Lechon Kawali Recipe and Tien Sauce

If you want to fly, give up everything that weighs you down

Brace yourself. This will be a long post since I am going to take you to a memory lane where names and memories from the past are reminisced and shared.

When I was in college, which was a very loooooooong time ago, there was no ATM nor bank to bank deposit yet. So, my mom sent my monthly sustenance/allowance by boat.( I can just imagine  you calculating how this long time ago means.) My mom sent my allowance through Toto. Now, it is official, the long time ago means during the inception of Dorothy from Wizard of OZ - that was during 16-00 -----when Dorothy's dog, Toto existed. No, this is not Toto the dog but Toto the name of  the man who is the bearer of my treasure. Each month, by instinct, I go to Pier 3 (where the boat dock), and here I am accepting the treasure that was handed to me. I was instantly rich!  Oh my, as I was writing this line, I am kind of embarrassed on how ancient that time was.

Now, what should I do with all the money? I go to a restaurant named Broadway This restaurant had tons of Filipino foods lined up in it counter: lechon, (whole roasted pig), pancit ( noodles), adobo, sweet and sour dinuguan ( blood stew?) and all types of different foods. Last but not the least,  lechon kawali. Their lechon kawali was so crispy and delicious that I frivolously spent my whole month's allowance in that place. Pretty much, I had nothing left in that allowance when I got out from that restaurant. It was that good,that I am willing to get hungry throughout the month.

I did not really get to learn to cook lechon kawali when I was in the Philippines. I just learned it when I moved here in the US. Before, I cooked the meat by deep frying and it was an agony to do this. Hot oil splattered everywhere and my arms, neck and face never came out not burned; so I refrain from cooking it until Amy, my good friend, told me to bake and broil it. I am going to share to you how to do just that.

On another note, Tien is not actually a fish sauce brand but a human who happens to work with my husband. He is an young engineer. He was born in Vietnam and moved here in the US when he was 12 years old. He interned in Bombardier (my husband's workplace) and he got hired after graduating. That is an amazing feat  for a young kiddo like him. Currently, Tien had just clenched the "nook of fame in my house." This means he is ever present in every lecture I give to my children. Aside from my husband, he is the other guy who I want my children to emulate. Being an engineer, I thought he is smart too. Honestly, I think engineers are smarter than the rest of us. Imagine making a living by solving problems, analyzing  and doing those through numbers, and doing these everyday, that is something else.

One day, Tien gave my husband a white squash ( upo in Filipino)  which he got  from his parents garden .It was as tall as I am, that I do not know what else to do with it. He  is generous guy. He also gave my husband this fish sauce recipe which I appropriately called Tien's sauce in his honor...

When my husband came home from work one day, he cannot stop raving a certain sauce that Tien brought to work. I was surprised that somebody will bring  a fish sauce at work. In the cafeteria. Should I say, how brave is that? With  this, I pretty much conclude that Tien is a courageous guy who doesn't mind what people think of him. If you have smelled fish sauce aroma, you will understand why I said this.

Lechon Kawali and Tien Sauce

Ingredients:

2 lbs pork belly slice in a long 1" strips. (have the butcher do it for you or you can do it yourself) It should be bacon size length but 1 1/2 " to 2 " thick.
salt


Direction;

Put water, salt  and meat in the pan and bring to a boil and cook until soft. When done, let it cool and place in a zip loc. Refrigerate until you are ready to cook it.

Preheat oven at 350  F
Place pork belly in a baking pan line with the oil drain and bake for 45 minutes or until the belly looks golden brown. Change oven  into low broil setting . Broil at low until the belly looks crunchy. Make sure that you will not burn the meat.

Tien Sauce

1 lemon
5 cloves garlic
1/4 water
3 tbsp sugar
Bit of chili pepper ( depending on how spicy you want it)
2 cups Fish Sauce ( Make sure that the sauce is the one pictured above. It is available in Asian store. It has different tastes from Rufina and Teparos brand)

Lechon Kawali

Put water, salt  and meat in the pan and bring to a boil and cook until soft. When done, let it cool and place in a zip loc. Refrigerate until you are ready to cook it.

Preheat oven at 350  F
Place pork belly in a baking pan line with the oil drain and bake for 45 minutes or until the belly looks golden brown. Change oven  into low broil setting . Broil at low until the belly looks crunchy. Make sure that you will not burn the meat.

Tien Sauce:

Crush the garlic and mix in the rest of the ingredients. Place into a bottle or a container. Refrigerate.

Note: If you prefer to just try the sauce first, make a smaller batch  and just tweak the ingredients depending on how you want the sauce to taste.

Tien's sauce is perfect for any dish like fried fish, grilled fish grilled chicken but the sauce fits like a glove when paired with lechon kawali. It is like pea in a pod comb

10 Minute Meal Project # 3 Sweet and Sour Ground Pork

Kindness is loving people more than they deserve

-Joseph Joubert

Hello! Today is the 3rd 10 Minute Meal Project. I have fun doing this thing because it really surprises me that meals can be prepared so quickly.

This meal is reminiscent of the the sweet and sour fish  my mom prepared before when I was still in the Philippines; only, she used vinegar to create the sour paste and she added some carrots to neutralize the vinegar's sour taste. Boy, I remember how good it was...

When I started this project, I just randomly chose which meal recipes I have to follow, so I did not really know how they will turn out. I buy the ingredients and cook away. Of course I expected the recipes to be good since they were published in the cookbook so I expect good results. They say taste is subjective. The food may be good for you and not good for me. Everyone's taste is different.

