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.
- 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
-
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.
