Sitaw Guisado (Sauteed Yardlong Beans)

An insane amount of chopped garlic is slowly cooked in to create a flavor base for this sitaw guisado with shrimps and quail eggs.

Just garlic? Yes. Onion and tomatoes don’t always need to accompany garlic when cooking guisado dishes. In the same manner, there are dishes that require more onions and just a hint of garlic. Or garlic and onion can both be absent as in the case of dishes that benefit more from the flavor of other spices such as ginger or chilies.

In other words, what the spice base should be for your guisado depends on what other ingredients will go into the dish. In this sitaw guisado, for instance, shrimps are naturally sweet and adding onions — which are also sweet — will just overpower the sweetness of the shrimps. Ergo, I aimed for contrast and a garlic base was my choice.

What goes well with sitaw guisado? For Filipinos, rice would be the first choice. But did you know that many guisado dishes also go well with noodles? This is one of them. Don’t miss the notes after the recipe.

Sitaw Guisado (Sauteed Yardlong Beans)

The key to a flavorful sitaw guisado is to cook the chopped garlic slowly in oil to allow the bits to caramelize while, at the same time, infusing the oil with its flavor. That oil will later coat the sitaw and shrimps.

Course: Main Course

Cuisine: Modern Filipino

Keyword: easy, fast, Green Beans, Shrimps, Sitaw

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Cook Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 15 minutes

Servings: 2 people

Author: Connie Veneracion

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons cooking oil
• 2 tablespoons chopped garlic
• 2 cups sitaw cut into two-inch lengths (see notes after the recipe)
• patis (fish sauce)
• 1 cup shrimps peeled and deveined
• ¼ teaspoon black pepper
• 8 to 12 quail eggs hard-boiled and shelled

Instructions

• Heat the cooking oil in a thick-bottomed pan over medium-low heat.
• Spread the chopped garlic in the hot oil and cook, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned.
• Turn up the heat to medium and add the sitaw to the garlic. Cook, tossing occasionally, for a minute. Drizzle in a teaspoonful of patis and cook for another minute.
• Add the shrimps to the sitaw and drizzle in another teaspoonful of patis. Sprinkle in the pepper.
• Toss the shrimps with the sitaw and cook just until the shrimps change color (overcooking shrimps makes the flesh rubbery).
• Stir in the quail eggs.
• Taste. Add more patis or pepper, or both, as needed.

Cook’s Notes

Sitaw is yard-long beans. Green beans (a.k.a. Baguio beans) may be substituted.

While rice is the usual partner of most Filipino guisado dishes, there are quite a number of guisado dishes that go well with noodles too. Sitaw guisado, as cooked above, is one of them.

To serve the sitaw guisado with noodles, cook as above then transfer the contents of the pan to a shallow bowl.

Dump cooked egg noodles into the pan, season with patis, soy sauce and a bit of kalamansi juice and toss around until heated through.

Add the sitaw guisado to the noodles and toss to distribute evenly.

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