This is my second entry for the month’s Is My Blog Burning? with the theme I Can’t Believe I Ate Vegan! hosted by Sam at Becks and Posh.

What I’m presenting is a twist on an old family favourite, my grandfather’s original spicy chicken recipe which he called Lutong Bombay (Hi Nupur!). In a way, it is also a continuation of my Lolo’s tinkering in the kitchen to come up with original recipes. His grandchild has now improvised on it to come up with something new yet old, different yet similar. It is actually the garlic and ginger base which lends a very distinct flavour to the dish that made me decide to cook it with tokwa (also tau kwa, firm soy bean cake - tofu will do too).

This entry is also meant to prove that with a little ingenuity, meat dishes can be transformed into vegetarian/vegan recipes.

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One very Filipino eating trait I notice is the preference for soupy or saucy dishes. Traditionally, each meal had a soup which did not have to be separate from the entrée. The classic sinigang and tinola are good examples. But then we also do not serve dishes in a sequence, like soups and appetisers, salads, mains and so on. That’s a topic for another day.

Soupy and saucy dishes are a flavour contrast to the blandness of rice which is the backbone of every meal. More often than not, the soup or sauce is poured on and mixed with the rice. In Kapampangan we call this ambulâ (halo in Tagalog). At least in our house, this has become so ingrained that when we cook, we deliberately add more liquid just for the panambulâ.

The recipe below is an example of a soupy dish my grandmother cooked very often. I only know it by its Kapampangan name - Lutung Camatis â Babi - literally pork cooked in tomatoes. I am not sure if it has counterparts in other regions. It is a flavourful blend of slow-simmered meat and still-crunchy vegetables. This dish is versatile enough to be adjusted to individual preferences. Some prefer it to be mostly meat. In our family, we are not very avid meat eaters so what we do is to cut the pork into small cubes and add more vegetables. Every now and then, we also use bulig (dalag or mudfish) instead of pork.

I’ve seen a version of this dish which has a lot of beans in it that it’s already similar to the Spanish fabada. The beans we use are similar to lima beans except that they’re flatter and wider. They are called bulé baluga - bulé meaning beans in Kapampangan and baluga referring to the indigenous Aetas who come down from the mountains bringing us the yearly supply. I know that the term is supposedly not politically correct anymore when referring to people but that’s how we’ve always called these beans. I’ve also been told by our visiting Aetas that they’ve always referred to themselves by that name that they don’t feel slighted when hearing it. However, I guess it also depends on which tribe they’re from. Again, I digress.

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A few moons ago, Lynn and I had a short exchange on the comments box of her Five Minute Pao post in her blog To Short Term Memories. It was actually the related posts Chive Pao and Chive Boxes that made me mention my search for the herb.

I had long wanted to cook Sabo Balatung (mung bean, munggo or monggo soup) the way I remember it from childhood. This is a dish which is practically the same in the whole country, with regional or provincial nuances. In Manila and most Tagalog provinces I’ve been to, it is known as ginisang munggo (sautéed monggo), a very thick bean stew. To most Kapampangans, it’s a thick creamy soup.

Another difference I notice is how we mainly use kusé or garlic chives (Allium tuberosum - regular chives are Allium schoenoprasum) for the greens while in Manila they use kamaluñgge (Tag. malunggay - Moringa oleifera) or tender leaves of bitter gourd - we do too but not as often as chives. We also don’t use tomatoes. The soup is traditionally served with broiled tuyo or dried salted fish. To polish it off nicely, we also season the soup with a splash of vinegar and a dash of black pepper.

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