Lumpia is one of my favourite Filipino foods to eat in the summertime. There are several types of lumpia, ranging from the fresh lumpiang sariwa to the meat lover’s lumpiang Shanghai. I myself am partial to lumpiang prito, which typically comes in the format of vegetables (and optionally pork) stir-fried, stuffed, and deep-fried in large egg roll wrappers.

You can get creative with the vegetables you choose. Sometimes we put in potato matchsticks, diced water chestnuts, chopped celery, green beans sliced on the diagonal…but the recipe below is our standard base and the one that our guest prefer.

Ingredients

• 3 large carrots, peeled and cut into 1″ matchsticks
• 1 head of chinese cabbage, shredded
• 600g of bean sprouts
• 1 large onion, diced
• 6 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 30 large egg roll (wonton) wrappers, thawed
• Oil for frying (canola, grapeseed, sunflower)
• 1 lb of ground pork

Directions

1. In a large wok, sweat garlic and onions over low heat until fragrant.
2. Increase head to medium-high and sauté ground pork until meat is no longer pink.
3. Add soy sauce to taste.
4. Toss in carrots and stir-fry for at least  5 minutes or until slightly softened.
5. Add shredded cabbage and stir-fry for at least 5 minutes or until colour perks up.
6. Rinse and drain bean sprouts and add to wok, stirring until incorporated. Taste mixture and season with soy and/or fish sauce till you are satisfied with the flavour.
7. Drain mixture of excess moisture and transfer to a storage container. Refrigerate until cool. This will be the filling for the lumpia.
8. Wrap 1 tablespoon of cooled filling  in each egg roll wrapper. Place in a single layer on a large flat surface and let dry. If you are going to cook them right away, let them be; if you will keep them for later, store them in a single layer in the freezer until you’re ready to cook them up.
9. In a deep fryer or pot, heat oil to 180C and maintain at this temperature.
10. Drop a single layer of lumpia into the oil and cook 3 minutes on each side or until a very light golden brown (they will darken to golden brown as they dry).
11. Drain on a plate of paper towel and serve promptly.

Makes 25 – 30 lumpia.

TS has won a $30 gift certificate to Pinpin, my favourite Filipino restaurant in Vancouver. That should be enough for you and a friend with room for dessert. For that, I suggest any of the sago at gulaman, halo-halo, or leche flan.

Thanks to all 19 of you who participated in this contest. Some of you named dishes that I love: sinigang, kare-kare, lechon kawali, lumpiang prito. Some of you are enticing me to try sisig, which I can’t recall ever having before. And some couldn’t remember some of the dishes by name, so here’s my attempt to find them for you:

Darren, on deep fried plaintains – you may be thinking of Banana-Q (above) or turon (above, behind the flag), which is a deep-fried caramelized banana, often accented with jackfruit, wrapped to look like an egg roll and drizzled with caramel.

Debbie, on eggplant and sinigang – the eggplant dish is likely tortang talong, and I have a tortang talong recipe on Tiny Bites for you.

I also recently posted a recipe for corned beef sinigang, but the prep for the meat is more involved than it should be for regular sinigang. I’ll think about posting the recipe for the baby back ribs variant that we normally make in our kitchen.

Congratulations again to TS – I will contact you by email to spirit the gift certificate to you straight away.

Filipino Restaurant Series to date:

• Josephine’s Restaurant
• Sandy’s Cuisine
• Cucina Manila
• Pinpin

Our adventure didn’t disappoint. In fact, it was all we could do to narrow down the dish options to 3. (It would have been impossible to select just one to represent all the culinary delights that the South Pacific had to offer.) After several weeks of trial runs, I settled on the following Bites of Asia tasting menu, shown above from left to right:

• Vietnam: BC spot prawn rice paper rolls
• Philippines: sinigang na corned beef
• China: braised pork spare ribs in apricot preserve

Bruce, one of my truest Tiny Bites dining companions, was my sous-chef for the evening. Together, we served these dishes to 2 waves of appreciative guests, followed by much celebrating, wine-tasting, and elbow-rubbing at Yaletown Gallery.

Since Greedy Guts and Wine Bard have already recapped the Yaletown event from a diner’s perspective, let me run you through the experience I had as a Hobby Chef.

Step 1: Inspiration

This was the easiest part!

