Pastil

Rice and dry shredded meat wrapped in banana leaf, and the meat must be cooked to threads.

Chicken, Beef. Not vegetarian — contains beef, chicken.

Ingredients

• 600 g beef brisket or chicken thigh
• 500 g rice, cooked hot
• 1 onion and 8 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 1 thumb ginger, grated
• 2 teaspoons turmeric
• 30 ml soy sauce
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 3 tablespoons oil
• 6 large pieces banana leaf, softened over a flame

Method

1. THE MEAT HAS TO BE DRY. It is wrapped against hot rice and left for hours, so anything wet steams the rice to paste and the parcel sours. Cooking it to threads and then frying the threads is the whole method.
2. Simmer the meat in salted water until completely tender, about 1 hour 30 minutes for brisket. Keep the broth for something else.
3. Cool it enough to handle and SHRED IT FINELY WITH TWO FORKS, into threads rather than chunks.
4. Fry the onion, garlic and ginger in the oil, add the turmeric, then the shredded meat, soy and salt.
5. KEEP FRYING UNTIL IT IS DRY AND SLIGHTLY CRISP at the edges, 10 to 12 minutes. It should rustle in the pan. This is the step people stop too early.
6. Lay a softened banana leaf, press a portion of hot rice into a flat bed, pile the meat along the middle, and fold the leaf into a tight parcel.
7. They keep several hours at room temperature and are eaten with the fingers, straight from the leaf.

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