How to Cook the Local Version of Pakbet

 How to Cook the Local Version of Pinakbet

Pinakbet (pi/nak/’bət) or pakbet is, without a doubt, the Pangasinense's comfort food. It has that peculiar blend of flavors that Ilocanos and Pangasinenses love, even though it comes off as a strange melange to the uninitiated: salty, sour, bitter, slightly sweet, grassy/herbal, creamy, and full of umami.

This humble dish is easy to make. With served in the most ordinary days, cravings for the familiar flavors of home are satisfied in every bite without being cloying.

The local version uses a recipe with this particular set of preferences: Eggplants are preferably the pale-colored, bulb-shaped variety (balbalosa). The ampalaya (bitter melon/gourd) is the dwarf, a lot more bitter variety. Tomatoes are preferably the pumpkin-looking one called tres cantos. Onion is preferably lasuna (shallot) and garlic preferably the small variety grown in Ilocos.

Locals are very particular with the bagoong. It has to be the dark reddish-brown, salt-cured anchovy-based variety from Lingayen (bagoong/inasin a monamon).

Ginger, crushed, is also indispensable.

The optional ingredients are green pepper (the long green sili/finger chili), topped; bagnet, lechon kawali, roasted or fried fish, or parboiled pork with a generous portion of fat, also topped.

Vegetable oil is used if the sautéing step is preferred.

The older generation preferred squeezing everything together inside a clay pot (sayap, palayok) -- the harder ingredients first, then the easy-cooking ones at the top -- and then, using firewood, boil everything together with bagoong until the whole thing turns into an almost amorphous blob of green, red, and various shades of brown.

Some prefer sauteing the pre-boiled meat, onion, garlic, tomatoes, and the other vegetables first, then drowning the whole thing with water, but purists frown upon this step. They prefer plain boiling with just a little water until the broth is brought to near reduction and the vegetables get shrunk in size, for this is where the term pakbet or pinakbet comes from: the original word pinakubet (Pangasinan) means "shrunk" or "shriveled." The sayap is carefully shaken (isintak) to make sure the vegetables are mixed in the desired degree, i.e., without crushing the vegetables. Mixing the dish with a ladle supposedly turns the ampalaya overly bitter.

Oftentimes, the tomatoes are added in later after the pot is brought to a boil or the eggplants will not reach the desired stage of wilting.

A crucial step in cooking pinakbet is the addition of bagoong. Separately in a deep bowl, about two tablespoons of bagoong monamon are diluted with some of the boiling stock, stirred until the bits of bagoong fish (anchovies) are dissolved, then poured into the pot, with the fish bones strained using a sapitan (strainer). This step is called panag-sagsag (sagsagan, sinagsagan), with sagsag as the root word, referring to the use of bagoong as flavor-enhancing agent.

Other optional vegetable ingredients include diced camote (sweet potato, preferably yellow variety, for use as salt buffer and to lend some sweetness), okra, saluyot, patani seeds (to lend a particular fragrance), segmented malunggay pods, and winged beans or sigarilyas. Cabbage wedges also work nicely.

Leftover adobo would be a good substitute for bagnet as sambong or sahog (a term used to refer to the main protein ingredient that enhances the flavor of the dish). If there is none, boiled pork cuts or pre-fried bangus (milkfish) will do, or even chicharron (pork cracklings). Shrimps may also be used as sambong.

Served a bit overcooked, pakbet is eaten with a steaming mound of rice. Pinakbet tastes even better with sauteed fish buro as side dish.

Kalabasa (squash) and sitaw are often the 'deal-breaker' in this recipe, for once these are added, and the bagoong used is bagoong alamang (shrimp paste), the dish is no longer called pinakbet but bulanglang, which is even more open to additional ingredients (patola, sitaw tops, etc.).