Menudo-esque

I ate a lot of "stuff" when I was younger: Peanut butter stuff (kare-kare). Eggplant omelet stuff (tortang talong). That stuff with raisins (menudo).

I don't know when or why I suddenly started asking the real names of the food I was eating. For a long time, I didn't even know certain dishes were actual Filipino foods, like tortang talong (which I still call eggplant omelet) or menudo. I just thought my mom made them up.



This version certainly isn't a true Filipino menudo. For one thing, I didn't add raisins, and the raisins are what really make the dish -- I mean, that's how I identified the dish for years. But there were no raisins in my pantry, and being a Lazy Sunday, I certainly wasn't going out to the store for anything.

Secondly, after doing a little blog research, I'm pretty sure a true menudo is made with pork. And liver. And garbanzo beans. But my mom doesn't use those ingredients. Occasionally she'll use pork, but it's always ground pork. I always remember eating menudo with ground beef.

And that's all fine. I used to be weird about tweaking Filipino dishes, simply because I felt that they should always taste the way my parents make them. But that was before I started cooking them for myself. I certainly like to learn the original recipe first, but once I've got that down, there's no harm in playing around to create something all my own.

So my version of menudo consisted of ground beef, onions, garlic, green pepper, potatoes, carrots and celery (not usually in the real stuff but added for color and crunch), soy sauce, stewed tomatoes (instead of the usual tomato paste), and no raisins. Served over rice.

Of course it didn't taste like my mom's. I didn't make it very saucy either, which I later regretted. But it was still tasty and filling, and that's all that really matters in the end.