Greetings Foodies Bee Hive!
Welcome to another edition of my food sharing blog.
Today, I am going to share with you one of the most beloved dishes in our country.
It is called Sinigang na Bangus. This dish is so versatile, it can be served regardless of the season, be it summer or rainy season (the Philippines only got two seasons, summer and rainy season). But usually, it is served during lunch and dinner.
This dish is characterized by its sour soup (people in the Philippines love almost anything sour) and it has many variants too.
The variant that I am going to share with you today is using fish, using a milkfish to be exact but you can cook a sinigang using pork, other types of fish like tilapia, mudfish, catfish, and blue mackerel scad, and shrimp.
Most of the time when we are going to cook sinigang we usually use tamarind to make the sour soup, but this time I will be using santol (cotton fruit) which makes the soup white in color.
Aside from tamarind and cotton fruit we also use miso, calamansi (Philippine lime), ripe guava, green mango, and watermelon in cooking sinigang, but the most popular is tamarind followed by Philippine lime. and cotton fruit.
This sinigang is special because it is going to be the first time in my life that I am going to use an ingredient that I harvested from my own crops of vegetables in our backyard.
TRIVIA: Did you know that sinigang is one of the top dishes in our country (the Philippines )besides Adobo. Lechon, and Kare-Kare? If you are going to visit the Philippines and then ask any person from the Philippines about a list of their all-time favorite dishes it will be very much certain that sinigang is included in their top two, that's how popular and beloved sinigang is. And did you know that sinigang is one of the candidates as the national food/dish of the Philippines besides adobo?
By the way, cooking this dish is so easy, the preparation of the ingredient takes more time than cooking the dish itself. Cooking is done in just four simple steps.
Without further ado let's start the cooking.
- Bangus (Milk Fish)
- Water Spinach
- Tomatoes
- Eggplant
- Ginger
- Onion
- Green Pepper
- Salt
- Santol (Cotton Fruit)
Wash and slice the tomatoes
Wash and slice the eggplant (any type of slice would do)
Peel and slice the ginger
Peel and slice the onions
Peel and slice the cotton fruit (remove the seeds and make sure that you feel the entire skin to avoid the bitter taste of the skin to be included in the soup of the dish)
Wash and slice the Milk Fish into serving portions (make sure to remove the stomach and the gills of the fish, removing the scales is optional)
Wash the finger pepper
Wash and prepare the water spinach (this water spinach came from our own harvest)
1. Put all the ingredients on a cooking pot except the water spinach
2. Add water (enough to submerge all the ingredients) then let it boil, add some salt.
3. When all the ingredients are about to be cooked add the spinach, then let it boil again
4. When the spinach is cooked it is done
Serve while it is hot. It tastes very good when it is hot. We usually partner it with rice and is very popular during lunchtime and even becomes more popular during the rainy season.
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
