Pinakbet Sans Okra and Calabasa
After braving the Farmer’s Market a few weeks ago, I stopped at the Filipino store on our way home and grabbed a few items for my Pinoy Goodies supplies. I also ended up grabbing fresh vegetables to make one of my favorite Filipino dishes which is Pinakbet. If you haven’t noticed, my pinakbet is missing a couple of key ingredients. These are okra and calabasa (squash). Well, I’m allergic to okra, and I forgot to grab a quarter of the calabasa at the store. I saw sitaw (long green beans), bitter melon, and eggplant and I forgot about the squash. Oh well. Good thing I didn’t forget the alamang. That’s the itty bitty pink fermented shrimp you see all around.
INGREDIENTS :
- 2 pork chops, sliced in cubes
- 3 cloves of garlic, smashed, peeled, and chopped finely
- 1 sm onion, finely shopped
- 1 medium tomato, sliced
- 1/2 cup of water
- sitaw (long green beans) sliced in 3 sections
- 2 medium size bitter melon, seeded and sliced diagonally
- 2 Japanese eggplants, sliced in half, then quartered
- 2 tbsp of pink alamang
- oil for sautéing
Heat up oil. Cook garlic, onions, and tomatoes. Add the pork and cook for 5 minutes or so.
Add sitaw. Stir then add the water. Cover the pan. Let the sitaw cook. Then stir in the bitter melon (ampalaya). Cover and cook until the bitter melon is tender. Stir in the eggplant, then cover again and let everything cook. Try not to overcook the eggplant.
Add the pink alamang at the very end. Right before you turn the stove off, stir in the alamang into the mix. Even though the stove is off, the burner is still hot so it’ll still cook the pinakbet a bit with the alamang but avoiding the strong and lingering smell of the fermented baby shrimp. Of course, you can always turn the stove fan on before you even start cooking. 
Serve with white rice.
Call her Dexie. She bosses around everybody in her kitchen.
Ang galing mo talaga Ms. Feisty. Pwede ba kitang maging idol? hehehe (joke). Glad to have found this site. Btw, i’m not a cooker (hehehe) but I do try to make some dishes including this one but never really got it right. Ask ko lang po if you bought a canned/bottled alamang at the grocery or yung sa wet market. I’m planning to follow your recipe on the dot. Thanks!!
Hi Iska, I bought the alamang in a jar from the Pinoy store. I make sure to grab that when I go there coz I like it with green mangoes too
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Thanks for the info. I will try this recipe next week. I have the same problem with my adobo, too. It seems very simple but I’m sure there’s a recipe of that here, too
. I’ll be on this site quite a lot as I am on FilipinasinShowbiz. Thanks so much! May God bless you and your family more.
Iska, the last time I cooked adobo, I added coconut milk. It’s really good
http://feistycook.com/WP/2010/03/02/pork-adobo-w-coconut-milk-scallions/
I did the pinakbet last Friday and I liked it. It’s not quite perfect though because of the alamang I used. Also, I used to put all vegetables at the same time before in a specific order then cover it up to let them cook. Now I know I have to let one veggie cook after another.
Yeah, put the toughest veg to cook first. Can’t cook them all together coz their textures are very different form each other.