Cooking with Cecilia: Binagoongang Baboy - Pork with Bagoong

I'll be fixing Binagoongang Baboy for some friends.

What, you may ask, is that?

It sounds terrible, but it's really good. It brings back memories of down-home meals in the homes we grew up in. It's not healthy - it has pork and is saltier than heck because of the shrimp fry. It's not anything one should eat often, but once in a while, why not? Here are the ingredients and directions, although I have noted alterations below.

Ingredients:

Binagoongang Baboy
1 kilo pork loin, cut into 1" cubes
1/2 cup vinegar (spicy preferred but not required)
1/2 cup bagoong, or for the Ilonggos, ginamus
6 cloves of garlic, crushed and then minced
6-10 peppercorns, crushed
2 bay leaves

Marinate the pork cutes in the othe ingredients overnight in the refrigerator. Heat 3 tablespoons of oil in a wok or large frying pan. Saute the bay leaves to bring out the fragrance. Add the marinated pork along with the marinade. Cook over a medium heat until the pork is nice and tender (30-45 minute). Check the frying pan every so often to make sure the sauce isn't drying out. If it is, lower th eheat and add 1/3 c. of water and stir.
Serve with rice, tomatoes, and sliced cucumbers.

In fact, I've altered the above recipe. I'm using pork hocks. I found some sliced around 1 1/2 inch thick, in my Filipino market (Seafood City, on Vermont). After washing them, I placed them in a huge pot. I got a nice lemon from my little prolific lemon tree and squeezed lemon juice on the meat. I was watching the Food Channel once and saw this Caribbean woman squeezing fresh lemon on the chicken she was fixing, and she said a blessing as she did that. She talked about the lemon removing smells and cleaning the chicken well. Ever since I saw that, I squeeze lemon on any meat I fix and say a little prayer that God bless this food that my family and friends will be eating, and I actually say a thanksgiving to God for the poor animal that gave up its life for us.

I put water into the pot - I have no idea how much, around 2/3rd pot-full? It's just to simmer the pork in, to tenderize it. I added 1/2 cup vinegar. Then I sliced onions and threw that in. I threw in 3 bay leaves and some black pepper. I also crushed 3-4 cloves of garlic and threw that in. I had some loose oregano and tossed a pinch in. I have not salted this because once the pork is tender, I'll mix in the bagoong in the last minute. Using pork hock and boiling it releases a kind of gel that marries with the bagoong into a nice sauce.

What gives this taste is the bagoong, which is wickedly salty and tasty. Americans say the stuff smells and perhaps it does, but the scent makes my mouth water, from all the years of associating it with food.

I saw another recipe that uses tomatoes, and I suppose it wouldn't hurt to add tomatoes. In fact, I wish I had some tomatoes to throw in.

That, dear Readers, is Cecilia's way of cooking Binagoongang Baboy!

Tags: cooking, recipes, Filipino, food

Read also:

Grilled Tri-Tip for Father's Day

https://cbrainard.blogspot.com/2014/06/cooking-with-cecilia-grilled-tri-tip.html  

Fried Chicken Caribbean Style

https://cbrainard.blogspot.com/2008/09/food-essay-chicken.html 

 Chicken soup for my bad cold

https://cbrainard.blogspot.com/2013/08/cooking-with-cecilia-chicken-soup-for.html 

Cooking with Cecilia: Pasta with Crab Roe or Aligue

https://cbrainard.blogspot.com/2014/07/cooking-with-cecilia-pasta-with-crab.html

Cooking with Cecilia: Paella
https://cbrainard.blogspot.com/2019/05/cooking-with-cecilia-paella.html

Cooking with Cecilia: Lengua Estofada

https://cbrainard.blogspot.com/2019/05/cooking-with-cecilia-lengua-estofada.html  

Philippine Cooking: Spam, Eggs, and Rice Breakfast

https://cbrainard.blogspot.com/2015/03/filipino-cooking-spam-eggs-and-rice.html 

Philippine Cooking: Ube Halaya

https://cbrainard.blogspot.com/2015/03/filipino-cooking-ube-halaya-or-purple.html 

Hot Chocolate Drinks: Chocolate-Eh, Chocolate-Mexicano, Chocolate Filipino

https://cbrainard.blogspot.com/2014/06/chocolate-eh-chocolate-mexicano.html

Cooking with Cecilia: Paella

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I have several recipes of paella. I'm sharing one of them.  Paella is a great dish to fix if you have company. All you need is salad and wine and you have a complete meal. Enjoy!

