MANILA, Philippines — Can you make Binakol with fish instead of the traditional chicken? Chicken Binakol, which is an Ilonggo dish, is like Tinola, but it uses buko juice for its soup instead of water.
These days, no one can stop any cook from being innovative and for daring to make unusual combinations or changing certain ingredients in a dish and checking out if another protein would turn out just as good.
In the recent cooking demonstration to revive The Maya Kitchen’s Culinary Elite Series that features well-known chefs and restaurateurs, The Maya Kitchen teamed up with FEATR, a food storytelling platform that documents Filipino culinary traditions and regional ingredients, to present a number of exciting but lesser known Filipino recipes that make use of Filipino heritage ingredients. Its aim is to make Filipinos rediscover these ingredients and dishes and start using and cooking them again.
One of the dishes featured in the cooking demo conducted by Erwan Heussaff, founder of FEATR, was Binakol na Isda, whose recipe Philstar.com is sharing here. It makes use of Asin Tultol, a rare cooked sea salt from Guimaras.
Binakol na Isda
Ingredients:
3 pcs. red onion, quartered
1 head garlic, chopped
1 knob ginger, sliced
1 stalk tanglad (lemongrass)
2 liters buko juice
5 pcs. tomatoes, quartered
6 pcs. tanigue steaks
2 cups fresh shredded buko meat
Asin Tultol to taste
1 bundle dahon ng sili, leaves picked
Procedure:
1. Sauté onion, garlic and ginger until fragrant before adding tanglad and buko juice.
2. Once simmering, add tomatoes, and simmer for an extra minute.
3. Add tanigue steaks and buko meat, then simmer on low for 6 to 8 minutes. Season with Asin Tultol to taste.
4. Add picked dahon ng sili. Turn off heat.
*Serves 6 to 8.