I Smell Some Blood! :D

Of all the exotic foods that Philippines has, the balut, papaitan and dinuguan (pork blood stew)dinuguan is what I like the most. I just simply don’t like to taste the other exotic foods like fried frogs, snakes, bayawak (monitor lizard), etc. In other words, I’m herpetophobic. And the one that I find the most disgusting of all is the fried or sautéed tateg, huge worms that can be found on rotten trees or rotten stack of rice hays. I don’t want to talk more about those things, let’s just go to my favorite dish, the dinuguan. are the only ones that I have tasted. Of the three,

Before I start, I just want to mention something about tinumis. It’s the Nueva Ecijano’s version of the dinuguan. It is closely similar to dinuguan, only it uses ground pork as opposed to dinuguan’s pork that is cut in chunks. Nanay, my fraternal grandmother, cooks tinumis everytime we go to their place in Nueva Ecija during vacations. Immediately, the giddiness that I get from the long trip fades away as I smell the aroma of the tinumis. I’ll quickly run to the dining table and start eating. Eating tinumis is my favorite part of the vacation. Paring this dish with the original puto will surely make you feel like you’re in heaven. I’m serious. You may wonder why I mentioned “original puto” earlier. Just for your information, the original puto that I’m referring to is puto made from ground kernels of rice. They are more delicious than puto’s made from ordinary flour, the ones that are colored.

Tinumis is great for the main meals and also merienda’s! The sour flavor from the vinegar, the fantastic flavor of the tanglad (lemon grass) and the soft feeling of the pork’s blood are great combination that makes tinumis an excellent exotic food.

So, if you are ever interested in cooking tinumis, here’s how:

First, you will need to have these ingredients:

1 kilo ground pork (whole skin included, separated from meat)

200 grams pork liver, chunked

3 cups pork blood

1 cup vinegar

1 tali tanglad (lemon grass)

8 green peppers

3 cloves of garlic, chopped

1 medium-sized onion, chopped

Salt

Pepper

Water

Let’s get cooking! :D

1. Season pork and the pork skin with salt and pepper. Then, add garlic, onion and vinegar. Dump everything in a casserole. Don’t stir for the first 2 minutes or until vinegar is cooked. Bring to a simmer until vinegar seeps into the meat ensemble. Add water when necessary until the meat is cooked.

2. Midway into cooking, add liver, tanglad and peppers. Remove pork skin and cut into fine cubes. Throw back into the mixture.

3. Meantime, strain in pork blood onto the mixture. Coarsely chunk the blood left on the strainer and throw back into the mixture again. Continue simmering until meat is cooked. Serve hot.

Source: http://theeatingroom.wordpress.com/2009/06/04/tinumis/

Gerald Kim T. Miranda
C31