Cebu, the queen city of the south, is considered as the home of Balbacua ( pronounced as BAL - BA - KU- WAH). This slightly gooey soup of beef "throwaways" -- skin, tail, tripe, tendons, feet, etc...-- reminds me of Callos, another Spanish-inspired dish served only on very special occasion among the Tagalogs of Luzon. But the similarity ends at the stickiness of the soup and of course the meat parts. My dad bought a lot of ox tripe the other day intending it for another rice dish. I was going to cook Callos, but he said he wants something fast and much simpler. The carpenter working at our house started singing a novelty song about "balbakuwah".Hmm...why not, right?
Dad started to enthusiastically recall how his male workers would cook it "the way it should be". Again, hmm... yeah, what better way to cook something homegrown than by the way the locals whip it up. After an hour, it was my turn to critique my dad's memory on balbakuwah. I was surprised that I liked it. The meat parts were not smelly at all. And everything was soft-melt-in-the-mouth kind of texture in my mouth. I was expecting a dense soup but it was watery enough to wet a mound of hot rice. The soup itself smelled good. I never realized until now that salted black beans can smell appetizing. The soup was slightly sweet and sour and salty. It may be an acquired taste for first timers, but its not a famous local dish for nothing. My final say? I'll have a bowl of this anytime with a side dipping of fish sauce and calamansi spiced with tiny hot chilies. Eye-ball everything. The sweet, salty, and slightly sour should all be fighting equally on your taste buds. Hmm!!!
Ingredients:
- beef parts (skin, tripe, feet, tail, shanks with meat around it)
- salted black beans
- coarsely grounded cooked peanuts (or peanut butter if you're feeling lazy)
- pineapple chunks
- a big thumb of ginger (crushed)
- a tspn of turmeric
- a tspn of annatto oil (asuete rendered in oil)
- minced garlic
- minced red onion
- small hot red chilies (if you want it spicy)
- broth from the simmered meat parts
- salt and fish sauc to taste
Procedure:
- clean all the beef parts. cut them into bigger than serving size pieces (2 inches for the tripe, 3 inches for the tail and feet, 4 inches for the skin).
- place in a pressure cooker and cover with more than enough water (meat must be very submerged). add a thumb of crushed ginger, salt to taste, and turmeric.
- par boil the meat and remove all scums that appear. when the broth is clear, close the lid of the pressure cooker and cook for 45 minutes. when meat parts are tender, separate from the broth and set aside both meat and broth.
- in a large pan, saute onions and garlic in annatto oil. once fragrant, add the sliced meat and stir gently until coated with the annatto oil.
- Add the black beans and stir.
- pour in the broth. add the peanuts or peanut butter and pineapple chunks
- season with fish sauce.
- add sliced chilies if you want it really spicy.
- simmer until the broth becomes a little gooey (according to preference)
- enjoy with hot rice and spicy dipping sauce of fish paste, calamansi, and sliced red chilies.