The inspiration for this dish was David Chang’s roasted brussel sprouts with fish sauce dressing at a recent lunch we enjoyed at Momofuku in Las Vegas. We don’t often see brussel sprouts on offer in Manila, so I thought I would experiment with other brassica relatives — cauliflower, broccoli and red cabbage.

Cut cauliflower and broccoli into medium sized florets. Wash or soak well and drain and spin dry.

Slice red cabbage so that the central stem holds the leaves together. Heat up your oven to 400F. Into an ovenproof pan, heated on top of a burner, add some vegetable oil (grapeseed, canola, etc.) and add the brassicas and let them be. Once they start to brown slightly, place them into the oven and let them roast on high heat. After about 10-12 minutes, check on the veggies and turn them over for even browning. Cook for a total of 23-25 minutes (cabbage less) until well caramelized and colored.

This is what the veggies looked like after I took them out of the oven… I could have left them in a few more minutes.

Make a dressing of fish sauce, a touch of water, fresh lime (dayap) juice, sugar, chilies and chopped cilantro. Sprinkle dressing generously over warm vegetables and add some chopped wansoy or cilantro, thai basil, mint and green onions.

This was delicious. Not quite the wonderful dish we enjoyed at Momofuku, but brilliant for a first attempt.

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Bad Saint has received a lot of phenomenal press coverage in the past 3 years since it opened. Reviews often begin with the no reservation policy and the often several hour long wait on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant for a seat. But we weren’t going blind. Isabel, our daughter, had already been 3 or so times, once to take photos for a published review of the restaurant and where she had a chance to taste just about everything on the menu. And she said, “Dad, it’s worth the wait”… so line up on our last afternoon in Washington, D.C., we did. Bad Saint refers to St. Malo, and area of Louisiana where Filipinos who jumped boat (the earliest TNT adventurers) from their galleons in the 17-1800’s took refuge and presumably started to cook Filipino food. The first immigrants… I think it is a BRILLIANT name for a Filipino restaurant in the U.S.

You can tell who the regulars are, they come armed with portable seats, novels, tablets. We had shopping bags instead, to sit on the pavement while we wondered what was on the menu for dinner… The wait wasn’t so bad. But a quick tip for MM readers… just send one person to line up and have your friends come 10 minutes before opening… that’s what lots of other folks did. If you aren’t ion the first 8-10 people in line, you may have to wait even longer for a seat after opening. With just two dozen seats or so, and maybe just 2-3 tables for 4, Bad Saint can’t accommodate too many people at one seating. Maximum group size is 4 people.

A few groups were ahead of us, so we ended in four seats facing out the front windows of the restaurant. The place is tiny, but don’t dwell on the interiors, just focus on the food. The menu listed only 9 dishes that evening + one special. Out of ten dishes, we ordered 7 and the Chef Tom Cunanan sent out another 2, so needless to say, we had 90% of the dishes in that one visit. A bit of backstory, I think one of the owners Genevieve Villamora and Chef Tom were aware, had visited, followed? marketmanila.com and had spotted us in line so we have to be grateful for the extra nice welcome which was like meeting up with old friends, though we had only met them face to face this one time. Genevieve was a gracious host, and well, Tom made sure the dishes sent out of the kitchen aimed to please…

To start off this post-graduation family celebration, Isabel ordered the “Tang” cocktail, a cheeky, nostalgic 60’s to 80’s taste profile that was amusing in name, but surprisingly adult and tasty to the palate… Made with a tangerine juice reduction, fino sherry, tangerine, lime, lemongrass and rambutan bitters. Somehow, this first sip was to herald good things to come…

…Mrs. MM opted for a small bottle of French cider, that was a perfect pairing for much of the food we ate that evening. Light, crisp and clean, the Etienne Dupont Cidre Bouché is something I am going to keep my eye out for to bring back home…

…Chief of Stuff and I had two bottles of San Miguel Pale Pilsen for a direct taste of home (I think these were brewed and imported from Hong Kong, however) and a cheery toast for all to celebrate graduation, moving into a new apartment rental, no more tuition checks for mom and dad, an epic trip to the Grand Canyon and Sedona area, touring a first-time visitor to the U.S., etc. was in order. Now to the food…

Labanos at pinaitum. We didn’t order this dish, but I think the Chef thought we should try it. Thank God for that. French radishes sitting on a bed of coconut meat, burnt coconut meat and coconut cream with honey. I think it was all emulsified and chilled to set. Several garnishes such as micro greens, toasted coconut, etc. on top. The dip almost had a consistency of hummus. It was amazing. Surprisingly delicious, but really delicious, and not really reminiscent of anything Filipino, but somehow it still had Pinoy soul. For a westerner, they would just think it was an amazing dish, regardless of provenance or nationality. Note to self, it was disarmingly rich and only became obvious because of how much we would eat in total that evening.

