Pinakbet

Vegetables layered and shaken rather than stirred, seasoned only with bagoong.

Pork, Shellfish. Not vegetarian — contains bagoong, a fermented fish or shrimp paste, pork, shellfish.

Ingredients

• 1 bitter melon, halved and sliced
• 2 aubergines, in thick batons
• 150 g okra, trimmed
• 150 g long beans, in lengths
• 1 squash wedge, about 200 g, in chunks
• 200 g pork belly, in small dice
• 4 tomatoes, quartered
• 1 onion, sliced
• a thumb of ginger, sliced
• 3 tablespoons bagoong isda or alamang
• 200 ml water

Method

1. Render the pork in a wide pot until the fat runs and the pieces crisp, then add the onion, ginger and tomatoes and cook until the tomatoes collapse.
2. Add the bagoong and the water and bring it to a boil.
3. LAYER THE VEGETABLES ON TOP IN ORDER OF TOUGHNESS and do not mix them in: squash and long beans at the bottom, then aubergine, then okra, then bitter melon on top.
4. Cover and cook 15 minutes without touching it.
5. NOW SHAKE THE POT RATHER THAN STIRRING IT, holding the lid on, two or three times. Stirring breaks the aubergine and the okra down into a grey mush and the dish is supposed to arrive as recognisable vegetables.
6. Leave the bitter melon unsalted and unsoaked. It is supposed to be bitter — that is the name of the dish — and the sweet squash and the salty bagoong are there to sit against it.
7. No salt and no stock cube. Bagoong is the entire seasoning, and salt instead gives a flat vegetable stew.

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