek via Mexico (Spain once governed its Philippine colony from Mexico [confusing, but true]). Instead of cooking the beef and onions in the marinade on the stove, I grilled the steak and onions on my barbecue:
Grilled Bistek
I then sliced the meat and threw it into a tortilla topped with the onions, some queso de bola (edam) cheese and some cilantro:
Bistek Tacos
The Bistek Tacos would probably also fare well with a little topping of Atchara as well. Although the Bistek Tacos lack the sauce that the traditional preparation includes, the longer marination of the meat ensures the maximum toyomansi taste (flava in ya mouf!).
I used sirloin for the traditional Bistek, and flank steak for the tacos, but I think either meat would work for either situation. I found both applications to be amazingly easy to prepare and were perfect for a quick midweek dinner.
Filipino Bistek (Citrus Steak and Onions)
Serves 2 to 4
1 lb. sirloin beef, sliced thinly 1/4 cup kalamansi juice (or lemon juice) 1/2 cup soy sauce 3 cloves garlic, smashed 1 Tablespoon oil 1 large onion, sliced into thin rings Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Place the beef, kalamansi juice, soy sauce, and garlic in a large zip-top bag, or in a shallow dish, and marinate in the refrigerator for 30 mins.
Heat the oil in a large saute pan or skillet over medium-high heat. Remove the meat from the marinade (reserve marinade, do not discard marinade) and sear the meat on all sides, 4-5 minutes total. Remove meat from pan, place the meat in a bowl, and set aside. If the pan is dry, add a bit more oil. Add the onion rings to the pan and saute for 3 minutes.
Pour the reserved marinade into the pan with the onions, being sure to deglaze and scrape the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon or spatula. Bring the liquid to a boil, reduce heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the black pepper to the sauce and taste for seasoning. If the sauce is too salty, or too sour, add 1/2 cup of water if necessary. You can also add water if you just want to have more sauce.
Add the meat back to the pan and cook for another 2 minutes. You can also thicken the sauce with cornstarch if desired. Serve with rice.
Bistek Tacos
Serves 2 to 4
1 lb. flank steak (leave whole, do not slice)
1/4 cup kalamansi juice (or lemon juice)
1/2 cup soy sauce
3 cloves garlic, smashed
1 large onion Salt and pepper, to taste Olive oil Tortillas (flour or corn) 1/4 cup edam cheese, grated Cilantro, for garnish
Place the beef, kalamansi juice, soy sauce, and garlic in a large
zip-top bag, or in a shallow dish, and marinate in the refrigerator overnight.
Cut the onion into 1/4-inch slices, then place the onion slices on skewers so that they are easier to grill. Brush the onion slices with olive oil, then sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Remove the meat from the marinade; reserve the marinade. Place the meat and onion skewers on a hot grill over high heat. Grill the meat and onions for 10-12 minutes total for medium-rare meat, brushing occasionally with the reserved marinade. Remove the steak and onions from the grill and allow the steak to rest for 10 minutes. Discard the leftover marinade.
Thinly slice the steak against the grain. Place the steak and onions in warmed tortillas, then top with cheese and cilantro.
I sometimes find myself wondering if I'd be more "ecologically responsible" if Captain Planet had aired during the '80s with the rest of my favorite childhood cartoons (e.g. G.I. Joe, Transformers, and Voltron).
But because Cappy aired during my angry teenage years in the '90s, I always viewed that cartoon as somewhat corny and sissified (heck, I even watched Jem and She-ra during the '80s, and I still liked those better than Captain Planet).
Despite the absence of this green-mulleted, blue-skinned, red underwear-wearing superhero during my formative years, I still try to live and eat as green as possible as an adult. That's not to say that I'm some kind of eco-freak (not that there's anything wrong with that), but I try to do what I can when it comes to how my food choices affect the planet: I eat as locally and organically as I can (though it's not always possible) and I go out of my way to not be wasteful of food.
More recently though, I've started to learn a bit about sustainable seafood and how overfishing certain species of fish can not only lead to the possible extinction of these fish, but can also cause terrible repercussions in the oceans and the rest of the world.
Whenever my dad gets a little hot under the collar and has to work off some steam, my mother usually hangs a whole Bangus (milkfish) from a meathook in her kitchen. Then, she goes to her mint-condition 1980s-era Sony boombox and blasts "Eye of the Tiger" from its speakers. Then, as if on cue, my dad bounds into the kitchen and proceeds to go to town on the poor hanging Bangus--Rocky Balboa style--working his jab-jab-cross combinations to rightly tenderize the flesh of the fish. After absorbing enough furious blows from my father's menacing knuckles, the fish meat relents and finally yields as it falls through the fish's mouth and gills and into a bowl waiting on the floor. Left hanging from the meathook is only a limp, empty sock of fish skin, and on the kitchen floor lay a bowl full of tender fish meat. And thus begins the recipe for Rellenong Bangus--Stuffed Milkfish.
