Menudo, a fantastic Filipino Pork Dish

Another lovely recipe from the Philippines...and yes another favorite of mine. I cooked it a couple of days ago for our Filipino crew and I found total approval. So my day was good being a non Filipino cooking some of their favorite dishes. We all sat together and after I was finished cooking I got a lot of good advise which I have straight incorporated here in the Blog, so I know, the recipe will work!

Now, there are of course hundreds of different preparations and ingredients, I have 9 chefs in the galley and got 9 versions of how to make the perfect Menudo, but they all agreed on each others recipes, it was a great discussion we had, it bonds the chef's together and of course while discussing the different recipes from the different regions we were happily eating the Menudo I cooked. It depends from which region the chef's were, each region has special ingredients.

As for the meat, I take pork neck. The neck has basically no sinews, but still a good amount of fat. It is fairly tender, so the cooking process doesn't take too long and it is really flavorful. Of course one can take any other part of the pork, many people enjoy the pork belly or take from the leg. The belly is s little too fat for me to make a stew, the leg is perfect too, but will take longer to cook

There are some items some of the chef's insisted that they should be in, but out of personal preference I left some of them out

Ingredients
1 kilo pork (cut into small chunks)
1/2 kilo pork liver (cut into small cubes)

6 potatoes (peeled, cut in small cubes)
3 red bell pepper (diced)
3 Carrot (diced)

3 tomatoes (diced)
1 small head of garlic (minced)
1 medium size onion (diced)
1 small knob ginger

1 cup Soy Sauce
2 teaspoons of patis (fish sauce)

3 tablespoons oil
1 cup pork or chicken stock
2 cups tomato sauce

Method
Marinate the pork with the soy sauce and fish sauce for 2 to 3 hours
Saute the onions and garlic without color in the oil
Add the marinated pork and fry for 5 minutes, without giving color to the meat. The meat juices will come out and the braising process starts
Add the stock, now braise the meat till it is nearly soft (about half an hour)
Add the Liver and braise for another 5 minutes
Add the cut vegetables and potatoes
Simmer till the vegetables are soft
To finish the dish off add the tomato sauce and simmer for another 5 minutes
Thicken if required

Optional Items
5 pieces chorizo Bilbao (also cut in small pieces)
1 cup chickpeas
1/4 cup raisins