Recipe: How to Make Lechon or Crispy Pork Roast (in your oven!)

Lechon....mmmmmm. What can better describe the heavenly taste of Lechon with its crunchy skin with its delicate crispness that is covering the layer of melting fat which introduces the diner to the further tenderness of a slow roasted lean pork?  All that with the blend of the charcoal smoke, the stimulation of salt and the background flavors of tamarind leaves.  Delicious is not enough of an adjective to describe it...just well, mmmmmm. 

Lechon..crispy skin...mmmm.

Unfortunately, here in America, it is a hassle to get lechon -- no Mang Tomas around.  Not even Andok. And if one wants a "do-it-yourself" kit, well, a whole pig for the roasting is not available, unless one knows the local butcher. 

Forget having one of these unless the Desperate Housewives
of the Women's Auxiliary would give a permit.

When I first arrived about twenty years ago landing in Chicago on the way to Milwaukee, my uncle gave me a first hand tour of the wonders of the American supermarket, where cereals come not just in various presentations but in multiple brands including "supermarket-white product" lines that therefore the same corn flakes occupy all the six shelves that span about six feet from the floor up.  Here, I was introduced to "flyless" shopping where meats are in shelves wrapped in Saran wrapped Styrofoam trays. No need for haggling either - for the sticker price is what you pay for what you get!  With this pristine shopping experience, I was very much amused by the seemingly sanitary even sterile conditions that meat is sold.  But I am quite dismayed as well -- after all, what is meat without skin or bones or fat that make the lean flavorful.  What is Adobo without skin but a dull mix of lean with no fat in vinegar and soy sauce.  Skin and  fat in meat - they are the stuff that makes "magic" in Adobo and in any other Filipino dish - including Lechon. 

See what I mean - cereal varieties occupying
a whole aisle!

The problem with Filipinos, it seems, is that we are very proud, sometimes to a fault, to attach to ourselves the moniker, "Brown, Little Americans".  Yes we are brown (some fair or yellow but you get what I mean...). And we are little (though that has changed a lot recently with good nutrition).  But American?  I am American because I adopted US as my home...but for the time when I was in the Philippines and still having my Philippine passport under my possession, I was still and always have been a Filipino. And now, I have stopped being one in 2010 (except at heart and nationality).  But I brought up this point because of we sort of just "go with the flow" with the American milieu when we are in America.  Well, I guess there is nothing wrong with that, it is just like, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do."  But going back again to the experience of American grocery shopping -- since I have been accustomed to buying meats with no skin, fat or bones, the taste of my Adobo, for sometime, changed from flavorful to dull.  Even the Afritada was boring as with other of my Filipino dishes. 

So - Thank God for other cultures.  There is hope.  With the increasing influx of other ethnicities in the US even to the point of equalizing the proportions with the Caucasian Anglo-Saxon (or even not AS) majority - remember that some of what is now considered "white" used to be not in the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries - no offense, but that's how those blurts like "Those Italians!" or "Those (insert race, nationality, color or religion here)!" came to be - so did the need to supply in supermarkets provisions that are reminiscent of food preparation of other cultures.  Take for example, pork shoulder which usually comes with skin and fat trimmed off packaged neatly in a Styrofoam tray and wrapped with shrink-wrap.   Because the supermarket needs to accommodate to consumers that demand these with skin on, hence we are seeing the presence of "intact" pork shoulders - skin and bone intact. 

With that -- now we can make lechon.  Still not the same, the home version is at least an approximation and I finally found out that the trick to making great lechon with its crunchy skin is the process of dehydration.  With this note, the cook's best friend to achieve this end is salt. 

Why salt?  Because it attracts water.  To illustrate, for example, snow in winter.  As one scatters salt, one would notice the attraction of water to the salt particles as it melts the ice crystals.  To be just scientific about it, simply stated, it is osmolality - the ability of particles to attract and therefore move, water molecules. 

In this recipe, we will use this principle of osmolality to dehydrate the pork skin thus making lechon that is crispy on the outside yet juicy and tender on the inside. 

