Pork Sinigang with a Twist

The laziness strikes again on me, been ages since I last updated this blog. But anyways, let's break the ice with a very delicious and a very suitable dish for the coming cold or rainy season here in the Philippines, with Pork Sinigang! Now, you might ask what's the twist we can do with a Pork Sinigang. Well, keep reading and I'll tell you along the way.

Ingredients:

• Pork belly or liempo - adobo cut, 1.5in cube
• Tamarind or sinigang mix -  if you are not comfortable with using tamarind, there are lots of pre-made sinigang mix you can choose from. I would suggest the one with Gabi in it, so you soup would be thick.
• Gabi - or carlang as what we call it, but if using the sinigang mix with gabi it fine to not include this.
• String beans
• Kangkong or water spinach 
• Eggplant
• Radish
• Finger Pepper or Siling Espada - about 3-5pcs, chop 1pc or 1/2pc
• Onions
• Tomato
• Garlic - chopped 
• Soy sauce - 3-5tsp.
• Vinegar - 3-5tsp.
• Pepper powder
• Salt
• Vetsin

Direction:

1. Marinate pork with garlic, pepper, a little salt, soy sauce and vinegar. Make sure to squeeze the pork a couple of times to let the marinate mixture sip inside the pork. Marinate it for just about 5-10mins.
2. Slice or prepare the vegetables. Right after you set aside the pork, start preparing the vegetables. Slice the vegetables to your liking. When you're halfway on the vegetables, your marinated pork is done simultaneously. Now you have to..
3. Deep fry the marinated pork. Hope you can deal with a lot of multitasking hihih. When the oil is hot, add the marinated pork, make sure not to cook it very well since we will still cook it along with the vegetables later. Of course, since you are halfway with the preparation of your vegetables, you can now finish it while frying the pork. After finishing the preparation of vegetables and frying the pork, remove the pork from the pan and settle it somewhere to let the oil drip away from it. Then the next step is..
4. Boil 3-5cups of water. Add the onions and finger pepper right away. While waiting for the water to boil you can start..
5. Chop the fried pork crosswise. It's still hot so use fork to hold it. After chopping the pork, wait for the water to boil, and it it is boiling already..
6. Add the vegetables to the boiling water. Make sure you know how the vegetable are sorted base on how fast they will be cooked. Faster cooked last always, so add the string beans and radish first. But if you are using Gabi and tamarind, add them along with the onions since it's not easily get cooked like other vegetables. After the radish and string beans, 5mins later, add the eggplant and the pork. 5mins later add the sinigang mix and vetsin. 5mins later, add tomato and water spinach. Then let is boil for a few minutes to cook the last vegetables you added.
7. Add salt. Now you may ask why the salt is added at last part, it is because there is a weird relationship with sour taste and saltiness I discovered. When it is sour and you add salt, it will increase the sour taste also it will taste very salty. So if you soup is very sour already, don't add too much salt. After adding salt, stir a little and turn off the heat. You're ready to serve you Pork Sinigang!

Well, hopefully this post makes sense. lol. The twist there by the way is how we prepare our pork. Normally, we add the pork directly to the boiling water or leave it for a few hours so the pork will be very tender. But in our case, we deep fried it. We normally don't add garlic on our sinigang, but this time, the fried garlic from the marinated pork adds a little garlic taste to our soup. Also, the soup will eventually be spicy. Not too much though since we only chopped 1 siling mahaba. But if there are some leftovers and you'll going to heat the sinigang, thats the time it will be really spicy. It is bearable and very appetizing, well for me that is. hihih.