Bringing homey comforts to work is always nice, especially when said homey comfort is good old-fashioned Filipino food. Make it doubly nice when it’s all leftovers that just needed reheating, instead of cooking from scratch.

Contents:
• Ginisang Munggo (Sauteed Mung beans). A traditional Filipino soup / dish made from mung beans, the munggo which has been boiled until soft is added to a classic Filipino sauté of garlic, onions, tomatoes, diced pork and shrimp. Ampalaya (Bitter Melon) leaves are added to finish the dish off. While I’d love to share a recipe, I have to admit, it’s only recently that I learned to enjoy this dish, so no recipes—yet.

A funny bit of trivia with Munggo is its connection to Fridays. For some reason, a lot of Filipino households cook Munggo each Friday, probably stemming from Catholic tradition of abstaining from eating meat on Fridays. Of course, this is pure conjecture on my part—plus the fact that a lot of people add pork to their sautés. Still, it’s a staple of Friday meals, served alongside Pritong Galunggong (Fried Mackerel Scad), Tinapang Bangus (Smoked Milkfish) or Adobo.

• Crispy Adobo Flakes. Who hasn’t heard of Adobo? I bet it’s the most popular Filipino dish. Still, I like taking it a step further with Crispy Adobo Flakes, also known as Binudbod. To do this, I take day-old adobo, then flake the flesh. It works with both pork and chicken, so take your pick. After that, I simply fry until crisp. Crispy Adobo love, anytime.

• Adobo Fried Rice. Day-old rice, lightly stir-fried in oil and sprinkled with Adobo Fried Rice Mix. The traditional way to make Adobo Fried Rice is to drizzle the rice with adobo sauce while stir-frying. But because our adobo had little leftover sauce, I had to use a mix.

• Cherry Tomatoes.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 6th, 2007 at 5:57 pm and is filed under bento, 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.