Lauya

It is not cooking, washing dishes (well maybe) or piles of laundry (err...) that I hate when we don't have a maid.  It is "looking after" the stupid dogs.  I could practically write a whole new blog regarding their insanity. It goes that whatever I'll be cooking, I have to have the critters in mind.

So early on, I decided to make sinigang using pork ribs for dinner while making a mental note of my ingredients, specifically the week-old kangkong (water spinach) in the ref.

But it was only later that I found, when the meat has already been thawed, that the kangkong was unusable and worse, there is no instant sinigang powder mix anywhere in the kitchen.  So there goes sinigang.  There is however an unripe papaya in the ref.  Might as well use it.

So what will I be making?  Tinolang baboy?  Well, it's a form of nilagang baboy.  I definitely remember with fond memory the pork dish lauya.  But in that dish, my aunt (may she rest in peace) use kamote (sweet potato) or cabbage instead of unripe papaya.  There's another lauya version where bamboo shoots are used, and no tomatoes.  But googling it, lauya just means boiled pork, so my recipe with green papaya could still work.

I placed the pork ribs in the pan together with a clove of garlic, ground pepper and dried bay laurel leaf and a cup and a half of water.  I also added chopped shallots. Shallots.  Shallots.  What I hate about preparing this vegetable is that I couldn't get its oniony smell out of my hands, even after I've washed hundreds of times.   *sigh*

I let the meat and spices to boil for a few minutes then added the chopped tomatoes. The secret of lauya is overcooked tomatoes.  So when the tomatoes are overcooked, the dish is done.  I added some more water, after all this is a soup, and then salt to taste then added the cut unripe papaya (I used only half of the fruit since I might find another use for it, for example, for a REAL tinola, and besides an unripe papaya has a tendency to dilute the taste of a dish).  At first I thought against adding garlic powder to taste, but for some reason the dish beckoned for it. I then covered the pan and clicked the stove off, and the dish was done.  Easy.

As you can see I didn't cook the papaya, as I've said in the previous entry, I usually let the residual heat cook the vegetables.

Lauya with unripe papaya.  Picture taken using iPod touch.

Again, I used my staple ingredients: pepper, dried bay laurel leaves, garlic and shallots.  Adobo soup without soy sauce.

Although the smell was inviting, I didn't eat dinner.  This was because I already ate lunch and I try to only eat once a day (I'll tell you more about it some other time). And I believe the laundrywoman came this morning while I was still "asleep" and my niece cooked pinakbet, so I ate that when I "woke up" in the afternoon.

The verdict?  The leftover pinakbet won.