While I could have kept it simple and picked a recipe that I could serve with my eyes closed, I decided to watch for interesting dishes while we ate around in the Philippines, Macau, and Hong Kong. Meals that won us over were dutifully documented via notebook and camera. There were much too many to list, but here are a few that caught our attention: 

These starred items became our shortlist for the next part of the workflow: finalizing the menu.

Step 2: Menu Planning

Annika required Hobby Chefs to submit a high-level menu plan long before the event was promoted. The menu plan helped her to select the Hobby Chefs she would approach, and forced participants to work forethought into their cooking process.

I already knew that the Tiny Bites menu would be a trio. The trick was to select three from the catalogue above that provided breadth of regionality without flavours clashing.

As it turned out, that nixed dishes that were overly sweet, delicate, fishy, or exotic. Goodbye bangus; fare thee well pineapple bun.

The chosen ones were within similar parameters of weight and spice. Other influencers were level of difficulty, cost and sourcing of ingredients, ease of portioning, and ability to make components in advance. I certainly didn’t want to make three things that all required last-minute cooking!

Step 3: Trial Cookery

For me, this was the most enjoyable part of the planning. I probably cooked 10 meals and had several guinea pigs trusted gourmands over to provide feedback for the dishes I intended.

This iterative process commenced with recipes from our repertoire and from the world wide web. After each trial run, I returned to my dry-erase board, where I had scribbled the guidelines for each dish, and checkmarked the ratios that worked and starred items that needed improvement. Ingredients often required substitution due to seasonal availability or outrageous prices. Sometimes I returned to steps that I thought were a write-off and folded them back into the recipe.

It was tedious, grueling, frustrating and puzzling at times, and required a lot of legwork to source the right materials…but the eureka! moments and the oohs and aahs extracted from pilot dinner guests made it all worthwhile.

Step 4: Event Prep

With the recipes down pat, the days leading up to D-Day were filled with a hell of a lot of grocery shopping, advance ingredient prep, and cookery for components that could be made ahead of time. My kitchen must have exuded apricot and corned beef for a full week leading up to the event!

Favourite prep moments:

• My husband and I peeling 2 pounds of BC spot prawns over the kitchen sink while chatting about our day
• Stealing hourly nibbles of Sebastian & Co. corned beef as it simmered for the entire day in tamarind broth
• Snapping off bits of chives, Thai basil, and pea sprouts with Bruce, eating them in different pairings until we found what combo worked best for the rice paper roll

Step 5: Game Time

With sittings at 6:15pm and 7:45pm, I put sous-chef Bruce to work as soon as he was able to come in at 4:30pm. With him came the chili soup bowls that cradled the sinigang on each plate, as well as a bottle of chili garlic sauce that our household was not equipped with.

I was a bundle of nerves for the first sitting. The rice rolls were taking longer to wrap than I anticipated and the oil for deep-frying the prawns kept getting too hot (resulting in at least one toss of the burning batch). Our first guests also entered 15 minutes earlier than we expected. Luckily, they were Karen the Wine Bard and her fiancé, whom I was able to leave to their own amusement until the kitchen was in better order. Once all the guests were seated and chatting each other up, Bruce and I bumped paths around the island as we figured out where each person was most efficient. Somehow, we managed to plate the three dishes by 6:20pm and sit down with our guests till 7. The rolls took too long to make for ourselves to eat so we picked at the soup and the ribs as we anxiously awaited some feedback about the meal. Positive remarks – so far, so good.

Till 7:30pm, when the next wave of diners were to be expected, Bruce and I fell into a rhythm. We got all the dishes washed, dried, and set for the next round. Folded a fresh set of napkins. Got a head start on the rice paper rolls. Popped in the random shuffle of Asia food photos in the digital frame by the table (which the first guests didn’t see).

The second sitting was far more relaxed. We again sat with our guests, remembering how welcoming it felt to have our hosts dine with us. Some of our guests left the rest of their wine at their first stop so we made them a pineapple spritzer with their meal. It was a special pleasure to cook for last event’s winners, Alex and Matt – hopefully they enjoyed our meal as much as my husband and I enjoyed theirs.

The Winners Revealed

With the second course done, the six of us walked 10 minutes to the Social Bites Hotspot for a wine tasting at Yaletown Gallery.

As all cooks and dinner guests converged over art, wine, and chocolate, Annika rounded up the votes from all sixteen tasters. The winners were none other than Belinda and Jason, the folks behind the Farmers’ Market theme. 

