Filipino Whole30 Eats: Fried Chicken

All good things, etc.

It’s been really fun tinkering with traditional Filipino recipes this past month to make them Whole30 compliant. And not just the recipes: as I wrote in a previous post, one of my goals was to try to figure out food combinations and strategies to create meals wherein rice is not the sun and everything else just revolves around it. As this food project draws to a close, let me just recap some of the alternatives we’ve explored:

You can use cauliflower rice as a substitute, as I did when I made beef kaldereta and mango tocino.

You can use sweet potatoes as the main starchy component, as I did with my bistek Tagalog; or you can use saging na saba (sweet plantains), as I did with my (so-called) Arroz a la cubana.

You can use noodle-less pancit to accompany your protein instead of rice. Regular pancit (with rice noodles) already substitutes for rice occasionally, but making it Whole30 using spaghetti squash allows you to make a much healthier swap.

You can make egg “rice,” as I did with my skinless longanisa. This is a particularly adaptable strategy for breakfast, since many of our breakfast dishes already combine various meats and fishes with eggs and rice. Just omit the rice and elevate the role of the eggs, and you still have a great meal combination. (I used a somewhat similar strategy with my tinapa egg scramble.)

You can make hefty salads from such dishes as pork adobo, instead of making them part of just another rice meal.

And I’m sure there are many, many more strategies and substitutions out there just waiting to be realized.

More than anything, I hope I’ve shown here that there are alternatives to our rice-centric meals that nevertheless hew close to our beloved dishes and traditions. So that even if not many Filipinos do a Whole30, at least it’s clear that we have the option of trying other meals – delicious and healthy meals – that do not always require rice.

And as for the non-Filipinos who may have visited these pages, please do consider trying some of these recipes. I think they’re pretty good, and you might just like them. Something different, you know.

Anyway, enough big picture stuff. Here’s a final recipe to close out this project: Filipino-style fried chicken.

Translations
Kalamansi (kah-lah-mahn-si): small, very tart citrus fruit
Patis (pah-tis): fish sauce

Ingredients

• 6 chicken pieces (wings, thighs, drumsticks)
• 1 1/2 tablespoons patis
• 1 tablespoon kalamansi juice
• a couple of pinches of ground black pepper

Substitutions: Try, try, try to get kalamansi juice (in frozen or concentrate form) from a Filipino or Asian grocery store. It will really give your chicken a sharper, tangier, authentically Filipino taste. But if you absolutely can’t find any, then go ahead and use the juice from half a lemon.

Instructions

1. Drizzle the patis and kalamansi juice onto the chicken and dust them with the ground pepper, turning the pieces over to make sure all sides are coated. Store in the fridge and let marinate for at least 2 hours and up to 6 hours.
2. Pre-heat your oven to 475 degrees. Heat up an oven-proof skillet in medium-high heat with a couple of tablespoons of cooking fat that can stand relatively high temperatures. I used ghee (clarified butter) for the buttery taste, but coconut oil is good, too. 
3. Place the chicken pieces skin down in the oil. Cook for 2-3 minutes.
4. Lower the heat to medium-low and continue to cook the chicken for 12-15 minutes, rotating the pan a quarter turn every 3-4 minutes to ensure even heat distribution and turning the chicken to cook all sides. You want the fat to render and the chicken skin to turn golden. (Be careful not to pull the skin off if it sticks to the pan. Use a spatula to gently scrape it off if this happens.)
5. Transfer the entire skillet into the oven and cook for another 10 minutes. Flip the chicken, then cook for another 5 minutes or so until the skin is crunchy brown and the chicken is cooked through.
6. Remove from the oven, transfer to a plate and let rest for about 5 minutes. Try not to munch on the skin before serving.

Makes 2 crispy/juicy servings of fried chicken deliciousness.

How this is Whole30
I made sure to get a pasture-raised, organic chicken for this, since I would be eating a lot of chicken skin (the toxins in factory-raised chicken are concentrated in the skin). I also skipped flouring the chicken, the way I used to in my pre-Paleo days.

• About Whole30

Filipino Whole30 Eats: Pork Barbecue

Last Sunday in the month-long series of Sunday lunches for my family! I went with barbecue today, always a favorite for social gatherings. There are any number of recipes and techniques for making Filipino-style barbecue; quite a few (including the one I learned from an aunt a few times removed who helped raise my sisters and me) rely on a marinade containing that uniquely Filipino condiment, banana sauce or banana catsup.

As I said in a previous post, the problem with banana sauce is that it’s laced with a number of non-Whole30 ingredients, including starch, sugar, preservatives, and dyes. To get around this – and anticipating I would be needing it for this dish – I prepared my own homemade banana sauce from saging na saba several days ago. That made getting everything ready for today’s lunch a relative cinch.

An aside: The veggie accompaniment to today’s barbecue was a Filipino-style Russian salad (that’s what we call it, anyway) – basically a potato salad (sweet potato, in this case) mixed with shredded chicken, cubed carrots, cubed beets, cubed apples, and raisins, all slathered in (homemade) mayo. I made a version of it during my Whole30 in April.

Translations
Saging (sah-ging – first “g” is a hard “g”): banana
Saging na saba (sah-ging nah sah-bah): sweet plantain, aka saba banana, also sometimes called cardaba banana

Ingredients

• 3 lbs. pork loin, cut into thin strips
• 6 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 1/2 cups + 1 cup banana sauce
• 1/2 cup coconut aminos (soy sauce substitute)
• 1/4 cup white vinegar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1/2 teaspoon black peppercorn

Instructions

1. Place the pork loin strips in a storage container. In a small bowl, mix the garlic, 1 1/2 cups of banana sauce (keep the other cup in the fridge for later), coconut aminos, vinegar, salt, and black peppercorn. Pour this marinade over the pork and mix everything thoroughly to make sure all the pork pieces are coated. Seal the container and refrigerate at least overnight and up to 2 days.
2. Heat your grill to medium-high (I used an indoor grill set to 400 degrees). Skewer your pork with barbecue sticks and put them on the grill a batch at a time. (Tip: if you are using bamboo or wooden barbecue sticks, soak them in water for several hours beforehand to keep them from burning.) Turn each barbecue “kebab” over several times every few minutes, searing all sides, while basting the meat generously with the banana sauce you had put aside. 
3. Grill till the pork is charred in spots and the meat is cooked through. Then serve!

