Burnt Lumpia: Filipino Food | Filipino Recipes | Culinary Hijinks

Oven-Roasted Pinakbet with Bacon

I didn't know it until I started writing this particular post, but 5 years ago, I wrote about how I first learned to make the Filipino vegetable stew known as Pinakbet. In that old post, I boldly proclaimed that Pinakbet "is my most favorite food in the whole entire world times infinity!" (man, I was a wordsmith back in the day).

Fast forward 5 years and you know what? Pinakbet is STILL my most favorite food in the whole entire world times infinity! (man, I've still got it!!)

My fondness for the Filipino vegetable medley probably just stems from the stew being a part of my childhood and upbringing—it's a comfort food for me. And besides, with sweet and tangy tomatoes, bitter melon, a touch of fish sauce and a smattering of pork belly, I love the interplay of all of the 5 tastes (sweet, sour, salty, bitter, Umami) in this dish.

Since learning how to make Pinakbet all those years ago, I estimate that I've probably made it well over 100 times (at least once a month for 5 years, plus a gajillion more times for my cookbook, you do the math).

But I've found that if you do something enough times, you start looking for different ways to make things interesting, not because you're bored or tired of the original, but just because you can. Probably kinda like how Kobe can throw up that occassional left-handed runner when there's absolutely no need to (I am by no means calling myself the "Kobe Bryant of Pinakbet Preparers." But maybe Nick Van Exel is more appropriate—my pinakbet is good and dependable, yet open to occassional fits of craziness [humblebrag]).

So that's what I did with my latest Pinakbet--I just did something a bit different for the heck of it, but with great results. This is a simple variation on the "classic" Filipino vegetable stew. And by "classic", I mean within the context of my own family. Your classic Pinakbet might contain cubes of kabocha squash, tender okra, lima beans, and a healthy smattering of Bagoong (fermented shrimp paste). And that's fine. But in my family, my Great Auntie Puyong (The Michael Jordan of Pinakbet Preparers) uses just tomatoes, onions, garlic, eggplant, bittermelon, longbeans, Lechon Kawali, and fish sauce. Simple. Straighforward. Streamlined. Just the way I like it.

Homemade Tofu

Whether you eat tofu on the regular or not, chances are that you've never considered actually making the bean curd from scratch. I mean, who the hell makes tofu from scratch, right? And why would you want to make tofu from scratch anyways if you could just buy a block of it at any supermarket?

Well, because fresh homemade tofu is amazing! Amazing, I say! Fresh tofu made from your own hands is unlike any bland block of bean curd you'll find at your local grocery store. Freshly made tofu is incredibly creamy, subtly sweet, and infinitely versatile.

Still not convinced? Well, once upon a time, I didn't think I'd ever make my own sausage, or my own ice cream, or homemade lumpia wrappers from scratch either. But somehow, I did.

It's amazing the things you can crank out in your kitchen when armed with just the right bit of information.

And all the tofu-making information you'll ever need can be found in Andrea Nguyen's latest cookbook, Asian Tofu.

Asian Tofu is not only a wonderful guide to making your own tofu at home, but it also includes a great collection of recipes utilizing all things bean curd. And while there are plenty of vegetarian-friendly recipes, there is also an abundance of dishes that feature both tofu and meat.

And yes, you can use store-bought tofu for use in most of the book's recipes, but what fun is that when you can make your own?

Pork and Rhubarb Sinigang

The Filipino sour soup known as Sinigang can contain any variety of meats, poultry and seafood, and is typically studded with a variety of local vegetables. Depending on the region of the Philippines, a range of native fruits can be used to give Sinigang its trademark tang. And although vinegar is a vital ingredient in Filipino cooking, it is never used as a souring agent for Sinigang.

The typical souring agents that can be used include unripe tamarind pods and leaves, kamias (a very sour green fruit pod native to the Philippines), guava, starfruit, tomatoes, as well as lemon, calamansi and dayap (another variety of Philippine lime).

But since Rhubarb is so plentiful this time of year in my neck of the woods (and also because tamarind, kamias, guava, starfruit and dayap don't grow in my neck of the woods), I decided to try and use the sour red stalks to bring the tang for a Pork Sinigang.

Rhubarb? In soup? Yes. And it works wonderfully! Although rhubarb is typically used in desserts, a savory Sinigang application isn't as crazy as it sounds. Besides lending the necessary sourness for a proper Sinigang, rhubarb also provides a nice crunchy texture in much the same way that daikon or taro traditionally would in the Filipino sour soup.

