Welcome Year of the Sheep!

18 February 2015 marks the start of the Lunar New Year, also known as Spring Festival and Chinese New Year.  This celebration coincides with Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese New Year celebrations. My first introduction to celebrating the Lunar New Year was while living in North Texas. A client from Singapore  and a coworker who was originally from Taiwan gave me a primer on celebrating the holiday. We are entering the Year of the Goat/Mutton/Sheep.  Depending on the source you may see one of drawing of one of the animals representing the advent of the Year of the Sheep.

According to Wikipedia, the Lunar New Year is celebrated around the world, especially where there are Chinese populations including Malaysia, the Philippines, the United States and Mauritus . In honor of the New Year I decided to make a Filipino dish named Pinakbet (it is also spelled Pakbet).  I discovered the recipe for this dish because I purchased a bitter melon at a local international market and was looking for a way to prepare the vegetable. I had eaten bitter melon at a local Burmese restaurant and enjoyed it but it had a cathartic effect on me. Would the same thing happen after eating Pinkabet?

Here's the recipe:

1/2 pound pork, cut into small pieces
1/2  pound peeled and deveined shrimp
1 bitter melons, seeded, cut into bite sized  pieces
1/4 pound eggplant, sliced into bite sized pieces
1/4 pound  of okra, cut into pieces (I omit the okra in my dish)
1/4 pound zucchini, cut into bite sized pieces
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 onions, diced  ( this is two small or one medium onion)
5 tomatoes, sliced (I seed the tomato and dice it)
1 tablespoon of fresh ginger, crushed and sliced  ( I have used galangal when I did not have ginger on hand - cut it up, but do not crush it or eat it)
4 tablespoons of shrimp paste  (this can be found in international markets, the label  may state bagoong isda or bagoong alamang)
3 tablespoons of oil
1/4 pound  green beans, trimmed
1 1/2 c. water
Salt and pepper to taste

• I prep all the ingredients first.
• In a cooking pan, heat oil and fry the pork until brown, remove the pork from the pan and set aside
• In the same pan, sauté garlic, onion, ginger and tomatoes, shrimp
• In a saucepan boil water and add shrimp paste
• Add the pork to the saucepan and mix in the sautéed garlic, onion, ginger, tomatoes, and shrimp
• Bring mixture to boil and simmer for 10 minutes
• Add in all the vegetables and cook until the vegetables are done, careful not to overcook. I add the  eggplant and bitter melon first, followed by zucchini and green beans because they cook faster
• Salt and pepper to taste
• This dish can be served with hot plain rice

I experienced no distress after eating Pinakbet. I attribute this largely to removing the bitter melon seeds.

If you make this dish, let me know how it turned in the comments below.  Most importantly, "Gong Xi Fa Cai!", which loosely translated means, "Congratulations and be prosperous!"


Be well,
Technicolor girl