Filipino Breakfast: Beef Tapa and Longanisa

Beef tapa is one of our comfort food, especially my mom's beef tapa. Fact is, I brought some, a kilo of cooked tapa, and got busted at the airport by a little dog, who can't resist sniffing my luggage, so there goes my beef tapa, that should have been our breakfast for weeks/or days. Anyway, for months we've been craving for this tapa, and bravely I cooked one, unfortunately I didn't do it right. Why? because of the soy sauce, its different from what we used back home (Philippines), argghhh, so hubby did the cooking. And yes, he got it right, hubby for the beef tapa and wifey for the longanisa. 

FYI: No chemicals (such as saltpeter, phosphate) were added, all natural ingredients..

Last Saturday, after biking under the snow with our grocery stuffs,  hubby and I did some cooking in our little kitchen, preparing for this week's breakfast menu, beef tapa and longanissa. We're laughing, teasing while chopping and mixing, it was fun... really fun. It felt like we're on a school project/experiment, exchanging views until we got it right. Thinking about it now makes my heart smile. It was those moments that I feel blessed, I love the simple life we are now having because this simple life makes us appreciate little things more, its with this simple life that we are thankful for every second we shared. Ah...so much for the drama..We couldn't wait for the next morning, you know what happened next.. yes, we had it for dinner.. It was funny though, we use those pipe thingy used for decorating the cake.. yes..hahha..so that answers why our longanissa looks like nuggets, I am to blame! I cut the pipe ends without checking the resulting diameter. It should have been molded using a wax paper, but we forgot to buy one, we are on a hurry seeing the snow starting to fall. Still, it's a fun fun fun adventure! love it.. And because of that we called our longanissa, " longanissa nuggets".  

PLATE:  left to right: egg, longanissa (upper, light brown color), tomato, beef tapa (center, dark color), garlic rice. 

Ingredients:  Beef Tapa

450-500g beef sirloin, cut in strips, (size of your pinky finger) --what a description! (we prefer bite sized pieces, sorry no formal cooking background), or cut it anyway you like, but make sure its thin.

6 tbsp soy sauce

4 tbsp vinegar

10 cloves garlic, smashed

1/2 tsp pepper

dash of salt

Procedure:

1. Combine all ingredients in a pot, let it simmer until the beef is tender and the marinade is well absorbed.

2. Fry the beef using oil until it turns dark brown, serve it with garlic-chili-vinegar.

Ingredients: Skinless Longanisa/ Longanisa Nuggets

350g ground pork

7tbsp soy sauce

1/2 tsp salt

5 cloves garlic, smashed and minced

1 tbsp vinegar

1 tbsp Mirin (sweet rice wine) (optional, or Worshteshire sauce)

1 tsp ground pepper

2 tbsp sugar

Procedure:

1. Mix all ingredients

2. Scoop a mixture using a tbsp, put it into the wax paper/cling wrap and roll the wrap and shape it like a sausage, mini sausage.The wrap will serve as a the longanisa cover and to separate one from the other, and it should be removed before frying. OR if you want to eat it immediately, scoop a mixture, shaped it like a sausage or any shape you want, then fry them.

3. Store longanisa in the freezer (2 to 3 days), when you want to eat them, boil a little water (4 tbsp) and put your longanisa (unwrapped) , cover it for 5 mins, remove longanisa and fry them. serve with garlic-chili-vinegar. A little burnt on the outside won't hurt, it's more yummy..