And besides, using Rhubarb in Sinigang will trip out even the most palate-progressive of all your Filipino friends. It's a culinary curveball!

Rat Tails in the Garden

On most visits to my grandparents' house, I can usually be found in the kitchen, hovering around my grandmother and her two sisters (AKA "The Aunties", AKA my extra grandmas) as they prepare that day's meal. And while many of the kitchen ingredients come directly from the backyard garden that my grandfather usually tends, I rarely venture out there on account of things like bugs and dirt. I mean, I can't be bothered to have my nice kicks all muddied up now can I?

Truthfully though, my grandfather hasn't been himself for the past few months, so he and his green thumbs have been inside the house and away from his vegetables in the backyard. But despite my grandfather's absence from the garden, I still found my grandmother prepping a particularly interesting looking veggie on my last visit to their home.

On the kitchen counter were a bowlful of strange green pods resembling some sort of love child sprung from the loins of a green bean and a green thai chile. My grandmother told me that they were the pods that eventually grow from a radish root if left to its own devices.

Initially, I was quite dubious of this "radish pod" talk. Stuff grows out of a radish root? That's crazy I thought. Maybe my grandfather had been well enough to go outside and grow these magic beans. Or maybe my grandmother or her sisters had been tending the garden. So I actually went outside to the garden to have a look for myself.

Adobong Sili (Chile Pepper Adobo)

It's been said a few times before in this space, but it bears mentioning again: almost anything can be made into a Filipino Adobo. As long as you have a braising liquid consisting of vinegar, soy and/or salt, garlic, bay leaves, and black peppercorns, a tasty adobo you should have. Of course, we Filipinos veer toward the meaty side of things when throwing something into the adobo braise.

In fact, you might remember adobo from such meaty blog posts as Chicken Adobo (Yes, Again), Unforgettably Fatty, and the Burnt Lumpia classic, Wingin' It, Filipino Style. But even things like squid and water spinach do a good adobo make.

And, as I discovered at my grandmother's most recent Thanksgiving feast, even chile peppers can be adobo'd!

Tinola: Filipino Chicken Soup

As new parents, the wife and I have received some child-rearing tips from, oh, just about everyone we know. I'm not saying we're not appreciative of such tips, but some of these pointers have been downright unusual. Not surprisingly, the strangest pointers have come from my own mother:

• "Make sure you massage his head so it will stay round."
• "You should leave the lights on at night when he sleeps, so he gets used to it."

I know I'm new to this whole parenting thing, but I'm perfectly satisfied with the current roundness of my kid's head, and leaving the lights on at night just makes no sense to me. Ironically enough, I can rest a beer on my own head because it's so flat, and I'm nocturnal. Strange, that.

So despite my mother's good intentions (at least I think her intentions are good), I've pretty much ignored her "sage" advice. However, there was one nugget of knowledge that spilled from my mother's mouth that did kinda sorta make sense: "Tinola is good for increasing breast milk production."

"I can produce breast milk?" I asked my mom.

"Not you, your wife!" she corrected me.

I told you, I'm new to this.

Anyways, Tinola is a simple-to-make rustic Filipino chicken soup. Like the chicken soups of most other cultures, Tinola is also known for its healing and restorative powers--helping to recover from cold and flu symptoms--this much I knew. But I had never before heard that Tinola was also good for nursing and feeding newborns.

So I wasn't sure if my mother was just perpetuating some old Filipino wives' tale, or if Tinola indeed possessed any lactic magic (I'm very pleased with myself that I came up with that rhyme). But if cooking a pot of Tinola would make things easier for my wife, and indirectly get some Filipino food into my kid, I was all for it.

Green Mangoes and Bagoong

The mere mention of "Green Mangoes and Bagoong" will likely excite the salivary glands of almost any Filipino. It's true.

Green Mangoes and Bagoong.

Green Mangoes and Bagoong!

Green Mangoes and Bagoong!!!

The pairing of sour unripe mangoes dipped in salty fermented shrimp paste (Bagoong) may not sound too appealing to some, but it's a mouth-watering combination for most Filipinos. In fact, after reading the first few lines of this post, I'm sure that there are some gleek-covered computer screens out there due to the certain downpour of Pavlovian drool.

Up until recently though, my own Pavlovian response to green mangoes and bagoong did indeed entail salivation... except it was the sort of salivation associated with nausea. Yeah, vomit spit (ewww). You see, when I was a wee lad I would recoil in horror as I watched my mother snack on this sour/salty delicacy. Eating unripe fruit was strange enough to me as a child, but to then dip and smother the unripe fruit in stinky rotting shrimp was altogether... well, it was just plain gross.

