Recipe 2: Pakbet Bisaya

Pakbet or Pinakbet is a famous vegetable dish in the country. It is just sauteed mixed local vegetables plus shrimp paste (bagoong alamang) and sometimes pork or pork cracklings. In our house, we normally serve pakbet whenever there's fried fish.

Bisaya is just one of the variations of this famous dish. This refers to those who are living in the southern part of Philippines (Visayas, Mindanao area). Since I grew up in Mindanao, this version is the one I knew. Anyway, if you wanna have a taste, here's how it looks and how to cook it:

Sorry for the poor quality photo, I just took it from my phone. :)

Ingredients:

• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• tomatoes, diced
• 1/4 squash, sliced
• 4 pcs eggplant (talong), sliced
• 15 to 20 string beans, sliced
• 10 pcs okra, sliced
• 2 tbsp shrimp paste
• 2 tbsp cooking oil
• 200 grams pork, sliced into mini-cubes

Procedure:

1. Pour cooking oil into the wok then saute onions, garlic and tomatoes. Add the pork then simmer until pork is cooked.
2. Add the shrimp paste, simmer for 2 minutes then add the squash.
3. When the squash is half-cooked, add the rest of the vegetables then simmer until all the vegetables are cooked.

There you go, 3 very easy steps to cook pakbet bisaya. You may also add ampalaya or bitter gourd if you want to. Anyway, as I've said, we normally serve this with fried fish and rice. Enjoy! :)