Belinda and Jason received a $200 gift certificate from Zipcar and a trophy in the form of a lovely wine brought in by Annika from Germany. All Hobby Chefs received a goodie bag from Social Bites for their efforts, which included 2 tickets to a future Social Bites event. I gave mine to Bruce so that he could experience the fun as a dinner guest, next time.

Pencil in the next Social Bites event in the West Side

Social Bites is such a fantastic way to meet other food enthusiasts in the city, whether it’s as a dinner guest or as a hobby chef. Annika is planning another one on May 30, 2009 as a special benefit for Relay for Life. Check out the menu lineup and grab your tickets. 

Recipe Centre

If you’d like to try your hand at the dishes we prepared that evening, have at the recipes below.

Sinigang na corned beef (corned beef in tamarind broth)

• 1 lb corned beef or regular brisket, uncut
• 1 lb Korean radish or turnip
• 1 bunch long bean or green bean
• 3 ripe medium-sized tomatoes, chunked
• 1 large onion, chunked
• 5 tablespoons tamarind paste
• 3 tablespoons fish sauce
• 1 tablespoon Tabasco or 1 jalapeno, whole

In a large stockpot, cover beef with enough cold water to completely submerge, leaving another 1-2 inches of water as margin. Add tamarind paste. Simmer for at least 6 hours or overnight.

2 hours before serving, add turnips, tomatoes, and onion. Simmer for 1 hour and taste. Is it too bland? Add fish sauce. Not sour enough? Add another tablespoon of tamarind paste. Want a kick? Add Tabasco / jalapeno to taste. Keep adjusting until you have the broth where you want it to be.

At least 15 minutes before serving, add long / green beans to soup and simmer until bright green (but still retain crunch).

Serve in a curved plate (one that can handle all the soup) over a bed of steamed white rice.

Braised pork spare ribs in apricot preserve

• 1 lb pork spareribs, cut into 1″ pieces
• Marinade (see below)
• 1-2 tablespoons rice powder
• 1 dozen dried apricots, halved

Marinade and braising liquid

Mix all of the ingredients below in a large bowl and marinate the spareribs for at least 30 minutes in the fridge.

• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon cooking sherry
• 1 tablespoon rice vinegar
• 1 tablespoon cider vinegar
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon finely cracked pepper
• 1 tablespoon quince paste or preserve (optional)

Fill a wok 1/3 full with cold water. Prop a deep plate, or a bamboo steamer with a plate inside it,  just above the water line. You can buy steamer stands at Asian stores but I used a very small steamer with its lid off as my makeshift stand. Make sure that the plate / steamer you use will allow the steam to circulate.

Line the plate with apricots and pour the spareribs and its marinate on top. Sprinkle or toss with the rice powder.

Steam / braise for at least 40 minutes or until the meat is fork tender and fully cooked through.

For better colour, drain and dry the wok, turn the heat up to high, splash a bit of oil in the pan and saute the spareribs until you get some caramelization on the dish.

BC spot prawn rice paper rolls

• 24 Spot Prawns, halved and peeled with tails left on (1 prawn per piece)
• 6 large round rice paper wrappers
• 1 bunch fresh chives
• 1 bunch fresh Thai basil
• Chili-lime sauce (based on this recipe from Epicurious)

Prawn batter (based on this recipe from Chowhound)

• 2 egg whites
• 1/4 cup cornstarch
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Clean, peel, and halve the prawns and pat dry.

Beat egg whites to stiff peaks and add the rest of the ingredients for batter.

Dip each crab in batter and deep fry until golden (30 seconds – 1 minute). 

Place a large bowl of hot water on the table. Soften the rice paper wrappers in hot water and shake off any excess water. Lay the wrappers on a large flat surface and slice them into 4 strips.

On the edge of each strip, place several basil leaves, a few chive sprigs, and 2 prawn halves. Roll tightly into the rest of the rice paper strip. Serve with chili-lime dipping sauce.

My mother and I have had our differences over the past 29 years, but  I think most people can say that about family.  We’ve gotten to the point where life is too short to quibble, especially now that she lives so (relatively) far away in Everett, WA. Despite the distance, I am very happy that we are still able to share a love of cooking by phone and web.  So here’s a recipe that my mother taught me from her store of family winter meals, relayed to me one night over the phone. It’s a dish whose presence on my kitchen table is a source of nostalgia and a reminder of my mother’s larger-than-life influence on my cooking.

Happy birthday, Mom.

