Penultimeat
It's a sad time of year, the Meatwave is winding down, with only one left of the season now. To make the most of the time we have left together, I made sure that Penultimeat was a huge porky feast. No one does pork like the Filipinos, so I went to the store, bought a 9lb pork shoulder and divided up into 3 different Filipino treats.
First to come off the butt was 1/4" slices to make tocino. This is a fatty, sticky sweet breakfast meat that I can't leave the Fil-Am Mart without purchasing. I started "curing" this meat in a salt and sugar combo 4 days before the Meatwave, and when grilled, it caramelized into the sweetness that I love.
Next up was a batch of longanisa, another Filipino breakfast item. A little over a year ago, Marvin over at Burnt Lumpia sent me his attempt at longanisa my way, and it looked so good that I stuck with his recipe with just a couple modifications. Although the longanisa I'm used to is a littler sweeter, this grilled up to be a delicious sausage; the heavy garlic and vinegar flavor made it uniquely Filipino.
I really only had tocino and loganisa on my menu, but I was still left with about 2 beautiful pounds of pork when those were done. So I took another crack at Filipino barbecue, whipping up the marinade and throwing in the leftover pork chunks. This time I subbed out the Sprite for Coke, as a one commenter suggested, and I think it produced a more authentic pork skewer.
I made the popular mango sorbet to go with all these meats. I know some people are still waiting for Filipino cheese ice cream, but something about mango sounded more appetizing, and less heart stopping, than cheese ice cream for this weekend.
With all these meats ready to go, I was prepared for an all out feast. The only problem was it was a bit of no-show Meatwave. Lindsay popped over early before she went to close out the downtown Strand. She seemed to take pleasure in all the meat, but maybe not as much as seeing her long lost loves, Kate and Bianca.
After Lindsay took off, we waited around for the impending crowds, but they never came. I steadily ate off one piece of meat after another, taking in an unhealthy stream of pork throughout the day. Luckily that took care of most of the barbecue skewers, then the tocino and longanisa went into the freezer to be enjoyed for many future breakfasts as well as the next, and final, Meatwave of the season, Yes Meat Can.
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Comments
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Marvin Everything looks wonderful, josh! If I were in your neck of the woods, I would have definitely shown up to the meatwave! Filipino cheese ice cream? Kesong puti? Awesome idea and I'm looking forward to seeing it.
And thanks for the shout out on SE;) -
josh! Marvin: Thanks, and thanks again for the recipe. The cheese ice cream I saw in the Philippines was made with that Kraft-y soft cheese. They have the cheese at the Fil-Am mart here in Woodside, but I've resisted my fiancee's constant pushed for me too make it thus far...one day though...
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[eatingclub] vancouver || js Love, love the grilled longganisa. And everything else of course. Have to try our hand making tocino one of these days.
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Noda What a crying shame no-one came to experience this! I've come across your site while looking for new rotisserie recipes and the second I read Filipino i had to read on. Last year we attempted an authentic (as much as possible) Filipino Lechon complete with lemon grass, peppercorns, soy sauce etc.)
I'm not so much of a grill master as a rotisserie/spit guy (won't bestow the title master on myself). I grew up doing Greek lamb on spits with my dad and brother every year for Easter and then expanded to annual summer pig roasts (Filipino, South Pacific, Cuban this year). We had a home made spit made by cutting an oil barrel in half. Now i got my first rotisserie extension for my grill. Any advice/tips/recipes would be very appreciated! I copied a few from your site to try already.