Cooking: Pancit Luglug

I used to be embarrassed by the reduplication in Filipino words. A son named Bongbong? What the hell with such a weird sound and why? And yet, I'm calling my dog Sa(y)Sa(y) instead of Sadie, and now my husband even knows the Filipino word for underarm, which is kilikili. Lately, I've been longing to cook Luglug, a Kapampangan dish, which means to rinse or wash--I think specifically to shake and shake again so that the cornstarch noodles shed all the water that you've soaked and boiled them in so that they separate before topping it with the pork and annatto gravy and shrimp and hardboiled egg, sprinkled with crushed chicharrones and chopped scallions and fried garlic bits and then squeezing calamansi, a Philippine lime or lemon before chowing down.

I had trekked a couple weekends ago to Seafood City to pick up ground pork and the specialty noodles and annatto. And found the annatto as well as a spice packet (I bought both just in case my first attempt to make the dish from scratch was a fail) for the dish and Calamansi citrus. And laid it all out into a mise en place when I was ready to cook along with chopped scallions, poached shrimp, and some hardboiled heirloom eggs.

I saw online that the recipe called for fried garlic as a garnish. I already had declined to buy the tinapa or smoked fish as an additional garnish for the dish. But I suppose I had to if I was gonna try to recreate the flavors. I had also asked a grocery clerk where the shrimp bouillon was and told they were out, and so I asked, well if I boiled shrimp shells, that would be the same thing right? "Oh that would be the best mam!" He even walked me to the seafood aisle of shrimp pastes and dried fish to assist me with the gathering of ingredients for my pancit luglug. And so I had to fry my minced garlic. And make shrimp stock from the shrimp shells of the shellfish that I just poached. I also thought I should chop an onion to sauté with the ground pork. Flavor after all is key. I also took out my fish sauce to add to the pork.

And then as I was heating a pan to sauté the onions and the pork, after I had browned the garlic and crushed the chicharrones, I remembered the noodles. Oh wow. The noodles need to soak for 10 minutes (I probably went 3 minutes longer) and then boil for 10 minutes.

And I might have boiled the noodles longer than 10 minutes because I didn't boil them like Italian pasta where I plunge the dry pasta into boiling water, but brought them to boil in the same water in which they soaked.

And I noticed too that yeah you need to shake shake shake shake the noodles a lot as well as break them up with your fingers in order to separate them and not be a sticky mass.

I assembled my neighbor, Cecilia's dish first, hurriedly slicing hard boiled eggs and calamansi limes. And then laid the noodles down on my own dish for my dinner.

I tasted my gravy and was surprised by the smoky fish flavor. I guess there's tinapa already dehydrated and ground up into the spice packet. I debated adding more annatto to the sauce to make it more orangey. But no time. After the pork, the shrimp. And then removed the shrimp because I needed to sprinkle chicharrones and scallions first.

And then artfully as possible arranged quartered longwise slices of hardboiled egg and halved Calamansi.

If you use a spice packet like I did this first time around, you don't need to do the extra step of flaking and garnishing your dish with tinapa. I also am okay without the smoked fish flavor.

Filipinos eat, if not scooping rice into their hands, with a fork and spoon, and so that's how I laid out my utensils. Again I'm not sure if I like the smoked fish flavor. I'll have to cook it again and discover my palate for this dish because it didn't seem to taste like my mom's.