Sinigang Na Lechon: When You Don't Know What To Do With Leftover Goodness

It's an absolutely fine day. You are at home, in a good mood though you are really hungry. And luckily, this is one of those days that you have 3 kilos of lechon in your freezer. But here's the thing, you don't have an oven to heat your lechon with and you're absolutely sick of lechon paksiw. What do you do? Make a Sinigang na Lechon! Why you ask? Because you can, bitch!

Most of you would probably cringe at the idea of doing this to lechon, but that's the magic of sinigang, you are only limited by your own imagination. Da vah!?

Anyway, I don't claim that this is an original recipe. In fact, I've heard about this many times before but was repulsed by the idea of soaking the Pinoy version of meat candy in sour broth. That was until this one fine day, Arvin dropped by the house with lechon cebu and cooked this dish. Bojji and I asked him why do that to lechon. He answered, "because I can, bitches!"

So on this one fine day, I cooked this dish, tweaked some ingredients and methods to suit my taste, and my innate hunger for convenience. So here it is!

Sinigang na Lechon, Bitches!

INGREDIENTS

1 kilo lechon (the real one, not the kawali or manukan versions), cut into chunks (bring to room temperature if frozen) 
1 large red onion, quartered
4 pcs ripe tomatoes, quartered
1 stalk of lemongrass, top green part removed, bottom white part pounded
1 pack/ 60 g of sinigang mix (tamarind soup base) or 4-6 tbsp of katas ng murang sampaloc (young tamarind extract.) 
1 radish, sliced
2 medium pcs gabi (taro), quartered
2 pcs siling pansigang (green lady finger chilis)
200 g / 1 bunch of talbos ng kangkong (river spinach sprout)
2 liters of either rice wash, water, "awesome" (pork) stock or any combination of the 3.
2 tbsp of fish sauce or 1 1/2 tsp salt (but it all depends on your taste)
a pinch of ground black peppercorn

METHOD

1. In a pot, simmer to a boil the rice wash with onion, tomatoes, taro and lemongrass.
2. Turn the heat to medium-low and add the lechon, simmer for 15 minutes to infuse flavor
3. Season with fish sauce and black pepper.
4. Add the sinigang mix, continue simmering for another 5 minutes.
5. Remove the lechon chunks from the pot and place it in a tray.
6. Put in radish, simmer till desired doneness.
7. Before turning off the fire, add the kangkong and siling pansigang till the kangkong wilts.
8. After turning the fire off, add the lechon chunks back in the pot to absorb heat.
9. Serve while hot.

THINGS OF NOTE

- Contrary to popular way of doing sinigang, I season the broth first with salt and pepper before adding the tamarind instead of the opposite. This gives me a better hand at controlling the sourness of the dish.
- Every local lechon recipe has its own special blend of lechon stuffing aromatics (ginger, cloves, star anise, banana, etc.). Adding some these ingredients to your broth would make your sinigang better. I should probably put Sprite next time.  
- Since lechon is already cooked,  I remove the lechon after simmering it for 20 minutes. This will prevent the lechon from being labsak or labog (excessively soft?). But if you are using exclusively lechon head or hocks, or you just want to thicken your sinigang with disintegrated meat, you can do away with this method. 
- You could only do this probably as seldom as Christmas so doing it right every time helps. If not, you still have 2 kilos of lechon left.