PAELLA
From Cecilia Brainard's Favorite Recipes

Ingredients

1/2 lb sausage
Olive Oil
1 chicken, cut up
1 1/2 lbs pork, cubed
1 large red pepper, in strips
1 yellow onion, diced
2 garlic cloves, chopped
2 tomatoes, medium diced

1/4 tsp saffron
1 1/2 cup long grain rice
1 1/2 lbs shrimps
1 10 oz frozen peas
12 mussels or clams
salt to taste
4-6 cups chicken broth

Directions

Heat olive oil. Saute Onions, garlic, and tomatoes. Add pork and chicken and cook, stirring constantly, around 15 minutes. Add sausage, salt, pepper. Add rice, stirring until coated with oil. Mix with other ingredients. Add saffron to chicken broth. Slowly pour broth into the pan until the contents are covered. Arrange mussels, clams, shrimps, pepper on top. Simmer to cook rice. Add water if needed. When rice is almost cooked, sprinkle peas on top.

Tags: #recipe #food #Pinoy #Philippines #cooking #ceciliabrainard

Read also:

Grilled Tri-Tip for Father's Day

https://cbrainard.blogspot.com/2014/06/cooking-with-cecilia-grilled-tri-tip.html  

Fried Chicken Caribbean Style

https://cbrainard.blogspot.com/2008/09/food-essay-chicken.html 

 Chicken soup for my bad cold

https://cbrainard.blogspot.com/2013/08/cooking-with-cecilia-chicken-soup-for.html 

Cooking with Cecilia: Pasta with Crab Roe or Aligue

https://cbrainard.blogspot.com/2014/07/cooking-with-cecilia-pasta-with-crab.html  

Cooking with Cecilia: Lengua Estofado

https://cbrainard.blogspot.com/2019/05/cooking-with-cecilia-lengua-estofada.html  

Philippine Cooking: Spam, Eggs, and Rice Breakfast

https://cbrainard.blogspot.com/2015/03/filipino-cooking-spam-eggs-and-rice.html 

Philippine Cooking: Ube Halaya

https://cbrainard.blogspot.com/2015/03/filipino-cooking-ube-halaya-or-purple.html 

Hot Chocolate Drinks: Chocolate-Eh, Chocolate-Mexicano, Chocolate Filipino

https://cbrainard.blogspot.com/2014/06/chocolate-eh-chocolate-mexicano.html

A Food Article about Philippine Official National Dishes by Manny Gonzalez (Guest Blogger)

OFFICIAL NATIONAL DISHES – AN OFF-THE-WALL IDEA FOR REAL SOCIAL CHANGE THROUGH CULINARY PRIDE

By Manny Gonzalez, Resident Shareholder, Plantation Bay Resort & Spa.
This article was first published in the Philippine Inquirer. It is reprinted with permission by the author. Thanks to Manny Gonzalez for being my Guest Blogger.

As much as some of us like it, Lechon could never be our National Dish. Find out why in this article by a dedicated amateur chef and globe-trotting Filipino. 

Before we get to the food part (don’t worry, there’s lots of it), here are some very serious observations about our society and our economy.

Guest Blogger: Smoothies and More by Bing V. Jacala #health #Maryknoll

Inspired by a recent college reunion, Barbara (Bing V.) Jacala) decided to share the wisdom gained by her classmates in an ongoing column, "The Sage Women We Have Become: Conversations of College Chums Who Met 50 Years After Graduation." 

