A peek at our Easter eats

The handa (food spread or food menu) for today's Easter Eats included, but were not limited to, sinigang hipon and pancit bihon. I'd like to preface that the seasonings to flavor these dishes is not the o.g. way of doing things, and instead an "instant" powder was used.

Sinigang hipon - others may cook it differently, but the key ingredient is this Tamarind Soup Mix:

Sabaw = soup, Sampalok = tamarind. Next time, I'm gonna do the actual labor process of using real sampalok.

We used the shrimp with head and shell still intact and boiled this in a pot of water. After the shrimp turned a bit pink, remove shrimp:

Then with the water in the pot still boiling, add gabi (a form of taro, a root plant), tomato, onion and jalapeño.


Throw in the boiling pot:

Add tamarind mix for the sour flavor and some fish sauce for saltiness. Let simmer until gabi is soft, like the consistency of potato before mashing. Then add the shrimp back.

When you're ready to serve it, throw in some veggies like eggplant:

And some kangkong, or water spinach:

Side note, put the veggies in the pot after you've turned the burner off so as not to have dilapidated or brown vegetables.

See how green vegetables can still be in this dish? Served with steamed white rice.

Next, the pancit bihon was prepared. And like the sinigang, instant seasoning care of Mama Sita was used:
A stock was prepared by boiling pork and chicken (bone in) in a pot of boiling water. While this was going on, we cut up onion, cabbage and carrots into matchsticks for the recado (this is all the ingredients that's not noodles). We used sotanghon noodles (vermicelli glass noodles) for this dish because they didn't break apart when tossed with all the ingredients.
Shrimp was pan seared in one of mama's giant woks and then remove from oil. Then add the onions, cut up pork and chicken, toss. Then add the cabbage and carrots.
Remember the stock that had the chicken and pork? Add the pancit bihon mix and let boil. Use this as the liquid to soften the noodles.
Then add the vermicelli noodles and stir to evenly cook all the noodles.

Two sandoks (ladle) are better than one.
After much stirring, and when the vermicelli noodles are soft, plate and serve.

If you have kalamansi (a type of citrus, like a non-oblong shaped kumkwat), serve on the side. Or else you can just use some lemon. Eaten during merienda (snack time).

As an extra added 411, we also had some lumpia, daeng bangus, pata in lutong toyo, boiled peanuts and mama's ginatan just in cases. What'd you have for your Easter Feast?