FLAVOURS OF ILOILO

When there's more than enough green mangoes at home, they often end up as  binuro nga paho  so we can enjoy their green-ness for a longer period of time. Making pickles out of these fruit differ from household to household, so it depends on the recipe you grew up with or if you have none, the one that you find online. Ours is very simple. Sliced mangoes are stored in a concoction of salt and  fresh garlic - and remains untouched for a week before it can be utilized. Sometimes a little water is added to thoroughly mix them but most of the time, the juice from the mangoes does the trick. Aside from being appetizers, it sometimes find its way into some pinamalhan recipes. Enjoy this appetizing binuro nga paho !

There are so many ways of making a delicious bowl of Monggo Soup. Often a perfect partner of fried or grilled fish and meat, ginisang monggo is a staple in Pinoy gastronomy especially on Fridays. As the recipe varies from household to household, it's just simple cooking - a mix and match of monggo beans plus leafy vegetables and sliced veggies plus the subak or meat/seafood add-ins.  Be it pork slices, grilled pata, shrimps, dried seafood, left-over lechon, baby shrimps called kalkag and so many more. And how about CHICHARON? Now, let's cook... Ingredients 1 cup monggo, soaked in water before cooking A pack of your favorite CHICHARON (better if with "laman") Leafy vegetables  (Malunggay/moringa, Kamote tops, alugbati, lupo, etc) More vegetables (Langka, kalabasa cubes, sayote, papaya or eggplant slices, shredded ubad (banana trunk pith)) Water Salt, to taste ( broth cubes or patis - optional) How to Co...

Inubaran  basically means the dish is cooked with ubad . No, it's not a typo error, it is really ubad not ubod Different from but practically the same. Confusing? Well ubod is the pith or the center of a coconut tree while ubad is the pith of a banana tree. To have an ubad means a whole banana tree has been cut down and stripped to bare its center. So goodbye to banana fruit, leaves and heart. To make this dish, one has to prepare an ubad for cooking - first thinly slice, around half a centimeter, the cleaned pith (must be very white and sized like a fluorescent lamp to be sure of the quality.) . Then using a barbecue stick, remove web like fibers "interconnecting" these slices (these are actually hardened banana sap). When finished you can crush is into smaller pieces and add to your cooking. This particular recipe also makes use of (young) libas leaves as a souring ingredient. Just saute pieces of (native) chicken in ginger,ga...

The municipality of Santa Barbara, Iloilo embarks on a culinary journey focusing on heritage, traditional and sustainable food. Promoting and utilizing local produce and recipes, the LGU led by the Municipal Tourism Officer Irene Magallon with the support of the Baranggay Nutrition Scholars and department heads held a cook off of local Ilonggo dishes and typical "sud-an"    with ingredients sourced out from the local market.  Tasked of preparing one dry and one "sabaw", groups prepared assortment of typical "sud-an" favorites and various methods of cooking which includes pinamalhan, tinola, sinugba, sinabawan, ginat-an, relyeno, ensalada, tino-um among others. On a special note, if the dish involves a souring ingredient, it required the use    "catmon", a local citrus fruit which was the old name of the town. Fresh ingredients were sourced out from the town market which is just a few steps away from the venue. The...

A confession to start this blogpost - I consider MUASI as one of my hated native delicacies given its bland taste even with the sugar dip. But that was back during my childhood days. Maybe be because I may have used less sugar or might have completely forgotten to "dip" it at all. Yet nowadays, I have learned to appreciate it especially when its freshly cooked with the muscovado teeming the aroma of roasted sesame seeds. So let's make some MUASI

It was a typical fiesta scene in a barrio that I got to taste this cholesteroliffic and delicious pork dish. I can still vividly remember that decades old gastronomic memory - very tender and almost fall of the bone pata, vivid orange sour and sticky broth, large chunks of unripe  langka;  all in one big large  kaldero !  And it's been really a while since I've tried to recreate that taste memory and a few days ago, it was worth another try. Here's my simple recipe for Pata Lauya