Filipina Soul

Are you familiar with the story of the “stone soup”? As the story goes, a traveler starts a pot of soup using just water and a stone. Villagers add to the pot whatever they have on hand. A delicious and nourishing pot of soup is the end result.

While nilaga (literally: “boiled”) doesn’t have a single stone in it, except perhaps by accident, it is also easily made with ingredients that are on hand. It’s practically a no-fail soup. The amounts of all the ingredients can be modified to taste and availability.

This is the way I make this simple Filipino dish:

Nilaga

Ingredients:

meat (pork or beef; choose cuts with some fat to give the dish a good flavor), cut into serving pieces
1/2 to 1 small onion, sliced
10 whole peppercorns
1 teaspoon salt
starchy vegetables (potatoes, carrots, sweetpotatoes, corn on the cob, or yam) cut into large cubes
green vegetables (green beans, asparagus, or broccoli)
leafy vegetables (bokchoy, pechay, napa cabbage, cabbage, or chinese cabbage), cut into serving pieces
2 green onions, chopped

Choose 1 meat, 1 or 2 starchy vegetables, 1 green vegetable, and 1 leafy vegetable in whatever proportion you want.

1. Put water in a pot, enough to cover the meat and vegetables, and then some. Add the onion, salt, and peppercorns. Boil until the meat is tender.

2. Add the starchy vegetables and allow the soup to reboil. Cook until the vegetables can just be pierced with a fork.

3. Add the green vegetable, the leafy vegetables and the green onions. Cook until vegetables are tender but still crisp. Adjust the taste by adding salt.

4. Serve hot with steamed rice.

In my home, this is comfort food. The hot soup is great at the end of the day. And it’s a great way to get several servings of vegetables, which are my favorite part of this dish.

Added tip: To make the dish even better, mash a couple of pieces of potato or sweetpotato once they are cooked. It flavors the broth really well.

image from personal collection ©2008 Maricar

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