Weekends call for comfort food of the most fattening, sinful, and absolutely delicious kind. But because I was too busy reading, cooking something elaborate was the farthest from my mind. Instant food to the rescue!

Thankfully, we still had a couple of bags of Mother Earth Sisig. My mom first discovered the brand during one of the food expos she visits, and we’ve been buying it ever since. It’s a really good, ready-to-cook sisig dish that needs to be pimped more.

Sisig is a dish originating from Pampanga, a province in Central Luzon which is known for its rich and delicious cuisine. The dish is usually made of the chopped parts of a pig’s head. Legend has it that Kapampangans (Pampanga locals) would buy the unused pig heads from the nearby American Air Base’s kitchens where it was largely unused.¹ It would then be chopped and seasoned with calamansi (Philippine Lemon) and tiny chilis (siling labuyo) which are extremely hot. Whether there’s truth to the US base kitchen story or not is hardly important. Sisig is yummy, filling, and fantastic, both as a viand served with rice, and also eaten on its own while you’re downing mugs of icy-cold beer.

The Mother Earth version comes in frozen, vacuum-packed slabs, which you just defrost, then saute. I prefer to saute mine with chopped onions, letting it crisp up, before serving it with calamansi halves and Knorr Instant Seasoning. But that’s just me, if you’re really lazy, it can work as a reheat in a frying pan, then eat dish. As for me, I’ll take it with the works.

¹ From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisig

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 15th, 2006 at 6:25 pm and is filed under food spotlight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.