Filipino Pinakbet with Bacon- Vegetable Stew
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For the first time in our lives, we finished all the vegetables, wanted more and felt guilty about eating. Once the holidays came upon us, I felt it my duty to serve more wholesome meals. I found this delightful recipe of Filipino Pinakbet with Bacon from Marvin Gapultos of the Filipino food blog “Burnt Lumpia”. Marvin is based in the west coast, and like the rest of foodie friends, I met him on the social networks. I’ve watched and followed his blog and this guy is amazing. His recipes are traditional Filipino, yet he always puts a fresh new spin on them. The results are always extraordinary.This Pinakbet with Bacon is proof.
In a recent conversation with him, he shared this recipe for the classic Filipino Pinakbet (say ‘pee-nak-bet’ ), but this time with bacon. Pinakbet is a popular Filipino vegetable stew that consists of eggplants, yard long green beans, tomatoes, okra, bitter melon, squash, with small pork bits, seasoned with fish sauce or shrimp paste. The point of this dish, like most Filipino dishes is that vegetables thrown in the pot are those which are grown in our backyards. Well, I couldn’t grow this aubergines in my east coast American backyard. But I did get to buy from the market some fantastic large eggplants and organic vine-ripened Jersey tomatoes and followed Marvin’s recipe exactly.
“This is so good !” exclaimed my family, as they scooped out the final slices of vegetables and fought over the last bits of crisp bacon on the platter. There was still some sauce left from the vegetables on the serving plate, so I spooned a heap of fragrant jasmine white rice, swizzled it around and inside the plate to catch all the bacon-fish sauce drippings and gulped down a mouthful.
Do you know how much I love this job? This was one of my most enjoyable writing assignments! Here’s how I found out about Marvin’s Oven Roasted Pinakbet with Bacon…
First, be sure to grab a copy of this holiday issue FOOD Magazine December 2012. I’m a contributing writer for FOOD Magazine, the largest circulated culinary magazine in Manila. I interviewed Marvin Gapultos for a feature article and he generously shared his holiday recipes, told us stories about how his family celebrates a Filipino-American holiday season. Published by ABS-CBN Publishing Inc., find FOOD Magazine in Manila news stands or online at www.Zinio.com (an online news stand).
Filipino Pinakbet with Bacon - Vegetable Stew
Ingredients
- 6 slices bacon
- 1 whole large red onion sliced
- 2 cloves garlic minced
- 1/2 teaspoon minced fresh ginger
- 2 whole large tomatoes quartered
- 1 to 2 whole Asian eggplants sliced, about 2 cups ; or use 1 aubergine
- 2 cups sliced sitaw ( long green beans) cut into 2-inch lengths
- 1 whole ampalaya (bitter melon) cut in half lengthwise, seeds and white membrane removed, then sliced in 2 inch pieces ampalaya or bitter melon
- 2 Tablespoons patis (fish sauce)
- 3/4 cup water or broth
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon black pepper powder
- for serving boiled jasmine white rice
Instructions
- Preheat the oven at 400 F degrees.
- Arrange the bacon slices in a medium sized shallow roasting pan. Place the bacon in the oven to cook for 12 to 15 minutes, till slices are crisp. Drain the cooked bacon on paper towels to remove excess fat. Reserve the remaining bacon fat for cooking the vegetables – you need about 2 Tablespoons of bacon fat.
- Using the same roasting pan to cook the bacon, add all the sliced vegetables, onions, garlic, fresh ginger. Toss everything together to coat with the bacon grease. Add the ¾ cup water so vegetables do not stick to bottom of pan.
- Place the roasting pan in the oven and roast the vegetables for 30 minutes. Every 10 minutes, check on the vegetables, toss and move them around.
- In the last 10 minutes of roasting, pour in the patis or fish sauce. Mix vegetables together.
- Take vegetables out of the oven. Crumble the crisp bacon over the vegetables just before serving. Serve with boiled jasmine white rice.
Nutrition
Notes on Nutrition: The nutrition information provided is an estimate and will vary based on cooking methods and specific brands of ingredients used.
Did you like this recipe? I have more Filipino Instant Pot recipes in my newest cookbook Instant Filipino Recipes: My Mother’s Traditional Philippine Cooking in A Multicooker Pot by Elizabeth Ann Besa-Quirino. Buy my cookbooks My Mother’s Philippine Recipes and How to Cook Philippine Desserts, Cakes and Snacks and my other books on Amazon.com sold worldwide in paperback and Kindle format.
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