Oven Style Lechon (Crispy Roast Pork) 

• 1 pork shoulder or pork belly (belly may be more preferred due to its regular surface but is a more expensive cut) 
• Salt 

Procedure. 

1. Flay open any parts of the meat that is "hidden" in joints and crevices by "dissecting" underneath using a sharp knife or scissors.  Expose them as flat as possible. 
2. With a sharp knife or fork, puncture the skin in rows thereby increasing the surface area of the skin exposed to air.  This allows the wetness underneath the skin to escape via the puncture holes.  
3. Apply salt.  Not only does this season the meat, but on the skin, it attracts water hidden within the puncture holes.  With salt, the meat skin dehydrates further and facilitates the crisping process.  Wipe the wetness with paper towels. 
4. Leave to dehydrate.  The longer the better. 
5. Wipe off the wetness further.  Cover with aluminum foil so that the moisture of the meat is preserved to yield a juicy roast; yet, with the dehydration of the skin through the puncture that makes it crispy.  Bake in a high oven of 400oF for the first hours except for the last thirty minutes. 
6. When the final thirty minutes start, remove the aluminum foil and bake further.  One may choose to increase the cooking temperature to 500F or broil.  The high temperature would further dehydrate the skin to desired crispness.  If one chooses to really turn up the heat, the same crackling process would be seen although this might produce a bubbly skin similar to pork cracklings or chicharones.  
7. Turn off the heat and leave the meat to rest for a few minutes.  Sometimes, one would notice that the skin would be rubbery soft when hot but as it cools a bit, would become solidified to crispness.  This is essentially the gelatin inherent in the skin.  As the temperature is hot, gelatin turns to liquid phase but as it becomes cold, solid. 
8. Slice and serve with your favorite accompaniment sauces like lechon sauce or Thai chilli sauce.

   

Recipe: Pininyahang Manok (or Pininyang Manok) - The Pineapple Chicken - Marikina's Dish (so says Aling Edith and Aling Zeny)

During her royal days, the First Lady promoting
Marikina as shoe capital of the Philippines
and hopefully, of the world.

Aling Edith and Aling Zeny, sisters who were friends of my mom and dad, used to purchase live hogs from our family farm for slaughter selling the meat in the local meat market in Marikina which in Philippine circles is known for shoe trade.  If one recalls, Imelda Marcos, the former First Lady of the Philippines, prior to leaving Manila, left 3000 pairs in the Malacanang Palace and it was seen that some of her shoes came exclusively hand made for her from this town.  There was a shoe industry promotion then by Imelda, hoping that the Philippines could elevate their products as one of the best in the world to rival that of Milan.  Of course, now that it is about thirty years hence, we know that the product of that effort was just a pipe dream. 

Anyway, I digress. 

Pinyahang Manok with no frills. Just chicken...
and pineapple.

Marikina, I believe is known for a dish called Pininyahang Manok which is translated as "Pineapple Chicken" and whenever we visit their home (located next to a family owned business aside from the pork mongering was the funeral services), they would happily serve this dish displaying it in the middle of the table with pride.  And rightly so for he dish itself has a unique flavor and what makes it so unique is the incorporation of coconut milk with the souring contrasting agent which is pineapple. Much like a cooked Pina Colada, with the flavors of the chicken and spices, it has layers of flavors that build on top of the other.  So imagine, chicken stewed with a hint of spicy ginger and garlic, the bite of peppercorns and green chilies, the sweetness and fragrance of coconut milk and the mildly sour contrast of pineapple on top of newly cooked steamed rice.  Does that sound like heaven?  You bet it is.  So - the recipe... 

Oh, when we say shoe capital, we mean
SHOE capital...OKAY?!

Pininyahang Manok (Pineapple Chicken)

Ingredients. 

