Cooking moments: Kare kare

I have always been a fan of Kare-kare. It has always been my favorite Filipino dish. I can eat it with rice for days! I love to cook and kare-kare has always been my hurdle. I don't know I think the good taste of it always intimidated me and I would only have it during special occasions or when we eat out. With my dad being ill, me and my mom would think of ways for him to have vegetables. So kare-kare was one of them. My dad can have all the vegetables he can eat without the bland taste.

Mommy bought all the ingredients for it already and planned to cook it one fine Sunday morning for lunch but she and my younger sister have to go out that day to the dentist! I was left to cook it. My mind was racing! Oh gosh.. how would I do it? So I opened the internet and read the instructions... The first website provided the steps and I found it easy. I told myself, this could not be the kare-kare I always ate so on to the next Google result.... Hmmmm! It is the same!

Armed with the instructions in my head, I prepared the ingredients:

• 1 kilo of pork (you can use the usual tripe, oxtail or beef chunks, I used pork since beef will be harder to cook and because of budget constraints!)
• Pechay
• Banana blossom (puso ng saging)
• Eggplant
• green beans (sitaw)
• ground peanuts
• ground rice
• achiote seeds extract
• garlic
  
• onion
• cooking oil
  

I really do not measure. I based the quantity of the vegetables with the number of servings. Since daddy will be eating it, I put more vegetables. This is not a cheating recipe. Notice that I did not use any kare-kare mix or peanut butter but used the ground peanuts that you can buy at the local market. You can use these items if you don't have any resource to buy the ground peanuts.

For the steps:

1. Boil the meat until tender. In my case it was a short time. I boiled them while I prepare and cut the remaining ingredients. I like kitchen preparation. I would usually do a mis en place.. have all the ingredients ready and place them on the stove, just like what they do on cooking shows!
2. Set aside the boiled meat and broth.
3. Saute garlic and onion in another pan with cooking oil. Place the sauteed items in the pot of boiled meat.
   
4. Set to boil.
5. Add achiote extract and peanut grounds.
6. Put in green beans, banana blossoms, eggplant and boil until tender.
7. Add the ground rice. Be careful with this one since it will thicken the sauce. Use it according to your desired thickness.
8. Place the pechay on the last part of the cooking process.

I am no longer intimated by kare-kare. I will be looking forward to the next time I will cook it. My mom told my sister to watch out the following weekend for I might cook the dish again since she, well all of my family, knew that it is my favorite.