As my Guest Blogger, she will share health and beauty tips, as well as favorite recipes of these "sage women." Her first entry is "Smoothies And More."

Bing graduated from Maryknoll College, Philippines in 1968. She was an advertising copywriter, a training officer at the Philippine National Media Center, and a Colombo Plan scholar to the United Kingdom. She resided on Guam for 40 years where she held many positions including features editor, chief of staff in the Guam legislature, and adult education program manager.

Thanks Bing! ~ Cecilia



THE SAGE WOMEN WE HAVE BECOME
Conversations of College Chums Who Met 50 Years After Graduation

by Bing V. Jacala

We were sheltered but in Maryknoll our minds were liberated. We read widely and discussed assertively. This is what we found again in each other when we met 50 years after graduation. In reuniting for a week of renewal we discovered that when we stepped into the outside world, our attempts at conquering the world all began with self development and preservation. Here we share a glimpse into our journey.

Group photo of the Maryknollers who met in Toronto (Bing is front, second from the left)

Cooking: Fifth Taste Umami Discovered!

I was with Food Experts recently, including Chef Gene Gonzalez, historian Felice Sta. Maria, another historian Bryan Koh, and two food writers: Amy Uy and Jenny Brillos.

Half in jest, I told them about the secret ingredient in my Beef Bouguignon -- and I will say it here --- soy sauce.  I expected them to laugh as people often do, but they took the information in thoughtfully then said, "Ah, umami."

Manila: The Power of Pen Food Writing Workshop February 13, 2016

Transforming your Food Passion into Words On a daily basis, we always deal with food. It inspires us in more ways than one. We cook, we plant, we harvest , we enjoy taking photos and we even write about it!  To develop each of these interests takes an effort and great joy on the part of any human being. There is pure love and satisfaction in writing!

Review: Chiles en Nogada a Dish with History at Mexicano Restaurant, Los Angeles

Chiles en Nogada is one of my favorite Mexican dishes. Surprisingly, despite the great number of Mexican restaurants in Los Angeles, this dish is not easy to find.  In fact, until last night, I haven't eaten this in LA, but only in Mexico City and San Miguel Allende in Mexico.

Last night, however, I had Chiles en Nogada at Mexicano Restaurant in Baldwin Hills Mall in Crenshaw, and it was pretty good.  The walnut sauce was warm and tasty, the chile stuffed with pork was very good. It was, in fact, one of the best Chiles en Nogada that I've had.

Zum Augustiner and Schweinhaxen in Munich #Germany #travel #food

My friend, Tina Heiter, who lives in Switzerland, alerted me that Munich's specialty food is pork shank cooked like crispy pata in the Philippines.  It's called schweinhaxen in German.

Crispy pata is something sinful - pork roasted so the skin turns brown and crispy. I couldn't wait to try schweinhaxen. 

The Grand Central Market of Los Angeles, California

We visited the Grand Central Market in downtown Los Angeles which has been in continuous operation since 1917. It's been revamped in recent years and has become more gentrified. The high-energy place now attracts a huge crowd of people, some of them tourists, some office workers from the surrounding areas, and many other types of folk who were there for lunch or to shop for produce, meat, cheeses, and other food items.

Restaurant Review: Bay Cities Italian Deli in Santa Monica

We like the deli sandwiches at Bay Cities Italian Deli and Bakery at 1517 Lincoln Boulevard in Santa Monica. I get their "Godmother" which has  Genoa Salami, Mortadella Cappacola, Ham and Prosciutto plus Provolone with a piquant dressing. They have other sandwiches or you can ask them to make what you want.

Guest Blogger: Tesla the Cat "Cecilia Brainard Expose No. 1"

My name is Tesla. I'm today's Guest Blogger because the Woman Who Opens Cans is jet-lagged. 

Before I begin, let me tell you something about myself. My brother and I are owners of the Woman Who Opens Cans, otherwise known as Cecilia Brainard or Cecilia Manguerra Brainard. She likes to say she owns me and my brother, but that is false. We own her and her husband. This is evident in how they are the ones who serve us: they feed us, clean us, keep our box clean, and so on. 