•  2 kilos(roughly four pounds) chicken - fattier cuts are preferred like legs and thighs 
• Salt and pepper to taste 
• 1 can coconut milk (or if available, 1 package frozen Philippine coconut milk - thawed) 
• 1/2 pineapple, peeled and cored and sliced or if preferred 1 16oz can pineapple chunks or tidbits 
• 1 head garlic, peeled and chopped 
• 1 thumbsized ginger, peeled and chopped 
• 2-3 bay leaves 
• 1 whole green chili 

 

Version One:  Version traditionnelle. 

 

This version is how Aling Edith and Aling Zeny used to do it with some modifications which I believe, are needed to bring out the flavors of the spices.  Likewise, I think it is important that we keep the dish uniquely a chicken dish; hence, the elimination of other ingredients which I believe, dilute the flavors and send the final palatal effects somewhere.  Thus, there are no vegetables like other versions that are seen in the 'net - like carrots or potatoes. 

Procedure. 

1. Wash chicken pieces and cut through the joints, legs separated from the thighs.  Season with salt and pepper and leave to marinade for about a hour or so. 
2. In a hot braising pot, heat about an eighth cup of oil and saute the garlic and ginger together.  Once fragrant, add the chicken and saute further until somewhat half-cooked.  Covering the pot intermittently while lowering the heat would aid in bringing out the fat from the chicken which promotes the frying of the pieces of meat while dehydrating it - somewhat like a process similar to confit. 
3. Add the coconut milk and pineapple and add the bay leaves.  Stir a bit to incorporate the ingredients.  Place the green chili on top and cover and simmer under low or low medium heat for about an hour or so until the chicken is tender and the coconut milk has reduced to desired thickness.  Salt and pepper further if desired to taste.  Serve on top of hot rice. 

   

   The grand pineapple.

Version Two: French Oven Version 

Lately, I brought this dish to work to celebrate one of the staff member's birthday that evening.  Since I work nights and it was quite tedious for me to be cooking that morning coming home from the hospital after a twelve hour shift and I still have to work that evening, I decided to modify the recipe with the use of a French oven.  It's more of a "set it and forget it" kind of thing.  Now, in the dish that I made that evening, I used pineapple juice instead of pineapple chunks or tidbits.  But in this recipe, I would stick to the pineapple itself.  Note that the ingredients are the same as above. 

Procedure. 

1. Wash the chicken pieces and cut at the joints to separate the thighs from the legs.  Salt and pepper to taste and leave to marinade for about an hour. 
2. In a French oven, heat an eight cup of oil and saute the garlic and ginger until fragrant. 
3. Add the chicken pieces and saute further, lowering the heat though maintaining a high temperature to partially cook the chicken as the fat begins to come out of the meat. 
4. Pour in the coconut milk and pineapple. Add the bay leaves. Mix lightly until incorporated.  Putting the chili on top, cover and transfer to the oven, baking for two hours at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.  
5. Once done, turn off the oven and you may leave the pot in the oven covered as the temperature lowers spontaneously.  You may also remove the French oven and serve immediately.  Serve with hot steamed rice. 

Tips. 

• As always with any Filipino dish, the art here is in the process of using the immense amount of chicken fat in the thighs and legs to cook the meat as it is being penetrated by spices and other flavors such as the coconut and pineapple.  It is somewhat the technique in making confit though confit utilizes longer cooking hours as the meat is slowly cooked in fat under lower temperatures.   Resting the dish for a few hours or even overnight prior to serving usually intensifies the flavors. 

Recipe: How to Make Congee (Lugaw or Tsuok)

Something ought to be said about the problem with haute cuisine -- (a) it is haughty patoity, (b) it's rather complicated and (c) it can get rather tiresome.  Anyway - because of the above, I have come back to the pleasures of home cooking starting with the joys of lugaw or congee. 

Congee...mmmm!

Oh yes.  Congee.  Who among my reading audience does not know Congee -- probably some in the US.  But in the Philippines, this is widely known as apple pie in the States.  Roughly translated as rice porridge, it is more than that because it is not as bland as oatmeal and certainly does not mean sweet.  It is tasty like chicken noodle soup but not boring as that.  It has complex flavors and the texture is quite unique -- the trick is not just in the components that make the flavor but rather in the way the rice is cooked.  And yes! It is quite a very economical dish for it only takes a cup of uncooked rice to make more than a gallon of congee when it should just yield probably at most two cups of cooked rice. 