Makes about 18 sticks of pork barbecue.

How this is Whole30
As mentioned, by using homemade banana sauce, I avoided using the store-bought version that contains a number of prohibited ingredients. Also, that reliable standby, coconut aminos, stood in for the soy sauce normally included in the marinade.

• About Whole30

Filipino Whole30 Eats: Ensaladang Talbos ng Kamote (Quickie Veggie)

Just another simple dish to make sure you always have plenty of veggies with your meals. This one feels timeless to me: I can imagine families from almost any period in Philippine history sitting down by the glow of cooking fire, or candles, or gas lamp, or electric lights to a simple dinner of rice and fish and something like this.

Translations

Ensalada (ehn-sah-lah-dah): salad

Kamote (kah-moh-teh): sweet potato

Talbos ng kamote (tahl-boss nang kah-moh-teh): sweet potato tops or greens

Atchara (aht-chah-rah): green papaya and other veggies pickled in vinegar

Ingredients

• About 16 cups of talbos ng kamote, stems removed (about a big salad bowl’s worth)
• 1 Roma tomato, diced
• 1/2 of an onion, sliced
• 1 teaspoon minced ginger
• 3 tablespoons white vinegar
• 2 tablespoons Asian pear purée
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

Substitution: You can use the pickled juice of homemade atchara in place of the vinegar and fruit purée)

Instructions

1. Blanch the talbos ng kamote: place the leaves in a pot of boiling water for about 30 seconds, then transfer immediately to a big bowl of ice water and keep there for 30 seconds. Then move to a colander and shake the water off.
2. Make the dressing: in a small bowl, mix the ginger, vinegar, fruit purée, salt, and pepper.
3. Transfer the blanched leaves into an empty bowl and add the tomato and onion. Pour the dressing over the vegetables. Toss the ingredients until the dressing coats all the veggies. Serve.

Makes about 2-3 servings. The sour-sweet taste of this salad makes it a good side dish for fried or grilled fish.

How this is Whole30

The fruit purée takes over for the sugar that is normally added to the dressing.

• About Whole30

Filipino Whole30 Eats: Slow Cooker Beef Kaldereta

So many of our dishes are slow-simmered, a legacy of a more leisurely-paced, time-abundant era. This Filipino version of stew – kaldereta – exemplifies this tradition of slow food. This dish usually takes several hours of semi-attentive cooking, with the cook checking on the steaming pot now and then, giving it a stir, testing the tenderness of the meat, adding ingredients in the proper sequence.

Modern life has certainly shortened our available time, but it has also provided us with new tools to help us keep the best part of at least some of our traditions. Which is my roundabout way of saying, man am I glad someone invented the slow cooker. It takes on the most time-consuming part of cooking dishes like this. I can put everything in the cooker in the morning and come home to dinner all ready for me. So things tend to balance out, in the end.

Translation
Kaldereta (kahl-deh-reh-tah): Filipino slow-cooked stew; goat meat is traditionally used, but beef, chicken, and pork versions are common as well; derived from the Spanish caldera, or cauldron.

Kaldereta with cauliflower rice

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 lbs. beef, cubed
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/2 onion, finely chopped
• 1/2 cup boiled chicken liver, minced with a fork or blended into a paste in a food processor (you can also use liver spread at a pinch)
• 1 large yellow sweet potato, cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes
• 3 medium carrots, cubed
• 1 red bell pepper, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 2/3 cup green olives
• 1 can (14 oz.) tomato sauce
• 14 oz. of water
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 3 bay leaves

Instructions

1. Heat your favorite cooking fat in a large pan in medium heat. Sauté the garlic and onions until the onion starts to soften.
2. Add the beef into the pan and sear the pieces on all sides. Do not cook through, just enough to brown them.
3. Place the beef, garlic, and onions in your slow cooker. Add the rest of the ingredients except the green olives. Mix everything thoroughly. Gently push all the solid ingredients down so they are submerged in the tomato sauce.
4. Set the slow cooker on low and set the timer to 8 hours.
5. If possible, at about the 7 hour mark, add the olives. If not, just add them when everything else is cooked.
6. Transfer to a serving bowl and serve.

Makes about 4-5 servings. This is good with cauliflower rice.

How this is Whole30
It took just a few changes from the usual kaldereta recipe to make this Whole30: potatoes were replaced with sweet potatoes, and green peas were omitted.

• About Whole30

Filipino Whole30 Eats: Banana Sauce

It takes a little effort, but you can find condiments that are Whole30 compliant and that cater to the Filipino taste palette and traditions. For example, you may have noticed that I’ve been using coconut aminos as a soy sauce substitute, since soy is a no-no for Whole30. I have to admit that I think coconut aminos actually falls short as a dipping sauce (too sweet for my taste buds trained to our deep, dark, salty soy sauces), but it’s perfectly decent as a marinade for the dishes I’ve been making, such adobo, tapa, tocino, and bistek, as long as you combine it with salt. Whatever you’re marinating becomes infused with the sauce’s umami flavor, and the sweetness becomes muted in the marinating process.

When it comes to patis (fish sauce), the go-to brand in the US Paleo community is Red Boat fish sauce from Vietnam. And I like it; it’s smooth and it packs a punch, and with just anchovies and sea salt as ingredients, it’s completely compliant. But I also wanted a more familiar, local brand that had the distinct earthy, gritty, fishy, patis taste that I grew up with. I had to reject brand after brand, since they contained disallowed or borderline ingredients (Rufina has benzoate of soda, Tiparos has added sugar), but I finally found one that passed Whole30’s standards: Lingayen’s Best, made of fish extract and salt and nothing else. No starches, no preservatives, no added sugar. It would have been nice if it had actually been made in the Philippines (it’s processed in Thailand), but such are the vagaries of the globalized world we live in. You can’t have everything.

