How to cook
Pancit ng taga-Malabon
You will need two days to cook Pancit Malabon. Not because cooking it is difficult but because you will need to prepare the noodles a day before.
Here are the steps for cooking the Pancit Malabon.
1. Cook the noodles in the pork soup stock. Drain completely.
2. Add Palabok Sauce and mix thoroughly
3. Other Toppings (garnishes) may either be mixed right away or for better presentation, arrayed artfully on top (like a pizza). Paminta (black pepper powder) may be added according to taste.
4. Serve with halved calamansi on the side.
Details per step below.
Pancit Luglog
Pancit Luglog (big noodles made from rice sticks) require presoaking for a night. Soak the noodles completely under water. This will let the noodles absorb the water and will thicken the strands. Soaking will also make it pliable – bendable but firm like al dente spaghetti noodles. It has to turn like this before you even try cooking it. Otherwise, it will turn lumpy and no amount of boiling will make your noodles eatable.
Prepare the soup stock for cooking the noodles
Pancit Malabon uses pork meat which can come from any of these three parts: head, liempo (stomach flesh) or buto-buto (soup bones). Boil the meat and bones in water. Collect the soup stock. Set aside the meat which will later be used to top the dish. Cook your noodles in the soup stock.
Once your noodles are ready, you may now begin cooking the rest of the ingredients.
Palabok Sauce
1. Sauté a half kilo of ground pork in garlic and onion.
2. Flavor with patis (anchovy sauce). Palabok should be a bit salty.
3. Add Atsuete. It gives the sauce its orangey color. Atsuete can be bought prepared in liquid form. It can also be made from scratch by adding a little hot water to Anato seeds, mixing, and then straining. You only need the juice (less water, thicker juice, stronger color is preferred). Use just enough of it so that your palabok has the correct orangey color. Atsuete has no effect on taste.
4. When your palabok sauce is ready, mix it with the cooked noodles.
Toppings
Pork meat used previously to prepare the soup stock for cooking the noodles should be deboned and the meat cut into slivers (kilawin size).
Shrimp can also be used for topping. Boil the shrimps, shell and cut to bite size pieces.
Other Add-ons
1. Egg. Hardboil some eggs, slice.
2. Pechay Baguio. Wash and cut up the vegetable.
3. Onions. Blanch some onions and cut each into 8 pieces by halving them first and then quartering each half.
4. Celery or kimchay (optional). Blanch and slice (bite size)
5. Garlic – Pound one or two whole bulbs of garlic. Sauté and set aside.
6. Tinapa (smoked fish usually Tamban) 1/8 kilo. Debone the Tinapa. Tinapa is naturally flakey and so it will be easy to cut them into very small pieces (flakes) using your hands. Dry fry the tinapa (toast in pan without oil.)
7. Chicharon. 1/8 kilo. Chicharon is pork skin, fat and meat deep fried in oil until the skin turns very crispy and crunchy. Prepared chicharon can be bought almost everywhere. Slightly pound or crunch the chicharon until it also turns into flakes.
Calamansi and Oysters
Calamansi is the local lemon. It is considered an important element to pancit Malabon as it brings out the flavor of the mix to the fullest. It is served separately because you should only put calamansi on pancit Malabon you will eat immediately. Adding the calamansi juice to the dish may cause it to spoil faster.
Some taga-Malabon (locals) like to put blanched oysters on their pancit. It does impart a certain richness to the dish specially if you can get them this fat and big. Add oysters only when you know you will be eating it within a few hours of cooking as blanched oysters do not keep long.
Enjoy!