Now, to add, Congee is more than just a thick rice soup - for rice soups here in the States are usually seen as  loose cooked rice amidst the broth and meat which is very much like a chicken noodle only that the noodles were replaced by rice.  The joy in eating congee is the fact that the texture is soft and heavenly which glides on the tongue.  Coupled with the different flavors that may flavor the thick well fluffed rice porridge, the crunchies on the top serve as texture contrasts while the thinly sliced green spring onions give likewise a mildly pungent aroma to the delicate overall taste of the dish.  And because it is served hot, it is the perfect cold, storm weather, rainy day treat.  It is perfect, reminding one of home. 

The trick in making great Congee is not really in the flavor accents such as the meats or chicken or the meatballs or seafood.  Of course, they do help but first and foremost, Congee is rice.  And therefore, the emphasis is how the rice is cooked.  After all, does anyone want Congee with rice grains as tough as plain steamed rice?  Secondly, as the rice gets fluffed further from the long gentle boiling, the inner flavors of the grains become more exposed thus making the soup more fragrant and providing a further "blank canvass" for the meats and seafood to become naked to the palate.  My Caucasian American friends have exposed me to the many varieties of potatoes and how they are cooked and what makes a potato great for frying or baking or boiling or salads etc. 

This is plain congee.  As one can see within
the bowl, the rice has disintegrated.

On my part, at first I really did not understand the many ways of cooking potatoes much more the many varieties of them and their ultimate purpose but eventually I did learn.  Vis, they seem not to understand the many varieties of rice and more so, the various ways of presenting, cooking and eating them and no wonder we have many words pertaining to the grain.  "Bigas", for uncooked rice; "Kanin" for steamed rice, "Lugaw" for rice porridge, "Malagkit" for glutinous rice,  "Pinipig" for cooked but pounded glutinous rice, "Am" for the rice water and so on.  And in addition, we have words that pertain to different ways of cooking rice such as "Bibingka" for baked rice cake, "Puto" for steamed rice cake, "Kutsinta" for steamed, gelatinized consistency of glutinous rice, "Kalamay Pinipig" for a solidified, caked glutinous dessert based on the Pinipig as opposed to the "Kalamay" which is usually made of cassava.  But it is not just the sweet based rice dishes but there are also the savory ones as well such as, "Arroz Caldo", the Philippine version of the Congee based on chicken with a saffron flavoring, or the "Paella/Arroz Valenciana", resembling the Spanish paella, which is now made Filipino with the addition of tomato sauce and sometimes coconut milk. 

But back to the Congee, the main thing is the rice.  It has to be fluffy to the point of disintegration, that there is not semblance of whole rice.  As this stage is reached, the starch hidden within the rice grains are released, making the soup thick with a velvety texture.  In this recipe, I hope we can recreate this texture by applying techniques that would  achieve this product. 

Congee (Lugaw Puti) 

Ingredients 

1 cup long grain rice 

8 quarts water 

Procedure 

1. In a 16 quart stockpot, boil water.  Meanwhile, mixing about one or two glasses of water with the rice, blend the mixture using the highest speed, breaking the rice to smallest pieces as possible.  The water in the blender will become opaque white and the rice broken to small grains.  Once the water in the stockpot begins to boil, pour the blendered rice, stirring frequently to prevent the rice sticking together and settling at the bottom.  Once mixed with the hot water, cover and turn the heat up and once it boils again, turn the heat down to simmer.  It may also be necessary to leave the cover on the side, providing a small slit to let the steam escape and prevent the congee from overflowing as it cooks. 
2. It is in this long simmering process that the rice fluffs further.  As the rice opens up, the starch is released making the soup thick while the rice disintegrates.  This is the character of good congee and it is further promoted by regular stirring which breaks the rice and prevents it from sticking at the bottom of the stockpot which has a tendency to burn and leave a nasty black brown residue and not to mention flavor to the congee. In the event that some of the rice does stick at the bottom of the pot, don't panic - stir the congee as one would previously, but try not to scrape the bottom of the pot which releases the crust exposing the charred rice to soup spoiling the flavor. 
3. The liquid will reduce by a third.  Once done, the congee would be very thick, velvety and neutral in flavor.  Once that is that, turn off the fire and its time to enjoy it.   