Sopas na Manok (chicken and macaroni soup)

Ingredients

• 1 lb chicken breast or thighs, bone-in
• 2 carrots, diced
• 2 sticks celery, diced
• 1 onion, diced
• 1/2 head chinese cabbage, shredded
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tablespoon patis (fish sauce)
• 1 cup elbow macaroni, shell pasta, or other small-shape pasta

Directions

1. Place chicken in large stockpot and top with cold water in order to completely submerge the chicken. Bring to a gentle simmer and cook about 30 minutes.
2. Skim surface for fat / impurities and add the carrots, celery, and onion. Continue to simmer until chicken is tender, about another 60 minutes.
3. Take out chicken, leaving broth where it is, and shred meat by hand when it is cool enough to handle. Return shredded chicken to the pot.
4. Toss in macaroni and simmer until al dente.
5. Add the cabbage and cover for 5 minutes, off heat.
6. While the soup is sitting, toast the garlic in a small fry pan until golden and fragrant.
7. Serve soup topped with a pinch of garlic, with remaining garlic available on the table for those that want more.

My husband doesn’t care much for eggplant.  Unfortunately, this meant that one of my favourite vegetables became unwelcome in our home.  In the eight years that we’ve been together, the only times I could use it in the kitchen was during tax season (when my husband disappears into the void for 3 months) or on nights where I’m left to cook for myself.  What a terrible dietary restriction.

Since our trip to the Philippines, Kurt has happily relaxed his scorn.  His new interest in eggplant is thanks to a simple dish that most Filipinos know and love: tortang talong.   Below is a visual recipe of the dish that is no longer blacklisted from our household.

Tortang Talong (Eggplant Omelette)

Step 1 – Torch Eggplant

My favourite step. Using a gas stove, roast eggplant on all sides until skin is puffy and charred.  If you don’t have access to open flame (like our kitchen, sob) you can use your oven’s broiler, set on high. It’ll take a little longer to do.

Optional Step 1b – Steam Eggplant

If you are finding it difficult to peel the blackened skin off the eggplant, you can wrap said eggplant in foil and let steam a few minutes. The skin will peel off like panties at a Tom Jones concert.

Step 2 – Peel Eggplant

Remove the skin from your roasted eggplant. It should look like this.  Having trouble? Try Step 1b above.

Step 3 – Egg eggplant

Scramble an egg in a bowl and submerge your eggplant into it. Fan out the eggplant fully with a fork. Season with salt and pepper if desired.

Step 4 – Fry Eggplant

Heat a frying pan with a smidgeon of olive oil (low-med heat).  When the oil is ready, use the stem of your eggplant to lay it onto the pan. Make sure to fan the body of the eggplant out and use extra egg to fill in any gaps. Fry for 1-2 mins on each side or until each side is a toasty golden brown.

If you have extra egg left over, you can fry that up separately. It’ll taste like the eggplant omelette but without the veggie bits.

Step 5 – Eat Eggplant

Blot excess oil off the omelette with paper towel if desired and you are done!

In my family, these omelettes are served over steamed rice and accompanied with some sort of pork. I usually eat it with pork chops but have been known to eat it with (gasp) Spam as well. If you want to be truly Filipino about it, create a dipping sauce of equal parts bagoong and white vinegar and spoon a little over each bite.

As recent entrées to the Vancouver food blogging scene, myself and Owen of Butter on the Endive (which will be referred to as BotE for short) struck up an online acquaintance over the past few months. We thought a joint cooking affair would be a fabulous way to meet each other, and plans were soon laid out for a gastronomic get-together. Our schedules were at odds for most of the summer, but happily, we found time over Labour Day weekend to bask in the sun at Spanish Banks for a pork-tacular barbecue.

Owen was joined by fellow BotE blogmates Mark and Amorita while I was accompanied by my husband.  The group was rounded out by friends that were happy to contribute to and indulge in the communal table.

Knowing that our food would be eaten alongside those of an accomplished cook, we defaulted to our tried and true grilling recipes:  my family’s Filipino pork satays (recipe below) and a selection of grilled vegetables dressed in a simple olive oil and balsamic vinegar marinade. We also made sure to pick up a handful of spicy chorizo from our favourite West Vancouver meat purveyor, Sebastian & Co.

Owen and crew delivered a spectacular menu:  homemade limoncello; potato salad with capers and gherkins; grilled corn on the cob; pork terrine; and 2 cuts of mouth-watering pork that Owen and Mark had on the smoker for hours.  The resulting pulled pork sandwiches were worth every minute of the wait.