Vinegar was easy, since nearly all vinegar is compliant (though it’s always good practice to double check the ingredients list to make sure nothing hinky has been added). I just went with probably the most well-known brand in the Philippines, Datu Puti. And maybe it’s just nostalgia, but it’s mouth-puckering sourness seems to me just perfect for any Filipino dish you can think of that requires vinegar.

There are lots of options for coconut milk, though again, you have to cast a keen eye for such disqualifying additives as carrageenan and sulfites, nasty stuff that can play havoc with your digestive system. (Ideally, the only ingredient that should be listed in your coconut milk is coconut milk and water.) More often than not, I go with Aroy-D, a brand from Thailand, because it’s usually the cheapest. But I do get some Filipino brands now and then when they go on sale.

L-R: Red Boat fish sauce, Lingayen's Best fish sauce, 

Datu Puti cane vinegar, Gold Pure kalamansi concentrate, 

Coconut Secret coconut aminos, Aroy-D coconut milk

As for kalamansi, the tart citrus fruit whose juice is the indispensable seasoning for such dishes as pancit and grilled fish, I can get this in frozen, concentrate form. Again, I just make sure that the only thing in it is kalamansi, and maybe water – and nothing else. You would be surprised by the things they sneak into the most innocuous of processed foods.

However, one condiment that is impossible to buy compliant is banana sauce, or banana catsup, that unique and beloved concoction from the Philippines that flavors our fried chicken, deep-fried spring rolls, barbecue, and a thousand other dishes. It doesn’t matter if the brand is Jufran or UFC or Del Monte or Papa, it will be loaded with starches, sugar, preservatives, and food coloring (did you think that tomato catsup red was it’s natural color?). This one you have to make yourself.

So I did, and here’s my recipe for it. As you can see, I didn’t bother trying to give it the familiar reddish color (which is artificial to begin with), not even with a natural coloring agent such as annatto. And it certainly won’t taste exactly like Jufran; it won’t be as sweet, for one thing, since I didn’t pour sugar into it. But I think it’s still a nice little sauce that can enhance your dishes or that you can use as part of a marinade.

Now, if I can only figure out how to get compliant bagoong (fermented shrimp paste).

Translations

Patis (pah-tis): fish sauce
Kalamansi (kah-lah-mahn-si): small, very tart citrus fruit 
Bagoong (bah-goh-ohng): fermented shrimp or fish paste, very salty
Saging (sah-ging – first “g” is a hard “g”): banana
Saging na saba (sah-ging nah sah-bah): sweet plantain, aka saba banana, also sometimes called cardaba banana

Ingredients

• 2 very ripe saging na saba, peeled and cut into chunks
• 3 cups of water
• 1/2 cup coarsely chopped onions
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 tablespoon white vinegar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon chili powder
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 2 oz. (by weight) raisins
• 1 teaspoon tomato paste

Instructions

1. Bring the water to a boil in a sauce pan. Add all the ingredients and mix well. Bring to a boil again, then lower the heat and let it simmer gently, uncovered, for about 45 minutes, stirring every now and then. Add more water if necessary; do not let it get thick and gooey.
2. Remove the pot from the heat. Using an immersion blender, blend everything together thoroughly until you end up with a smooth purée. Adjust the seasoning.
3. If the sauce is still thin, return it to the pot and let it simmer some more. The sauce is ready when it has the consistency of tomato soup. (Do not wait for it to get to a catsup-like consistency; it will continue to thicken even after you have removed it from the heat, and it will become unpourable if you cook it too long.)
4. Once it cools down, bottle it, refrigerate it, and take it out whenever you want to use it to season your food.

Makes about 18-20 oz. of sauce.

How this is Whole30
Doing it yourself makes sure you avoid the chemicals, sugar, and other not-so-good additives that come in bottled banana sauce.

• About Whole30

Filipino Whole30 Eats: Slow Cooker Pulled Pork Adobo

Another Sunday, another family lunch at my mother’s place. This time I made what is arguably the quintessential Filipino dish: pork adobo. No rundown of Filipino cuisine would be complete without it, so of course this food project has to have a Whole30 version.

Adobo has always tasted best when cooked slowly: simmering in a pot in low heat for a long time, letting the meat tenderize, allowing all the flavors to blend and infuse the meat. I decided to take this idea even further and go all out and make this batch the way some people do kalua pork: in a slow cooker for a really, really, really long time.

It came out great: fork tender and adobo juicy. My sister and I prepared some salad fixings, and my family had it as part of a main course salad dish.

My plate: pork adobo salad with lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, singkamas (jicama), and guacamole

Translations

Adobo (ah-doh-boh): various meat and vegetable dishes simmered or braised in vinegar, soy sauce, and garlic; the most popular versions are pork and chicken adobo

Singkamas (sing-kah-mahs): jicama

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 to 3 lb. pork shoulder roast (bone-in or boneless)
• 1/2 cup coconut aminos (soy sauce substitute)
• 1/3 cup white vinegar (for greatest authenticity, use cane vinegar)
• 6 cloves of garlic, minced or crushed
• 1 teaspoon black peppercorn
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 bay leaves

Instructions

1. Mix the coconut aminos, vinegar, garlic, peppercorn, and salt in a small bowl. Pour over the pork roast and marinate for at least 30 minutes, flipping the roast midway.
2. Put the pork in your slow cooker, pour the marinade in, and place the bay leaves on top of the pork.
3. Set your slow cooker to low and set your timer to 16 hours. (You heard right: 16 hours. So yes, planning ahead is a must for this dish.) 
4. Once done, discard the bay leaves and transfer the pork roast into a big bowl and shred it with two forks. Ladle some of the juices left in the slow cooker into the pork bowl a little at a time while mixing the shredded pieces. Continuously sample the pork until you have the flavor just the way you like it.
5. Feed your hungry self/family/friends.

Alternative cooking method: If you prefer to make adobo the conventional way, use cut up pork instead of a roast, put the pork and all the other ingredients plus a cup or two of water in a pot, and bring it to a boil. Then lower the heat and let simmer uncovered until the sauce is reduced. If you want, you can brown the pork in hot cooking fat first, or after it has been simmered. Shred the meat or not as you please.

