I had problems doing this dish. No, I'm sorry, the recipe is fine, it's
just I particularly don't like beef or pork liver but chicken liver
I can tolerate so I subsituted pork liver that the recipe called for with chicken liver.
The problem with this substitution is that
chicken liver is crumbly and sort of disintegrated into a pasty muck.
So if you want this recipe to work, stick with
pork or beef liver if pork liver is not available.
Menudo, by the way, according to Reynaldo Alejandro in his beautiful book, The Food of the Philippines
(which you can buy through amazon.com on the right of this recipe, bottom), is Spanish for 'tiny' and refers
to a quite common everyday dish. Yes, this is a staple at any carinderia in Manila and even in
food vendors who hawk lunches in offices. I remember they served menudo in plastic bags.
Ingredients (adapted from Reynaldo Alejandro's The Food of the Philippines, which I highly recommend for
any one's cook book
collection):
half cup of diced pork
about a cup of water
vegetable oil, 2 tbsp
quarter of a cup onion, chopped
tomatoes, cubed, about half a cup
a cup of diced liver (pork)
2 cloves of garlic, mashed
2 cups diced potatoes, about 1/2 inch cubes
1 piece of bay leaf
patis (fish sauce, may be omitted if you don't like the strong taste, just use salt)
1/2 cup red bell peppers, canned or fresh (if fresh,
cut julienne style) but canned may
actually work better here if you want authentic
Filipino taste*
about half a cup garbanzos (chick peas), cooked
1. Cook pork in water until tender, set aside and save the broth.
2. In a skillet, saute the garlic, onion and tomatoes in oil until the onion is transparent and tomatoes
soft.
3. Add diced pork, liver and bay leaf. Simmer and stir for about 5 minutes.
4. Add pork broth, red peppers, potatoes and chick peas and potatoes. Simmer for another, oh, 7-10
minutes (until the potatoes are cooked at least).
Hope you have more success than I did. It didn't taste bad though.
*This is just my opinion. It's because canned red pepper (pimiento) used to be readily more available
than fresh red bell peppers. So the taste that I, or most Filipinos my age for that matter, am accustomed to is for canned, not fresh.
