Channeling the Inner Pinoy

Good ebening eberybodies.

     That's my fake filipino accent for clarification. Made a filipino-as-possible dinner tonight which is ironic because I feel like I have the least experience with this region of cuisine. A culmination of my upbringing in my endeavors of filipino food would have to be this conversation that I have frequently with my master chef mother (love you mom!).

Mom - Justin come here and eat now.
Me - Dang mom this food is dank! How do you make it?!?
      (Not sure if the kids use "dank" anymore...)
Mom - I dont know I just put stuff in the pot.

     Hence I never learned any of my mom's cooking secrets. I am glad to report my mom and I's communication skills have improved to a point where I can actually get what ingredients and techniques are used in her dishes. Hopefully we will improve further and get some actual measurements so I can replicate those flavors. Nonetheless, we all know who the best chef in the whole world is, and that is without a doubt "Mom."  
     There is this fish my mom left for me from our last kamayan night, which is a dinner where you cover a table in banana leaves, put a row of steamed white rice, a plethora of meats and you eat with your finest utensils, your hands! I'll have to find the pictures from that night. Anyway the fish I was talking about is called Pampano.  I've had no prior experience cooking this fish so I went with these flavors as you'll see below and it turned out to be pretty good while tasting distinctly pinoy in my opinion. Here's the recipe:

Broiled Pampano on Braised Spinach with Hibiscus Sawsawan

For Spinach....
Spinach
Julliene yellow onion
Chopped garlic
Fish sauce
Unseasoned rice vinegar
Ponzu
Salt and black pepper

On high heat quickly saute onions and garlic with a little olive oil.  Add spinach and seasonings and turn to low and braise for 45 mins.  Transfer to a pyrex or steel baking pan

Fish....
Whole cleaned pampano
Cucumber
Cilantro
Lemon
Kosher salt

Stuff the pampano with lemon slices, cilantro and cucumber.  Rub kosher salt on the skin of the fish.  Place fish on the bed of braised spinach and place into the oven or salamander on HI broil until the skin carmelizes.

For sawsawan (I believe it means to dip, please excuse me I am a coconut filipino, I think you can figure out what that means haha)....

Unseasoned rice vinegar or cane vinegar
Hibiscus tea
Fish sauce
Granulated sugar
Diced cucumber
Salt and pepper

Dissolve sugar in hot hibiscus tea, let cool to room temp and mix with the rest of the ingredients. Serve with steamed white rice.

 Mel ate it with the left over lump crab fried rice, I'll post this recipe later!

     The dish itself had good flavor and the meat on the pampano was buttery and flaky .  What I love about filipino food is you get a very eclectic mix of flavors that hit multiple sides of your pallet.  Sugar, fish sauce, and vinegar gives you a salty sweet acidic sawsawan sauce that goes great with the fish.  The story on the hisbiscus in the sawsawan is I ran out of sugar and had some hibiscus simple syrup that we were using for our passion iced tea drink Mel and I make and I guess it's a good thing because it adds a great flowery depth to the sauce. I like mixing the spinach and fish with my rice and lettting the rice soak up all that sawsawan flavor. Mel hates fish and she ate a good helping!

     Well I hope you like the recipe and remember to always thank your mom for being the greatest cook you know!