Last night, Peter and I cooked what we had in the fridge. We found rashers of pork and some vegetables. And it so happened that we also have a jar of shrimp bagoong in our store cupboard.
We looked at what we have got and decided to cook our version of pinakbet and adobo, London-style.
With the pork rashers, we cut up half of it thinly to saute for the pinakbet and the rest we cut it in inch thick cubes for the adobo.
Cooking the best pinakbet is instinctive. You put the amount of vegetables you feel is right or according to the number of people who will be enjoying your sumptous feast.
Anyway Peter and I added to our glorious pinakbet the sauted pork, a handful of string beans, about 5 baby eggplant/aubergine, one ampalaya or bitter gourd, a quarter of squash/pumpkin, one large spring onion ( we’ve run out of onion), two tomatoes, 4 cloves of garlic, 1 tbsp of oil and a cup of water and the most important ingredient the bagoong, the bagoong should be fish bagoong like padas but since we have not got any we used the shrimp bagoong which we later found to be so delicious with the pakbet.
Peter sauted the pork in the oil with garlic, he then added the shrimp bagoong.
He added the squash or pumpkin, then the rest of the the vegetables.
He then added a cup of water and covered the pan and left the whole thing to simmer gently.
He stirred it often to incorporate the bagoong to the dish.
We continued to let it simmer ever so gently, while we cooked our second dish, the pork adobo.
The Adobo:
We put the pork in a pan with a cup of water, half a cup of soy sauce and the same amount of vinegar.
We added a couple of bay leaves, a good amount of grind black pepper and 6 cloves of chopped garlic.
This we let simmer until the water, soy sauce and vinegar have evaporated leaving the pork to fry in its own fat with the garlic.
It was so easy to do and yet so yummy and would suit any palate as we have discovered before when we served adobo to our friends and family.
Anyway our little feast of adobo and pinakbet was complemented by boiled rice.
We really enjoyed the meal and we also found the perfect wine to go with it, a red Spanish wine.
Peter said that Pinakbet and Adobo would definitely be a mainstay to our tried and tested yummy dinner recipes.