Sinigang con Beef and Sugpo

During one of my trips to the U.S., I surprised my relatives with this sinigang recipe. The truth is I surprised even myself. It was my first cousin’s birthday and I wanted to create something that will throw them overboard. I was on creative overdrive so I decided to combine beef and sugpo. Of course they were initially aghast at the audacity of my choice of meats to put together in a sour soup at that.

The technique is to cook and tenderize the beef first before adding the sugpo. The resulting dish that combines the fleshy juicy beef with the succulent sweet sugpo is unbelievably a harmonious marriage of supposedly discordant taste and texture.

In Manila I again cooked this over adventurous sinigang recipe for a cooking show’s TV plug. The production crew was trying their best not to raise their eyebrows to my choice of dish to show on TV. As always, the proof of the pie is in the pudding. After tasting my fancy sinigang recipe, everyone was raving about the dish. Everyone was wondering how I knew that the pairing of meat with seafood would work. I admitted that I didn’t know but I wanted to think out of the box and succeeded…

SINIGANG CON BEEF & SUGPO

Ingredients :

4 pcs. red ripe tomatoes, sliced
1 pc. Onion, sliced
6 cups water
1 ½ pack Sinigang sa Sampalok Mix
½ kilo beef ribs
½ kilo sugpo
1 talong, sliced diagonally
1 raddish, sliced diagonally
5 pcs okra, cut into half
1 bundle kangkong (about 150g). separate leaves from stalks
2 pcs siling pangsigang

Procedure :

In a saucepan, bring to a boil water, tomatoes, onion and beef ribs. Cook until beef is tender.
When beef is almost tender , add Sinigang sa Sampalok Mix.
Add talong, raddish and okra, cook for 5 minutes
Add kangkong stalks and sugpo and cook for 3 minutes.
Add kangkong leaves and siling pangsigang.Cover and remove from heat.