Lengua estofado

Ox tongue peeled while hot and braised in a sweet soy sauce with fried saba.

Beef. Not vegetarian — contains beef, tongue.

Ingredients

• 1 ox tongue, about 1.5 kg
• 60 ml soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 onion, sliced
• 8 garlic cloves, crushed
• 300 g mushrooms, halved
• 4 saba bananas, in thick slices
• 2 bay leaves
• 500 ml of the tongue's cooking liquid
• 3 tablespoons oil
• 1 teaspoon black pepper

Method

1. PEEL IT WHILE IT IS HOT. Boil the tongue first, lift it out, and take the skin off within a couple of minutes using a small knife to start it at the thick end and then your fingers. Left to cool, the skin sets like rubber and takes the meat with it.
2. Boil the tongue in water with the bay, covered, 2 hours 30 minutes, until a skewer pushes into the thickest part without resistance. KEEP 500 ml OF THE LIQUID.
3. Peel it hot, then trim the root end and cut the tongue across into 1 cm slices.
4. Fry the saba slices in 1 tablespoon of the oil until gold at the edges, 3 minutes, and set them aside. They go in at the end -- in from the start they dissolve and make the sauce cloyingly sweet.
5. Garlic and onion in the rest of the oil, 4 minutes.
6. Sugar in on its own, 1 minute, until it has melted and begun to darken. Soy sauce in, which will hiss and caramelise. This is where the colour comes from.
7. Tongue slices in, turned over to coat, then the reserved cooking liquid.
8. Simmer uncovered 30 minutes, until the sauce has reduced by half and coats the slices.
9. Mushrooms in, 8 minutes. Fried saba back in for the last 3 minutes, folded through gently.
10. Pepper. Rest it 10 minutes off the heat before serving; the sauce thickens as it settles.

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