SHINE!

Bopiz is originally a spicy Spanish dish adapted by Filipinos. Its main ingredients include pork lungs and heart  sauteed in herbs and spices. Cooking time is around fifteen minutes so it can be categorized as a thirty minute dish, including prep time. Here’s how:

Ingredients:

1/2 kilo ground/minced/cubed pork lungs and heart

1 whole garlic head, crushed and minced

1 whole onion head, minced

1 red bell pepper, minced

pepper

chili slices (adjust according to taste)

atsuete /annato seed oil

2 tablespoons cooking oil

salt

*you can substitute salt for patis/fish sauce

Procedure:

Heat oil in a pan and saute garlic until you can smell its aroma then mix in the onions. After two minutes, mix the pork heart and lungs. Cook for about five minutes or just until the meat turns brown. Season with salt, pepper and the chili slices. Pour in the annato seed oil and bell pepper. Stir and let cook for around ten more minutes, adjusting the taste as you go along. Serve with plain steamed rice.

Hong ma, or slow-cooked pork in Chinese, is one of the best Chinese dishes I have tasted so far. The fusion of flavors and textures is superb and I am even more amazed at how simple one could achieve that melt-in-your-mouth meat tenderness.

Today would be my second attempt at this mouth-watering dish. The first one was a flop in a sense that I didn’t really use the right ingredients because I didn’t have a clue what they were. I basically relied on instincts, trying with a degree of desperation, to recall and mimic the taste of that hong ma dish we ordered at Ongpin back in early 2008.  I almost got it right, but the lack of enthusiasm on my Chinese husband’s reaction on his first bite was a bit discouraging.
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