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May

21

Dealing with Patis

Filed Under General | 20 Comments

I’m the cook of the house. That’s the deal with Ilyn. I’ll do the marketing and cooking, she’ll wash the dishes. I hate washing dishes, and I love cooking so it’s really no contest. Modesty aside, I think I’m a pretty good cook. More than once I thought that if the comic book thing doesn’t work out, I’ll go into the restaurant business. But one of the things that’s keeping me from actually doing it is the fear that I’ll poison people. Not intentionally of course, but you know how it is. I don’t want to risk killing people, or at the very least ruining people’s stomachs, even by accident. I don’t want to be responsible for people’s lives. At least with comics, I’m only responsible for corrupting young people’s minds. I can live with that.

I have a lot of specialties including pasta. I have a lot of successful pasta dishes, which includes my own version of spaghetti, Pilipino style spaghetti, pasta with white sauce, lasagna, baked macaroni, etc. I also have a recipe for giant taco, which is actually very easy to do, except for the shell which I make from molding lumpia wrappers.

The one thing I have difficulty doing is traditional Filipino dishes. I have successful recipes for Chicken Curry (my most watched video on You Tube) and Beef Caldereta, but stuff like adobo and also anything where I have to deal with patis, I’m having trouble with.

Adobo, whether it’s pork, chicken or a combination of both, is easy enough to make, but making terrific adobo, that’s very difficult. I still can’t get the hang of the proportion between vinegar and soy sauce. The other day I made ginisang kabute, which is a very simple dish, really. Ilyn can cook it really well, but mine turned out to be a disaster because I couldn’t get the patis proportion right.

One of the most recent Filipino dishes I learned to cook is Adobong Manok sa Gata, which is basically chicken with coconut milk, vinegar and young papaya. I’m really happy I learned to cook that because it’s turning out to be one of my personal favorites.

I actually get a lot of requests at You Tube to do more cooking videos, which I could oblige, but making cooking videos takes a long time to do, and lately, I really don’t have that much time to spare. I did shoot one video for a modified recipe of Arroz ala Cubana, replacing ground beef with ground chicken, but I’ve yet to find time to edit it.

Comments

20 Responses to “Dealing with Patis”

  1. Rod Samonte on May 21st, 2008 12:12 pm

    Gerry,
    I love spaghetti, pasta and any noodles. Right now, my wife and I are constantly looking for the best Ramen in town. We’re both vegetarians and we found a place we always go back to, Mr. Ramen in Little Tokyo, and they serve what we think is the best Sea Weed Ramen. I’ve watch your cooking videos and I think they’re great. I’ve always been interested in cooking, and I have hundreds of cookbooks. I once had an interest in making a comic strip with a chef as the main character. That, I think, is something you might do, since your a cook and a comic illustrator. A three or four-frame weekly or daily strip with a recipe to be published in the food section of a newspaper. Why not make some money with your culinary knowledge? The possibilities of this is endless, don’t you think?
    Rod

  2. jeff huet on May 21st, 2008 12:18 pm

    Naku! Pareho pala tayo when it comes to ADOBO! It always turns into disater hehe:D With two kids na makulit I’m forced to cook even with a tight schedule. Wawa kasi Mrs ko lagi na lang pagod:D

  3. Azrael on May 21st, 2008 12:46 pm

    awwwww!!! i miss your food at home

  4. Gerry Alanguilan on May 21st, 2008 1:24 pm

    he.he. naiisip ko pa lang Rod, natatawa na ako. Naiisip ko “chef” sya, and he believes he’s a really good chef but in fact, he’s really bad at it. He just makes these dishes almost by accident. Yeah… something worth thinking about. :D

  5. Ed on May 21st, 2008 1:41 pm

    Adobo kasi dalawa ang pampalasa; soysauce and vinegar. Either you want it to taste more soury or salty. In my case, I add brown sugar giving it a bit of sweety taste. Much better sa adobong pata.

    I rarely use patis sa pagluluto. I don’t know why. :\

  6. Gerry Alanguilan on May 21st, 2008 1:48 pm

    Ako man, Ed… laging iodized salt gamit ko pampaalat. Di ako gumagamit ng MSG. Banned dito sa bahay yun. Pero merong mga luto na mas masarap pag patis ang gamit… tulad ng tinola. Sinubukan ko na sya na asin lang, pero di ganun kasarap e, kumapara sa patis ang gamit.

  7. Jose Mari Lee on May 21st, 2008 2:02 pm

    What really kills me is the smell of patis. It’s horrible. Though Thailand has a good-smelling patis called THREE CRABS BRAND. Once my sister cooked some stirfry veggies and it tasted so good. I asked her what made this fantastic taste on it and she said: ano pa, di yung kaaway mong… PATIS! I couldn’t believe it. So she showed me the bottle. It has the image of three crabs. I smelled it. It wasn’t bad at all.

    For adobo, what makes it smell so bad is VINEGAR. If you don’t want your house to stink while cooking adobo, use LEMON instead of vinegar. You’ll be surprised how good it smells. There is also a soy sauce called ABC brand and it is sweet-salty, just poerfect to add flavor to your adobo.

    Though I don’t eat adobo because it is basically a meat dish, I like to smell its wonderful smell when cooked with lemon instead of vinegar.

  8. Robby Villabona on May 21st, 2008 3:40 pm

    My friend taught me that the secret to adobo (and dinuguan) is never to stir until the vinegar has come to a boil. I think this is what people mean when they say “lutuin muna ang suka”. I think that’s how the acidity is reduced.

