Little Cozy Solace

UK weather has always been unpredictable. Sometimes, you will have four seasons in a day. But today, it’s just wet and cold.

Today’s rainy weather is not very different from the Philippine weather because we also always have rainy days.

As filipinos, we do have a habit of craving food that will keep us warm, so we opt to cook food that has nice warm stew or we cook some soup or we make what we call arroz caldo which is like a rice porridge cooked in chicken broth and with chicken and egg.

So, for tonight’s meal, this rainy day… my lovely friend cooked one of our traditional ilonggo dishes called KBL, which stands for Kadios (pigeon pea) Baboy (pork) Langka (jackfruit).

KBL is a traditional ilonggo dish. It is a soup broth dish that is sour and savoury. It’s a slightly thick broth but it is not supposed to be this dark, however, because pigeon peas are very hard to find here in the UK we used a substitute beans to be used in the dish. Here in the picture, we used red bean, which is also a good replacement for the pigeon peas.

This dish also has lemon grass, which is used in the dish to remove the smell of the pork. We used batwan fruit as well, which is used as a souring agent for this dish.

Batwan fruit is an endemic fruit in the Philippines. And I think it can mostly or commonly be found in the Visayas.

But don’t worry, even if you can’t find batwan or batwan powder here in the UK, you can always use Sinigang Mix. There will be just a slight difference in the sourness between the two.

Luckily for us, we still have some frozen batwan in the freezer that was brought by my friend when she came back from her vacation last time.

The sour and savoury taste of this dish really brings back memories and makes us feel somehow close to home.

For other Filipinos abroad, especially Ilonggos. If you miss this dish you can also try making this.

This is a simple recipe from my friend:

Ingredients:

• Pork (preferably trotters or can use the pork ribs as well)
• Pigeon peas ( red bean or black beans can be a substitute)
• Unripe jackfruit ( there are cans sold or frozen ones – can be found in asian stores)
• Lemon grass ( frozen ones are sold in asian stores)
• Batwan or batwan powder ( 1 pack sinigang mix as substitute)
• Chili pepper (optional)

How to Cook:

1. Soak beans preferably overnight but if you don’t have time you can also soak it for 30 mins to 1 hour.

2. Put the pork in a boiling water and let boil until scum comes out. Then throw away the liquid together with the scum. Then add a clean batch of water and let it boil.

3. Add the lemongrass. (You can also add pork cubes here if you want)

4. Boil the pork and add the beans in between boiling so that it will cook together with the pork.

5. Add the batwan or batwan powder or sinigang mix.

6. Once the pork and beans are cooked. You can add the unripe jackfruit cut into cubes.

7. Let it simmer for few more minutes. You can add your salt and pepper here.

8. Once the jackfruit is cooked. You can turn off the heat.

9. Then serve and enjoy!

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This simple recipe is from my dear friend Maggie.