Aside from the preceding paragraph being unnecessarily laden with adjectives, it's also not entirely true. One, my mom wouldn't know how to work a boombox; and two, my dad only punches live animals (it's been a while since I've zinged my old man in this space: ZING!). So aside from poking fun at my parents for my own personal pleasure, I did want to paint a picture of how difficult it is to prepare Rellenong Bangus (stuffed milkfish).
All joking aside, Rellenong Bangus is perhaps one of the most time and labor-intensive Filipino recipes to attempt--its preparation involves the tenderizing and removing of the fish flesh through only a small opening in the fish's skin using only a spoon and a lot of scraping and squeezing. For Stuffed Bangus, the whole idea is to remove the meat from the fish while still keeping its skin intact--this is done by inserting the spoon through the gills of the fish, although my mom sometimes cheats by cutting the fish open, scraping the meat out, and then sewing the skin back together.
After the meat is removed from the fish, it is seasoned and cooked, flaked, picked over for bones, and then mixed with chopped veggies. Meanwhile, the empty fish skin is marinated in a mixture of soy and kalamansi. The fish meat and veggies are then stuffed back into the fish's body until the deflated balloon of fish skin resembles a whole fish again (It's kinda like squeezing all the toothpaste out of a tube, and then
stuffing the paste back into the tube again--only much tastier). After the fish is stuffed, the whole shebang is grilled or baked or fried or what have you.
The entire ordeal (and it is an ordeal) of removing and deboning the meat from a whole Bangus is easier said than done--which is why Stuffed Bangus is only made every once in a while for parties and special occasions (or on occasions when my father has to punch something--actually, that's not true, otherwise we'd have stuffed bangus every day).
Chicken feet are gnarly-lookin' things aren't they? What with the pink-toned lizard skin and the talon-equipped toes and non-opposable "thumb".
Ick.
From a purely aesthetic standpoint, the foot of a chicken is indeed quite creepy in appearance. And depending on how a particular chicken is raised, his or her feet will either spend a good amount of time standing in the chicken's own hot feces within a small confined cage (regular industrial, corn-fed, mass-marketed chicken), or hopefully running around out in the open on dirt, grass, and the hot feces of other farm animals (natural, cage-free, free-range, blah blah blah chicken).
Double ick.
Now, if you can get past the pink lizard look of chicken feet, and if you can get past the notion of where those feet could have possibly spent all their walking (or standing) hours, and if you are a bit of an adventurous cook, then you may find that chicken feet can actually be a wonderful ingredient to use in the kitchen.
Not only can chicken feet be used to make a wonderfully rich and gelatinous homemade chicken stock, but they can also be transformed into tasty bits of goodness on which to nibble.
Yes, nibble.
That's right. Chicken feet are delicious.
For instance, the menus of Chinese dim sum joints often offer fried/braised/steamed chicken feet under the moniker of "Phoenix Claws" (perhaps risen from the heap of unwanted chicken parts).
And in the Philippines, street food vendors can be found grilling marinated chicken feet that are playfully nicknamed "Adidas" (three toes = three stripes). Similarly, grilled chicken heads are referred to as "helmets," and pig ears are known as the ever-so-80's "Walkman". I'm not making this up.
Filipinos. Clever marketers of food we are.
Anyhoo, I'm sure there are many more cultures with a chicken foot fetish. But for most chicken foot recipes that I've found, you have to first boil the feet to tenderize and soften them up a bit. As such, I decided to kill two birds with one stone, er, uh, boil chicken feet for two separate recipes: Chicken Stock and Grilled Adidas.
When invited over to someone else's home for a barbecue, proper party etiquette usually dictates that you not point and laugh at the main dish as it is brought to the dinner table. That would be rude.
However, grilling a whole chicken with a beer can stuck betwixt its drumsticks not only yields a moist and flavorful bird, but it also merits a few chuckles when presented to the table. So by all means, do point and laugh if you are ever presented with beer-can chicken. But you should also be ready for a tasty treat once the bird is on your plate. And there are quite a few foods that combine both hilarity and deliciousness like beer-can chicken can. Just look at that picture above. It appears to be a nicely roasted and juicy chicken on a grill (delicious!), but then there's a beer can stuck up its arse (hilarious!). Sorry, but I'm easily amused.
Although vertically roasting a chicken with a half-full (hooray for optimism!) beer-can stuck where the sun don't shine is a common practice in many parts, there may still be some of you out there unaccustomed to such culinary delights. Let me first explain that the beer-can is more than just a novelty--it actually does help prevent the chicken from drying out by steaming the bird from the inside out, all the while perfuming it with beery goodness. Grilling in this manner is also not limited to just beer-cans. You could also use fruit punch, colas, energy drinks, whoop-ass, and whatever else comes in a can these days.
