Showing posts with label Dinengdeng. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dinengdeng. Show all posts

A Failed Attempt in Cooking Dinengdeng

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Overstaying vegetables are one of our usual home problems. Some vegetables take more than a week in the fridge because we either don’t have the time to cook them or they’re just too many.

Upon opening the fridge one day, I noticed that we have ampalaya (bitter gourd), talong (eggplant), sitaw (string beans), and takway. Their freshness is gone and they will be sent to the trash can if they stayed longer in the fridge. Throwing these veggies means throwing away hard-earned money, so I decided to salvage them.

After a bit of Google search, I discovered this popular Ilocano dish: dinengdeng.

The original dinengdeng
Photo by :Thepacificconoisseur / en.wikipedia


Dinengdeng is just a mixture of veggies and bagoong. Cooking this dish is very easy. It is the perfect dish for our overstaying veggies.

Ingredients for Dinengdeng

Talong
Sitaw
Ampalaya
Takway
Tomatoes (3 pcs)
Onion (1 pc)
Salt
Magic Sarap
Bagoong Isda
Pork (bite-size and fried)

How I Cooked Dinengdeng

1. The first thing that I did is to cut the ampalaya, talong, sitaw, and takway to bite-sized slices. I then sliced the sibuyas into two and quartered the tomatoes.

Vegetables for dinengdeng


2. I boiled the water in a pot and then placed the tomatoes and the onion. I then added the bagoong isda. I let the mixture simmer for a while. The scum forming at the sides of the pot were promptly removed.

3. I threw in the talong, sitaw, ampalaya, takway, and the fried pork. I let it simmer until the veggies are cooked.

4. I then added Magic Sarap and salt until it tastes OK.

5. I finally served it hot for dinner.

My Cookery Result

My version of dinengdeng


My dinengdeng tasted very bitter. Even Lei made the same remark. It’s so bitter that she didn’t eat it. The taste is not surprising because I placed 1 and a half amplaya in this dish.

I had no choice but to eat it all of it. I think I finished eating my dinengdeng after three meals. The sad part is that ampalaya is my most hated vegetable. I think eating this dinengdeng was my punishment for cooking so badly.

My consolation is that ampalaya is known to be good against diabetes.

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You just finished reading a Foodie Sunday post. This a blog post series where I post about our foodie adventures. Expect to read about food; from homecook meals. to street food. to fine dining, to fast food, even the weird edible things.
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