Greetings!

Here's a dish that we Ilocanos so love to cook, it is called "Inabraw". This dish is so versatile it has an almost endless combination of vegetables. This dish's main ingredient is the fish sauce which we Ilocanos are known to use in almost all of our recipes.

Inabraw uses most of the locally grown vegetables such as String Beans, Ribbed Loofah, Cabbage, Sweet Potatoes, Squash, Kardis, Moringa, Taro, Bottle Gourd, Bitter Gourd, Winter Melon, Papaya, Jicama Fruit, Winged Bean, Hyacinth Bean, Lima Bean, Eggplant, onion, ginger, and many more. Also, some edible snail is used as the main ingredient in an "Inabraw".

With those array of vegetables that can be used as ingredients in "Inabraw" the possibility of vegetable combinations to cook into "Inabraw" is almost English. Inabraw can use only one or two vegetables as an ingredient, that's is how versatile this dish is.

The good thing about Inbraw is that the taste can be elevated by adding grilled fish or fried fish into it making the soup more delicious than normal. As for me, I love to add fried/grilled Tilapia, Catfish, and Milk Fish.

As for this Inabraw that I am going to cook, I will be using Squash, Cabbage, String beans, and Ribbed Loofah.

Cooking Inabraw is very easy, most of the time you just put all the ingredients into a bowl then add some water and then boil it, it's that easy how to cook this dish is. It is also very tasty and very healthy since this is a dish that only consists of vegetables. No wonder, Ilocanos are one of the healthiest when it comes to cooking.

By the way, I saw some of my relatives adding dried small shrimps into their Inabraw, which is of course a lot more delicious than its normal taste.

So, without further ado, here's how I cook this very delicious and very healthy dish...

• Squash
• Cabbage
• String beans
• Fish Sauce
• Salt (optional)
• Ribbed Loofah

Peel and slice the squash into bite size cubes

Peel and slice the ribbed loofah into two-bites size (you can definitely slice the ribbed loofah any way you want)

Peel and slice the cabbage into four sections

Prepare the string beans

Prepare the fish sauce

1. Put all the ingredients into a cooking pot except the fish sauce

2. Put some water (submerging half of the ingredients)

3. When it starts to boil get some soup then add it to the bowl of fish sauce

4. Put the soup into the bowl of fish sauce (add more soup so that the fish will be fully dissolved into the soup)

5. Stir the bowl with the hot soup to fully dissolve all the sauce of the fish sauce

6. Put the dissolved fish sauce into the pot, add some salt if needed, when all the ingredients are cooked and when the taste is now okay, it is done

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I am a Computer Engineer, blogger, farmer, father, and husband. I love countryside living, nature, farming (rice/vegetables), and has two decades of experience as an I.T. professional