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.

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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.)

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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.

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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.

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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