Sauce / Sarsa at Sawsawan

Balo-Balo, aka Burong Hipon (Fermented Rice with Shrimps Sauce)

People who are not used to the smell and taste of this sauce, find it very offensive and why not! it smells like rotten, putrefied garbage. But to those that know how this sauce tastes like and is served, find it heavenly. It’s all in the mind! Once I served it to very good friend – Denise Bellini (an Australian), and he found it tasted like cheese and liked it. In Pampanga, where this is a common sauce for fried or grilled or roasted fish, and for steamed vegetables (eggplant, okra, ampalaya (bitter melon), sitao (long pole bean)) or fresh mustard leaves, the meal is incomplete without this sauce. There is also a version where fish is used instead of shrimps, maybe you could try that out too. Usually this is made in large quantities because it is used frequently. I have made this Sydney upon the request of my Filipino ladies group and our home’s architect – Ton Jaucian. It just takes a bit longer to ferment due to the cool weather of Sydney. Fermenting Ingredients: 5 cups cooked rice – boil rice with 10 cups of water till cooked; you come up with a soft kind of cooked rice; cool rice thoroughly 500 grams very fresh shrimps – alive if possible, the 2-inch long size; do not peel. In Sydney where you do not find shrimps that are alive, I use small, fresh prawns that are peeled and sliced in half – lengthwise. If you want to use fish, I use filleted fish and slice into 1/2-inch cubes or in small strips. In the Philippines, you can use whole small fresh gurami or tilapia, de-scale, debone and cut into finger sized strips. Do not use head of tilapia. Some even use the mud fish for this. 250 grams young, fresh bamboo shoots – sliced very thinly and blanched for 5 minutes in hot water and drain well and cool down 1/2 cup salt Procedure: Get a well washed, dry, 1 to 2 gallon glass jar. Rinse the shrimps/fish with water and drain well. Pat dry to ensure dryness. In a large bowl, place shrimps and sprinkle with the salt, and mix thoroughly. Using rubber gloves, spread cool rice in a large bowl. Mix the bamboo shoots with the shrimps. Mix the shrimp/bamboo with rice using gloved hands. Put the mixture inside the jar, in layers, packing well each layer. You want to avoid air pockets in the jar. Cover the mouth of the jar with a clean sheet of plastic and close with lid. Some times it is hard to find glass gallon jars and I use a glass bowl that has a lid. Set aside in...

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Salsa Ana Version 2 (Dried Fish with Mushrooms and Sun Dried Tomatoes)

This Salsa is so delicious on rice, pasta and bread. I got the idea from Salsa Amaya but changed things a sit to suit my blood type AB diet. I also find it a ‘comfort’ food. With my hectic schedule in Manila, sometimes I don’t feel like eating a full meal. I ask my ‘yaya’ Carol Laoreno to cook me some fragrant Jasmine rice and then I mix the Salsa Ana on top of the steaming rice and just savor the homely flavor of the salsa. That’s what I call ‘comfort food.’ This recipe will make  three 300 gram-bottles. Ingredients: 2 tablespoons (25 grams) finely minced garlic 60 grams deboned salted fish (tuyo na Lapad) 2 tablespoons Mirin – cooking Sake 400 grams canned button mushroom – sliced fine 70 grams sun dried tomatoes or 100 grams sun dried tomato in oil – slice thinly julienne 150 grams green pitted olives – sliced fine in round shape 3 cups extra virgin olive oil 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon pepper Procedure: Sprinkle the deboned tuyo with 2 tablespoons of Mirin and toss. Set aside. In a non stick, heavy bottom cooking pan, pour in olive oil and warm over very low fire. Place the tuyo in the pan and cook the tuyo in the low fire for 20 minutes. Then add in the garlic and continue to cook for 5 minutes; stirring every once in a while. Then add in the dried tomatoes and simmer for another 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Then add in the olives and simmer for another 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Then add in the mushrooms and simmer for another 40 minutes, stirring occasionally. Season with salt and pepper. Cool and bottle. Serve with steaming hot rice. Notes: The other way to use this sauce is as sauce for pasta. Tuyo is our version of anchovy sans the oil. I use either spaghettini or twist pasta. Salsa Ana is also good served with crackers or bread, rolls or French bread (toasted or...

