Garlic, basil and onion leaves sinangag

It is grilled pork liempo (belly) and a new concoction for sinangag (fried rice). There are two reasons why we had them for lunch today.

First, Pinoyblog had it’s Christmas party at Cabalen restaurant last night. Cabalen serves Filipino dishes. More specifically, it specializes in Campampangan (a regional) cuisine. I’ve eaten in the various Cabalen branches before and found the buffet rather mediocre. Cheaper than other restaurant buffets so perhaps that should partly explain the choice of entrees. But last night was a real bummer. The food was just terrible. Not only had the number of dishes been drastically reduced; the quality has deteriorated a gazillion times.

There was something called onion rings which looked like reheated calamares (deep-fried squid rings). The onion rings were rubbery, the onion slices inside were super dry but the batter was dripping on oil which, naturally, means they were not freshly cooked. In fact, they seemed to have been cooked two days ago then reheated over and over. The lumpiang bangus appeared and tasted reheated as well.

I didn’t bother with the kare-kare. The dinuguan was the only dish I liked although the sauce was much too thin and pale for my preference. The crispy kangkong was alright.

To cut a long rant short, I was hoping for a good Filipino buffet dinner and was sadly disappointed. I decided we would have grilled liempo for lunch today para hindi naman bitin. I did the marinating; my husband did the charcoal grilling. Of course, the kids did most of the eating.

The new sinangag recipe was inspired by something from a book by an outrageous chef whom I am admiring more and more each time I turn a page. I am referring to Anthony Bourdain and his Kitchen Confidential where I came across some very interesting descriptions of combinations of basic herbs and spices. I so believe him when he wrote that cooking good food is a craft–a skill. And no amount of decorating can make a dish better than one that may use only a few–but fresh–and well-chosen ingredients.

No big mytsery about the grilled liempo. Just make sure that the liempo slices are not too thick. Half an inch would be ideal. Then marinade them in a mixture of kalamansi (native citrus) juice, light soy sauce and plenty of finely minced garlic. And here’s a tip. If you don’t have too much time for marinating, reduce the amount of soy sauce so that the marinade is more sour than salty. Then rub the sliced liempo with refined salt. Your grilled liempo won’t taste bland even if you only have 15 minutes for marinating.

Now the sinangag… Now this is no chinese-style fried rice. This is Pinoy sinangag with a few extras.

Ingredients :

6 c. of cold cooked rice
8-10 tbsps. of used cooking oil (cooking oil that had been used for frying meat is best)
1 whole garlic, crushed, peeled and finely chopped
1 tbsp. of finely chopped basil
1 tbsp. of finely chopped sibuyas na mura (onion leaves)
salt

Cooking procedure :

Mash the rice to separate the grains.

Heat the cooking oil in a skillet or wok over medium-low heat. Add the garlic and cook gently until fragrant and the garlic bits just start to brown. Add the basil and sibuyas na mura. Turn up the heat and cook, stirring, for a few seconds. Add the rice. Sprinkle with salt. Cook, stirring, until the rice is thoroughly heated through.

I wish I can describe the aroma while I cooked the sinangag but you’ll have to try it yourself to experience the whole thing. After cooking sinangag this way, I don’t think you’ll ever be content with plain garlic fried rice.