Next to arrive was ginisang ampalaya, which was beautifully done, the twist being the addition of salty black beans (or soy beans?) that ramped up flavor and minimized bitterness, though I seek the bitter. Even Isabel, who is an avowed anti-ampalaya stalwart, seemed to enjoy it. I loved it. This and a bowl of rice, nice vegetarian meal on its own. Note the ebullient use of garnishes, not just to prettify it, it was to add flavor, texture, contrast and it really did work well. Philippine cuisine doesn’t use much in the way of herbs, so playing with other strong flavors is a good way to tickle one’s palate.

The third dish to arrive were these nearly coal black adobong sugpo. Made with squid ink (wrong guess, my bad) pureed black garlic and bay leaves (some ingredients left out), it was swoon-worthy. Again, this single dish on its own with rice would have made a meal. But I like how Chef Tom doesn’t plate up to western expectations, but rather suggests family style servings with multiple dishes to enjoy a myriad of flavors and textures. This was a dense coating of squid ink, not the watery adobos you might be more familiar with from back home. The crisped rice lightened up the look of the dish, but as Isabel put it, they look a bit like fried maggots and to some, might not be so appealing. :)

I had to include another photo of the prawn dish to show how sticky and viscous the sauce was. Note the amount of rice I was consuming with each little bit of shrimp. They deliver unlimited amounts of rice to you, which was appreciated.

Next, dinuguan na bagnet or deep-fried pork belly on a blood stew. Delicious. Only the faintest of metallic taste to the blood; I am not normally a huge fan of dinuguan, but I liked this dish a lot. More on this in the Part II of this post… coming up soon.

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My first attempt at dried flying fish or dibang, here, yielded so-so results. I had a nagging feeling that what I was attempting to re-create wasn’t just a day-old or semi-dried salted fish, but something a bit more refined. So with that thought already imbedded, I finished batch #1 and immediately moved onto a second kilo of fish… with the provincial concept in mind of “lamayo” or “labtingaw” or vinegar-marinated semi-dried fish from forays to Palawan and Visayan islands where they practice that, I wondered if the Maytahes dibang was in fact marinated in vinegar first (I would later find out from a sole blog reference to this dish that it may in fact be marinated)…

Taking off from the previous post, take the cleaned fish and dip into a marinade of coconut vinegar, salt, crushed black pepper and copious amounts of smashed garlic. I was afraid of “cooking” the fish, so only briefly washed the fish with vinegar. Some our crew looked on disapprovingly, expecting me to leave the fish in the vinegar for a while. In retrospect, I would recommend you linger while bathing the fish, more than getting wet, but not quite sitting in a bath, if you know what I mean.

The vinegar has several purposes. The first is to remove cooties or potential cooties. It also bleaches the meat of the fish, making it “whiter” or paler. It adds a hint of sourness, but this is balanced out with the salt. The garlic and pepper add flavor.

I sprinkled good local sea salt on the bathed fish. I put too much. Next time, either simply heavily salt the vinegar mixture and skip the direct salting step, or pull back on the salt, sprinkling lightly some finer natural salt instead.

Lay out in the hot sun to semi-dry. Note that the vinegar kissed fish nearest me are already paler than the previous batch of salt cured fish. Imagine if I had left it for a few more minutes in the vinegar…

…Chief of Stuff insisted on dotting each fish with lots of garlic and sprinkled on some of the marinade, afraid I was either going to kill all of us with bacteria growth or just because he is from Palawan, and holder of the key to proper lamayo… He was right, of course. :) After roughly 4 hours of drying, we put the dibang in plastic bags and froze them. I would recommend doing at least 6-7 hours (but we couldn’t as the sun turned to ominous storm clouds).

