Cansi

A sour beef soup where the acid is a fruit simmered in it, not vinegar poured in at the end.

Beef. Not vegetarian — contains beef, fish sauce.

Ingredients

1.8 kg beef shank, in 4 cm rounds
12 batwan fruit, halved
3 lemongrass stalks, bruised and knotted
400 g unripe jackfruit, in chunks
1 onion, quartered
40 g fresh ginger, sliced
3 tablespoons fish sauce
2.5 litres water
4 long green chillies
1 teaspoon annatto powder
0.5 teaspoon black pepper

Method

THE ACID IS A FRUIT SIMMERED IN IT. Batwan goes into the pot whole and halved and gives up its sourness slowly over an hour, so the sourness sits underneath the beef rather than on top of it. Vinegar or lime juice stirred in at the end gives you a sharp edge and a beef broth; this gives you one thing. If batwan is impossible, 6 tablespoons of tamarind pulp added at the same stage behaves similarly, and the result is a different soup rather than a worse one.
Cover the shank with cold water, bring to a boil, boil 5 minutes and pour it away. Rinse the meat and the pot.
Fresh water, the onion, ginger and lemongrass in. Simmer covered, 1 hour 30 minutes.
Batwan in now, not at the start. An hour and a half of boiling breaks the fruit down to nothing and the pot goes cloudy and faintly bitter. From here it needs 45 minutes.
Annatto powder slaked in a ladle of the hot broth and stirred back in, for colour. Added dry it sits in orange specks on the surface.
Taste at 30 minutes. If it is not sour enough, press two or three of the batwan against the side of the pot with a spoon -- that releases a lot at once and is easier to stop than adding more fruit.
Jackfruit in for the last 20 minutes, until a knife goes in but the chunks hold.
Fish sauce and pepper at the end. Whole chillies in for the last 5 minutes.
Fish the lemongrass out before serving. Marrow spoon on the side.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Philippines · All recipes