Go loco with Ilocano recipes!

The first part of “Pop Talk's” Vigan Food Crawl made audience's mouths water for some authentic Ilocano flavors. The regional cuisine is a celebration of freshness where vegetables and seafood are flavored with bagoong and sukang Iloko.

The food can be quite simple. But even an experienced chef will tell you: the simplest dish may be the hardest to prepare well, and the only way to master it is through practice.

Here are some recipes you can recreate and dash with your own flavor!

Kalamay



This specialty of Candon is sold on roadside pasalubong stalls. These flat discs of sticky goodness are so popular that they reach the markets beyond Ilocos province. As Kuya Tonipet showed us, the cooking of kalamay requires a bit of time and elbow grease.

Ingredients:
2 cups glutinous rice flour
2 cups (packed) brown sugar
2 cans coconut milk or gata
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions:
1. In a large non-stick pan, combine coconut milk and glutinous rice flour. Stir until rice flour is dissolved.
2. Turn on heat and keep on low. Add the brown sugar and stir until completely dissolved.
3. Stir until mixture thickens. Add the vanilla flavoring.
4. Continue stirring for an hour or until the mixture thickens further that it is too heavy to mix.
5. Remove from heat and transfer to a plate lined with banana leaves.

Dinuydoy

 
 

"Ilocano food" with vegetables is synonymous to Dinuydoy. It stews squash until it melts into a sweet pulp. In the show, Manang Elsa, a carinderia owner with a stall right outside the Sta. Maria Church sells this dish to the hungry faithful who troop to her eatery right after mass.

Manang Elsa’s own version of Dinuydoy has pork and bitter ampalaya leaves. But our recipe adds shrimp and substitutes actual ampalaya for talbos.

Ingredients:
4 cups squash, cut into cubes
1 large size ampalaya, de-seeded and sliced
2 cups pork, cut into thin strips
1/2 cup small size shrimps, shelled
1 small onion chopped
1/4 head garlic, chopped
1 medium size tomato, chopped
1/4 cup patis
Salt
Cooking oil

Instructions:
1. Heat a pan with cooking oil. Saute garlic, onion, and tomato.
2. When the onion turns translucent, add the pork. Keep sautéing until the pork begins to release fat.
3. Add shrimps and patis. Stir for a minute or until the shrimp changes color.  
4. Add 1 1/2 to 2 cups of water. Bring to a boil and add squash. Simmer for 10 to 15 minutes until the
squash is soft and the liquid has reduced.
5. Add the ampalaya slices and cook for a minimum time of two minutes.
6. Season with salt, to taste. Serve with rice. 

Adobong Utong

 
 

First and foremost, get your brain out of the gutter! "Utong" is the Ilocano word for sitaw or yard long beans. The vegetable is staple in Ilocano cooking. But when you get tired of dinengdeng and pinakbet, you may want to try cooking it --- adobo style. What makes this dish different from the usual adobong sitaw is the use of sukang Iloko, whose complex flavors remind you of wine.

Ingredients:

1 kilo sitaw, cut into 2 inch long pieces
1/2 kilo pork belly, sliced into strips
2 medium sized onions
4 cloves garlic, crushed and minced
1 teaspoon black pepper powder
1/2 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoon sukang Iloko or vinegar
1 teaspoon brown sugar
1 cup water
3 tbsp. canola/vegetable oil

Instructions:
1. Heat canola oil in a pan. Fry the garlic until it turns golden. Quickly, set aside half of the cooked garlic for topping. Add the onion followed by the pork meat and sauté until meat browns.
2. Add the sitaw, soy sauce and pepper. Sauté for two minutes.
3. Add water, let it boil. Lower the fire to simmer for 15-20 minutes or until the sitaw is tender.
4. Add the sukang Iloko (vinegar) and brown sugar. Simmer for another two minutes. Do not stir.
5. Place the sitaw on a serving dish and top with the fried garlic which was set aside earlier. Serve with rice and enjoy!

If you cooked any of these on your own, share your photos with us on our Facebook page or on Twitter. “Pop Talk” airs every Saturday, 8 PM, on GMA News TV.  — Minnette Aquino/ARP/BMS/ Photos by Tonipet Gaba