TRAVELS (and more) WITH CECILIA BRAINARD: Cooking with Cecilia: Filipino Barbecue Pork

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Cooking with Cecilia: Filipino Barbecue Pork

We've had a heat wave in Southern California, which is perfect weather for barbecuing. My family loves barbecue pork, so I fixed this over the weekend. Here's a recipe. To be honest with you I don't measure ingredients and just add stuff into a huge bowl. For my family of 12, I cooked 10 lbs of pork butt; my men gobbled up most of it.

Ingredients:
1 lb pork (butt or belly, cut into chunks or slices; slices cook faster)
1/2 cup vinegar
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup banana ketchup
6 to 8 cloves, garlic, minced or macerated
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
dash of chili seeds
bay leaf
bamboo sticks
additional banana ketchup for basting

Procedure:
Combine vinegar, soy sauce, banana catsup, garlic, brown sugar, lemon juice, salt and pepper, chili, bay leaf, in a large bowl, and stir. This is your marinade for your pork slices. I marinate the pork overnight in the refrigerator, turning it over on occasions so the meat soaks up the marinade.

Before barbecuing I soak the bamboo sticks in water for an hour; this prevents the sticks from burning on the grill.

Skewer the pork in bamboo sticks; don't pack the meat tightly together, but allow it to "breathe" so the meat cooks;

Make your basting sauce from banana ketchup and the marinade. You can add a bit of cooking oil to make your pork glisten and look absolutely yummy - this is a trick I learned from a professional cook.

Preheat grill over medium heat.

Grill the pork and baste as you do so.

If you are preparing a lot, you can pre-cook the skewered pork in the oven and finish off over the grill. This allows for quicker cooking time.

I like to serve barbecue pork with rice, pancit, and salad. Some people like to eat the pork with vinegar. For dessert, serve leche flan - check out my special recipe.

Enjoy!

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard's official website is ceciliabrainarddotcom. She is the award-winning author and editor of 22 books, including When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, The Newspaper Widow, Magdalena, Selected Stories, Vigan and Other Stories, and more. She edited Growing Up Filipino 1, 2, & 3, Fiction by Filipinos in America, Contemporary Fiction by Filipinos in America, and other books.. Her work has been translated into Finnish and Turkish; and many of her stories and articles have been widely anthologized. Cecilia has received many awards, including a California Arts Council Fellowship in Fiction, a Brody Arts Fund Award, a Special Recognition Award for her work dealing with Asian American youths, as well as a Certificate of Recognition from the California State Senate, 21st District, and the Outstanding Individual Award from her birth city, Cebu, Philippines. She has lectured and performed at UCLA, USC, University of Connecticut, University of the Philippines, PEN, Shakespeare & Company in Paris, and many others. She has served in the Board of literary arts groups such as PEN, PAWWA (Pacific Asian American Writers West), among others.