Maritime Southeast Asia · Volume 50, The Vinegar Line, the Sizzling Plate and the Whole Roast Pig
Batchoy
Ilonggo Iloilo and Panay
Illustration
- Time
- 2 hours
- Researched
- Researched from 124 sources in the brief
La Paz batchoy grew rich on the same nineteenth-century Negros sugar money that filled Iloilo City with the largest concentration of colonial-era ancestral mansions of any Philippine city, a depth of local wealth and identity that helped make Iloilo City the Philippines' first, and so far only, UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy, in October 2023.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. About 2 hours.
Ingredients
- 500 g pork bones and meat
- 500 g pork belly
- 2.3 litres water
- 2 tbsp guinamos (fermented shrimp paste)
- 400g fresh miki egg noodles
- 300g pork belly, 150g pork liver and 2 pieces pork heart, sliced sliced boiled pork and offal, to top
- for garnish crushed chicharon
- for garnish fried garlic
- for garnish chopped spring onion
- 1 per bowl raw egg
Method
- Simmer the pork bones and meat with the pork belly in the water for a rich stock, roughly two hours.
- Season with the guinamos, fermented shrimp paste.
- Cook fresh miki egg noodles separately and portion them into bowls.
- Top with sliced boiled pork and offal, crushed chicharon, fried garlic and chopped spring onion, and pour the hot broth over.
- Crack a raw egg into each bowl at the table, letting it cook gently in the residual heat of the broth as it is stirred through.
What a modern chef changes
A pressure-extracted stock, and the guinamos bloomed rather than stirred in raw
Rung 5
Method
- Pressure-extract the pork and beef bones for a longer, more concentrated stock than an open simmer allows, then clarify it through an egg white raft for genuine clarity.
- Bloom the guinamos in a little rendered pork fat before it joins the broth, rather than stirring it in raw, so its fermented character rounds out into the stock rather than sitting on top of it, exactly Rung 5's principle.
- Make the chicharon in house, pork skin confited slowly in its own fat until fully tender, then dried and flash-fried at high heat for a genuinely shattering crackling rather than a bought, softer commercial version.
- Poach the egg separately at 63°C for precise, repeatable doneness, a set white and a soft, still-flowing yolk, then lower it into the bowl at the table rather than cracking it raw, keeping the ritual of the tableside finish while controlling the one variable the traditional method leaves to chance.