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!

Odong with sardines

Odong ingredients

Odong is a kind of short flour and egg noodle, yellowish in color, somewhat resembling spaghetti noodles. The most common way of preparing odong is a rich noodle soup or stew made with sardines in tomato and chili sauce. Sounds disgusting, tastes great! I plan to cook this for dinner tonight.

The key is to use Asian-style sardines. Americans, please don't try substituting cheap Beachcliff brand sardines in those flat cans: it will taste horrible. Try to find an Asian market and look for sardines in a small (around 150 grams), upright can (see photo above.) Favorite brand names include Ligo, Toyo, Family's, 555 and Mega. Make sure you get sardines in tomato sauce with chili added, unless you absolutely can't stand any spiciness at all in your food (they're not hot, by the way: just tasty), in which case get sardines in plain tomato sauce. Well, you'll need to go to an Asian or Filipino market anyway, to get your odong noodles, so you may as well just get your sardines there too.

Odong is sold in a plastic bag which contains several (around ten) small packets of noodles. You'll need six of these packets for this recipe, which sadly only leaves four for the next batch. I wish they'd give us 12.

Mongo Madness (stewed mung beans)

A bowl of Mongo Madness and rice

Tonight I'm making mongos. "Mongos", also spelled "monggos", "mungos" or "munggos" are dried mung beans and are very similar to lentils. Mongos are typically prepared as a soup or stew. I make mine a bit differently, shall we say, compared to the typical Philippine way. It's kind of my own secret recipe, but I'm willing to share. My wife, a Cebuana, says I make better mongos than she does. I call this dish Mongo Madness as originally I added whatever I happened to have lying around, such as leftover pechay, so it was a bit different every time until I finally standardized my recipe as is given here.

This dish is easy to make but requires quite a bit of preparation, some of which can be done beforehand, finishing up about an hour before you want to eat. It's a great comfort food when you're not feeling well or for during the cooler rainy season, as it is here (it just started.)

Please read the recipe thoroughly, including the notes at the bottom, before going shopping. (Recipe details continue after the jump.)