Ginataang ubod

Heart of palm cut along the grain and barely cooked, so it keeps its snap in the coconut milk.

Pork, Shellfish. Not vegetarian — contains fish sauce, pork, shellfish.

Ingredients

• 600 g fresh heart of palm
• 400 ml coconut milk
• 200 g shrimp, peeled
• 100 g pork belly, in small dice
• 1 onion, sliced
• 6 garlic cloves, chopped
• 40 g fresh ginger, in matchsticks
• 1 teaspoon annatto powder
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 2 tablespoons oil
• 0.5 teaspoon black pepper

Method

1. CUT ALONG THE GRAIN, AND BARELY COOKED. Heart of palm is crisp and faintly sweet and the entire reason to cook it is that snap. Eight minutes in the coconut milk is the maximum; at fifteen it is soft and indistinguishable from any other white vegetable in a pan.
2. Cut it into batons 5 cm by 1 cm along the length of the shoot, not into rounds across it. Rounds separate into rings and fall apart; batons hold.
3. Use the pale inner core only. The outer layers are fibrous and no amount of cooking softens them -- strip them away until the knife goes through cleanly.
4. Keep the cut batons in cold water until the moment they go in. They brown at the cut faces.
5. Fry the pork in the oil, 6 minutes, until the fat has run and the dice have browned.
6. Garlic, onion and ginger in, 4 minutes. Annatto in for 30 seconds, in the fat.
7. Coconut milk and fish sauce in, simmered 8 minutes uncovered to thicken slightly BEFORE the ubod goes anywhere near it. The sauce has to be finished first because the vegetable cannot wait for it.
8. Ubod in, drained. 6 minutes at a gentle simmer, stirred twice.
9. Shrimp in for the last 3 minutes. Pepper.
10. Test a baton: it should give under the tooth and then snap. If it bends, it has gone too far, and there is nothing to be done about that one.

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