Cebu’s Chorizo Dance

Chorizo is one of my favorite sausage and since I like going out with mom on most weekends when she visit her casket customers, I was happy to meet one of them who sells Chorizo. What is Chorizo?

It uses the skin of a pork’s large intestines. They remove all the TA-E (feces), clean it thoroughly and then dry it. I think this is the reason why chorizo tastes so delicious.

And then they stuffed the skin with meat. To make a special chorizo, for a 20 kilo of meat, it must have an 8 kilo of lean meat and then 12 kilos of fat. Meat can be a combination of beef and pork. The 20 kilo of meat is then mixed with 6 kilo of sugar, salt, vetsin, onion, pepper. I only learned about the amount of sugar and the proportion of the rest of the spices were probably a trade secret.

After stuffing the skin, it is then tied with a thread to make it look like an intestine again but instead of TA-E, it’s now stuffed with delicious and edible goodies.

How they tie the thread fascinates me the first time I saw it in carbon market. It’s as if they were dancing. You’ll have to see the video below to see it for yourself.

Their chorizo costs 25 pesos per 12 round pieces and if you don’t know which stall to buy chorizo from in the chaotic carbon market, check out their Stall #51. I was told that even the late Fernando Poe, Jr ordered from them and they also supply to the different foodcourt stalls in SM City Cebu.

Charito’s Special Tomatoed Pork Ribs

We use Gasul’s LPG (liquified petroleum gas) to power our oven but on fine days, we use wood instead because parents believed that food is MORE DELICIOUS if it’s cooked by wood. Frankly, I don’t think it matters as long as there’s heat to cook the food but stubbornness run in our family.

Let me introduce to you one of mom’s easy recipe which she learned from our old neighbor. Mom just call it her pork ribs recipe really but I think that’s too boring so I baptized it as Tomatoed Pork Ribs.

Ingredients:
500 grams of Pork Ribs (Mom said that it MUST be pork ribs).
Lots of Tomatoes
Onion
Salt and a dash of vetsin

Directions:
Put everything in a casserole and cook / simmer in low heat until meat is tender. The end!

Isn’t that the simplest and easiest recipe you’ve ever encountered?

Pork Tenderloin in Mushroom Cream Sauce with Potatoes and Veggies

I love cooking on Sunday because my victims (a.k.a family) are at home and Becky, our weekend housekeeper is around to clean up my mess after I’ve wrecked considerable havoc in our kitchen. Las Sunday was Pork Tenderloin in Mushroom Cream Sauce with Potatoes and Veggies.

My victims aren’t really into potatoes and veggies so I thought of making it as breakfast instead of side dishes for my main meal. Unfortunately, there are so many confusing information from the internet and the manual attached to my turbo is not the most straightforward manual in the whole world, so I decided to get to know my turbo via trial and error. This means that I set the temperature at 220 C and timed it at 5 or 10 minutes interval until I’m satisfied with its “cookness”.

After potatoes are scrubbed, halved, pierced with fork and smeared with butter on top, I arranged my potatoes with broccoli in the middle as if they are on a meeting. Broccoli got burned unfortunately, so she’s not attending that conference anymore but will be enjoying a jacuzzi with diced carrots next time. Potatoes are quite dense so would you believe it that it took about 30 minutes before they are fully tender and consuming 1300 Watts per hour of our precious electricity? Good thing mom doesn’t read my blogs and since people are barred from the kitchen whenever I’m cooking, turbo and I are still safe from being thrown out.

While my potatoes are halogen-bathing inside my turbo, I boiled my diced carrots until tender then I sautéed it with sweet corn kernel in butter. A pinch of salt and pepper are added of course to taste.

And voila, my glamorous shot of potatoes topped with vegetables.

Sister cooked pork fillet in Mushroom Cream Sauce when I was in Belgium and I love it very much so I thought I could replicate for my Philippine victim’s gastronomic pleasure also.

Ingredients:
500 grams of pork tenderloin
100 grams of bacon
200 ml cooking milk cream
200 ml water
1 pork bouillon cube
Mushrooms
Salt, pepper, and calamansi (or lime?!@)

Direction:
Rub pork with calamansi juice then massaged with salt and pepper. Set aside for an hour or two.

Fry pork in butter for about 2 minutes on each side and then transfer to my turbo broiler for roasting at 220 C for 5 – 10 minutes or until desired “cookness”. Overcooked pork is one hard bad boy to eat while undercooked pork means saying hello to tapeworms and other monsters.

In the same frying pan, sauté mushroom and bacon then add water and pork cube. Bring it to boil and season it with salt and petter again before adding milk cream. Simmer until desired thickness. Top the pork tenderloin with this uber delicious creamy sauce.

Serve with rice or potatoes or whatever suits your fancy.

My brother loves the mushroom and bacon creamy sauce but avoided my pork because he is all dentures now at the age of 27.  As for the rest of my victims, well, they are still alive as of this posting.