We were a bit crazed this morning with last minute preparations for several balikbayan houseguests arriving later this afternoon, and at about 1120am, I realized we had nothing for lunch. There was some freshly defrosted chicken, a quick look in the fridge yielded about a cup or more of kadios or fresh pigeon peas I bought at the market last Saturday, and we decided to make a quick stew of sorts. Without any langka or pork, we couldn’t make a more classic KBL, but we took a crack at a dish anyway…
Into a pot we added a bit of vegetable oil, then sautéed some sliced ginger, some peeled garlic and some bruised tangled or lemongrass stalks and waited for that to soften and get fragrant. We turned the heat up, browned the chicken, added some patis or fish sauce and added in several cups of rice washing water (cloudy starchy water when you rinse rice) as well as the kadios or pigeon peas. Let this simmer for some 15-20 minutes and adjust liquid levels and seasoning if required. You could have also used some nice chicken broth if you had it to ramp up the flavor.
The dish was done before noon. And while it didn’t exactly look terribly appealing (it had that muddy brownish gray tinge) and unlike this equally bizarre purple kadios and chicken dish I did in the past, it tasted wonderful for the minimal effort expended. It also felt relatively healthy, though I consumed an inordinate amount of steamed rice. I’m sure I have probably offended some Negrenses by cooking this dish in such a casual manner, but it was delicious nonetheless. Now if only I had some batuan fruit, I could have done this version of KBL… :)
11 Responses
Haha, I get it when you say it doesn’t look appetizing. Throwing in carrots for color might have done the trick.
Slightly off topic. I see you have succulent plants in your first picture. I’ve tried growing them myself but couldn’t get them to stay shaped like a ball with tightly packed leaves like yours. Mine grew tall instead.
ami, more on those in an upcoming post. Just bought them hours before. So I can’t take credit for raising them. :)
the succulent plant at the back caught my attention too! I got mine a month ago and now the leaves are thinner and not so tightly packed anymore :(
When succulents get leggy , and leaves thin out, it means they are starting to stretch to seek sunlight which they need plenty of, but not direct sunlight because they are prone to sunburn ( when you start seeing brown spots). Soil should be well drained and roots should dry out before the next watering. They are desertous plants after all.
my mom makes something like this, but use frozen or canned peas, sometimes with potatoes and/or carrots, no ginger or lemongrass. She got it from my grandfather, who one time wanted to cook chicken afritada but didn’t have tomato sauce, and it kinda stuck.
The dish look great actually…satisfying.
“bruised tangled..”? did you mean “tanglad” MM?
If you’re on a kadios roll you might want to experiment with a famous Puerto Rican dish of rice and pigeon peas…arroz con gandules.
the ilonggo version i know has ubod ng saging.
at first glance i thought it’s monggo MM. we are used to the purple kadios sa KBL namin.
yes Ms. Elma, ubad ng sabang saging with monggo…:) very tedious to prepare pero super sarap!
ng re request pa kmi ng ubad mula sa province pag may lumuluwas pa manila.
So these are Kadios. This afternoon I bought some dried ones, the plastic didn’t say the name, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t big monggo. Anyway, I will try to cook them with ham hocks.