Makes 5 or more servings. You can serve it in a salad the way we did, or as a main course protein, or with cauliflower rice, or with plantain nachos, or any number of other ways.

How this is Whole30

Coconut aminos subbed for noncompliant soy sauce. Coconut aminos is sweet compared to the soy sauce we normally use, which is on the salty side, so be sure to add some salt to make up the difference.

• About Whole30

Filipino Whole30 Eats: Tinapa and Talbos ng Kamote Egg Scramble

Eggs with tinapa (smoked fish) and talbos ng kamote (sweet potato greens),
ube (purple sweet potato), and a slice of mango on the side

One of my go-to breakfasts is a simple egg scramble from Stupid Easy Paleo’s Stephanie Gaudreau that she calls “Breakfast of Titans.” I love it. It’s so easy to make, and the combination of fluffy egg, salty smoked salmon, and power packed spinach just hits the spot for me when I wake up hungry and ready to eat the day. During my April Whole30, I kept coming back to it, switching from salmon to different kinds of sausage now and then, but sticking to the three-ingredient template. I’ve also tried replacing the spinach with other veggies, such as Swiss chard, arugula, and even beet greens, and those variations were good, too. So for this food project, it only seemed fitting to put a Filipino slant on the recipe and try it with some Filipino ingredients. 

In place of the salmon, I chose tinapa, a salty, smoked fish usually fried whole and typically served at breakfast with rice (of course). (Fair warning: this fish will cast a strong, pungent aroma – the way a few delicious things do.) As for the spinach substitute, I went with talbos ng kamote, a highly nutritious leafy vegetable trimmed from sweet potato plants that is ubiquitous in the Philippines. (One thing about us Filipinos: we use every part that we possibly can from our foods.)

Needless to say, I gobbled this up once I put it on my plate.

I’ve been trying to think of a Filipino version of “Breakfast of Titans,” but I don’t think we have a term analogous to “Titans” in our folklore or mythology. Something like “Almusal ng mga Lakan” (“Breakfast of the Noble Chiefs”) might be the closest I can get.

(Thanks to Stephanie, of course, for the original recipe.)

Translations

Almusal (ahl-mooh-sahl): breakfast

Kamote (kah-moh-teh): sweet potato

Lakan (lah-kahn): title of the supreme ruler of a chiefdom in pre-colonial Philippines

Talbos ng kamote (tahl-boss nang kah-moh-teh): sweet potato tops or greens

Tinapa (tee-nah-pah): smoked fished, usually scad or milkfish

Ube (ooh-beh): purple sweet potato

Ingredients

• 2 pieces of tinapa (scad, in this recipe)
• 3 large eggs
• a handful or two of talbos ng kamote (stems removed)

Instructions

1. Shred the tinapa into pieces, removing the head, tail, and bones. (I’m not going to lie to you; there are a lot of tiny bones – but they’re easy to remove.)
2. Heat a pan with your favorite cooking fat in medium heat. Sauté the tinapa pieces for a few minutes.
3. Crack your eggs and pour them directly into the pan. Mix everything with a spatula.
4. When the eggs are half-cooked, add the talbos ng kamote, a handful at a time. Keep stirring until the greens are wilted.
5. Plate your egg scramble and add a sweet potato  (or any other readily available veggies or fruits).

Makes 1 serving.

How this is Whole30
This dish was made from compliant ingredients, everything healthy and whole.

• About Whole30

Filipino Whole30 Eats: Stir-Fried Garlic and Ginger Bok Choy (Quickie Veggie)

Remember the rationale for these quickie veggies: to have easy recipes on hand that you can use to fill your plates with veggies, since Whole30ers eat lots of the green stuff (also the purple, red, orange, yellow, white...). It doesn’t get much easier than this.

Ingredients

• 2 bok choy or 4 baby bok choy
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon minced ginger
• salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

1. Trim the butt ends and cut the stems into 1-inch wide pieces, all the way to the leaves. Keep the leaves (the green parts) whole.
2. Heat your pan with your favorite cooking fat in medium heat. When the fat starts shimmering, add the garlic and ginger and sauté until fragrant, about 30 seconds.
3. Add your bok choy and cook about 2-3 minutes, stirring often. 
4. Season to taste. (You can add a few sprinkles of fish sauce or coconut aminos, if you want, but it’s delicious without them.) The dish is ready when the leaves have started to wilt and the stems are tender-crisp.

Makes 2-3 servings

How this is Whole30

Actually, the recipe was Whole30 compliant as it was and didn’t need any alterations.

• About Whole30

Filipino Whole30 Eats: Arroz a la Cubana

The nomenclature for this one takes some twisty turns.

This recipe is based on a dish we call Arroz a la cubana (“Cuban-style” rice), except God knows if it really originated from Cuba, and anyway, our version is pretty distinct from the other dishes in the Spanish-speaking world also called by the same name. All the recipes have the eggs, rice, and plantains in common, sure, but ours has to have ground beef and everyone else’s has to be slathered in tomato sauce. They are different enough that ours is sometimes called “Filipino-style Arroz a la cubana,” which verges on the silly. We should have just called it a las filipinas and called it a day.

And then I go ahead and muck around with the recipe and remove the rice. (You could add cauliflower “rice,” as I myself have done before, but that’s still not rice.) So: a la cubana is a little off the mark, and now the arroz part doesn’t make sense, either – so what the heck do I call this?