    When we have time my wife and I make home-made pasta. Tortellini stuffed with ground beef is my favorite. It’s not that hard to do if you have a pasta machine (that thing with the dough rollers and cutters), and is a good way to relax after you’ve met all your deadlines. We got ourselves a Chinese knock-off pasta machine that was selling for P1,050 at Megamall (the original Italian version sells for P4,500). Next on our list of things to learn is to bake our own bread, since bread’s becoming more expensive… and the cheaper ones are no good.

    I’ve always found it weird that there’s no good local cooking show, considering Filipinos are talking about food all the time.

  9. auggie on May 21st, 2008 3:59 pm

    JM,
    The better brand toyo yata dito eh yung MARKA PINYA, medyo mas mahal siya compared sa Silver Swan and other brands, but it improves the taste of cooking or even sawsawan lang, Mahirap nga iyang adobo, ako tsambahan lang eh, hit or miss eh. Pero other than the toyo & vinegar, eh there are other variables that add up to the sarap index, like the amount of bawang that you have put in, the laurel leaf, the black pepper. Sa tinolang manok, mas masarap syempre yung native chicken kesa yung nabibili sa super market. This is fairly easy to do compared sa adobo, altho kung minsan kumakabyos din. The main ingredients syempre eh yung TANGLAD, PAPAYA , GINGER, SILI, and the DAHON SILI. I”m trying to master some Ilonggo dish like KBL ( Kadyos, Baboy, Langka ), which is fairly easy to do dahil puro boiling lang ito, still, yung nuance ng pagpa-asim nag -kakatalo. The original dish calls for the BATUHAN to make the sabaw sour. I cheat, I use the ready made KNORR Tamarind cubes.

  10. Robby Villabona on May 21st, 2008 8:55 pm

    Thai (and Vietnamese) patis is great… not so salty, not so smelly, and widely available nowadays. You can even make salad dressing out of Vietnamese patis by adding rice vinegar, sugar, garlic, carrots, and lemon.

  11. Reno on May 21st, 2008 9:01 pm

    There is no scientific proof that MSG is bad for you. It’s true.

    Pople say eating it makes you dizzy. But you know why you become dizzy? Because the MSG makes the food taste so good that you tend to overeat. And it’s the overeating that makes you feel bad.

  12. Rod Samonte on May 22nd, 2008 1:41 am

    Gerry,
    Hahahaha, great idea, a funny chef. And you can make him look like you too. I’m already LOL.

    Robby,
    There’s something to that secret of not stirring. Totoo yan. Also don’t overcook.

    Another secret to good cooking: saute everything, hehehe. Even adobo can be sauteed. Since there is no tomatoes in adobo, just saute plenty of garlic and onions and ginger, then pour this in the pot over your mix of vinegar and chicken or whatever you are making into adobo. You can do it this way too with vegetables, like adobong kangkong, for vegetarians. I also cook a mean pinakbet, my favorite. Here instead of patis, bagoong is best used.

    Auggie,
    My favorite Bicolano food is Laeng. It’s not easy to cook, so I just go to a Pinoy restaurant here where they have the best laeng, swimming in pork fat. However, I’ve stopped eating it, since I turned vegetarian, because of gout. Naglalaway tuloy ako, just talking about it.

    Rod

  13. jose Mari Lee on May 22nd, 2008 1:55 am

    Reno:

    I’m surprised you like MSG :-(

    Does anyone really need it?

    In 1970s, I had the opportunity to have a tour in an MSG factory in Bulacan. The guys who were pouring them into a huge container, were having NOSEBLEED!

    And I’m not kidding. Siguro, one needs MASKARADO’s mask when working with MSG! At least protectado ang ilong :-D

    There you go. There’s a nice episode of Maskado.
    He was an MSG worker in Bulacan, then one day, he had nose bleed due to the fumes of MSG that he inhaled. Kaya ang maskara pala niya ay hindi para itago ang true identity and/or to bring in his alter ego, but to protect his nose from MSG. Kaso lang, dahil sa effect ng MSG, dumikit sa skin niya ang costume na ginamit kaya naging maskarado na siya.

    This is how MASKARADO was born. Ayan, may Origin episode ka na :-D, na-i-promote mo pa ang kahalagahan ng MSG sa health ng Pinoys.

    You know whaddaimsayin? Whaddasay?

  14. Ferres on May 22nd, 2008 2:28 am

    Mom added butter in her version.
    But Pinoy style spaghetti is just wrong. :(

  15. Gerry Alanguilan on May 22nd, 2008 7:35 am

    Hey Reno! Casting no aspersions on MSG at all… I just don’t like it. :D

  16. auggie on May 22nd, 2008 8:02 am

    Rod,

    You should try KINUNOT NA PATING or PAGE, but the preparation is so thorough dapat, otherwise, malansa. JM could provide the recipe and step by step methodology. Could give LAENG a run for its money, in terms of SARAP INDEX. I don’t know how to cook it.

  17. Reno on May 22nd, 2008 10:34 am

    Okay, okay… I’ll ‘fess up. I’m defensive of MSG because AJINOMOTO is a client of ours, and they’ve given us convincing facts that MSG per se is not harmful. :)

  18. auggie on May 22nd, 2008 12:33 pm

    Reno,

    Saan ba nanggaling ang ingredients ng MSG ? is it true na it brings up the sixth taste bud among the Japanese ?

  19. Robby Villabona on May 22nd, 2008 2:04 pm

    Reno,

    I didn’t know that — and looking around what google could find, it looks to be true.

    Though I don’t use MSG myself because I don’t like the metal-like taste. But I must admit it’s what makes R. Lapid’s cocktail chicharon taste soooo good. Sa Iloilo punong-puno din ng MSG ang Ted’s Batchoy, kaya masarap.

  20. Ferres on May 22nd, 2008 6:39 pm

    Some people are just more sensitive to msg than others. And at times too much msg is used specially with vendors.