After two successes from the 10 Minute Meal recipe book, I was expecting success on this one but I was disappointed with this recipe in terms of taste. The ground pork with pineapple juice plus the bell pepper did not make a good combination for me. The taste  was too sour  and the ground pork was so crumbly and dry.

It is an irony that I place kindness quote on top but I just cannot say something good about this meal, so I do not recommend it to you my friends. Yup, my family ate it, but it sat on the fridge for like three days before I finally have to shove it in my mouth so as not to waste it. I say this post today is pretty useless, unless you want to try it at your own risk. Sorry!

VERDICT:  Fact that you can cook this meal within 10 minutes but the taste was BLAH.


10 Minute Meal Project # 3 Sweet and Sour Ground Pork

1 tbs cooking oil
1 8 oz can pineapple chunks
1 lb lean ground pork
1 bell pepper (sliced in chunks)
1 onion ( sliced into small chunks)

Sauce
1/4 cup ketchup
1 tbsp chopped ginger
2 tbsp corn starch
1 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp black soy sauce
2 tbsp white vinegar

Drain the pineapple from the can and reserve the juice. Set aside the pineapple.
Put the sauce ingredients in a deep bowl and  whisk in the juice, mix them completely and set aside.

Heat cooking oil in a pan over high heat.
Add the pork and onion and stir fry for about 4 minutes until pork is cooked through.Add in bell pepper and let it cook for two minutes then add in the sauce cook through until the sauce thickens. Serve immediately.

Pork Fried Rice

It is Sunday today and what else do I have to do but do the same thing each day- cook for my clan. As everyone else, weekend is my most favorite part of the week because there is no mad rush in the house. Everybody's just lounging quietly and comfortably. My son is making the most of his privileged computer time, my daughter is writing and reading fan fiction, my husband, I do not know what he is doing, myself, writing and taking pictures for this article today.

Sometimes, I want everyday to be a weekend so that I will know what everyone is doing. I am just trying to be nosy, bored maybe, but I like watching everybody like a hawk. My daughter told me to relax all the time. My son thinks I am a veteran in National Guard, since I always watch if he exceeded his computer time. I  know, I am just a bored housewife. That is why, I needed to do something other than focus on my family.

Yup, my kids are grown up, not dependent on me anymore, so I decided to better start a life on my own. How else should I do that, write a food blog. To be honest, I do not have any idea on how to do this. I am not a good writer nor I am  a skilled photographer and most, I cannot cook fancy foods even if my life depended on it. But I know that to have a food blog, I have to cook the food, write the article and take the pictures . Did I mention that I am not good in all three? In the food department, uhhh,  I  cook simple meals I learned from observing my mom.

As with the other skills and hobby that I was trying to pursue, my husband was supportive. He bought me a very fancy camera. He drove me to buy the  plates. This will be my latest from the long list of hobbies that I want to try and had tried, so  I feel like if I do not stick to this, I am thinking my husband's going divorce me. I'd rather learn or die. I choose the former.

 As you can observe, my blog is very far from being perfect. My pictures are awful, my writing full of grammatical error, but one thing for sure. I am learning a lot. With regards to the grammar, please pardon me. I blame it to where I was born. I did not grow in the US nor English is my first language , so I have a valid excuse, right? But for the spelling,  I am not really sure what to say, since we have spell check. Can I say my spell check does not work?  But really, I do not want to make excuses. I have to get out from my comfort zone and review grammar rules and learn how to spell check. Now, I am watching my grammar and spelling like a hawk. A big diversion from the norm. Just in case you see some errors, which I am certain you will, can you please excuse me?

Currently, I am learning and reading from THE GREATS in food blogger world. The food blog world is so vast that I cannot even make a speckle of it. But write I must, since it is actually fun and also the best way to test my grammar muscles .

To start with that, I am going to share today is another fried rice recipe. I was born in the Philippines, so I eat rice with everything. I eat rice with egg, I eat rice with soy sauce, I eat rice with chicken, I eat rice with bacon. I eat rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner. So I have left over rice  all the time. I even have a system on how to keep my rice left over: I put it in a container until it will be overflowing, maybe around five to six cups, then I cook fried rice.

I remember when I tried to give up rice for the first time. It was when I was crazy enough and thought that my rice is the reason that I cannot lose weight. So number one on the list was to give up rice cold turkey. Then an imaginable thing happened. I got a rice withdrawal. How is that possible? I was shaking and grouchy all the time. I had headache, I felt dizzy. I NEEDED MYYYY RICE. So I stopped blaming rice for my weight and I scrapped that plan out. Rather than totally giving it up, I eat a little bit of rice in every meal. But giving it up, forget it. 

So here is my other fried rice recipe. Now you know the reason why I cooked fried rice, right? Yup, you are right. My container is already five cups full.

Recipe:

1 lb pork
5  cups cooked rice
1/2 cup diced onion
1/2 cup frozen peas
1/2 cup diced pepper
1 tbsp cooking oil
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup water
1/8 cup dark soy sauce



Directions:

Heat oil in a large skillet.
Add and saute' onion until it will look transparent.
Add in pork. Let it brown in both sides. Then add water.
Let the pork cook some more in the water and then wait 'til the water dries up.
Add in rice. Mix rice with the pork.
Add peas and bell pepper
Add 1/8 cup of soy sauce and 1/2 tsp salt.
Continue mixing until seasoning are fully incorporated.

Serve and Enjoy!