How many ways can one cook adobo? Ooohh… let me count the ways… Okay, I give up. Countless ways. With chicken and hard-boiled eggs, as stuffing for burrito, corned beef style, with liver sauce, with lemongrass, with eggs only — exotic or eye candy, with green beans, with white button mushrooms, with frog legs and quail eggs, with lamb, with catfish, with squids, with kangkong (swamp spinach), with rice… You get the idea.
And I am now about to add another adobo recipe to my list. This time, with minced pork, baby portobello mushrooms and sitaw (yard-long beans). What’s the idea? Well, if you’re trying to cut down on you meat consumption, it’s smart to include some other substantial ingredients to your dish. For me, that means either tofu or mushrooms. Does adobo still taste like adobo with all that mushrooms? Sure it does. And it is delicious adobo.
- 150 grams minced pork
- 100 grams baby portobello mushrooms sliced
- 3 cups sitaw (yard-long beans) cut into one-inch lengths
- 8 cloves garlic
- 4 to 6 tablespoons vinegar
- 4 to 6 tablespoons soy sauce
- ground black pepper
- 1 bay leaf
- 2 tablespoons vegetable cooking oil
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Blanch the sitaw in boiling water for about five minutes. Dump in a bowl of iced water to stop the cooking and to refresh.
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Heat the cooking oil in a pan. Add the pork, garlic and bay leaf. Cook just until the meat changes color.
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Pour in the vinegar. Cook, stirring, until the mixture is quite dry (the pork should be fully cooked at this point).
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Pour in the soy sauce.
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Add the mushrooms.
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Season with pepper.
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Cook for about a minute (don’t cook too long or the mushrooms will turn microscopic) then add the cooked sitaw.
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Cook, stirring, just until the sitaw is heated through.
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Serve the pork, mushrooms and green beans adobo hot with rice.
