I got overzealous clearing out the refrigerator and ended up with nothing to cook. Off I went to market, only to find most of the stalls empty. “Rough seas,” said a vendor. I grabbed some of his meager catch of squid. On the way home I dropped by Mr. Wok to order pata tim. It took a while. The place was packed (it was also a local holiday).
The pata tim was not as I remembered it from last time, that is to say, far from bad, but not that good, either. My folks were not keen on it, although when it comes to the dish, they set the bar by Majestic’s (preferably with their signature fried bread), so there. The squid fared better. Not by much, mind you. There was just too much for three people in one order of braised pork leg. I knew I would be serving it again for dinner. How?
The answer came later as I was looking for something to snack on. There behind the Beer Nuts sat a jar of ujáp left over from an outing two weeks ago. Or was it a month? Whatever; shrimp paste keeps amazingly well (all that salt!). And it goes well with most everything, but especially with pork.
Binagoongan!
I have a food blog, so people assume I know about this or that dish. Mostly they want to know how to make “white” spaghetti (no kidding). Of course I know carbonara, just not how to make a good one. That means I have tried. Not so with binagoongan. When pork is mentioned in the same sentence with shrimp paste, in our house it means crispy, fatty hinilisan (cracklings). Anyway, I had all the ingredients for more or less traditional binagoongan. As with the lomi, I decided to wing it.
The dish came together in a matter of minutes. After sautéing the shrimp paste with ginger, onion, garlic, and tomato, I poured in the pata tim sauce, thinned it with water, and let the mixture boil before adding the meat; all it needed was to warm up, then it was ready to serve. I did not even need to season, what with all the salty goodness from the fermented shrimp (okay, maybe a pinch of sugar).
So, did we finally finish that hunk o’ leg? Not even by half. I will not say the new dish was better or worse off — just that it was recognizably the same one we had earlier: dark, fatty, and salty-sweet. It was, in the end, still pata tim, only with shrimp paste. Interestingly enough, the last time I dined at Majestic, we decided to try their deep-fried pata tim, and it tasted just like regular crispy pata. I had the bones bagged, then went home to the condo and realized: Of course, we don’t have dogs here!
Our poor dogs, they could not even help with the leftover binagoongan — because, duh, bagoong. The leg’s back in cold storage, awaiting yet another brainstorm. A cook’s battles never end.
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