You'd have to be a total kitchen 'tard to mess this up. If you can boil water, then you can make this!
Get yourself to Seafood City and buy 1 pound of cornstarch noodles (I used this brand, Pamana) and two packets of palabok mix (also by Pamana AND on sale 2 for $1/MSG included, heh heh).
Boil the noodles and make the sauce separately.
Meanwhile, here are the toppings. Fried garlic, crushed pork rinds, lemon wedges, sliced green onions, and sliced hard boiled eggs. Not pictured are the skrimps.
Oh yeah, that's what I'm talkin' about. Just put these in your electric chopper and you've got yourself some powdery yet crunchy goodness.
You know those pre-peeled garlic cloves you can get at the market? Well, I chopped and fried up the whole damn container! Get ready for your house to smell like heaven! I ended up saving the oil for a later use. I strained the oil through a mesh. I'm sure I can use it for some fried rice...But yeah, this is a lot of fried ass garlic!
So yeah, the toppings are pretty easy. You don't really have to "cook" anything. Just fry the garlic and boil the eggs.
Meanwhile, pour the sauce over the noodles and mix it up. The long noodles will get cut up when you stir it, but that's all right. It's easier to eat when the noodles are short.
Garnish your saucy noodles with your toppings.
I made two one pound batches and gave some containers to a few friends at the gym. I'd been promising them pancit forever and thought it would be fun to have them try another type of pancit.
Most non-Filipinos are familiar with Pancit Bihon and think of it as the ONLY kind of pancit. This is thethe kind you see typically see at Filipinos parties with the skinny skinny noodles and mixed with celery, cabbage, green beans, carrots, chicken, and/or shrimp. I can make that too and in fact I have (see my how to posts here and here). Well, that's not the only kind of pancit there is.
The different types of pancit will depend on the noodle used and the toppings. Here are just a few of the more varieties of pancit:
Bihon - uses bean thread noodles
Canton - eggs noodles are used, which are the same kind used in Lo Mein. I don't like these noodles. I've also seen bihon and canton noodles mixed in the same recipe. My mother in law used to make her pancit this way.
Mami - round egg noodles (my mom will use this in a chicken based soup with the same toppings_)
Sotanghon - clear vermicelli noodles (this is a cellophane noodle soup with a chicken base)
For Palabok, the noodles are made from cornstarch and are thicker than bihon or canton noodles.
I almost forgot to mention that one of the other traditional toppings is tinapa, or smoked and dried fish flakes. I personally don't like that and didn't include it.
It's all good, smoked fish flakes or not.
Pancit Palabok
Ingredients
For the noodles:
one 16 oz package of cornstarch noodles (for palabok) - prepare according to directions on package
two Pamana sauce packets (for Pancit Palabok) - prepare according to directions on packet
For the toppings:
sliced green onions
fried garlic (this involves actual frying)
crushed pork rinds (this involves using your blender or your mallet and a ziplock but that can get too messy)
sliced hard boiled eggs
shrimp (I used two kinds - the small Bay shrimp which I mixed throughout the noodles, and a larger sized shrimp which I used as the actual topping)
sliced lemons (or if you can find them, calamansi)
*if you can get it: tinapa - dried smoked fish flakes
Depending on the brand of noodles you get, you either soak them first or boil them immediately. The brand I bought, which was Pamana, didn't need to be pre-soaked. I would recommend those just because it seems easier.
Prepare the sauce. Now, this was the EASY way. I can do it the REAL way too, but that does take longer. That way involved boiling shrimp heads in water, then pureeing the shells and pressing out the liquid through a strainer, then adding atsuete for that characteristic reddish color. But that can be for another post for when I want to go all Martha Stewart on your asses.
So back to the sauce - the directions said one packet for an 8 oz packet. Add two cups of water and two teaspoons of cooking oil and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. If you don't stir it, it will get all lumpy. That happened to me because I was trying to multitask, but I fixed it by whisking it smooth again. Bad, inattentive cook.
When the sauce is thickened to your liking, pour over the noodles, which I have assumed you have already boiled until the noodles were soft, and then drained. Mix it up really well so that the noodles are coated. The sauce will thicken.
Now add your toppings. Some people like to have the toppings separate so that way, you can customize your pancit the way you like it. Others like to have everything on it already and still have the toppings on the side. It's up to you how you'd like yours to taste. It's got both salty, sour, savory flavors as well as smooth, and crunchy textures in there.
It's one of the easiest dishes I've ever made, made even easier with the pre-made sauce mix. It smells so good with the fried garlic too. One one of these days, I'll make my own sauce with the shrimp head shells!
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