Taken out of the freezer ten days later, note the uneven bleaching of the meat. I think I could have marinated the fish for a minute or so longer.

Heat up some vegetable oil (or better yet, lard)and fry the dibang for a few minutes until cooked through and slightly golden in color.

I thought this looked pretty darned good.

But the fish we enjoyed in Batanes had an extra layer of crispness, and I wondered if they had sprinkled it with flour or cornstarch, so I gave this a try…

…et VOILA! maytahes dibang or day-old semi-dried and marinated flying fish a la Marketman (floured one on the right, above photo). Definitely an 8 or 8.5 out of 10.0 I think. I wouldn’t be embarrassed to serve this to guests any day. But to get to that 9 or 9.5 rating (will never get to the 10.0 tasted in Batanes, as location and terroir add that final 0.5 points) here’s what I would do in addition to the tips in the previous post… use bigger fish, fillet more carefully, cut off the head and tails neatly, marinate in vinegar solution for at least 1-2 minutes, and salt lightly. Dry for 6-7 hours and fry with a light coating of flour or cornstarch. Fry in hot lard. Are you salivating yet? Throw in a huge pile of homemade acharra and unlimited rice, please. Spicy vinegar a must. :)

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It happens less often now, but I have a history of eating something wonderful (and often deceptively simple) and wondering if I can replicate it at home to ensure availability. The simplest local Filipino dishes are almost always the most difficult to get just right, but it’s precisely that enigma that sets up the challenge… On a recent whirlwind trip to Batanes to shoot an episode of “Show Me the Market” on Metro Channel, I tasted maytahes or “day-old” flying fish three times in 45 hours and was utterly smitten. Flying fish was filleted and dried for a day then deep-fried, that’s all I had figured out. No one showed me how to do it, no one explained how to salt and dry it, but I nevertheless thought I should be cheeky enough to give it a go. So if you’re Ivatan and cringing at my attempt at maytahes, any advice you may have to improve this will be greatly appreciated.

At the Nasugbu market a few weeks after our Batanes trip, I spied some fresh looking flying fish, smaller* than the ones I had seen in Batanes, but I definitely wanted to try and make the dibang we had enjoyed in Batanes.

My knife skills filleting a bony fish are horrific, so before buying two kilos of flying fish, I looked up a photo of the dibang on my phone and tried to show the fishwife what I was trying to achieve and see if she was willing to fillet the fish for me. She agreed to try…

Her knife wasn’t the sharpest blade around and the filleting** was a bit ragged, but certainly better than anything I could do. She went ahead and filleted all two kilos worth and we packed it on ice for the half hour trip back home.

Back at home, I cleaned up all of the guts and any dark or bloody bits from the fish, assuming that this part would be more likely to spoil in a semi-dried state.

Next, I be-headed the fish…

…with a cleaver in a clean straight cut.***

Next, I decided to just simply salt the filleted flying fish. I used some good rock salt from the local salt beds near the Wawa port area, but I noticed the granules of salt were quite big.****

I had no idea how much salt to put so I guessed, and probably overdid it.*****

Next, I laid the fish out to dry, over a plastic net over a hot stone paved driveway. It was a searingly hot cloudless morning, and I could barely stand barefoot on the stones. I wondered if I might inadvertently cook the fish, but I went ahead anyway, hoping there was enough solar power and sea breezes to do this right. I know, I know, you are thinking bugs and flies right? I covered everything with a finer screen, even though they don’t do that in the provinces… And just in case you were curious, hot pavement of black rocks can rise to 145F or so, about 15F short of being hot enough to cook an egg. The soles of my feet can handle up to about 130-135F I suspect… :)

The morning of searing sun quickly turned dark and ominous some 4 hours later, so rather than 6-8 hours of drying, we took the fish away and packed them individually and froze them. This was version #1. Just salted, and semi-dried.******

While the fish looked and smelled fine after its partial drying (I was pretty sure I wouldn’t poison myself), it certainly DIDN’T look like the lighter, meatier day-old flying fish I had brought back from Batanes…

…which made me wonder if I was doing this right. Thankfully, I had also tried another version (next post).