Cooking with Cecilia: Chicken Malunggay or Moringa Soup

While I'm on the mend, I haven't gotten rid of my cold. The worst day was Day 3, but at Day 6, I'm not done. I continue to be vigilant and am resting and taking my medicines. I've added Aleve to my arsenal of treatments.

Philippine Cooking: Ube Halaya or Purple Yam Dessert

In the Philippines, we used to eat Purple Yam or Ube, a root with dense purple flesh. Sometimes this was boiled; sometimes this was added in other dishes. It had a distinctive pleasant taste, which I can't really describe beyond saying I could taste the forest in it.

Filipino Cooking: Recipe for Carol's Cornbread Bibingka

 Recipe for Carol's Cornbread Bibingka

Carol Ojeda-Kimbrough shares with us her recipe for Bibingka Galapong, a favorite Filipino "cake."
Carol says she arrived at this recipe by trial and error, by playing with different recipes until she got the taste and texture just the way she likes.

COOKING WITH CECILIA - LECHE FLAN (Vietnamese style), Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

 COOKING WITH CECILIA - LECHE FLAN (Vietnamese Style)

I'm cooking for some friends, and my menu includes Leche Flan. Here is my favorite Leche Flan Recipe, which has coconut milk.  The coconut milk seems to make the texture smoother.  I have other Leche Flan Recipes, from the Philippines and Mexico, but this one almost always turns out perfect. It may take more than 45 minutes to cook. You have to test with a knife. Poke and pull, if the knife is clean, the flan is cooked.

(The picture shows me with Beef Bourguignon, another favorite recipe. I'll post that recipe another time.)

Leche Flan with Vietnamese Touch
4 eggs
1 cup condensed milk
1 cup coconut milk
2 tbsp vanilla
sugar to carmelize container
Mix eggs, milk, and vanilla. I carmelize sugar in a pan and spoon out brown sugar-liquid into the bottoms of pyrex containers. I put the mixture into the containers, around 2/3 or 3/4 full. I double boil for around 45 minutes at 325 degrees.

Let the pyrex containers cool. Run knife around the edges and loosen flan before flipping onto a serving plate, spoon carmelized sugar over the top. Delicious!


