Filipino Food

UPDATE: The National Pork Board has generously extended the deadline for The Foodbank donation partnership with you all because you’ve been asking such great questions! In other words, every question you leave for pork producers in the comments on this post, the Foodie With Family facebook page, or on Twitter with the hashtag #sustainablepork will translate to 1 pound of pork being donated to The Foodbank of Ohio. No strings attached!

Pork.

It’s what’s for dinner in one form or another in our house most nights of the week. We are a porkcentric household. That has probably been pretty obvious here with all my use of bacon, chops, roasts, Cuban Pork, Cola Pulled Pork, Hot Tex Mess, and more (scroll down for porky goodness.) So when the National Pork Board contacted me to see if I wanted to take a tour of a sustainable pork farm, I replied with a pretty quick ‘yes’. Then they contacted me again and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.

They are going to donate one pound of pork to The Foodbank in Ohio for every question you all leave here for me to ask them when I go on the tour up to 1,000 pounds. Holy cow. Or should I say holy pig?

Just think of how many people we can feed if you all are curious enough!

Let’s talk for a moment about what I’ll be looking at when I head out to Dayton. According to the information sent to me by the National Pork Board, within a 50 year time frame, pig farmers have reduced their carbon footprint by 35%, reduced water usage by 41% and decreased the amount of land needed to grow feed by 78%. Additionally, we are getting more meat from fewer pigs – which helps reduce the use of natural resources to raise pigs.

The Pork Checkoff has been honoring the sustainability efforts of pig farmers for 18 years with the Pork Industry Environmental Steward Award. The farm I will be visiting on July 24 was recently honored with this award.

So where do you come in on all of this? Just leave me a question in the comment area below (or on Twitter using the hashtag #SustainablePork ) between now and July 13th. All comments and tweets that have questions for me to ask the farmers and the National Pork Board representatives will count and one pound of pork will be donated per question or tweet.

Now I figure you all know me well enough to realize that I couldn’t talk this much about pork without giving you a great recipe for it. That would just be unkind. Without further ado, I present to you one of my favourite freezer pleasers; Tocino. (Pronounced toe-see-no.)

Tocino is a Filipino dish that I have loved longer than I can remember. Starting with a humble and inexpensive pork shoulder (about $1.29/lb where I shop), a little slicing and a quick cure in some sugar and spice in a resealable zipper top bag, you end with a salty but sweet, crisped pork that tastes like super meaty bacon. It doesn’t take much work, and once you’ve tossed the pork with your sugar and spices, you can stash the bag in the freezer for up to six months before frying or grilling. Low investment, mega-payoff.

The sugary salty cure that enrobes the thin slices of pork keeps the mixture from freezing totally solid, so you can scoop out what you’d like to serve for dinner and leave the rest frozen for future meals. The traditional accompaniment for tocino is garlic fried rice and a fried egg for the classic Filipino breakfast called Tosilog. Doesn’t that sound like just about the best possible way to start a day? I speak from experience when I say it makes one heckuva lunch, dinner or snack, too.

Tocino is traditionally cured with red food colouring or other agents (like the pink salt, or saltpeter, used in curing other meats). I’m not super keen on food colouring, so I use beet powder as recommended by Jun-Belen. That man is a genius. The beet powder adds an appetizing red colour without adding any funky insect or chemical colouring. Lest you fear the beet, let me assure you it does not impart any beet-y flavour to the finished product.

Tocino (Filipino Cured Pork) | Make Ahead Mondays

Do you love meaty bacon? Give this traditional Filipino, quick-cured, pork a try. An inexpensive pork should gets a boost from the fast-curing sugar, salt and spice combination and yields salty, sweet perfection that is reminiscent of thick cut bacon. It stores beautifully in the freezer for whenever cravings strike.

Ingredients

3 pounds pork shoulder, sliced into 1/8-inch thick pieces
3/4 cup raw or granulated sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar (light or dark)
1 clove garlic, peeled and minced
3 tablespoons kosher salt
3 tablespoons beet powder (you can substitute about 15 drops of red food colouring if you prefer.)
1 tablespoon light soy sauce

For Cooking:

Vegetable, peanut or canola oil for pan frying

Instructions

Combine both sugars, the garlic, salt, beet powder (or food colouring), and soy sauce in a very large resealable zipper top bag (2 gallons) or a stain-proof container with a tight fitting lid. Close the bag or container tightly and shake to combine ingredients evenly. Open the bag or container, drop the pork slices in and reseal. If using a bag, squeeze the bag to thoroughly coat all of the pork with the sugar and salt mixture. If using a container, use your hands to move the pork around to be sure it is thoroughly coated in the mixture then close the container tightly.

Put the bag or container in the refrigerator and let it cure for at least 2 days before using, but up to 4. Alternatively, you can put the container or bag directly into the freezer (letting it sit for at least a week before using) for up to 6 months.

To Cook the Tocino:

Whether using fresh from the refrigerator or directly from the freezer, remove the amount of tocino you want to cook and let it sit in a colander for several minutes to drain any excess liquid.

You may either grill the tocino over high, direct heat, or pan fry in batches. To pan fry, heat about 2 teaspoons of oil in a heavy-bottomed skillet over medium-high heat. Fry the pieces until cooked through and browned with little charred bits, about 2-3 minutes per side.

Serve, if desired, with garlic fried rice and a fried egg for a traditional Filipino breakfast.

http://www.foodiewithfamily.com/2012/07/09/tocino-filipino-cured-pork-make-ahead-mondays/

Recipe printed from Foodie With Family | Rebecca Lindamood http://www.foodiewithfamily.com

Don’t forget to leave your question for the pork farmers and National Pork Board below. Every question you leave will provide a hungry family with a pound of pork!

