Filipino Meat-and-Tomato-Based-Stew-Thing
Filipino home cooks are well aware of the great variation amongst recipes and their loose cultural transmission down the matriarchal family line. Every region has their spin, and every family has their version. You are very unlikely to find a definitive recipe for most dishes. One of the genres of Filipino home cooking that I am currently fascinated with is the [meat] stew in a tomato-based sauce. I only knew of caldereta and menudo growing up, but apparently there are a number of other varieties out there such as apfritada/afritada, mechado, pochero, and others. The various permutations of ingredients makes for a fun culinary mathematical puzzle. In this category of foods, you’ll find the following equation, with the variables denoted by the [brackets]:
[Stew] = [Tomato based sauce with base of onions, garlic, soy sauce, bay leaves, peppercorn, sometimes chili flakes and vinegar] + [Vegetables] + [Cheap Meat] + [a little somethin’ somethin’ that sets the dish apart from others]
After some browsing around the internet at various recipes, I realized…wow, this would make a fun table! Here’s my attempt to summarize the variations by dish (please feel free to email/comment if you have any suggestions or edits to this table):
Earlier in the summer, I won a $25 gift certificate to the Minneapolis Farmer’s Market. Cause meat don’t come cheap (especially local, organically raised stuff), I decided to splurge on some grass-fed beef short ribs, berkshire pork shoulder, and other stuff from Blue Gentian Farm. The short ribs finally saw their day of glory recently when Regi and I planned a Filipino-cooking-date.
Though we used this recipe as inspiration (particularly with the homemade chorizo from the St. Paul Cheese Shop!), it was really a pastiche of the various meat-and-tomato-based stews referenced above.
Normally, this kind of stew is slow cooked over low heat. But we were really hungry and didn’t have all day. Thanks to Regi’s miraculous pressure cooker, the meat was tender in no time (25 min or so). Served on top of brown rice and with Ben’s Dogfish Ale, it made for a super hearty meal and perfect for the cold Minnesota weather.
Here are the ingredients that we ended up using and a rough recipe for this mechritada/aprichado/calderado/whatever:
3 lbs. beef short ribs
Chorizo
Onion
Garlic
Red and green bell pepper, large dice
Carrots, large chunks
Red potatoes
Tomato sauce/diced tomatoes
Tomato paste (to thicken)
Fish sauce
Soy sauce
Whole peppercorn
Salt
Red pepper flakes
Bay leaves1. Brown the meat.
2. Saute the onions and garlic.
3. Combine meat, onions/garlic, chorizo, and sauces into the pressure cooker. Cook until tender.
4. Add in the rest of the veggies later on in the cooking so that they do not get too mushy.
5. If you have time, let the sauce thicken over stove top or just wait til the next day.