The next morning, we fried up the first attempt at maytahes/dibang or day-old flying fish and that’s the photo all the way up top. It looked a bit ragged, but it tasted pretty good, but it was way too salty. I would have rated it a 6/10.0 compared to the beautiful dibang from Batanes, above. But here are some tips if you want to do it yourself, and it should yield a 8 or 9 out of 10, assuming you just want a salted flying fish recipe…

*find really large flying fish, say 300-400 grams a piece, if you can. These ones were some 230-250 grams each, and were a tad small.
**use a really sharp thin fillet knife and cut close to the bone cleanly without “sawing” your knife back and forth that makes the meat ragged.
***a straight cut with a cleaver isn’t the best choice. Use a sharp knife to cut out all of the head and any dark bits, but mimic the close up of the Batanes sourced fish that looks like it was trimmed in a “V” cut. Also, I would remove the tail as well.
****Use non-iodized salt like I did, but unlike me, it’s best to crush the salt into a finer consistency so you don’t risk over salting the fish. Better yet, rinse with sea water rather than fresh water before salting.
*****salt with a light hand. I know you think the fish will spoil in the hot sun, but trust that the solar rays and light salt will control the rot nicely… :) TRUST.
******I was beginning to think there were other ingredients involved, and took a guess and tried another version, up next.

Photo #3 was taken by P.O. Thanks!

The post Homemade “Maytahes Dibang” or “Day-Old, Batanes-Style Flying Fish” a la Marketman (Attempt #1) appeared first on Market Manila.

We were at the beach last week, with a very good old friend (and his family) from high school that hadn’t been back to Manila in 36 years since we graduated from high school. He tagged along to the Nassau market and surprisingly for a Tuesday morning, we found tons of things to cook for lunch that day. One of the unusual items was this giant squid or “lumot” that I have avoided in the past as I always thought it might be tougher and chewier than I would like. But my “suki” or market vendor convinced me to give it a try.

Weigh up a 1.3 kilo specimen, so fresh it was sticky with mucous.

My suki suggested the squid be skinned to ensure tenderness, so she made short shrift of skinning it (there was a part of me that wondered if it might still be alive!)…

…which took her less than a minute to do…

…and gutted and cleaned the squid as well.

Back at home, rinse the squid to ensure any remaining bits and bobs are removed. Then carefully cut and “score” the skin in a diamond pattern to help prevent curling. Use a sharp knife and cut only part of the way through the squid.

Next, add a marinade made up of soy sauce (I used kikkoman), kalamansi, a touch of vinegar, salt, pepper, homemade tamarind puree and chopped chilies. Let this marinate for an hour or so. Several readers have mentioned on IG that marinating the lumot in milk for a couple of hours helps to tenderize it as well… will have to give that a try sometime soon.

Grill over a medium high heat and note that some squid still curled, as I probably scored it on the “wrong side” (it should be inside the squid rather than outside) and baste with remaining marinade. Cook until just done, this took less than 5 minutes total.

The squid was surprisingly tender, though it had just a bit of chew, but that was a pleasant chew. Do not overcook the squid, it needs just a brush with the fire until opaque and just cooked. This was easy and supremely easy to make if your market vendor is kind enough to clean and skin it for you.

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The house is awash with tamarind puree. That’s what happens when something seasonal hits its peak and I get so excited to have the ingredient, that I stock up as though next year would never come… So while at the office in Manila the other day, our Caviteña accountant asked if I had ever tried pinangat na bangus made with ripe but sour tamarind. I hadn’t, and based on her quick description, I headed to the kitchen as soon as I got home and tried to make the dish on my own without a recipe. It isn’t as authentic as it could be (probably doesn’t have young garlic and would be better made in a palayok) but this turned out BRILLIANTLY for the minimal amount of effort required. I bet 90% of marketmanila readers could do this and the flavors would be so familiar for them to wonder why they had never cooked or tasted it before. Think a variation of paksiw na isda, but with a far more sophisticated sour than bottled (and in most households, horrific tasting) vinegar used for most paksiw. This is humble home cooking, but just a few tweaks would definitely elevate this dish to restaurant worthy special.

