She Said : It’s Mom’s , He Said : It’s Grandmom’s

I am actually referring to my daughter and her boyfriend. Actually, it was my daughter who told me that she and her boyfriend will always boast of who cooks the most delicious kare-kare , a dish of oxtail or the front leg of the pig, cooked in peanut butter sauce.

It’s an intricate dish to cook. It has lots of ingredients thus making it an expensive one so it’s not a dish that you can serve always. I only cook it whenever our daughter comes home for a vacation from her studies in Manila.

And even when she’s still in high school where she stays in a dorm in a province far from our residence, I only get to cook it sometimes when she’s home which is usually on Fridays to Sunday lunch only.

Anyway, she also got to taste the version of her boyfriend’s grandmother whom he also boasts as so delicious, but she told me I make the more delicious one.

It’s really music to my ears actually. At least , when I die she will always remember me whenever she will get to eat kare-kare.

So, I will share to you how to make it. Though, I must say I don’t measure the ingredients but I just estimate the amount of some of the ingredients that can add to the flavor of the dish .

Here goes for the ingredients :

Oxtail , chopped into pieces
Garlic
Onion
BokChoy
Banana blossom
String beans
Eggplant
Rice Flour
Atsuete or dried annato seeds
Alamang(shrimp paste)
Chopped Roasted Peanuts (you can buy from ambulant vendors the fried nude ones and chopped them )
Peanut Butter ( buy the a bit sweet one)

First, you have to roast the rice flour , about a half cup of it. When it turns a bit brown, set it aside.

Saute the atsuete in cooking oil to bring out the color red. Remove the seeds and set aside the now colored red cooking oil.

You can steam the vegetables I mentioned –half cook only. Set them aside.

Oxtail can be a bit tough. So what I do is to pressure cook it for about 20 minutes. I will stop it at 15 minutes to see if it’s already a bit soft. When it’s a bit soft , I will set it aside. But if it’s not I will pressure cook it again for another 5 minutes. Don’t make it so tender though.

It is important that it’s moderately tender because you still have to sauté the oxtail pieces, garlic and onions in the atsuete oil with additional cooking oil. Season with some soy sauce and a pinch of salt.

Then after sautéing it , cover it so that the aroma and taste of the garlic and onion will be absorbed by the oxtail. After that, put on some of the broth (about 3 cups) of the oxtail from the pressure cooker where you have it tenderized. Then , put the atsuete oil and the water where you soaked the atsuete for 15 minutes.

Add to the sauce the roasted rice flour and mix it.

Now, put the chopped peanuts, then the peanut butter. Taste it if the sauce has already acquired the taste of the peanut butter, soy sauce and salt. See if the sauce is already a bit creamy and sticky already.

Top it with the steamed veggies. Serve it with the sautéed shrimp paste in a little amount of sugar. Or you can just buy the bottled sautéed shrimp paste.

The sautéed shrimp paste is for me made into a dip with some spicy vinegar where you can dip the oxtail or the veggies before you put them into your mouth.

Now, you have your kare-kare. Bon Appetit!