Dessert was handled by a couple of my friends, consisting of a tasty Spanish olive oil cake topped with pecans and an apple crumble whose leftovers were highly prized.

Thanks to the efforts of Owen, Mark, and Amorita of Butter on the Endive and the contributions of our esteemed friends, we enjoyed a luxurious outdoor dining experience surrounded by the blue skies and sparkly waters of our beautiful city.  What a perfect way to wrap up the long weekend.

Filipino Pork Satays (we just call ‘em barbecue)

Ingredients

• 2 lbs of pork shoulder, or a cut with good marbling
• 1 cup of 7-up (do not subsititute with Sprite, which will add too much sweetness)
• 1 cup of soy sauce
• 1 cup of white vinegar
• 1 cup of brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon of whole peppercorns
• 1 head of garlic, crushed
• 3-4 green chilies, chopped

Directions

1. Slice pork into thin pieces approximately 1/4″ thick and roughly 1″ square. I try not to be exacting with the 1″ parameters as I like the pieces to look rustic.
2. Marinate in a large, non-reactive (ie, glass or ceramic) bowl for 2 – 4 hours in the 7-up.  Don’t marinate in a metal bowl or your meat may taste a little tinny in the end.
3. Add the rest of the ingredients to the bowl and mix until dissolved / thoroughly incorporated.  Marinate for another 2-4 hours.
4. Place 2-3 pieces of pork on each skewer (soak wooden skewers in water for 20 minutes beforehand).  If you are not grilling immediately, return skewers to soak in the marinade until ready.
5. Grill skewers on direct high heat for 5-10 mins on each side or until meat is cooked through and slightly caramelized, taking care to baste with the marinade to prevent the meat from drying out.  Stop basting about 5 minutes before they are good to go.

]]> http://tinybites.ca/2008/09/08/a-summer-barbecue-with-butter-on-the-endive/feed/ 5 http://tinybites.ca/2008/04/07/tinolang-manok-ginger-chicken-stew-with-spinach-and-papaya/ http://tinybites.ca/2008/04/07/tinolang-manok-ginger-chicken-stew-with-spinach-and-papaya/#comments Tue, 08 Apr 2008 06:52:19 +0000 Karen Hamilton http://tinybites.ca/?p=28 I’m back home from my trip to Atlanta, trying to eliminate the massive sleep debt I’d accumulated over the past two weeks! There are also hundreds of photos to sift through and quite a few pages of restaurant observations to decipher from my little notebook. While I get that sorted out, here’s a recipe handed down from my mother’s side that should assuage Bruce’s craving for something soupy.

Tinolang Manok (Chicken Tinola)

The Filipino idea of soup is a little different from Western notions. Nearly everything, including our soups and stews, are eaten on a bed of steamed rice. We throw ingredients into a giant pot, let it simmer for a good long while in its liquid, and then attempt to eat the stewy or brothy mess on a flat plate using only a fork and spoon. Don’t bother asking for a knife—the meat should already be falling off the bone, as intended.

This recipe is one of the quicker ones: under an hour from prep to finish, serving 4 comfortably or a couple with baon (leftovers) for the next day. If green / unripe papaya is difficult to find, a couple of chayotes works fine. We have also tried it with ripe papaya in the summer months. Doing so does change the flavour profile quite a bit, but you may enjoy the colour contrast and additional sweetness that ripe fruit will lend to the broth.

Ingredients:

• 8 – 12 chicken drumsticks
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 2-inch-long piece of ginger, sliced wide and thin
• 1 bunch or bag of spinach
• 1 green papaya, chopped into 1-inch pieces
• 1 litre chicken broth
• 1 tablespoon patis (fish sauce)

Directions:

1. Sweat the ginger and onion over medium-low heat until the onion goes translucent. Raise heat to high. Add chicken and saute until the meat is no longer pink, about 5 minutes.
2. Add patis and chicken broth and bring to a boil. Turn heat down; cover and simmer until chicken is fork-tender, about 20 – 30 minutes.
3. Add papaya and simmer another 10 minutes or until soft.
4. Taste the broth. Is it seasoned enough? If not, add more patis to taste.
5. Turn off heat. Stir in spinach, covering until ready to serve over steamed white rice.

To be extra Filipino, make individual dips of patis and Tabasco for each place setting, spooning a little bit of the dip on your spoonful before it enters your mouth.