You will need either whole de-boned bangus, sliced into steaks, or if you are simply reaching into your freezer for the easiest option, then bangus bellies like I have here. You will need a big handful of fresh ripe sour and peeled local sampalok. I happened to have sweetened sampalok puree so I was determined to use this. Salt. Some folks use ginger, onions, garlic. But I am told others eschew the use of the last three and rely purely on the salt and tamarind to work their magic. I thought a touch of homemade lard couldn’t hurt, and our accountant suggested a touch of soy sauce near the end for both color and flavor, just as the dish was “drying out” as they preferred it served closer to a dry consistency than saucy.

First, make a light broth from the tamarind, water and salt. Strain this through a sieve. Into a pan, add the bangus segments, the tamarind water, some tamarind puree if you have it (or more concentrated tamarind water and a touch of brown sugar), salt, pepper and young garlic. That’s what I did. Alternatively you could melt lard, saute the ginger and onions and garlic, lay the fish on top, add the tamarind broth and continue cooking. I added the lard last as I nearly forgot to put it.

Cover and let this come to a boil and simmer for say 15-20 minutes or so. Apparently the goal is to get the fish to absorb all that sour goodness without it disintegrating, so don’t move the fish around too much. Also, some folks like this drier and that’s what my goal was as well. Notice how the water, tamarind and lard guile into an almost emulsified sauce that coats the bangus pieces, I really liked that effect.

Halfway through cooking, I was worried that the flavor might not permeate all the fish, so I carefully flipped them over. In retrospect, you might start off this way and flip them the other way around so the skin crisps up a bit in the minimal fat in the pan when you are nearly done cooking. Add some soy sauce and season with salt to get the right level of saltiness to your liking nearing the end of cooking. I pulled this off the heat just as most of the liquid had evaporated. Think of this as a variation on paksiw, or acid braised fish, so essential in the times with no refrigeration and it could sit out for hours without spoiling.

The result? For minimal effort and no reference point? Was nothing short of WOW, just WOW! And there are so many ways to enhance this, refry it, serve it saucy, etc. Totally instant comfort food. So worth trying. And so seasonal if you are using fresh tamarind…

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I worked in Jakarta for the better part of 5 years, on and off. And at around 3 or 4 pm in the afternoon, the administrative staff on our floor would often head down to the street to pick up a snack or merienda. During the summer months, when fruit was in season, they often came back up to their desks and unraveled a waxed paper bundle with this pungent fruit salad called “rujak”. Think sliced fruit with salty, pungent “terasi” (a form of shrimp paste of dry bagoong), salt, sugar or palm sugar, salt and chilies. Depending on the ingredients, pineapple, apples, guavas, makopa, green mangoes, singkamas, tamarind paste, chilies, etc. you ended up with a crunchy, smooth, sour, salty, sweet and pungent afternoon delight. I haven’t had rujak in many, many years.

But today I realized we had lots of fruit in the house and the neighborhood, freshly made tamarind puree in the fridge, some bagoong, chilies, etc. so off to the kitchen I went. This is my version of an Indonesian (and Malay) classic. I was salivating all throughout the prep process, and managed to eat roughly a third of this hefty bowl of rujak! Into a bowl, add some homemade tamarind puree (made with ripe but sour tamarind, brown sugar and water). Next, some bagoong, sambal and chopped chilies and generous amounts of salt.

Assemble an interesting mix of fruit. Pineapples are classic (but I am very allergic to them), green and semi-green mangoes, tambis, makopa, papaya, apples, pears, pomelos, singkamas, guavas, etc. Think of sweet, sour, crisp, soft, etc.

Slice either in flat shapes or sticks, depending on your preference.

Toss to mix up fruit. Add the tamarind and bagoong mixture. Add more bagoong or salt or chilies as you desire. Mix well.

Serve immediately (or if you leave a few minutes, it weeps and makes a sauce of sorts) with bamboo sticks (polite) or just attack with your fingers, licking the pungent dressing every now and then. Are you salivating yet? Salivating yet? :) Do not start typing your blog post until after you have washed your hands twice. :)

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Mrs. MM and I officially called Singapore our home for nearly 5 years in the early 90’s. While we were constantly traveling (for business) during that time, we always managed to get back to Singapore at least 2-3x a month for a few days. And it is during this period that I somehow fell in love with noodles flavored with curry powder. I never bothered how to learn to cook them at the time, since they were readily available from hawker stands that were not only convenient, but economical as well. While experimenting with local noodles flavors in Cebu a couple of weeks ago, I decided to try one that might approximate the noodles we used to enjoy in Singapore all those years ago… it turns out it was really easy to do…

The versions I used to have had shrimp, char sit (barbecued pork), bean sprouts and other veggies. So to make our version, we started with a bit of chopped lechon (not as flavorful as char siu), shrimp, onions, garlic and lard then when that was soft, added in other veggies, chicken stock, curry powder, bihon noodles (that are supposed to be rice I am told, but are sometimes made with cornstarch now here in the Philippines), bean sprouts and salt and pepper. Ideally, you want a well seasoned wok (not a pathetic kawali as in photos), super hot flames and a wrist of a young one to flip the noodles around like your life depended on it.

