Dinner Recipe: Sinigang na Baboy

Shekynah Angelene Samadan

Ingredients:

1 liter of water (or rice water) ½ kg Pork belly 1 Red onion 1 Taro 2 Tomatoes 1 Okra 2 Kamias 2 Siling haba 1 bundle of Kangkong 1 bundle of Sitaw 1 tbsp of fish sauce 1 pack of Sampalok mix of your choice

Cut the pork belly and taro into chunks, like the way they did to your body just because you took a wrong turn in a dark alleyway. Make another victim of a brutal murder, the way the world seems to have done with you. Julienne your onions, but watch your eyes or you might salt the broth even before extracting the flavor from your ingredients. No one wants a salty dish. No one wants to taste your selfishness.

In a pot, prepare your sliced ingredients and drown them in lukewarm water. Add salt for taste if you think your tears weren’t enough. Boil it with anger for five minutes.

Then, add the lone okra because you hate the way it tastes. The slime sticks to your throat so hope that the heat kills it. Next, add in the chopped tomatoes for color. Simmer it down to medium and watch the seeds float above with the gunk from the pork. Try skimming them off the way you tried to skim your own impurities through ice-cold showers. You failed. Just mix it in then. Justify that it’ll only add to the umami of your soup. Pray no one will notice how lazy you are.

Add the chopped kamias because you think things will get better after this. Hopefully it controls the way your blood is curdling from the once struck nightmare you endured. Pour in the whole pack of the sampalok mix. No speck left behind. Hope the piercing sourness shrouds their faces off from memory.

Leave it to boil for eight minutes. That’s how long it lasted. Don’t forget to keep an eye on it so it won’t boil over… or escape.

Add the two siling haba for heat because you never do it without it. The one time you did, you screamed to yourself it was only happenstance. A reckless mistake that kept you inside for two months.

Next, surely you’ve broken the sitaw by now for easy eating, along with the kangkong leaves. Put them on top of the mess, disguise yourself with green to seem desirable again.

Pour in the fish sauce for good measure, then leave it to cook for a minute or two.

Try forgetting it.

Once the greens are wilted to shreds and the pork is falling apart, taste the soup and make sure it’s sour enough to consume you from the outside in. Make sure it packs heat that it oozes from your pores. Taste if it’s salty like the dead sea waters that flowed through your forehead and down to your mouth.

Pour your dish in your finest bowl of your liking and enjoy.

Best served scalding hot.