Tinuom

Chiqui — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 22:04:53 +0000

Look at that pretty vegetable dish. It’s a recipe I picked up from a friend’s mom way back in 1992, when I stayed at their house in Lambunao, Iloilo. Very simple peasant fare. Goes well with steaming hot rice, pinakas (fried dried fish), or balingon uga (dried anchovies). Or just about any fried fish. Sampat!

It’s the Ilonggo version of the fritata or the quiche, without all the oil, meat, and cheese. Definitely healthier (that is if you have the strength of will to eat it without the sampat food that goes along with it).

Tinuom sampat with Balingon!

Ingredients:

1 cup chopped tomatoes, 4 eggs, 4 cups leafy vegetables (lupo, or, if it’s not available, spinach is a good substitute), salt, pepper, banana leaf for wrapping.

Procedure:

Mix all ingredients in a bowl, except for the leaf. Hold banana leaf a few inches above a flame until it changes color. This will make the leaf more pliant and stronger. It will not break apart easily. Pour the mixture on top of the banana leaf . Gather the edges together and tie with a string. You can place it over hot coals or you can steam it. Cooking time is short. Just 5- 10 minutes. Serves 4.

Note: I tried making this years ago, using foil to wrap the vegetables in. It was okey, but it didn’t have the kind of taste that I loved when my friend’s mom cooked it. Banana leaves are a must for this recipe. It adds another dimension of flavor to the dish. In the US, look for banana leaves in the freezer section of an oriental store. You can also check out Latino markets. They use banana leaves for wrapping food.

KBL

Chiqui — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 01:55:55 +0000

Took out the canned jackfruit(langka) an hour ago. It would be nice to cook KBL, an Ilonggo dish of Kadyos(a type of bean), Baboy(pork), and langka (jackfruit). But here I go again….procastinating on the computer.

I don’t feel too confident about cooking this dish, I guess. Months ago, fueled by a picture on a food blog, I went out to buy some black beans (substitute for kadyos), bulalo beef cuts(substitute for pork), and canned jackfruit. I began to lose interest in my work while it was boiling away on the stove. I couldn’t understand where my dish was headed. Was it supposed to taste like bulalo or linaga?Because I was sure as hell it didn’t taste like KBL.

My husband, who (much to my irritation) always asks about the name of a dish (as if dishes were books with titles), gave me his usual “What’s that called?” question. I apologetically said “I can’t really understand what it’s supposed to be. Basta. May sabor. It’s edible.” He smiled and answered that he’s used to my cooking by now, that nothing really surprises him anymore.

Sigh. To a lesser degree, I think I’m like my mother. And maybe this latest realization about myself is my punishment for all the times I teased her when she’d put a queer-looking dish on the table. She has the tendancy to experiment. She turns a recipe upside down by putting ingredients that are not supposed to be there. Just last weekend she served miswa for dinner. It had cabbage and ginger in it! That’s culinary innovation at its best. I kept my mouth shut this time, but in the past I would usually say, in my best announcer voice, “Welcome to the Cooking Adventures of Dax”. She’d just laugh and counter that cooking doesn’t always have to follow a cookbook.

If I were to grade my KBL attempt, I would give myself an NI for Needs Improvement. The meat and the beans were not tender enough. The jackfruit had somehow disintegrated. My only consolation was that my husband ate a lot. He disappeared after the meal. When I saw him again he informed me, with a smug smile on his face, that his BM was as effortless as flowing water. Coming from him, that’s really something. Best compliment of all was when my 3 yr. old told me that she liked it and finished the contents of the bowl I gave her.

That’s not too bad for a dish I had quietly named: Identity Crisis Beef.

Chiq Boutique » Ilonggo food

Tinuom

KBL