Tocino

Pork cured sweet and red for three days, then fried in water first and its own syrup after.

Pork. Not vegetarian — contains pork.

Ingredients

• 1.2 kg pork shoulder, in 5 mm slices
• 120 g dark muscovado sugar
• 3 tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons calamansi juice
• 6 garlic cloves, crushed
• 2 teaspoons annatto powder
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 100 ml water, for the frying
• 2 tablespoons oil

Method

1. CURED SWEET, NOT SAVOURY, which is the whole difference from the tapa already on this site. Tapa is salt and vinegar and is dried; this is sugar and annatto and stays soft and red, and it is fried in a way tapa never is.
2. Slice the pork thin and across the grain, 5 mm. Thicker and the cure never reaches the middle in three days.
3. Mix the sugar, soy, calamansi, garlic, annatto, salt and pepper into a paste and work it into every slice with your hands, a full 2 minutes.
4. Into a bag or a covered dish, pressed flat, and refrigerate THREE DAYS, turning it over once a day. One day gives you marinated pork; three gives you tocino, and the colour goes right through.
5. TO COOK: the slices go into a cold pan with the 100 ml of water and whatever cure clings to them, and come up to a simmer. 8 to 10 minutes, until the water has gone.
6. That water is not an odd step -- it cooks the pork through gently. Put straight into hot fat, the sugar in the cure burns black in 90 seconds and the inside is still raw.
7. Once the pan is dry, the oil in, and now fry 2 to 3 minutes a side in the syrup that is left, until the edges have caught and gone dark red.
8. Watch it closely at this stage. The gap between caramelised and burnt here is about 30 seconds.
9. Serve with garlic rice and a fried egg, which is what makes it tocilog.

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.

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