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Filipino Style Mango Chutney

We also have our very own style of chutney. It is served with Bringhe and other curry dishes. The difference in the Indian style chutney is the mango itself and no other spices. With the Filipino chutney, manibalang (half ripe), carabao mangoes are used and only salt and sugar are added to it. I learned how to make this from our assistant cook, Helen Manao. Helen was a very diligent cook. She learned how to read and add from us. I would see her sweating it out trying to add up the market list and then I learned that she didn’t know how to read and do maths. Over the years, with lots of effort and sweat, she finally did learn and even became a business woman on her own right. She has gone to heaven and this recipe is in memory of her. Ingredients: 4 kilos yellow-green half-ripe (manibalang) carabao mangoes – dried strips must come up to 500 grams 1 piece yellow (ripe) carabao mango – peel off skin with potato peeler and coarsely grate meat into a glass bowl or plate; set aside 2 1/2 cups (500 grams) white sugar 1 1/2 cups water 4 teaspoons sea salt coarse Procedure: Peel off the skin from manibalang yellow-green mangoes with a potato peeler. Slice the mangoes with potato peeler too. Place the sliced mangoes in a glass or stainless steel bowl. Sprinkle the salt all over the mangoes and mix well. Leave in the salt for 2 hours, mixing occasionally. Drain salt water well from the mangoes and place in a bilao (native bamboo tray) or baking tray. Spread out evenly on bilao and sun dry. It may take a few hours to two days, depending on the sun’s heat to dry. It must not be too dry nor still soggy. The mango strips must still have some moisture left. In a medium sized stainless steel or fire-proof cooking sauce pan, over medium-low heat, place the grated ripe mango, water and sugar. Bring the mixture to a slow boil. About 5 minutes. Add the semi-dried yellow-green mango strips and continue cooking for another 5 minutes. Turn down the flame to low simmer and stir constantly until the candy thermometer registers 200ºF (90ºC). Turn off fire and bottle immediately. Leave off cover till cool and then cap. Serve as an accompaniment to Bringhe or any curried...

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The Art of Making Tabang Talangka

I learned how to make tabang talangka as a very young girl. I would spend summers and All Saints Day holidays with my grandmother, Lola Charing (Rosario Valdes Gonzalez) in Bacolor, Pampanga. Sometimes it would be the season of talangka and seeing the whole ritual of this tiny crab being turned in crab paste (tabang talangka) was quite an adventure for me. Talangka is found in fishponds. The pond owners called them ‘singaw’ (because they come out of nowhere). When the ponds would be emptied and cleaned in preparation of the stocking of fingerlings, one would find the talangka in abundance, appearing seemingly from out of nowhere. In fact, pond owners would even poison them because they were the pests of the pond. Sacks of the talangka would be delivered to my grandmother’s kitchen then it was all hands on deck. First, the talangka would be poured into huge vats (batya), first to be rinsed and then the males would be segregated from the females. It was the tiny female crab that was needed for making this delicious paste. The males were then bound for the steamer and eaten; the prized ones were the females. It was the females with their delicious orangey fat that was needed to make the tabang talangka. In fact, one knew if the bottled paste was pure or had a mixture of male crabs by the color of the fat: if it was pale orange, then male crabs were added to it, lowering the quality of the crab paste. The more orange-y it was, the higher the paste’s quality. Nowadays, most commercial tabang talangka is a mixture of female and male talangka. Producers find it a waste to use only the female crabs, as adding male crabs into the mix add body to the paste. Also, a purely female tabang talangka becomes prohibitively expensive. Aside from segregating the males from the females, all the dead crabs would also be discarded. The major rule was: NO DEAD CRABS in the lot. This rule is rigidly observed: dead crabs had a rotten smell and would spoil the batch being cooked. Even when the crabs are ready to be squeezed, one had to smell each and every tiny crustacean just in case one dead crab escaped someone’s eye (and nose). The next step in the talangka preparation is more of an artistic approach. There is no measurement. One just knew, by looking at the tiny crabs, how much salt one had to put in to pickle the crabs. The crabs would now be divided into manageable amounts and put in huge casseroles that were covered, then vigorously shaken with both hands. I could see the crabs scrambling...

