Bicol Express

Named after a train route between Bicol and Manila, this rather spicy dish is more or less the Philippine's version of Thai curry. Or something. Anyway, it's delicious. It's basically pork meat with hot peppers and green beans in a coconut cream sauce (coconut cream is a thicker, richer version of coconut milk.)

The only exotic ingredients are bagoong (Philippine shrimp paste) and the coconut milk and cream. I'll tell you how you can make your own of the latter, in case you can't find any in stores.

Mongo Madness variant

My wife had been craving my Mongo Madness but I decided to do it a little differently this time, just for a change. Besides the ingredients I normally use, I added coconut milk and tumeric powder to make a kind of curry. Sort of.

I went out and bought two fresh coconuts. The ladies who were selling these cut a hole into the husked coconuts and poured the coconut water into plastic bags which had been temporarily placed inside a large plastic cup. Then, using a bolo (Philippine machete) the cut the coconuts in half and scraped out the fresh meat which was placed inside another bag. I took these bags home and ran everything through our blender then strained it to make homemade coconut milk. (I actually added too much of the coconut water, so my coconut milk came out a bit too watery. Oh, well, live and learn. This was my first attempt.)

I also added five silis (fresh, medium-hot green peppers) and six little red peppers, like Thai peppers. These gave my mongos just enough of a "bite" without actually being all that hot or spicy.

I used probably around four or five tablespoons of tumeric (I didn't measure, I just put.) I don't think my wife was all that crazy about it as she didn't rave over it or mention how good it was as she normally does, but I liked it just the same.

(My mother-in-law who lives next door once gave us some mongos that she'd made, with coconut milk, sili and tinapa (a kind of smoked, dried fish.) It was very delicious! I was trying to emulate that plus use up the tumeric that we already had. In restrospect, I should have asked the m-i-l how to make the coconut milk, I suppose.)

Sorry, I didn't take a picture this time. :)

Goulash

Yep, another non-Filipino dish!

The rainy season is here, there's a low-pressure area just east of Samar that's aiding and abetting the normal monsoon causing cool, rainy weather with lots of dark clouds, and I didn't have much food in the house nor money to go buy more. Besides, I didn't want to go out in the rain.

I had a bunch of pork belly, a large cabbage, plenty of garlic and onions, so I was going to make ginisang repolyo or braised cabbage (and pork.) But the weather made me crave soup or stew instead, and I figured I could stretch the cabbage further by using it in a soup of some sort.

I went prowling through our cupboards and drawers to see what I had on hand, and I found an unopened sachet (packet) of Spanish paprika, as well as a small plastic bag with some flour in it. I used to cook a lot of Hungarian dishes once upon a time, when I was still in America, so I was inspired to try to do something different for dinner.

Dugo-dugo

Dugo-dugo (image courtesy of Wikipedia)

Here's another dish that I've never actually cooked myself, but just eaten in restaurants and shopping mall food courts. Called dugo-dugo in the Cebuano dialect of Visayan and dinuguan in pure Visayan, it's one of those things that sound absolutely disgusting but taste delicious. It's a type of stew made from pork meat and/or offal (which may include lungs, kidneys, liver, intestines, ears, heart and snout) cooked in the pig's blood with vinegar and hot green peppers (siling mahaba or sword peppers.)

Americans usually are appalled at the idea of eating pig's blood, but the English and Germans are more used to the idea: to them, this dish is a spicier, moister version of black pudding or blutwurst. 

I, too. was at first turned off by the ingredients, but after trying it I was hooked! My wife and I once joined several friends and acquaintances for lunch after church on Sunday, and the particular restaurant we chose, Golden Cowrie, served very large portions (and unlimited rice), so we dined "family style." I was in a fish and chips mood for some reason, so I ordered a large batter-fried fish dish. My wife ordered dugo-dugo, and after tasting it I ended up eating half of her order without knowing what it was! It was only afterward that I found out what was in it. I often order it in food courts now, if I happen to want to eat when I'm at a mall.

I once kind of tricked an American acquaintance of mine, who is visiting Cebu, into trying it. We were meeting up to do some sightseeing, and first had lunch in the food court at the SM mall in Cebu City. I ordered dugo-dugo (as well as some barbecue and some adobong kangkong) and he asked me what it was. I just said, "It's pork" so he ordered some too, and loved it. I never did tell him what was in it. (Sorry, Doc Kieth.)

Some people make their dugo-dugo kind of sweet: I prefer it to be more sour and spicier from the chili peppers. Anyway, a small serving goes a long way in seasoning your cooked rice so it's a cheap meal when dining out. Oh, did I tell you it's absolutely delicious? No? Well, it's absolutely delicious.

Gourmet beef stew

OK, here we go with another non-Filipino recipe. I haven't made this one since I left the States as beef is rather mahal (expensive) and a bit hard to find here, being imported from Australia or New Zealand and sold frozen. So I'm going by memory, but I've made it several times so I think I can remember everything.

My version of beef stew is a bit different than most: upon tasting it, I've had people ask me if I'm a gourmet and also ask me for the recipe. Like many home-style cooks, though, I don't follow a recipe as such: I just make stew! But here goes:

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.)