First Version: Soy Sauce Poached Fish with Plain White Congee. 

Ingredients 

Fancy presentation of Soy Sauce
Poached Fish.

• 2 filets white fish: tilapia, flounder, milk fish or any similar fish 
• 1 thumbsized ginger, peeled and sliced 
• 1/4 head garlic, peeled and chopped 
• 1/4 head onion, peeled and sliced 
• 2 tablespoons sugar 
• 1-2 tablespoons fermented black beans (tausi) 
• 1/8 cup soy sauce 
• 1/4 cup water 

Procedure 

Saute the garlic and ginger until fragrant. Saute onion next until clear.  Add sugar to caramelize.  Saute the black beans next.  Add soy sauce and water and cover to boil lightly.  Once boiling, poach the fish until done.  Serve hot as a flavoring dish to the plain white congee. 

Second Version: Seafood, Mushroom with Century Egg Congee. 

 

How you flavor your congee is up to you.  But this is one version that you could do. 

Ingredients 

• 1 filet white fish, cut into chunks 
• 3 fish balls (Hokkien "he-I" Mandarin "Yui-Chiow"), cut in quarters 
• 3 seafood balls, cut in quarters 
• 1 century egg, peeled, halved and sliced 
• 1/4 head garlic, peeled and chopped 
• 1/4 head onion, peeled and sliced or chopped 
• 1 thumbsized ginger, peeled and sliced or chopped 
• salt to taste 
• Dash or dashes of sesame seed oil 
• 1 raw egg (optional if you are salmonella paranoid) 
• Chopped chives or spring onions to taste 
• 1 Chinese cruller (Filipino "bitso-bitso" or Mandarin "Yew Thiaw") 

 

Okay. This is the Century Egg.  It's a fermented
duck egg in ammonia (usually made of highly
concentrated tea solution and mud but modern
techniques eliminated the mud) for a
hundred days - hence, "century".

This are fish balls.

Chinese crullers.

The more traditional tausi that
we see in the Philippines.

But actually tausi can also be dried though
still very salty.

Procedure 

1. Saute garlic and ginger until fragrant.  Add onions and saute further.  Once lightly cooked, add the congee until the pot is almost 3/4ths full.  Stir and let boil.  Once boiling add rest of ingredients, lower the heat and cover to simmer for about five minutes.  Salt to taste and add dashes of sesame seed oil to taste. 
2. In a personal sized bowl (which is up to you), crack an egg and ladle in the hot prepared congee.  Top with sliced crullers and spring onions.  Serve hot. 

Notes. 

• I cannot over emphasize the need for vigilance in preparing the basic congee.  Again, once one burns the rice underneath and that gets to contaminate the rice porridge, the flavor is destroyed.  Might as well start new.  Therefore, occasional stirrings are needed to prevent burning the congee. 
• Always, keep the lid a bit oven for an escape vent to prevent overflows and messing the stovetop.  It happens.  
• Be free to experiment with flavors.  You can use Hong-Ma (known as "Red Stewed Pork" in Hokkien cuisine), "Ma-Hu" (Hokkien Dried Shredded Pork), Tau-Kiam (Hokkien Fermented Bean Curd) - almost anything.  It's very much like a sandwich.  How you want your sandwich is your own affair.  In fact, in Hong Kong, there are these small stalls for Congee which the different condiments are exposed and the diner picks what he wants for the cook to saute in a small pot in which the congee is then added and then served with the Chinese cruller and spring onions on top.

  

  Fermented Bean Curd.

  

  Ma-Hu known also as "Pork Sung"