From July 23-24, I will be attending a tour of an Ohio family’s pig farm with the National Pork Board (NPB) focused on sustainability efforts in the pork industry. NPB will cover the costs of my trip, but all opinions expressed are my own.

Filipino food is some of my favourite in all of the Earth. It’s not just because it’s great (although it is), but because for most of my youth, it represented the sum total of what was exotic in my life. Growing up in some of the most rural parts of Michigan it was nothing to run across scads of Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian and other assorted Nordic names. I betcha I could pick up a Finnish phone book and rattle off the names like I was born there. My Grandpa was a pastor on a nearby reservation, so Native American names were run of the mill. Polish immigrants? Yep… here and there. Italians? On every street (as few and far between as the streets were.)

Then there was my mom’s friend, Tecla. She was from the Philippines and was most emphatically not Nordic. She was always dressed to the nines while most of us were in parkas and mukluks. She sat down on the edge of the piano bench when my mom played and belted out the latest love songs that were on the radio. Her nails were always long and filed and dramatic and brightly coloured. She was most definitely not the same as everyone else around us and she was exciting. Most thrilling of all was her food. It was so different from everything else I had ever eaten -adobo chicken, lumpia, tocino, pancit- it was bursting with flavour and boy was it good. Even better, she shared it her mouthwatering dishes with us every chance she got. To this day, my last supper meal* includes lumpia.

*Are you familiar with the “last supper” game? It’s simple, but it tells you a lot about people (and vice versa.) All you do is consider what, of all you’ve ever eaten or would like to eat, you would request for your last meal if you could choose anything. So how about it? What would you have for your last meal?

While the wonderful world of Filipino food obviously rocks the savoury, I would be remiss if I didn’t wax rhapsodic about one of the easiest and most head-explodingly delicious dishes they have to offer: Champorado.

Champorado is, in short, chocolate rice porridge (or rice pudding, if you will.) It’s rich. It’s filling. It’s creamy. (Although you don’t add milk unless you want to while serving. That creamy texture comes courtesy of magical rice.) It’s chocolatey. It’s breakfast. It’s snack (I dare you to serve this to your kids and then try find a more popular after school snack. Go on. I dare you.) You don’t have to know how to do anything more complicated than measure, boil, stir, scoop and eat. FFFTW (Filipino Food For The Win!)

As if all this wasn’t already enough, consider this. You can whip up a huge pot of Champorado and keep it in a tightly covered container in the refrigerator. Scoop out enough for a serving and gobble it up cold, or reheat it with a splash of evaporated milk (as it is usually served), half and half or plain old milk.

Every single time I make Champorado, I get the song “Desperado” stuck in my head, but I walk around the kitchen singing it this way at the top of my lungs: “Chaaaaaaaam-poh-rah-doh! Why don’t you come to your senses…” I don’t recall Tecla ever doing this particular tune, she was more of a “Wind Beneath My Wings” kind of lady, but somehow, I think she would approve.

Thank you, Tecla, wherever you are…

Print

Champorado (Chocolate Rice Porridge)

Rating: 51
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: 25 minutes
Total Time: 30 minutes

On cold winter days, there's nothing like a breakfast, late afternoon or bed time snack of Champorado: a rich, chocolate laden rice porridge that comes to us courtesy of the Philippines. Eat it hot, warm, room temperature or cold, plain or the way most folks do with a good splash or two of evaporated milk, plain milk or half and half. This is comfort food extraordinaire!
Adapted from Tecla and Jun-Blog
Ingredients
1 cup sticky or sushi rice, uncooked
5 1/4 cups water
6 ounces finely chopped bittersweet or semi-sweet chocolate (or semi-sweet chocolate chips. In other words, half a bag of most brands.)
2 tablespoons to 1/3 cup of raw sugar (or granulated white sugar), according to preference
pinch of salt
Optional for serving:
evaporated milk, half and half, or plain milk to pour over the porridge
Instructions
In a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan, stir together the rice and water and the pinch of salt and bring to a boil over high heat, stirring occasionally to keep the rice from sticking to the bottom. When it reaches the boil, immediately drop the heat to low and simmer for about 20 minutes, stirring often to prevent sticking, or until the rice is soft and swollen.
Turn off the heat, stir in the chopped chocolate (or chocolate chips) and sugar, cover the pan, and let stand undisturbed for 5 minutes. When 5 minutes are up, remove the lid and stir vigorously until everything is evenly coloured and very chocolatey looking. Serve hot, warm or cold with a good splash or two of milk on top.
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http://www.foodiewithfamily.com/2011/11/30/champorado-chocolate-rice-porridge/
Recipe printed from Foodie With Family | Rebecca Lindamood http://www.foodiewithfamily.com

Are you on the hunt for more great Filipino recipes? Try two of my most trusted resources (great blogs, incredible recipes, beautiful photography):

Jun-Blog In his words, he’s a Philippine born, San Francisco based professional food and cookbook photographer, so you know his stuff is going to be gorgeous, but the recipes. Oh, his recipes. They’re mouthwatering and always great. I can’t recommend him highly enough!

Burnt Lumpia I’ve been a loyal reader of Marvin since long before I ever put fingers to keyboard here on Foodie With Family. He is always witty, always fun and his food is to die for. Plus, his pen name is Burnt Lumpia, for crying out loud. Lumpia. As in my death row meal. How could I not love him?