Sinigang Na Baboy (Sour Soup Pork)

Ingredients:

• 1 kilo pork spare ribs
• 2 packs Tamarind Soup Base
• 1 big tomato
• 1 big red onion
• 2 pcs gabi (taro)
• 3 pcs chili peppers
• Salt or fish sauce to taste
• Vegetable of your choice:
• Eggplant
• Radish
• String beans
• Kangkong (swamp cabbage)

Procedure:

1. Boil approximately 2 to 3 liters of water.
2. Put in the meat, tomato and onion.  Let the meat cook.
3. When the meat is tender, you can mix in the gabi or taro.  Let it cook.
4. When the taro is cooked (it should have a consistency of a cooked potato), you can take it off the stock and mash it and put it back.  It will help thicken the soup.
5. Put the Tamarind Soup Base as a substitute for the real tamarind.  Let it boil once again.
6. When its boiling, you can add the vegetable,except for the kangkong (swamp cabbage) if you have some.
7. When the vegetable is almost cooked, you can add in the chili peppers.
8. When the chili peppers are cooked, turn your heat off, and add your kangkong (swamp cabbage), and cover it.
9. Serve hot.

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Sinigang Na Baboy is another popular Filipino recipe.  It is known for its unique taste and flavor.  I personally love Sinigang ever since I was a child.  Every time my mom cooks this, I knew I was going to eat a bunch of rice because I like a lot of rice if we are having Sinigang.  And I like the soup really really sour.

I know other people don’t like it really sour, but hey, that’s just me.  I also like to dip the pork in crushed chili peppers with some fish sauce.  It’s actually makes me crave for Sinigang right now even though we just had it two days ago.

That’s one of my problem when writing about food, it makes me crave for it and makes me want to cook it, and then if I do that, I know for sure I’ll be eating a lot, and then I’ll be gaining some more weight.  Oh well.  Thank God I am pregnant and that’s like a perfect excuse to eat a little bit more than usual.

But anyway, lets get back to this wonderful Pinoy recipe.  Just like what I have mentioned before, since the Philippines consists of 7100 islands, there are more likely 7100 different ways on how to make Sinigang.  I know every region has their own style.  Let me show you an example.

I was born in Pasig City.  I got used to the really sour Pork Sinigang.  That’s how I like it.  Then during my elementary days, my family moved to Samar which is in the Visayas.  My relatives there don’t make the Sinigang they I want it to be.  I mean, when they asked me what do I want to eat, I said, I wanted some Sinigang, and when they serve it, I was actually asking for the Sinigang and didn’t know that it was right there in front of me.

It didn’t smell like sinigang, and most of all, it didn’t taste like the Sinigang that I know of.  Then mom explained to me that that’s how they make Sinigang in Samar.

And here in the US, I have a friend from Ilocos region, and she is really a good cook.  One day, she invited me for lunch and she said she cooked some Sinigang.  I was in my first trimester so my food craving at that time was really strong.  When I got there, her Sinigang is totally different from mine.

It’s not that my recipe is wrong and her recipe is right, or vice versa.  It’s just that that’s how they make their Sinigang in Ilocos.  It was still very good though.
But anyway, on this video, I am showing the kind of Sinigang that I have learned from my aunts in Pasig.  I really wanted to put some kangkong in it but it was not available at the Asian store when we went shopping.