Quarantine Cooking: Pancit Bihon & Lumpia Shanghai

I mentioned in another post that I was hankering for the dishes my mom cooked for our family growing up. Yesterday for the very first time, I cooked Pancit Bihon. But I started first with a Mai Tai cooler--lots of ice, Malibu, dark rum, pineapple juice and pineapple chunks, and a little coconut cream. 

I've a feeling this will be my favorite slushie for summer, not too sweet but very fruity and fragrant.

With drink nearby, I cut up pork into bite-sized pieces, but I wish I had cut the meat even smaller like my mom used to. I seasoned the meat with a little Chinese vinegar, Filipino soy sauce as well as salt and pepper and garlic powder and onion powder and a bit of cayenne.

I took out pre-cooked frozen shrimp to thaw.

I had bought bok choi earlier in the day when I also had to pick up shrimp for this week's kare kare and rinsed it in the sink along with the pea shoots.

While at Ranch 99, I picked up a bottle of this sweet chili sauce to zhush the chicken lumpia I found at Safeway a month ago. I've discovered I like the vinegar and garlic and black pepper dipping sauce I grew up with for my lumpia. Now I need to figure out what else to cook with this sweet chili sauce to use it up, so maybe a Thai sweet chili chicken dish.

The instructions on the package of rice noodles called for soaking and then draining them, and so I poured hot water and then cold and let it soak until pliant. Big mistake. 

There was a lot of moisture from the vegetables and the pork and its sauce that made my noodles a big soggy and a different kind of pancit. Next time, do not soak the noodles for Pancit Bihon in order to achieve that dry fry texture of my mom's pancit. Also my neighbor, Cecilia who also grew up with pancit, said that the noodles are so thin that they easily soak up any kind of cooking liquid.

My mise en place on the top of my fire pit which I never did mosaic the top of--oh well--I'm glad I'm no longer obsessed with tile and glass and their cutters.

Years ago I brought home from the Philippines a wok, but it was so heavy and made to use directly over a flame, either gas or a stick fire. Very impractical. Instead I now keep a 12-inch cast iron, which retains heat, and so I let it heat on my electric burner for almost an hour to attain the heat of a wok.

Nope. Wok frying is akin to pizza baking in that you need super, sizzling, surrounding hot hot hot surfaces to achieve the results of quick cooking. I had to let this pork stew in fat for at least half an hour to achieve some kind of crispness. 

Asian cooking is not my forte, and so my vegetables didn't receive that quick fire stir fry texture needed for Pancit Bihon. I tried to evaporate the moisture from the meat and the vegetables. If I ever make this again, I need to figure out another method, which may merely be to not soak the rice noodles.

And I used pea shoots instead of cabbage. Another failed experiment, but at least the flavors were right for the pancit.

I went with it and tried to get my noodles as dry as possible and then forgot about the shrimp. Doh! And so I was microwaving the shrimp before nestling in the pancit. I had two hard boiled eggs in my fridge and remember fondly my mom sometimes adding them to our family noodles. The lemon slices are purely for show here, but really I should have reserved them for the dinner plate. Pancit Bihon as I remember from parties is a dish that can be served almost at room temperature and I miss the crunch and firm texture of celery and carrots in my mother's stir fried noodles though the flavor profile was there because of the garlic and black pepper.

I then put the pancit on the stove top to remain warm and then started heating oil in my smaller cast iron to fry the Lumpia Shanghai. From this frying and reading other cooking blogs, the key is not to stint on the oil and have it hot enough not to golden brown your lumpia but not so hot that it burns.

I tried to fry my Lumpia Shanghai in varying shades of mahogany to light gold. They were pretty delicious and I think everyone's favorite part of the meal.