Translations
Saging na saba (sah-ging nah sah-bah): sweet plantain, aka saba banana, also sometimes called cardaba banana

Ingredients

• 1 lb. ground beef
• 1 cup diced onions
• 1 cup diced yellow sweet potatoes
• 1 cup diced carrots
• 1 cup diced red bell pepper
• (you can also add 1 oz. raisins)
• 1 teaspoon tomato paste
• salt and pepper
• 3 ripe saging na saba, peeled and cut lengthwise into 1/2-inch thick slices
• coconut oil
• large eggs

Instructions

1. Brown the ground beef in a pot in medium heat. Keep stirring until cooked through.
2. Add the onions, sweet potatoes, carrots, bell pepper, raisins, and tomato paste. Mix well, lower the heat, close the lid, and let simmer, stirring every now and then. Cook until the root crops are tender. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
3. While the beef is simmering, fry the saging na saba slices in coconut oil until they are light brown on both sides. Then fry your eggs (1 or 2 eggs per person) sunny side up.
4. Arrange everything in your plates with the eggs lying atop the others. Break the egg yolk and let it bleed into the beef. Chow down.

Makes about 3 servings.

You can also make them into banana boats. What? You don’t play with your food?

How this is Whole30

No rice. Also, some noncompliant veggies that are typically part of this recipe – such as potatoes and green peas – were omitted. (Sweet potato, which is normally not included, took the place of the potatoes.)

• About Whole30

Filipino Whole30 Eats: Bistek Tagalog with Crispy Sweet Potatoes

Sunday lunch again with my family. This time I made an old favorite: bistek, a soy sauce-seasoned beef dish with onions and, in some recipes, fried potatoes. As with most Filipino dishes, this would also normally have been accompanied by mounds of rice. In this Whole30 version, sweet potatoes took the place of both the rice and potatoes as the starchy accompaniment. And, of course, no soy sauce was used.

Speaking of substitutions, you can also try other members of the onion family in place of the onions. My sister doesn’t like onions, so to accommodate her, I sautéed leeks as well as onions to go with the dish. (And actually, leeks are what I ate myself.) It worked very well, as I imagine scallions, shallots, onion bulbs, and chives also would.

Translations
Bistek (bis-teck): a beef dish, usually made from thinly sliced cuts of beef; the word is derived from the Spanish term “bistec,” which is in turn derived from the English “beef steak”
Bistek Tagalog (bis-teck tah-gah-lohg): “Bistek of the Tagalogs”; i.e., the Filipino version of bistec
Kalamansi (kah-lah-mahn-si): small, very tart citrus fruit

Bistek with sautéed leeks instead of onions

Ingredients

• 1 lb. lean beef (I used round steak), cut thinly into 1/8 inch-thick strips
• 1/3 cup coconut aminos (soy sauce substitute)
• 2 tablespoons kalamansi juice (or 3 tablespoons lemon juice) 
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 medium onion, sliced into rings
• 2 medium yellow sweet potatoes, peeled and sliced into 1/8 inch-thick disks
• coconut oil
• water

Instructions

1. Mix the coconut aminos, kalamansi juice, salt and pepper. Marinate the beef with this mixture in the fridge for at least 1 hour and up to overnight.
2. Heat a large pan with your favorite cooking fat in medium heat (I used olive oil). Sauté the onion rings until they start to soften. Remove and set aside. 
3. In the same pan, fry the beef until brown on all sides. Add 2 cups of water, bring to a boil, then let simmer uncovered for at least 30 minutes (mixing every so often), until the beef has been softened and the sauce reduced. Return the onions into the pan when the beef is just about ready. (Note: If you use a more tender cut of beef, such as sirloin, you don’t have to simmer your beef in water. I used a tougher cut and so needed to soften it.)
4. While the beef is simmering, prepare your sweet potatoes. Pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper or a wire rack. Coat your sweet potato disks with melted coconut oil and place them on the baking sheet in a single layer. No need to season; the beef sauce will season them when you assemble your plates. Bake the sweet potatoes in your oven for about 25 minutes, flipping the disks halfway through. Keep a close eye on the disks to avoid burning them; they are ready when both sides start to brown.
5. When everything is ready, line your plates with sweet potato disks, then ladle the beef and onions on top or to the side of the sweet potatoes. Don’t forget to spoon some of the beef sauce over everything. 

Makes 2-3 servings. 

How this is Whole30
Coconut aminos was used instead of soy sauce in the marinade, and sweet potatoes instead of potatoes. The rice that normally goes this dish was omitted.

• About Whole30

Filipino Whole30 Eats: Adobong Sitaw (Quickie Veggie)

If there is any dish that non-Filipinos associate with Filipino cuisine, it would probably be adobo – pork or chicken adobo, that is. However, adobo also refers to the method of cooking these dishes, and the method can be applied to many different kinds of meats and veggies. On top of the more well-known pork and chicken versions, you also have adobong pusit (squid), adobong bangus (milkfish), adobong kangkong (water spinach), adobong kabuti (mushroom), adobong talbos na kamote (sweet potato greens), and a host of others.

And there’s this: adobong sitaw (long beans), another example of a quick and easy Filipino veggie. This recipe is pretty basic and adaptable; by substituting other veggies for the sitaw, you can make a number of other veggie adobo dishes.

Translations
Adobo (ah-doh-boh): various meat and vegetable dishes simmered or braised in vinegar, soy sauce, and garlic
Sitaw (see-tau): long beans

Ingredients

• 1 bunch of sitaw, trimmed and cut into 2-3 inch pieces (about 4 cups); if sitaw is not available, you can substitute green beans
• 1/4 lb. pork belly, diced
• 6 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 cup thinly sliced onions
• 1/4 cup coconut aminos (soy sauce substitute)
• 2 tablespoons white vinegar
• 1/3 cup water
• 1/2 teaspoon black peppercorn
• 1 bay leaf
• salt and pepper

Instructions

1. Heat a large pan in medium heat. Sauté the pork until it starts to brown and the fat starts to render and liquefy.
2. Add the garlic and onion slices and sauté until the garlic turns light brown and the onions start to soften, about 2 minutes.
3. Add the coconut aminos, vinegar, water, black peppercorn, and bay leaf. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat, cover the pan, and let simmer for about 10 minutes.
4. Add the sitaw, mix everything together, and bring the sauce to a boil again. Lower the heat, cover the pan, and let simmer an additional 3-5 minutes, or until the sitaw is tender crispy.
5. Add salt and pepper to taste.
6. Transfer to a serving dish and serve.

Makes about 3 servings.

