Green Salad with Fuji Apples and Oven-Grilled Pork Belly with Pinakurat

Dinners are special for my family; it's the only meal of the day we get to share food at the dinner table except for weekends and holidays of course. Last night was no exception. After my husband pick me up from work until we reached home, we couldn't decide what to eat for dinner. It depends on what's the fastest dish I can whip up in the kitchen. Pork barbecue was his answer and mine was some greens and apple salad.

Some of the ingredients are not available at home so we pass by the grocers. Some fruit, sack of rice and veggies are already in our cart and we are almost done shopping when we saw the shelf of sukang pinakurat.  The main ingredient of this Filipino dipping sauce was coconut sap or tuba and birds eye chilies or labuyo. I heard from friends that it's perfect for grilled dishes so we gave it a try.  It did not disappoint even if its smell is too strong for me. It does compliment the oven grilled pork belly though-sarap ng anghang di nangangagat.

For the oven grilled pork belly, I mixed 1 sachet of marinade mix to 1/2 kilo of meat and then oven grill it until it's well done. Very simple and quick but on other days when I have plenty of time, I create my own marinade mix from natural ingredients- mahirap yung laging instant di ba. For the salad, I had some romaine lettuce washed and roughly chopped, 1 medium size tomato cubed, a cucumber cubed and 1 Fuji apple cored, peeled and cubed, cut into bite size. For the salad dressing, I used the juice of 1 lemon and olive oil, salt, and pepper to taste. I pour the dressing just before serving the salad, this prevents the veggies from becoming limp-I like my greens crisp. Over dinner, we get to talk about what happened during the day at work and at school. Nothing beats family bonding like this.

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