Filipino sauce mixes

[Englishman2010]

On my last trip to the Phil's I bought some packets of Knorr Filipino sauce mixes from a supermarket.
I've just taken the Menudo sauce mix out of the cupboard and had a read of the instructions, and of course they are all in Tagalog
I think I'll just chuck it in the pan with some browned off chicken and veggies, add some water and some extra garlic and chillies, simmer for half an hour and see what happens
If it tastes like s**t, I'll add some extra chillies, that usually does the trick for me.
I'm not even sure what Menudo is, but as it has pics of tomatoes on the packet, an educated guess is that it's a tomato based sauce.

Other delights in my cupboard are:

Ginataang Gulay - which looks coconuty
and Sinigang sa Sampalok 2 in 1 mix.

Looking at the packets again, they are in a mixture of Tagalog and English, all the useless info like where it's made, the ingredients and nutritional info is English, but the important stuff like how to cook it is in Tagalog

[Moy]

try this recipe and it taste good my price should be sauces mixes if you got spare

http://cooklet.ph/recipes/details/1210

or

http://www.cookingwithpeachy.com/wor...peachys-style/

[Englishman2010]

Thanks for the links Moy I might have a go at some of the recipes on the second link
As for the sauce mixes, the menudo is currently simmering away in the pan, I've just had a little taste of it and it is more or less what I thought, and tastes quite nice, but I'll spice it up a little with a few drops of Dave's Total Insanity Sauce as I need my daily endorphin rush

[Moy]

no probls..sauce mixes is basically handy on making the dish easy but personallly i would prefer making my own spice and stuff to create that mixture..like the menudo..sweet and sour..caldereta and many more..

[Englishman2010]

I agree, I usually make all my own sauces, but as I bought these I thought I'd give them a go
There was a slight change of plan though, the chicken breasts I got out of the freezer this morning hadn't defrosted so I had a make a quick substitution for Quorn mince which can be cooked from the freezer.

[Englishman2010]

Well, that was OK, the sauce had a bit too much MSG and tasted a bit too manufactured, but it was edible. The boffins at Unilever who think up these sauce recipes need to leave out the MSG and find another more natural thickening agent......like cement

[Terpe]

Well, that was OK, the sauce had a bit too much MSG and tasted a bit too manufactured, but it was edible. The boffins at Unilever who think up these sauce recipes need to leave out the MSG and find another more natural thickening agent......like cement

Well done for trying.
If you can make the time you'll find recipes made from scratch with fresh ingredients are sooooo much better.
I mostly find the packet sauces are OK but too salty for me.

[Englishman2010]

I agree Terpe, I do enjoy cooking and making my own dishes from scratch and also enjoy experimenting. TBH I only bought these sauces in the Phil's out of curiosity and as a convenience. I also agree about processed food being too salty, I never use it myself and always find it a shock to the system when I eat in the Phil's as everything is so salty.

[Terpe]

Tonight we had a lovely roast shoulder of lamb with all the usual trimmings.
Our daughter loves lamb. My wife hates it.
She just ate the veggies and yorkshire pudding
I used about 40 cloves of garlic

and some fresh rosemary

[Englishman2010]

Sounds delicious Terpe, I absolutely love lamb, especially if it's slow roasted like the Greeks and Cypriots do it

[Terpe]

Sounds delicious Terpe, I absolutely love lamb, especially if it's slow roasted like the Greeks and Cypriots do it

Get back to your Adobo

[Englishman2010]

Get back to your Adobo

Too salty for me

On my last trip I was determined to reduce my salt intake, which meant no adobo

[sars_notd_virus]

On my last trip I was determined to reduce my salt intake, which meant no adobo

you can use superior light soy sauce for your adobo Ian...I am also not keen to use filipino sauce mixes because of the MSG, but i do use Bisto beef granules to go with my caldereta.

[Englishman2010]

Thanks Sars, yes I do use light Soy sauce when I cook at home But unfortunately, when I'm in the Phil's, it is unlikely that a restaurant or cafe will use light soy sauce - they probably have 45 gallon drums of industrial strength maximum salt soy sauce in their store rooms and then add extra salt just to make sure it's salty enough

[Terpe]

............and then add extra salt just to make sure it's salty enough

Carina dips strawberries into salt
Claims they taste better

[South-east boy]

Here's when I made some Sinigang na hipon using the Knorr Sinigang sa sampalok mix. I saw so many different recipe's and ingredients, I thought why not do my own version and added some courgette and a sweet potatoe to the onion, fine beans (as couldn't find the long beans), kang kong (water spinach), gabi, tomatoes, pink raddish (as I couldn't find the long white raddish) and ginger. Trouble was it didn't say how many people the recipe would serve, and I ended up with a big wok-ful (about 4 servings worth) for just myself! Lol! Anyway's, here's some pics whilst I was preapring and cooking it:













I wanted to try making it, as it was Viva's favourite! I liked it, so will try it again and this time, I'll know how many servings it makes!

[Englishman2010]

Thanks for sharing the pics SEB, it looks very tasty. That's the same Knorr mix I have, well actually I've got 3 of them. You've inspired me to have a go

[Terpe]

I'm a fan of Sinigang with Hipon or Baboy.

Must say SEB, I'm ever so impressed with your recipes and photo's

Well done

[South-east boy]

Thanks guys. I have one of the other Knorr Sinigang mixes too which I'll try out sometime.

Here's a link to the recipe, but there are a few points which I'll mention below (I mentioned them briefly earlier):
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http...ja&h=QAQDUkm3k

no.3) Gabi (they are the brown things in the pics and are white inside) you'll only find them in an asian shop It says that it makes a difference to the taste, but I don't know-you could possibly leave it out?

no.4) Radish-I couldn't find the long type they showed in the pic, so just used the smaller round dark pink ones.

no.5) String beans/yard long beans-I couldn't find those, so used fine beans which look pretty much the same, apart from being shorter!

no.6) Kang kong (river spinach). I bought this from the asian shop as well, but you could probably use normal spinach instead.

no.11). Ignore!

Also even if you did use pork, cooking those ingredients for an hour would make them way too soft!

As the packet mix already has sampalok (tamarind), you don't need to add anymore -not sure why that recipe says that! Same with the chilli's-it's hot enough as it is!

I used the Sinigang sa Sampalok mix original. If you can't find any, you'll find recipee's online that use tamarind paste or actual tamarind and fish, pork or chicken stock.

I also added 1 sweet potatoe, some grated ginger (both of those two are in some other recipee's) and 2 courgettes. I guess you could choose what veggies to put in really and don't see why you couldn't use carrott or cellery. All the recipee's seem to have the river spinach, onion and tomatoes though.

I found it made enough for around 4 people I guess, especially if you have rice as well!

Here's another recipee:
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&sou...xcQ-og&cad=rja

There's plenty more version online too!