The first time I ate gising-gising was at Chic-boy. I hadn’t heard of the dish before, I asked the girl at the counter what it was exactly and she said it was a spicy chop suey. Sounded good; we ordered it. Fast forward to several months later and Jeanette posted a recipe of gising-gising on her blog. Surprisingly, it was a simpler dish made with sitaw (yard-long beans), coconut milk and chilis. In her post, Jeanette referred to a recipe by Mec which has green beans (a.k.a. French beans but locally known as Baguio beans) and ground pork.
I searched the web for a more definitive version of gising-gising and found none. The common denominator is that all versions are spicy and that makes the name of the dish understandable — gising-gising translates to Wake up! Wake up! and the spiciness of the dish will really wake one up. I also found out that green beans rather than sitaw appear to be more commonly used for making the dish.
My version of gising-gising uses green beans. But instead of ground pork, I used pork ears that had been boiled, chopped then pan fried until browned and crisp.
Gising-gising (Spicy Pork and Green Beans With Coconut Milk)
Print PinIngredients
- 1 tablespoon cooking oil
- 1 pork ear simmered in salted water until tender then chopped (about a cup after chopping)
- 1 onion chopped
- 4 cloves garlic minced
- 1/2 teaspoon finely chopped ginger
- 2 tomatoes chopped
- 2 to 4 finger chilis depending on how spicy you want the dish
- patis (fish sauce) to taste
- 200 grams green beans stringed and cut into half-inch lengths
- 1 cup coconut milk
- 1 cup coconut cream
Instructions
- Heat the oil in a wok or frying pan.
- Add the chopped pork. Cook over high heat, stirring occasionally, until browned.
- Add the onion, garlic, ginger, tomatoes and chilis. Season with patis. Saute just until the vegetables start to soften.
- Add the green beans. Pour in the coconut milk. Taste and add more patis.
- Boil over medium heat, uncovered (to avoid curdling) and with occasional stirring, for about five minutes or until the green beans are done and the mixture is almost dry.
- Pour in the coconut cream. Adjust the seasoning once more. Boil gently, still uncovered, for about two minutes.
Read 
Doejibulgogi (Korean Spicy Stir-fried Pork)
Oh, I can just imagine the flavor from the pork ears! I just love your photos *sigh* inggit ako. :)
Naku… ang sarap! We usually make this with sigarilyas (winged beans) and shrimp, then we pair it with inihaw na liempo! Naglalaway na po ako…
I make use of kangkong stalks that we discard when making sinigang. I just chop the stalks cross wise to make little rings out of them just like they do it in some restaurants when they make gising gising.
This is so different from what I grew up with. Hindi pa ako nakatikim ng ganitong version, and I would really love to try it. The food you make is really enticing at nakakagutom! lol. My mom makes gising-gising that looks almost exactly like chop suey, pero nagmamantika ng konti tsaka medyo mapula, napaka anghang, and she adds quail eggs, squid balls, tapos half-cooked lahat ng veggies.
Re: “gising-gising that looks almost exactly like chop suey” — That’s the version I first encountered. And I’d love to try making it too.