Igado and Inabraw nga Sitaw

Yesterday, I blogged about complementary dishes: munggo and adobo, and munggo and tuyo.  Guess what I had for breakfast/lunch?  Tuyo!

Anyhoo, tonight I made two dishes that complement each other again: igado (Ilocano pork stew) and inabraw featuring sitaw (string beans).

Igado is the Ilocano version of the Tagalog menudo.  But instead of tomato sauce/atsuete (annatto), we use soy sauce in igado.

However today, I cooked a tame version of igado -- that is without pork liver.  Who like them livers anyway?

In a pan I sauteed shallots and garlic in used oil (hah!), then I added the sliced pork. My father (may he rest in peace, I love you, you know that) not really taught me how to cook but just let me watch him cook when I was just a little boy. And from him I learned to cook the fat and skin portion of the pork first, let it produce its own oil before adding the meat part.  Don't you just hate it when you eat pork and the fat/skin portion is not well cooked?

I then added the seasonings: soy sauce, ground pepper and dried bay laurel leaves, and left them to cook.  After a while of some stirring, I added the gisantes (green peas) and carrots.  I added some garlic powder to taste.

You'll know the dish is ready when the green peas are cooked.

Doesn't this dish remind you of adobo and the giniling I made a few days back? There are two key ingredients of the classic igado that are not in this dish: red bell peppers and potatoes.  Well pork liver is another staple in the dish, but who eats liver?

Tamed igado.  Picture taken using iPod touch.

The next dish, like the inabraw I did before, is cooked just the same.  In a pot I placed the main ingredients: sitaw, slender aubergines and malunggay (moringa) leaves.  Then added Ilocano bagoong (fish paste), water and patis (fish sauce) to taste.  Let it boil then simmer until vegetables are cooked to liking.  I didn't add alamang this time because it does not go well with the igado.  In cooking paired food, make sure not to use an overpowering ingredient, like the alamang and pork liver (hah!).

Inabraw nga sitaw.  Picture taken using iPod touch.

When I went down to the kitchen later this evening, there was still a lot of the igado.  I guess like the adobo, it's gonna be a good two-day-old dish.

Inabraw or Dinengdeng

You'll know I'm tired of cooking when I don't even try to cook well anymore.  It's almost two months since the maid left us, and that's the same amount of time I've been cooking for me and my sister and my niece (if an off-chance she eats upon arriving very late at night from work).

To make my cooking chore easy, I made dinengdeng/inabraw. I honestly don't know the difference since they look the same to me.  I always thought that dinengdeng is the Tagalog form of inabraw. And I presume they taste the same. I presume because I seldom eat it without an accompanying meat dish, specifically pork adobo.

Since I "wake up" after lunchtime, there was leftover danggit from breakfast, so I had that as my dinner and prepared the inabraw for my sister.

Danggit.  Picture taken using iPod touch.

I don't think she tasted last night's lauya. She preferred to eat the pinakbet instead. So that afternoon, all leftover lauya went to the dogs.  I don't think she'll mind if I only cook inabraw, since the vegetables in the ref are beginning to wilt. Besides, the only difference between inabraw and pinakbet is the amount of bagoong (fish paste) water you cook it on.

Inabraw is pretty simple.  My ingredients were slender aubergines (I like this word too like shallots), okra, and this four-corned vegetable whose name escapes me now and I couldn't find it on the usual dinengdeng recipes on Google:

Four-cornered veggie.  Picture taken using iPod touch.

So I just placed all the vegetables in the pot, added one and a quarter of water, one and a half ladle of bagoong and two ladles of patis (fish sauce).  From experience, I only use bagoong to color the soup then use patis to taste since bagoong can make a dish too salty.

I leave the vegetables to boil until they are half done then added dried alamang (small shrimp).  I didn't even have to stir, I just covered the lot and waited for the vegetable to be done.  Since this is an Ilocano dish, overcooking is okay, after all, what is pinakbet but an overcooked inabraw?

The blatant (pungent?) smell of dried alamang is a clue that the dish is done.

Inabraw or dinengdeng.  Picture taken using iPod touch.

The verdict?  My sister cooked some bagnet (deep fried pork).