Pork Adobo with Chinese Long Beans

Most people have certain comfort foods that remind them of home.  My comfort foods are actually Filipino foods.  I didn't start cooking any type of Filipino foods until I joined the Army in 2004.  When I finally got to my first duty station, I began to cook pancit (rice thread noodles with assorted veggies and your preferred meat/poultry/fish), make lumpia (Filipino egg rolls), and even made bibingka (coconut mocha baked dessert) for the first time.  Pork adobo especially with potatoes or green beans is simply wonderful.  In my culture, salty is in.  Of course that is probably why a lot of Asians tend to have high blood pressure.  To this I would have to advise you to use salt/shoyu/patis in small amounts or occasionally, exercise, drink lots of water, and eat in moderation.  

Pork Adobo with Chinese Long Beans

Recipe

Chinese long beans (if available in your area)

pork for adobo or pork loin that you can cut up into big chunks as seen above

1/2 a bulb of garlic

vinegar

shoyu sauce

water

1 to 2 bay leaves

2 to 4 peppercorns

vegetable cooking oil

peeled and quartered potatoes (if desired)

cooked jasmine white rice or your preferred white or brown rice

Cooking Instructions

Place a couple of tablespoons of vegetable cooking oil into a 8 qt stock pot while on medium-low heat.  While the oil gets hot, smash and peel 1/2 a bulb of garlic.  Once smashed, place the garlic into the pot. Make sure to watch the pot so that it is not smoking.  Take your big chunks of pork and place them into the pot as well.  Brown the pieces of pork until each side is nicely browned.  While browning the pork, you can also add the quartered potatoes if desired.  From there, place enough water to cover the pork.  Also add about a cup of shoyu sauce and a 1/2 cup of vinegar.  You can also throw in the bay leaves and peppercorns at this time too.  Allow the ingredients in the pot to come to a boil.  Let the adobo to boil for about 10 minutes and then turn the heat down low enough to continue simmering for about 25-30 minutes.  Your kitchen will fill up with the wonderful vinegar-garlic-pork aroma.  Take a piece of pork and cut to see if the inside is still pink.  If it is pink place back into the pot to cook for another 15-20 minutes.  At this time, you should add the Chinese long beans.  You do not want them to be undercooked or overcooked.  Once the pork is no longer pink, check to see if your long beans have a slight snap to them.  

Another note:  if the sauce is too bland, simply add a little more shoyu sauce and vinegar until you have a nice balance of salty-acidic flavor.  From here, place a scoop or two of your preferred rice and the pork adobo with veggies into your bowl.  You can use the soup as a sauce on your ingredients and rice for extra infusion of flavor.  Lol, just writing this makes me hungry.  Hope you all enjoy and if you have any questions feel free to leave a comment.