Read also:
Cooking with Cecilia Brainard - Quiche
Cooking with Cecilia Brainard - Linguine with Clams
Cooking Lengua Estofada
Food Essay - Fried Chicken Caribbean-style
How I Learned to Make Leche Flan (or How I Met my Husband)
Cooking with Cecilia - Leche Flan (Vietnamese Style) 
Recipe for Balbacua Cebuana from Louie Nacorda 
Easy Filipino Recipes from Maryknollers
Cooking with Cecilia - Beef Bourguignon
Cooking with Cecilia - Chicken Soup for my Bad Cold

~~~

tags: cooking, recipes, dessert, leche flan, custard, cookbook, food

A La Carte mentioned in Philippine Daily Inquirer

Another Google Alert: (To those who don't know, Google has a feature wherein they alert you if your name is mentioned in the internet - that would be publications,news, blogs, etc.)

Country Cooking
Quietly promoting Filipino cooking

By Micky Fenix
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 16:15:00 12/24/2008

Filed Under: Lifestyle & Leisure, Food

IT was also her matter-of-fact manner of doing her daily cooking chore that taught me to do what I’m supposed to do the best way I can, but quietly.

This column may be regarded as not really a quiet way to accomplish my advocacy—to make the cooking of our country known to compatriots as well as to the world in general. But it is working quietly in the sense that the effort is done with countless others but isn’t organized. All of us go about the task in our own way whether in writing or in cooking.

Some of those like-minded people were at the launch of the book “Kulinarya: A Guidebook to Philippine Cuisine.” In the program they were cited for promoting Filipino cooking, many of them at their restaurants, proving that serving our dishes is a viable business.

Among those was Nora Villanueva Daza, acknowledged to be the first multimedia culinary personality (print, TV, radio) and the first restaurateur to bring our cooking to Europe.

Aux Iles Philippines was established by Nora Daza in Paris in the early 1970s. That is a wonder considering how Asian ingredients weren’t available everywhere as they are now. And it was a fine dining place, not a carinderia or turo-turo which was the way restaurants serving Filipino food was always presented during that time and even up to the 1990s.

Daza likes to point out the restaurant had an indoor garden which was very unusual for a Paris restaurant at the time. Her food also merited high honors in the French Michelin Guide as well as in the Gault-Millau Le Guide de Paris.

Among her accomplishments, Daza seemed proudest of Aux Iles Philippines as she told her guests at the party celebrating her 80th birthday attended by many of her friends and relatives who shared their experiences about her as neighbor, workmate, mother, grandmother, mother-in-law, ninang.

Many of us who work to have our food known don’t have such a grand operation as Aux Iles Philippines. Yet little by little we let the world sit up and take notice. Thanks to Gourmand World Cookbook Award winners like Felice Sta. Maria’s “The Governor General’s Kitchen,” Cecilia Manguerra Brainard and Marily Orosa’s “A la Carte: Food and Fiction,” and a book I’m proud to be a part of, “Foodlore and Flavours: Inside the Southeast Asian Kitchen” edited by Tan Su Lyn.

Thanks also to “Memories of Philippine Kitchens” by Amy Besa and Romy Dorotan that won the prestigious Grigson Award, the most coveted prize at the International Association of Culinary Professionals convention.

Little by little the efforts to promote our cooking are bearing fruit. Take a look at the December issue of Saveur, one of the best culinary magazines in the United States, where Christmas in Pampanga was a feature story. This was written by Robin Eckhardt who tapped her friend Marc Medina to show her the holiday feasting and simple pleasures at his family’s Mt. Arayat home.

Street food

My piece on street food produced e-mails that complained about my using the word “dirty” for local ice cream. One said that for someone who promoted local cooking, the term was derogatory to the industry.

I forgot that not all readers are of my generation, a group that isn’t classified alphabetically (as in X, Y, Z) but can be described in polite terms as “of a certain age.”

And one reader reminded me that the Internet version of this column is read also by non-Filipinos who might take the “dirty” description literally.

So let me put “dirty” in context. The women of my generation who studied in Catholic schools regard the word with some fondness because it reminds us of our colegiala years when the nuns’ pronouncements were infallible.

“Dirty” was how the nuns called ice cream produced by small outfits, some just home-based, because they presumed that the process may not be as hygienic as those produced by big corporations.

But “dirty” couldn’t kill my love for local ice cream. I never pass up the chance of buying whenever a cart is encountered.

There was an unforgettable incident where I was admonished by my mother, a colegiala herself, about buying from the ice-cream man outside the house. She said something bad would happen.

I presumed she meant a bum stomach or something like that. I laughed that off and bought two cones as my husband also loves the stuff.

On the first lick the earth shook. It was the earthquake that destroyed much of Baguio. I couldn’t believe that my mother was right again.

Thank you readers for reminding me how I have to think and write for a global audience.