Achieving that “wok hay” or breath of a wok is essential to the quality of the dish, in my opinion. The results? Not bad at all. Definitely edible, definitely delicious. Not quite the ones I recall from many a hawker stall in Singapore, but it’s a good start.

P.S. My grey matter is failing, it seems I did another version of this recipe just 4 years ago, here, though it was much more involved with a few more ingredients like sriracha? that I wouldn’t have dreamed of putting in this most recent version… :)

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We eat a lot of hummus in our household. And I have made hummus with lots of different things mixed in like roasted red peppers, beets, coriander, etc. We have also tried white bean and other versions, but never really thought about mung beans or monggo. I was trying to think of healthier ways to eat classic pinoy dishes and decided to experiment with a monggo or mung bean hummus. A quick google yielded a couple of distinctly western takes on the spread, so I wasn’t being too bizarre. But I didn’t really follow a specific recipe and just boiled up some green mung beans until cooked, but not overly mushy. Into a food processor, I added the mung beans, tahini, salt, pepper, water, some garlic and blitzed that for a minute or two. You really have to whip it up to lighten it, and you need quite a bit of liquid. The results were surprisingly good, if a bit bland for my taste. Maybe if I used a really flavorful vegetable broth instead of water… I was also planning to make a tinapa or smoked bangus dip, but my “aha!” moment was to ditch the tinapa spread, and put flaked smoked fish into the monggo hummus instead. This worked wonderfully. The familiar flavor and a creamy texture of mung bean and the sharp salty hints of smoke and savoriness from the fish. Now I am wondering if I should have used coconut milk somehow as well. At any rate, garnished with more tinapa or smoked fish, some chopped chives and a healthy swoosh of good olive oil and it was a slam-dunk hit at dinner with Canadian friends, who lapped it up.

Still of the pinoy theme but presented a different way, I decided to make a simple tomato salsa to serve with the monggo and tinapa spread. Some dayap from our garden in Cebu, seasonings, olive oil and a bit of red wine vinegar. I didn’t use cilantro or wansoy as I knew one of the guests had an aversion to it. But wansoy would have been better than chopped green onions. This salsa was nothing unusual, but its presentation alongside the other spread was giving me serious pinoy meal vibes, but in a chilled appetizer guise. Had we put finely chopped salted red egg, this would have really been cool and reminiscent of hundreds of similar such meals I would have enjoyed growing up.

We served these dips/salsas with slices of toasted pita bread and everything was consumed in a flash. Even our cook, who sometimes raises her eyebrows at my wacky experiments, said the spread was delicious. If I play with this a bit more, I would have an appetizer dish for the restaurant even… think base of vegetarian monggo hummus, which could be varied with tinapa or even tuyo, or topped with lots of crushed chicharon, or deep-fried lechon flakes or served with other vegetarian salsas and dips. It would be pinoy style ingredients and preparations at heart, but presented in a different way. :)

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This is my recipe for homemade pancetta. It is extremely easy to do, but the ingredients, how you prep them, how long you cure them and where you cure them matters. Repeat, it matters. So please don’t make the recipe and substitute several ingredients (as many are tempted to or do) and then blame me for the odd results. It’s sort of like my Sister’s vaunted fruitcake recipe which folks always ask for, then replace specified dried fruit with things like dried pineapple and papaya then they have the nerve to bitch that it doesn’t taste the same as the original, duhhh. So you are forewarned. Once you have made a recipe or two and are confident about the results, feel free to alter ingredients to your own preferences, I do that from time to time for slight variations on the theme…

First start with 7.5-8.0 kilos of skin-on boneless belly (I buy in large slabs, you can do that from any decent grocery butcher). If you are anal, trim the slabs so that they are a uniform size and relatively uniform thickness. You will then have to remove the skin, so if you have a particularly good relationship with your butcher, ask him to remove the skin for you if possible. That will save you significant stress and grief as skinning the pork is not one of my favorite chores. I am assuming you will then have a cleaned slab or two of pork with a total cleaned weight of 7 kilos, give or take a few grams. Cut these into say 3-4 pieces of roughly 1.5-1.7 kilos each.