For those who have never had the pleasure of eating bagoong, it is a very pungent and salty paste comprised of itty-bitty teeny-weeny fermenting shrimp. While Bagoong is salty in flavor, its funky aroma is kinda like if anchovies had feet, and wore dirty socks with an old pair of sneakers, and walked around town in the afternoon sun, in July--but in a good way.

As I've gotten older though, I have learned to enjoy Bagoong in tiny doses. Heck, I even made a salad with it. However, I've always avoided eating bagoong where it is one of the primary in-your-face ingredients--such as the condiment for green mangoes. But I must confess that I've finally discovered the virtues of this classic pairing.

On My Low Horse

With a shopping basket in one hand, and a short grocery list in the other, I was skipping (ok, I was walking, but there was a lilt in my step) up and down the aisles of my local Filipino grocery store. As I stopped to mentally check off each item on my list, something squatting on the store floor caught my attention.

"Psssst. Hoy!" the object of interest seemed to simultaneously shout and whisper to me.

Normally, whenever the words "Psssst. Hoy!" are shouted/whispered (shoutspered?) at me, I usually duck and cover and/or run as I've probably done something wrong. But that's another story for another time. I digress.

This time however, I couldn't help but to kneel down and take a closer look at what appeared to be a mini-skateboard with short wooden stumps in place of wheels. Strange, that. Stranger still was that the nose of the board was fitted with a rather nasty-looking serrated spur.

Whoa.

After picking up the menacing looking device, I immediately recalled some childhood memory of my Great Aunt (my grandmother's sister) using this contraption in the kitchen.

What exactly is this thing, you ask?

It's a Kabayo, AKA a Coconut Horse, AKA a Filipino Coconut Grater.

Still in the dark? I thought you might be. So I made a video of me riding the Coconut Horse (out of context, that sounds awesome terrible!).

Thin-Skinned

I received another windfall of kalamansi limes from my mother recently, whose tree was bursting with bright orange orbs of the Filipino citrus. The longer a kalamansi sits on the tree, or the older it gets, it will change colors from green to orange. I'm guessing that because kalamansi are grown so abundantly and used so frequently in the Philippines, you will rarely find an older, orange-hued one there. Such is not the case for my mother, who is lucky enough to have a tree that produces more fruit than she can use. Hmph.

The bag of fruit that my mom unloaded on me contained about a jillion orange kalamansi, and only a few green ones. So I decided to conduct a very unscientific and inconclusive experiment in which I compared the traits of green and orange kalamansi limes. Prepare to be awed.

Kalamansi are smaller than lemons. Mind blowing.

Firstly, I noticed that both the green and orange kalamansi were smaller than a lemon! Mother-effing crazy, right? Wait, hold your applause, there's more!

After cutting open the green ones and a couple of orange kalamansi, I found that both are thin-skinned and orange-fleshed. The juice yielded from both was also orange. I then squeezed some of the juice into separate teaspoons and gave the samples a taste. The juice from both samples tasted sour with a hint of orange fruit--I couldn't find any discernible differences between the green and orange kalamansi. All of this info is earth-shattering, I know. I'm already crafting my speech for the Nobel Prize in Awesome.

So, in conclusion, the skin color of kalamansi doesn't matter. Green or orange, it's still Filipino on the inside (and that, boys and girls, concludes today's After School Special).

Although I was riding a natural high from my ground-breaking findings, I still had a bagful of kalamansi with which I had no idea what to do. Since they were already so "ripe", on the verge of decomposing, I figured I'd at least squeeze 'em and freeze the juice for a later use.

Quiche Me, I'm Filipino

Speaking of magazines, I also wanted to mention that the December issue of Yummy Magazine in the Philippines features a new recipe by yours truly (and for great comedic effect, there's an accompanying picture of me as well--so I'm told).

The recipe I contributed to Yummy is a Bitter Melon and Bacon Quiche, which is pretty much my take on the classic Pinoy dish of Eggs and Ampalaya, combined with the more western Quiche Lorraine (ooh lar lar).

Mmmm. Bitter melon and bacon, together at last.

This all came to be when, a couple months back, one of the kind folks at Yummy emailed and asked me if I had any ideas for a holiday side dish. So I sent them back a long, drawn-out recipe that is now (understandably, and thankfully) a whittled down and more streamlined version of what I sent them. I gather that the editors at Yummy must frown upon unnecessary parenthetical statements and vague references to cartoons and little-known rap lyrics (I kid, I submitted only a very straight-forward recipe).