E-mail pinoyfood04@yahoo.com.

EASTER PREPARATIONS

After getting back from a quick visit to Cambria, I've had to run around to prepare for Easter. Foremost in my mind is food, dear Readers, because some 45 people will be over on Easter. I'm fixing ham and beef bourgignon; the others will be bringing appetizers, salad, dessert. But regardless, I always make sure I have cheese and crackers and relish dishes, and a cake.

Lest you think, dear Readers, that that is all I know how to fix, let me inform you that I can fix exotic dishes like lengua and paella and so on, but I find ham and beef bourgignon are popular with this Easter crowd. Further, I can cook the beef bourgignon beforehand. We will also have an egg hunt for the children, dear Readers, which means, I have to boil and color some 80 eggs.

And then there's the house, dear Readers, which needs to be spruced up some.

So, for the rest of this Holy Week, you know what I'll be doing.

We got a new toy - an Irobot Roomba. It's a robot vacuum cleaner, recommended to us by the Oleys. Costco sells the model 550, and I like to buy things from Costco because of their good return policy. We opened the box; everything looked pretty simple, and the Roomba already went to work in our room. I cannot believe the amount of lint and dirt the Roomba picked up! It's a wonderful gadget.

So, the Roomba, like me, will be working this week to prepare for Easter!

VISITING CAMBRIA, CENTRAL COAST CALIFORNIA

We're in Cambria, Central Coast California, near Hearst Castle. Cambria has a population of around 5,000. It's located on the coast and its slogan is appropriately: Cambra, Where the Pines Meet the Sea. It reminds me a little of Carmel, although I suspect Cambria is smaller than Carmel. Nice coastline with otters, seals, nice rolling hills with pines and there are deer, wild turkeys, other wild life roaming in the more rustic parts.

Cambria is a tourist place which boasts of nice shops and restaurants. My favorite restaurants are: Main Street Grill, where I usually order ribs, cheeseburgers, salmon sandwich, and veggie avocado sandwich. Sow's Ear Restaurant has nice Chicken Fried Steak; Brambles is for prime rib and other beef dishes; Linn's Binn has excellent olalieberry pie and their chicken pot pies are also good. Moonstone Beach has great Sunday Champagne brunch. Lauren likes their Eggs Benedict; I love Hangtown Fry with fried oysters. Another breakfast place is Creekside Garden.

Cambria is a great place for resting, taking walks, and it's also a nice base for fieldtrips to other parts of the Central Coast such as Montana de Oro near Los Osos, and San Luis Obispo which is 40 minutes away. Morro Bay is around 30 minutes away.

In the summer, Cambria is a favorite for surfers, swimmers and sun bathers. A favorite pasttime is to walk along Moonstone beach searching for moonstones, the opalescent milky white gemstones which are all over the place.

Fridays, Cambria has a farmer's market where you can buy fruit, vegetables, flowers, cheese, bread, dried fruit, etc.

No matter what time of year, I find it's always chilly at night, so bring a jacket.

A LA CARTE FOOD & FICTION - GOURMAND AWARD

I just received the following notice from the people who run the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. The anthology A La Carte already won the Gourmand Award in the Philippines, and is being considered for their International Award - in the top 3, according to the Gourmand contact. Top mainstream publishers vie for the Gourmand Awards, so this is good news for me, my co-editor, Marily Orosa, and publisher (Anvil, Karina Bolasco)!


SHORTLIST FOR THE BEST IN THE WORLD

CONGRATULATIONS

You are a Nominee on the shortlist for

Best in the World in the Gourmand Awards

With your book:
A La Carte: Food and Fiction

You compete in the category: 27 – Best Food Literature Book

There were books from 21 countries in that category.

The complete list will be published in the Gourmand Yearbook 2008 in April.

You are now in the top three.

The Best in the World will be announced on April 13 in London and called to the stage at Olympia Theatre. (London, UK)

FAST FOOD IN THE PHILIPPINES

I listened to two mothers talking about their children, and they went on about their children being hyperactive - "super-kulit" is the term they used. Before this, they had talked about how picky their children are about food: one child didn't eat lunch at school and the mother had to give the kid Ensure in the morning and at night, and another child just ate fast food. I asked if fast food may have something to do with the hyperactivity and they both said yes.

We talked about how we didn't have fast food when we were growing up. Our snacks consisted of fruit and well, yes, sweets, but we didn't have Jollibee and McDonald and those stalls that sell assorted fried snacks.

I have noticed that there are a number of younger people who are heftier. When I was young and even now in provinces, people were/are generally more slender, sometimes too thin. I've always assumed that diet had something to do with this, in the same way I assume that the fast food diet is affecting the people in the cities where there's a proliferation of such food.

It would be interesting to see if there's an increase in diet-related health problems ever since the addition of fast food to the Filipino diet.