How this is Whole30

Coconut aminos replaced soy sauce in this recipe.

• About Whole30

Filipinos Whole30 Eats: Skinless Longanisa with Egg “Rice”

Longanisa (sausages) with eggs and atchara, and a slice of papaya on the side

It’s difficult to overstate how large a space rice occupies in the Filipino food tradition. It’s barely an exaggeration to say that it fills half our plates at every meal, half of every spoonful that we put in our mouths. Almost all of our other dishes are designed to complement rice (we tend to make them really spicy or sour or sweet to balance the blandness of rice). When we want to know what’s for lunch or dinner, we ask, “Anong ulam?” Meaning: “What’s the ulam?” Meaning: “What’s the other food that will go with the rice (because of course it goes without saying that we’ll be having rice)?”

I knew from the start, therefore, that the major challenge of trying to convert Filipino food to Whole30 would not be the relatively simple task of replacing the unhealthy ingredients of various dishes with compliant versions; rather, it would be finding strategies to replace rice, sideline rice, and otherwise remove it from its central place in Philippine cuisine. (Yeah, good luck, right?) I expect I will never even come close to succeeding, given the outsize role it plays and how deeply rooted it is in our tradition and even our self-identity. But part of the fun of this food project is in the trying.

One strategy is to use cauliflower rice as a substitute, as I’ve done in a couple of recipes so far. And it works perfectly fine in that role – every now and then. However, I can’t imagine it being a permanent solution. Cauliflower is simply too strong to replace the fluffy, starchy blandness of rice very often. Besides which cauliflower, being a cruciferous vegetable, has the unfortunate tendency of leaving one with certain gassy aftereffects when eaten too much.

A spoonful of longanisa and egg “rice”

However, I could try to find other relatively bland foods that can go with the tasty ulams of Filipino cuisine. And that’s when it hit me. Eggs are fairly bland and tasteless, as long as you don’t season them with salt or other spices, and you can cook them scrambled so they come out airy and fluffy. So why not try eggs as a rice substitute?

The perfect venue for this experiment was breakfast, when we Filipinos typically eat rice and eggs, along with some fish or meat. Just increase the egg portion (and hold off on the salt and spices), banish rice from the trio, and see how the new combination works.

I gotta say, it worked perfectly fine for me when I paired homemade skinless longanisa with fluffy, chopped egg “rice.” I had them three days in a row and liked them each time. And I look forward to trying this formula again with other Filipino breakfast meats and fish. Again, this is probably not an all-encompassing solution to the problem of replacing rice, but it can certainly be added to the toolkit. 

Translations

Longanisa (long-gah-nee-sah – second “g” is a hard “g”): sausages, of which there are a number of regional variations

Ulam (ooh-lahm): dishes that accompany rice in Philippine cuisine

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 lbs. ground pork
• 6 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1/2 cup puréed Asian pear (you can use other sweet fruit like mango, apple, or pear)
• 3/4 tablespoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon vinegar
• 1 1/2 tablespoons coconut aminos (soy sauce substitute)
• 3/4 teaspoon red beet powder (optional); or you can use annatto powder (also optional)
• 3 large eggs per person
• 1 tablespoon coconut milk per 3 eggs (optional)

Instructions

1. To prepare the longanisa: Mix the pork, garlic, Asian pear purée, salt and pepper, vinegar, coconut aminos, and red beet powder thoroughly in a large bowl. Pinch small handfuls at a time and roll the meat mixture into sausage shapes about 1 inch in diameter and about 3-4 inches long. (You can use 4-inch square pieces of wax paper or parchment paper to assist with the rolling if you want: put the meat in the square and roll the paper like a large joint, err, cigar.)
2. Fry the longanisa in small batches in oil in low heat, turning every now and then to cook all sides. They’re ready when they’re brown all over with caramelized dark spots and heated through and through. (Cut one open if you want to make sure there’s no pink left in the center.)
3. To prepare the egg “rice”: Beat the eggs and coconut milk in a bowl. Fry in low heat, constantly turning and chopping the eggs with a spatula until they are cooked and in small pieces.
4. Plate several longanisa with each 3-egg portion of egg “rice,” add some veggies, and eat up!

The longanisa recipe makes about 12-18 small sausages, depending on their size. You can freeze any that are unused (raw or cooked).

How this is Whole30
The sugar in the longanisa was replaced with the Asian pear purée, and the usual soy sauce with coconut aminos. Red beet powder was used instead of the saltpeter or red food coloring sometimes used for longanisa. As important, the rice that would normally have been part of this breakfast combination was excluded.

• About Whole30

Filipino Whole30 Eats: Spaghetti Squash Pancit

There’s a scene in The Godfather where one of the mob bosses tells Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) in a kitchen full of mobsters that he should learn how to make spaghetti, because “you never know, you might have to cook for twenty guys someday.” Pancit serves the same function for us Filipinos.

No, not to feed twenty hit men (though I’m sure it has happened). But whenever there’s a gathering where you have to feed a lot of people on the cheap, out comes the pancit. With it’s vermicelli-like rice noodles, it’s a lot of volume that that can fill a lot of stomachs – even if a big portion of it is empty calories.

So the task for making this dish Whole30 is pretty straightforward: find a noodle substitute that 1) tastes just as good or better, 2) is Whole30 compliant, chock-full of nutrition, and all that good stuff, and 3) preferably cheap and easy.

I tried julienned green papaya first, since I had some left over from the time I made my homemade atchara. Close, but not quite. It was actually too crisp to pass for rice noodles. So I set out to try it with spaghetti squash, which I had used before for faux spaghetti but didn’t like (the taste combination was off; it didn’t go well with tomato sauce for me).

Ahhh, but what didn’t work as spaghetti worked perfectly fine as pancit. Just the right size and shape, texture, consistency – and really delicious in the role to boot. As my family can attest when I served it yesterday during Sunday lunch to accompany the lechon manok.

Pancit is actually a generic term for the many, many varieties of noodle dishes in the Philippines (some actually made from wheat, not rice), the way “pasta” describes a large number of different foods. This recipe follows the formulation of one of the most popular versions called pancit bihon.