Now I make beer-can chicken a few times a year, and I normally take to dispensing a dry rub of herbs and spices to flavor my bird. But this being a Filipino food blog and all, I figured I'd do a Filipino-style barbecue. And if there's one culinary tradition that Filipinos and Americans have in common, it's good barbecue.
Of course, Pinoys can lay claim to piggy goodness in things like Lechon, but we can also grill up a mean and tasty bird in the form of Chicken Inasal--chicken marinated in a heady mixture of vinegar and lemongrass and then thrown on the grill while being basted with red achuete oil.
Mmmmm. Beer-Can Chicken Inasal. It's the best of both worlds.
If you were to look at my old man's life resume, a laundry list of bullet points would be on display under the "Skills" heading. Among his wide and varied talents would be the following:
Throat Punching
Beer Drinking
Marrow Extracting
It could be argued that both "Throat Punching" and "Beer Drinking" are hobbies rather than skills, so I'll focus on the last item in that list for now: Marrow Extracting. Or, to put it more plainly--sucking the fatty and unctuous meat-flavored butter from animal bones. Yum!
Ah yes, bone marrow. A delicacy that seems to be catching on in many fine dining establishments these days, but something that many cultures have been feasting on for thousands of years--or at least since the 80's.
I remember many a meal at our dinner table when I was a wee lad--before I discovered the joys of marrow consumption. My brothers and I were always instructed to give our leftover bones, from whatever we were eating, to my father. Then, with gustatory glee, my father deftly (and loudly) sucked the marrow from the bones of the creatures felled for our dinner: chicken legs, pork ribs, beef shanks, magical unicorn horns, etcetera etcetera.
Such behavior always seemed to leave my mother appalled, whereas I thought it was fairly awe-inspiring. As they say, the kalamansi doesn't fall far from the tree--I've taken quite a liking to the fatty, tasty goo found at the center of hollow bones. And for the longest time, due to my upbringing, I thought eating bone
marrow was the norm. But it turns out that (besides vegetarians) there
are those who are kinda grossed out by the whole idea of eating bone
marrow. Strange, that.
For example, my wife and I recently joined a couple of friends for an Italian dinner at a nice restaurant. One of the appetizers on the menu was "Roasted Bone Marrow"--which I immediately ordered with zero hesitation. When the platter of three-inch thick, oven-roasted beef bones (I'm guessing from the shank) arrived at our table, I gleefully scraped the gelatinous mass from their bony containers, spread the goo on some toast points and sprinkled on some sea salt and parsley leaves. It was good. Sinfully, deliciously good.
After a couple of delectable bites of the marrow-spread bread, I shook myself from my crazed carnivorous haze to find the rest of my table looking at me as if I had just eaten a baby. Sure, everyone had a taste of the marrow that night, but it seemed I was the only one who truly enjoyed that appetizer--I ended up finishing the whole thing myself (not that I'm complaining).
I guess eating bone marrow could be a cultural thing--not everybody grows up with a dad that inhales the innards of animal bones. And not everyone grows up with Bulalo, AKA "Bone Soup"--an incredibly easy, yet delicious, Filipino soup made from beef shanks and bone marrow.
It's just a roasted pig's head on a platter. No need to cringe, or go ewww, or label me as a savage. All it is is pork. It's Lechon and it's delicious.
As I'm sure all of my Pinoy readers already know, Lechon is a whole roasted pig that is usually served for big parties and special occasions. For my family, we have Lechon on Thanksgiving (there's turkey too, but who cares really?). And as I mentioned in my last post, I only get to experience the awesomeness that is Lechon every other year since my wife and I alternate between families. And my wife's family does not eat Lechon (read: they be white).
Now, don't get me wrong, I get along famously (famously, I say!) with the in-laws. But the years when I'm at their place for Thanksgiving, my mind is invariably elsewhere--all I can think about is how I'm missing out on Lechon. Glorious Lechon.
In fact, when spending Thanksgiving at the in-laws, I always sneak out to the front porch and give one of my brothers a call on my cell phone to see what's going on at grandma's house:
Bro: Hello? Me: Hey man, how's it going? Bro: Good, everyone's here and we're all... Me: Yeah, that's cool. Is there Lechon? Bro: Yup. Hey you wanna talk to... Me: How's it look? You eat yet? It's good right? Crispy? Tell me it's crispy, dammit! Bro: Yup. It's the same as always. Hey you wanna say "Happy Thanksgiving" to anyone? Me: Click.
I then crumple to the ground, curl into a ball and I quietly weep. Then my father in-law steps outside and I mumble something about dropping my contact lens, watery eyes, and pork, and then I slink back inside to have some turkey. Good times.
