Ang Sarap (A Tagalog word for "It's Delicious")

Pinapaitan

Pinapaitan is a very popular dish in the Northern Part of the Philippines more specifically in Ilocos Region, the original dish consists of goat and ox innards and its meat flavored with bile, tamarind and chillies.  This is not for the faint hearted as this will be up in the ranks of the strangest dishes together with Haggis, Eskimo Ice Cream, Blood Pudding, Frog Sashimi and Maggot Cheese.

Pinapitan came from the word “pait” which means bitter hence the bile.  I remember I spent my college days in Baguio (The Summer capital of the Philippines) which is in the northern region and one of my friends Uncle always cook this dish and I really love it, its good for cold season specially in Baguio which is cold compared to other parts of the Philippines.

Today in where I live it is hard to get the ingredients specially the bile that’s why we need to improvise some ingredients and in this case we will be using bitter gourds as the bittering agent.  By using the improvised ingredients its easy to serve it to non Filipino guests as it would look less like an episode of Fear Factor for them.

Ingredients

600g ox tripe, cleaned, cooked and sliced into small pieces
250g pork heart, sliced into small pieces
250g pork liver, sliced into small pieces
250g pork belly, sliced into small pieces
2 pcs medium sized bitter gourd, seeded and finely chopped
1 whole garlic, minced
1 thumb size ginger, crushed and sliced finely
2 medium size red onion, chopped
1 big packet sinigang mix (tamarind mix)
6 green finger chillies (siling haba)
1 tbsp cayenne pepper
fish sauce
salt
freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup vinegar
1 to 1.5 liters beef stock
oil

Method

1. Marinate liver for 30 minutes in vinegar then set aside.
2. In a pot saute garlic, ginger and onion in oil.
3. Add all meat ingredients except for the liver, stir fry for 1 minute until some brown color appear on the meat.
4. Add beef stock, bitter gourd and chillies (do not slice).  Bring to a boil and simmer for 25 minutes.
5. Drain the vinegar out of the liver.
6. Add sinigang mix and liver simmer for additional 10 minutes
7. Flavour with fish sauce (according to your taste) and season with freshly ground black pepper.