Translations
Pancit (pahn-sit): Filipino noodle dishes
Patis (pah-tis): fish sauce
Kalamansi (kah-lah-mahn-si): small, very tart citrus fruit 

Ingredients

• 1 medium spaghetti squash (about 6 cups when roasted and shredded)
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 2 cups sitaw (long beans) or green beans, trimmed and cut into 1/2 inch lengths
• 2 cups shredded carrots
• 4 cups shredded cabbage
• 1 chicken breast, cooked and diced
• 1 cup shrimp meat (cook or uncooked)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt 
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 2 tablespoons patis
• 4 kalamansi or 2 lemons

Substitutions: The veggies can be augmented or replaced by a lot of other veggies, such as snow peas, chopped celery, and chopped onions or shallots. Similarly, diced pork can be added to, or used as a substitute for, the chicken and shrimp.

Instructions

1. To prepare the spaghetti squash (from Melissa Joulwan): Pre-heat your oven at 375 degrees. Cut the spaghetti squash in half lengthwise and scrape out the seeds. Lay the two halves flat on a baking sheet and sprinkle 3 tablespoons of water on the sheet. Cook in the oven for about 30 minutes or until the squash is al dente – cooked but still somewhat firm. Let it sit flat side up until cool enough to handle. Using a fork, scrape the flesh lengthwise to strip it into thin strands. Put the strands in a bowl and set aside. (You can actually prepare this ahead of time and refrigerate it, then just bring it out when you’re ready to use it.)
2. In a large pan, heat your favorite cooking fat in medium heat until its starts to shimmer. Sauté the garlic until it is fragrant, about 30 seconds.
3. Add the beans and carrots; stir-fry until they start to soften.
4. Add the chicken and shrimp; stir-fry until they are cooked or heated through.
5. Add the cabbage; stir-fry until it starts to wilt.
6. Dump the spaghetti squash into the pan. Mix everything together. Season with salt and pepper and patis (start with the above measurements but add more if necessary). 
7. Transfer to a serving plate, garnish with kalamansi halves or lemon quarters, and enjoy!

Makes about 6 servings.

How this is Whole30
Nutrient-rich spaghetti squash takes the place of empty-calorie rice noodles, yet keeps the dish delicious!

• About Whole30

Filipino Whole30 Eats: Slow Cooker Lechon Manok

Sunday lunch again at my mother’s place. (I promised my family I would cook for them every Sunday this month while I’m doing this Filipino-themed Whole30; they’re my first audience and taste testers for a lot of these recipes.) This time I made a party favorite: lechon manok.

Lechon manok is rotisserie slow-roasted whole chicken usually seasoned with lemon grass and other spices. It reached the peak of its popularity about when I was in college (so, way back when). I remember you could barely walk a street in Metro Manila then without passing rows of smoky, aromatic food stalls with lechon manok in long bamboo skewers slowly turning over hot coals. Other food fads have since taken its place, but it’s still a Filipino favorite, specially during gatherings when you want to serve good, homey comfort food.

Not everyone has a rotisserie or a charcoal pit, so most homemade recipes for lechon manok call for oven-roasting the chicken instead. I thought I’d go a different route and cook it in a slow cooker, to try to attain the tenderness and juiciness you get from slow-roasting. I think I got pretty close; anyway, my family loved it.

The marinade is adapted from the blog Simple Comfort Food.

My lunch plate: lechon manok and spaghetti squash pancit, with guinataang halo-halo on the side

Translations
Lechon (leh-chohn): one of our most popular foods: roasted whole suckling pig; also, the manner of its cooking (rotisserie slow-roasting over hot coals)
Lechon manok (leh-chohn mah-nok): rotisserie slow-roasted whole chicken
Pancit (pahn-sit): Filipino noodle dishes
Kalamansi (kah-lah-mahn-si): small, very tart citrus fruit (it’s sometimes translated as “calamondin,” but I’ve never seen a calamondin that looked like the kalamansi that I know)

Ingredients

• 1 4 lb. whole chicken
• 6 cloves of garlic, coarsely chopped
• 2 stalks of lemon grass, trimmed, tough outer layers peeled off, and coarsely chopped
• 1 shallot, coarsely chopped
• 1 tablespoon coarsely chopped ginger
• 1/4 cup puréed Asian pear (you can use other sweet fruit like mango, apple, or pear)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 3 tablespoons patis (fish sauce)
• 1/2 teaspoon tumeric powder
• 2 tablespoons kalamansi juice (or 3 tablespoons lemon juice)
• 3 bay leaves

Instructions

1. To marinate the chicken: Put all ingredients except the chicken and bay leaves in a food processor and blitz them until you end up with a smooth paste. Rub the chicken all over with the paste, including inside the cavity. Place the chicken in a pan, cover tightly with plastic wrap, and store in the fridge at least overnight and up to 2 days.
2. Pour the excess marinade and juices from the pan into your slow cooker, then place the chicken inside, breast side down. Put the bay leaves on top of the chicken. Set the slow cooker on low and the timer to 4-6 hours. (Actual time depends on the size of your chicken and the heating qualities of your slow cooker. My chicken was 4 lbs. and my slow cooker is a little underpowered, so I went for 5 1/2 hours. Do not cook the chicken more than 6 hours or it will become dry and fall apart.)
3. Pre-heat your oven to broil a few minutes before the slow cooker times out. Once the slow cooker shuts off, remove the chicken and place on a roasting pan or other oven-proof pan lined with a baking rack. Broil the chicken for 10 minutes or so, flipping it over midway.
4. Remove from the oven, let stand for 5 minutes before carving away.

Alternative cooking method: If you don’t have a slow cooker, or the time to slow cook your chicken, you can also oven-roast it at 350 degrees for 20 minutes each pound (so 80 minutes for a 4 lb. chicken), plus 10 more minutes at the end at 450 degrees to crisp the skin.

Makes 4-6 servings. Our lechon manok was picked clean by the time we finished.

How this is Whole30
Sugar was replaced with a fruit purée. Also, some lechon manok recipes call for soy sauce; this one uses patis instead.

