Papaitan

An offal soup made bitter on purpose with bile, added off the heat and tasted in stages.

Goat. Not vegetarian — contains bile, fish sauce, goat, offal the source does not name.

Ingredients

• 800 g goat offal, in 2 cm dice
• 300 g goat meat, in 2 cm dice
• 4 tablespoons bile
• 60 g fresh ginger, in matchsticks
• 1 onion, chopped
• 8 garlic cloves, chopped
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 1 tablespoon vinegar
• 1.5 litres water
• 8 siling labuyo, chopped
• 2 tablespoons oil
• 1 teaspoon black pepper

Method

1. THE BILE GOES IN OFF THE HEAT AND IN STAGES. Boiled, it turns from bitter to acrid and there is no recovering the pot. So: heat off, one tablespoon in, stir, taste, wait a minute, repeat. Four tablespoons is a starting figure, not an instruction -- bile varies and so do people.
2. Rinse the offal in several changes of cold water, rubbing it with salt, until the water runs clear. Then blanch it 5 minutes and throw that water away.
3. Fry the ginger, garlic and onion in the oil, 4 minutes. A lot of ginger here, and it is doing a job: it is what keeps the dish from reading as simply offal.
4. Meat and offal in, turned over for 5 minutes.
5. Vinegar in, left without stirring for 2 minutes at a boil.
6. Water and fish sauce in. Simmer covered 1 hour, until the tripe gives under a knife and the meat is tender. Skim whatever rises in the first 15 minutes.
7. Chillies in, 5 minutes.
8. NOW TAKE IT OFF THE HEAT and add the bile a tablespoon at a time as above. It should be bitter enough to make you pause and not so bitter that you stop.
9. Pepper. Serve very hot in small bowls -- this is not a soup anybody wants a large portion of.

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