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Taba ng Talangka Sauce for Pasta (Tiny Crab Paste Sauce for Pasta)

Taba ng Talangka Sauce for Pasta (Tiny Crab Paste Sauce for Pasta)

Kapampangas love their ‘tabang talangka’ (tiny crab paste). Before it used to be seasonal; that is when the rainy season came, so did the talangka (tiny crabs). The talangka is a tiny crab; the shell is from 1 inch to 1 ½ inches wide. The fish pond owners call it ‘singaw’ (coming out of nowhere) because as they prepared their ponds for new fingerlings, the talangka would pop out of nowhere. One must gather the talangka by the hundreds just to make one cup of sautéed tabang talangka. Tabang talangka is usually eaten with steaming hot rice. Since one can eat it with rice, why not pasta. So here is a take on tabang talangka as a sauce for pasta. Because of the proliferation of bottling and canning, now one can enjoy tabang talangka even if its out of season. One finds it in Filipino stores around the world and in Supermarkets in the Philippines. Serves 6 persons. Ingredients: 4 tablespoons cooking oil 1 teaspoon crushed garlic ½ cup bottled/canned tabang talangka ¼ cup coconut milk ½ cup fish broth or water 2 tablespoons Mirin or Sake (this removes the fishy flavor of the talangka) ½ teaspoon Tabasco or chili sauce or 1 long lady finger chili (seed and chop) ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 12 pieces of prawns – peel, devein, leaving tail on 500 grams twisted pasta, pasta twirls or pasta that makes the sauce cling to it (do not use spaghetti) – follow cooking instructions of pasta Procedure: Using a skillet, over medium fire, pour 2 tablespoons of cooking oil in pan. Warm pan till it reaches 180°C. Sear prawns each side of prawn for about 1 minute; till prawns curls up on both sides. Place in pan, only six prawns at a time. Set aside and keep warm. In a medium sized cooking pan, over medium-low fire, warm pan for 2 minutes and pour 2 tablespoons cooking oil. Sauté garlic till very light gold. Add the tabang talangka, coconut milk, fish broth, Mirin, Tabasco, and ground black pepper. Stir continuously and simmer for 5 minutes. Cook pasta according to instructions on box. Put pasta in sauce and mix well. Place in serving dish and garnish with prawns. Serve...

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Salsa Ana (A Vinagretta Sauce)

Salsa Ana (A Vinagretta Sauce)

Ladies Lunches bring out my creative juices, thinking of what new dish would titillate my friends’ taste buds. On one such occasion, I needed to come up with a salad cum sauce. A few days before the intended Ladies Lunch, I had some left over salted red eggs, intense tomatoes, and rocket leaves. The light bulb in my head brought me back to the time my mother used to make vinagretta sauce. This vinagretta has nothing really to do with what is known as vinaigrette dressing; which is the vinegar, mustard, oil, salt and pepper dressing. The only common ground my mother’s vinagretta had to do with the vinaigrette is that it had white palm vinegar, oil, salt and pepper but the rest was the famous Kapampangans love for sauces. Mom’s vinagretta had tomatoes, salted red egg, onion, and pickle relish, plus the palm vinegar (sukang sasa), salt, pepper, and sugar. My mind went again on its hundred a minute spin. What if I jumble it in a different way and the result was just awesome! A salad cum sauce. You can eat it as a salad or use it as a sawsawan for grilled or fried seafood or fish. Best friend forever Marja says, “it’s good even with just rice.” Ingredients: 500 grams tomatoes (my preferred varieties to use are kumato or intense tomatoes, but your favorite variety will do) – seeds removed, then diced 2 salted eggs (aka red eggs) – peeled, cut into tiny squares ½ to 1 half ripe (aka manibalang or not quite ripe) mango – chopped into tiny cubes 1 cup finely chopped onion ½ cup horseradish – diced a little smaller than how you diced the tomatoes 4 cups coarsely chopped rocket greens Procedure: In a large serving salad bowl, mix all the ingredients except rocket greens. Let the mixture sit for 30 minutes. This will allow the flavors of the different ingredients to blend with each other. When ready to serve, arrange the rocket greens on top. Let your family or guests add the rocket according to their preference, and they mix it when they serve...

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