Cooking Challenge 1: Pansit Palabok

Yes! The image you are seeing is my cooking! I can't believe it myself. I'm not an expert in cooking but I'm knowledgeable enough to follow recipes and tweak it a bit to my liking. I've been wanting to cook Palabok ever since I was in my school days. But knowing how tedious it will be, I focused on mastering my baked mac dish. Now that we are living in Singapore where the source of Palabok is scarce, I'm forced to face the dish I've been avoiding to cook. Last week, we ate Palabok at Kabayan, a Filipino restaurant in Orchard, to pacify my craving. I personally didn't like it. Maybe, I just expected too much on it. Anyway, when I told our experience to my friend Lia (who apparently works in Korea), she suggested that we learn to cook dishes that we haven't tried yet together. So we agreed to make Palabok first. It's a good thing mamaKaye (my officemate) went home to Pinas so I was able to ask my parents to buy me "atchuete" (annato seeds) for her to bring to us. Since I didn't want to use Palabok mix, I searched the net for some easy palabok recipes I could learn from. Below is the recipe I made based on other four recipes I found in the net. So here it goes!

Pansit Palabok

Ingredients:



100grams Crab meat
2 c. shrimp juice
2 tbsp. annato powder mixed with 1/2c water
2 tbsp. fish sauce
salt and pepper
1 1/2 tbsp. cornstarch mixed with 1/2 c water
1 egg, beaten



Bihon
cooked shrimp
cooked squid
2 hard boiled egg, sliced
bacon bits (in replace of chicharon)
spring onion
calamansi

Procedure:

To prepare shrimp juice:

1. Place shrimp heads of 500grams uncooked shrimp in a bowl.
2. Pound to extract the juice from the shrimp.
3. Put 2 cups water on extracted shrimp juice.
4. Strain shells from the liquid.

To cook noodles:

1. Soak bihon noodles in cold water for 20 minutes.
2. Boil water or chicken stock.
3. Drain noodles from cold water.
4. Put noodles in boiling water
5. Cook for less than a minute.
6. Drain noodles.

To cook sauce:

1. Saute garlic and onion until cooked.
2. Add crab meat, shrimp juice and simmer.
3. Add annato mixture, fish sauce, salt, and pepper.
4. Simmer for 5 minutes.
5. Add cornstarch mixture and simmer to thicken sauce stirring constantly.
6. Add beaten egg, stir, then turn off fire.

To serve:

1. Place noodles on a plate.
2. Put sauce over noodles.
3. Top with garnishes; shrimp, squid, egg, spring onions, bacon bits.
4. Serve with calamansi on the side.

I'm so proud of myself after I cooked this dish. The sauce I made tasted exactly the way I wanted it to be. I'm able to achieve the taste I wanted. And most especially, my habibi loved it so much! The palabok I made is worth all the effort I exerted. As you can see in the text and pictures above, you'll notice that I used and done some unusual things in the recipe. Since we don't have a pestle, I used a clean bottle to pound the shrimp. I cooked the noodles in the water I used to cook the shrimp. Instead of a chicharon, I used bacon bits. We found a chicharon in the grocery last night, but it's too expensive! A pack costs SG$7! I settled with bacon bits and surprisingly it blend well with the sauce! Too bad, I don't think I'll cook this dish again until next year. Hahaha! I'm not sure if I'll have the same enthusiasm the next time. Nevertheless, I'm looking forward to our next challenge! We haven't decided on it yet. If you have some suggestions, we'd gladly appreciate it!

We agreed to learn two(2) dishes a month! Stay tuned!