Pork 'n Skrimps + Mother's Day Dinner

Pork and what?

Skrimps, or shall I say, Bagoong alamang, aka "salted shrimp fry"...

A most "fragrant" addition to any Filipino meal...


Even though the recipe for Binagoongang Baboy called for FOUR tablespoons of this pungent condiment, I only used two...

This is one of my favorite dishes, but I hardly ever make it. The last time I did it was for a small gathering back in November. Instead of pork shoulder, I thought I would change it up and use pork belly which I sliced up into bite sized pieces. I also added long beans (again).

Sauteeing onions, garlic and tomatoes always makes the house smell so good!

I made this the night before Mother's Day so I wouldn't have to deal with making three things the day of. Below, the bagoong was just added and I'm about to mix it in...

I love how this smells and the pork belly, while not the healthiest thing to eat, came out really well. Almost everyone (at least the adults) liked it and there was hardly any left to even take home. I'd say that was pretty successful.

The complete recipe can be found at my previous post from November, "Binagoongang Baboy".

Now the Skrimps recipe.

This was a new one that I saw while going through Marvin's cookbook. I was intrigued because it involved using 7-Up (or Sprite or any other lemon lime soda) as a marinade ingredient.

These shell-on and head on shrimp were purchased at Seafood City the day before Mother's Day at $5.99 lb. I bought nearly 3 lbs worth for our planned Mother's Day potluck.

The ingredients (garlic, shallot, lemongrass, patis, red pepper flakes (and seeds), plus sugar, salt and pepper...Not pictured, the 7Up!

Other than chopping up the garlic, lemongrass, and shallots, this was a pretty easy recipe to execute! Okay, not counting snipping off the antennae of the shrimps, but again, quite easy. Fry your aromatics, add the shrimp and marinade, cook until pink. The recipe also involves reducing the sauce, which I really liked. The flavors became more concentrated.

This also smelled quite amazing, the garlic and lemongrass went well together.

If you hate peeling and touching shrimp and getting down and dirty sucking the juicy shrimp heads, then this recipe isn't for you. Otherwise, this was a pretty easy dish to make and will impress your frieds at your next gathering.

The recipe, "Garlic Lemongrass Shrimp" can be found on page 106 of "The Adobo Road Cookbook" by Marvin Gapultos.

The verdict? A total hit! Three pounds was quite a bit, but I wanted to ensure that my parents, brother and sister and their respective families had at least a little something to take home tonight (and they did).

Here were the other dishes for Mother's Day dinner at my parents. Of course, even though we told our mom NOT to cook anything, she (or rather, my Dad) baked, of all things, a turkey! Go figure!

My dad even made "bringhe", a rice stuffing in which he also added sliced hot dogs. There was also a big bowlful of gravy for the turkey.

In addition to my pork dish with beans, was my mom's version, but without bagoong. Her meats were chopped up pork chop and shrimp which was flavored with patis instead of the salty shrimp paste.

My sister brought her specialty, Pancit Palabok, cornstarch noodles with shrimp sauce, topped with sliced shrimp, hard boiled eggs, green onions with crushed pork rinds (on the side) and calamansi halves to spritz on top.

My brother and his family spent the weekend at Disneyland and on their way back down, stopped by the Porto's in Downey. This was an assortment of Cuban pastries (clockwise): mango and guave turnovers, cinnamon brioche (in the middle, wrapped in paper), guave rings, some sort of savory pastry, and cheese and guava filled danishes.

No potato ballz though! @#$%!

Everyone enjoyed the potluck. My sibs and I were quite happy that our parents were able to enjoy all of the good food with the whole family. We should do the same for Father's Day which is right around the corner, it seems....

Hope everyone enjoyed today (Mother or not)  - talk about whiplash with the weather right?

I can't help it! I went back to this post so I could add a few more video snippets that are "mother" related:

The infamous "MILF" scene from "American Pie":

and this one from "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure" where Bill & Ted introduce their historical friends to Bill's stepmother:

"Hi Missy, I mean MOM!"

Haha, Socrates "Johnson" and "Dave" Beethoven, "Bob" Genghis Khan and "Dennis" Freud!

And even though I can't post this video because embedding is disabled (damn E4!), you can click here to see a clip of the Inbetweeners where the guys talk about Will's mom in a salacious manner.

"Is that your mum? She's FIT!", haha!

Tomorrow, back to the grind!