Next prepare your rub. Into a bowl, add 400-450 grams of kosher salt (available in good groceries, you can use other sea salt (NO IODINE PLEASE) but I am not responsible for translating weights due to different salts and moisture levels, it may rise or fall by as much as 25% depending on the type of salt you use… I know that sounds illogical, but that just seems to be the case for me); for the easy answer, buy kosher salt for your first attempt. Measure using a scale.

To the salt, add the following:

350 grams white granulated sugar
100 grams of dark muscovado sugar
130 grams of pink salt or curing salt
80 grams of peeled and smashed or roughly chopped garlic
several sprigs of fresh rosemary roughly chopped up

and mix this up well. Then into a frying pan, toast the following spices over medium high heat for a minute or two until fragrant but NOT burned.

20 grams of white peppercorns
20 grams of black peppercorns (or if you don’t have white peppercorns you can use all black peppercorns)
25 grams of dried juniper berries
40 grams of coriander seeds

Crush all of the spices above in a large mortar and pestle until roughly smashed up. Add to the salt/sugar mixture. Then add the following:

30 grams of dried bay leaves, crushed and broken up.
25 grams of dried thyme (or some fresh thyme chopped up, if you have it).

Dry your pieces of pork belly with paper towels. Then take your dry rub and coat all of the pieces well. Rubbing mixture onto all surfaces of the meat, including the sides, etc. I then place these in food pans and cover with plastic wrap and let them sit out on the kitchen counter for say 45 minutes or so to get the rub starting to dissolve. Then I place all the food pans in a fridge to marinate or cure for between 4.5-6.0 days. If the pieces of pork are quite thin, you will find that 4.5 days is enough; but if you have extra thick slabs of pork, you may need 6.0 days or so. The texture of the pork is what will give you the right cues. It should not be soft and squishy like the day you bought it; it should be firmer and harder, though not hard. Does that confuse you? :)

Flip the slabs of pork DAILY until you ascertain that they have cured long enough. If you let them go too long, they become very, very salty. If you don’t let them cure enough, they may lack salt and worse, may start to rot during the drying process. You may notice that you lose some liquid in this stage and that is good. Some slabs of pork lose more liquid that others.

Once you are happy with the degree of curing, then rinse the pieces of pork quickly and dry well with paper towels. At this stage, I just lay them on cookie racks on top of a cookie sheet and let them dry out uncovered in a clean fridge (I use one dedicated pre-cleaned fridge to cure 15 kilos of pancetta at a time) for say 6-8 days until quite firm. They are now ready for use. They will last several days in the fridge, wrapped up, or several months in the freezer, properly wrapped up. If you live in places where you might have a garage with a temperature of 50F or so at the moment, and no critters or bugs, then traditional recipes suggest you can just hang your slabs of pork to dry for 5-7 days until done. While I wish I could tell you I have tried this, I have not. Maybe if I had a cellar or mud room in New England just about now, I would. Most folks roll up pancetta before drying, but I find it a bother, it increases the risk of bacteria thriving, and in the end, it is just easier to cut flattish pancetta… so that’s up to you. I can only advise that if you roll it up, use some cracked black peppercorns inside the roll and do it so tightly that there is a minimum of air in there. It helps keep the cooties at bay. I kid you not. :)

My favorite use for the homemade pancetta? Bucatini or spaghetti a la Matriciana. Or you can use it in a clams and pancetta recipe. Cut it thinly and fry like bacon for sandwiches or to top salads. Use it as a base flavoring agent for minestrone. Top your pizzas with it. Saute cabbage and pancetta for a quick vegetable dish… Once you master this pancetta recipe, you won’t be tempted to buy pancetta from fancy purveyors for upwards of PHP1,200-1,500 a kilo. And it’s so much more satisfying to think you made it yourself. Enjoy!

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