Cabbage soup, Cebuano style

Payday was Friday but my wife has to work weekends, getting Thursday and Friday off, so we were unable to go grocery shopping. There wasn't much food left in the house on Thursday, so I took what was left of my funds and went to the local "mini-market" which is like a small farmer's market, located just up the street within easy walking distance.

We had a good-sized piece of pork belly left: enough for two of our standard recipes that use 1/2 to 2/3 cup of pork cubes. Also there were two onions and two heads of garlic, and several pork bouillon cubes. So I went to the vegetable stalls at the mini-market looking for ideas. I ended up buying a whole, small cabbage; three small, mostly-ripe tomatoes; three sili (sword) peppers; and a small ginger root. As it's now in the 'rainy season" and there's a tropical storm nearby, adding to the normal monsoons and affecting the weather (it's cool, overcast, dark, and wet with a lot of local thundershowers) I figured it was a good day for soup. Something to warm body and soul. The veggies I bought came to 28 pesos: around 65 cents (US.) All told, the entire meal (or rather, meals: there was enough for two meals, including seconds and even thirds at each meal, and there's still some left over) probably cost on the order of US$3.00. Cheap eats!



I cut the pork into larger pieces than normal, about two inches square, and chopped the peeled garlic and onion very coarsely. I cut the cabbage in half, removed the core and cut it into largish slices about two inches wide, cut the tomatoes into about six pieces each, trimmed the stems off of the sili and cut them into thirds, peeled half of the ginger root and cut four or five pieces of about 1/2 an inch long from it.

About an hour before dinnertime I threw the meat, onions, garlic and two bouillon cubes into a large (about a quart or so) potful of water, brought it to a boil and skimmed the scum off the top. When the meat was more or less cooked and the onions and garlic were tender, I added the cabbage, tomatoes, sili and ginger, lowered the heat and simmered the mess for about an hour. I added a couple of teaspoons of ground black pepper: no extra salt needed. We ate it over plates of cooked rice. Sorry, I didn't take a picture. :)

My wife said she'd never seen soup prepared like that before: just throwing everything into a potful of water and stewing it. I guess Cebuanos usually precook the onions and garlic in some hot oil first, then cook the soup in the skillet rather than in a pot. Anyway, it came out pretty good: tasty, nutritious, inexpensive, filling and warming. It would have been better if I'd used pork soup bones with lots of meat on them, rather than the pork belly meat, but I had to use what I had on hand. It was still good.