• About Whole30

Filipino Whole30 Eats: Guinataang Halo-Halo

Talk about grazing: with our carb-centric diet, we Filipinos typically eat 4 or 5 times a day, with meriendas (snacks or mini-meals) interspersed between our main meals. Guinataang halo-halo is one of those cloyingly sweet Filipino snacks that we came up with in our centuries-long effort to keep our ravenous, carb- and sugar-fueled bodies going. I remember this dish fondly from childhood: my sisters and I would often have this mid-afternoon after school, and the sugar would propel us like high-octane into the street for playtime with our neighborhood friends. (Homework? What homework?)

When I switched to Paleo, and went even further to Whole30, I found myself eating lots of sweet potatoes, plantains, and other dense sources of complex carbs to take the place of the rice, bread, and pasta I had given up. It wasn’t too big of a leap to recall this old childhood snack and realize, hey!, this was made from sweet potatoes and plantains and another dense carb, taro. Plus, jackfruit, yum. And add to all that the fact that it’s cooked in one of the healthiest fats around: coconut milk.

So I set myself to tinkering with the recipe to make it Whole30 compliant. One important note: it’s essential not just to change the composition of this dish, but also to repurpose it. I.e., this should not be eaten as a snack (snacks are not encouraged in Whole30), the way it is traditionally. Rather, it should accompany your meal as a side dish, to be eaten with your other food or right after.

Try this at breakfast alongside your protein source. I guarantee: it will power you all the way to lunch!

Translations
Guinataan (ghee-nah-tah-ahn): cooked in coconut milk
Guinataang halo-halo (ghee-nah-tah-ahng hah-loh hah-loh): literally, a variety of things cooked in coconut milk; colloquially, this dish
Saging (sah-ging – first “g” is a hard “g”): banana
Saging na saba (sah-ging nah sah-bah): sweet plantain, aka saba banana, also sometimes called cardaba banana

Ingredients

• 1 ripe (as in spotted with black) medium saging na saba, cut into 1/4-inch thick slices (about 1 to 1 1/2 cups)
• 1 medium yellow sweet potato, diced into 1-inch cubes (about 1 cup)
• 1 cup of diced taro (1-inch cubes)
• 1 cup whole (or 1/2 cup chopped or shredded) jackfruit
• 1 3/4 cups of water
• 1 14 oz. can of coconut milk
• pinch of anise seeds (optional)

Substitutions: you can replace the saging na saba with a very ripe plantain, and the yellow sweet potato with any other type of sweet potato; if you can’t find jackfruit (available frozen in many Asian groceries), do without, or try cubed butternut squash; cubed cassava can also complement or take the place of the other root crops.

Instructions

1. Bring the water to a boil in a saucepan. Add the root crops (cubed saging na saba and taro), close the lid, and simmer for about 5 minutes, stirring once or twice.
2. Add the coconut milk and the rest of the ingredients, and bring back to a boil. Let simmer uncovered, stirring often, until the root crops are tender but not mushy – anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes.
3. Let stand for a few minutes before serving in bowls.

Makes 3 servings. Remember to have this as part of your meal and not as a standalone snack!

How this is Whole30
No added sugar! You wouldn’t believe how much sugar usually goes into these things. But I’ve learned it doesn’t need it; with the saging na saba and jackfruit, the concoction is already just the right amount of sweet. Also, I excluded other typical ingredients, such as bilo-bilo or glutinous rice balls (non-Whole30 compliant) and sago or tapioca pearls (technically compliant but nutritionally empty).

• About Whole30

Filipino Whole30 Eats: Stir-Fried Kangkong (Quickie Veggie)

The basic Whole30 meal template requires you to start by placing a protein source (1-2 palm-sized servings of meat, chicken, or fish, or as many eggs as you can hold in one hand) onto your plate, and then filling the rest of your plate with veggies and occasionally some fruit (making sure some good fat is included in the mix). Let’s focus on the veggies part of that formula for a moment and note that this does not mean a desultory smattering of carrot sticks and celery around your pork chop, carefully spread out to cover the maximum area; it usually means 2 or more cups of veggies heaped on your plate per meal. Including breakfast.

That’s a lot of veggies.

So most Whole30ers learn quickly to roast, stir-fry, bake, boil, steam, grill, microwave, and otherwise prepare loads of veggies at a time, often keeping stocks in the fridge and just doling them out as needed during mealtimes — or they buy salad greens in bulk and munch through astonishing amounts of plant matter until they find the bottoms of their salad bowls.

It’s also handy to have easy, quick, go-to recipes for when you’re starving and you need to have your veggies on your plate pronto. So here’s one recipe for a Filipino Quickie Veggie (the first of a weekly series) to help fill that need.

Translation

Kangkong (kahng-kong): water spinach, a semi-aquatic tropical plant grown as a veggie

Ingredients

• 1 bunch of kangkong (about 1 lb.)
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon minced ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes (or chopped red or green chilis) 
• coconut aminos (soy sauce substitute)

Instructions

1. Trim the stem ends and cut thick stems into 2-inch lengths. Set these 2-inch stems aside. Cut the rest (leafy portions and thinner stems) into manageable lengths (no longer than the diameter of your pan). 
2. Heat your pan with your favorite cooking fat in medium heat. When the fat starts shimmering, add the garlic and ginger and sauté until fragrant, about 30 seconds.
3. Add your kangkong stems and cook about 2-3 minutes, stirring often, until the stems start to soften.
4. Add your leaves and thinner stems and continue cooking until the leaves start to wilt. (Kangkong is like spinach; it wilts fast once it gets started.)
5. Dust your kangkong with black pepper and add the coconut aminos to taste (start with one tablespoon and sprinkle more if needed). Continue stirring.
6. When the stems are tender-crisp and the leaves are all wilted, sprinkle with red pepper flakes. Give it one last good mix, and then transfer to a plate.

Makes about 3 servings.

How this is Whole30
Replacing the usual soy sauce with coconut aminos made all the ingredients Whole30 compliant.

• About Whole30