Pastilan! Living the dog-eat-dog world of a Global Pinoy!

I wish I could eat this again.




"Ingredients:
1 Pata (front or hind leg of a pig including the knuckles)
1 bottle of soda (7Up or sprite)
1 tbsp of salt
2 tbsp patis (fish sauce)
1/2 tbsp baking soda
1 tbsp honey
4 tbsp of flour
Enough oil for deep frying
Enough water for boiling

Cooking Procedure:
1. Clean the pork pata by removing all hairs and by scraping the skin with a knife. Wash thoroughly.
2. Make four to five inch cuts on the sides of the pata.
3. On a deep stock pot, place the pata in water with soda and salt. Bring to a boil and simmer for 20 minutes. Then add the baking soda and continue to simmer for another 10 minutes.
4. Remove the pata from the pot and hang and allow to drip dry for 24 hours. An alternative to this is to thoroughly drain the pork pata and refrigerate for a few hours.
5. After the above process, rub patis on the pata and sprinkle flour liberally.
6. In a deep frying pot, heat cooking oil and deep fry the pork pata until golden brown."

Where is the best place to eat deep-fried freshly caught fish, marinated and coated with Indian spices? Surely not in the Operating Room (OR). You might find this incredible and may sound silly but that’s true. Strange at it may be, but I just had an awesome fried fish eaten in the OR. I was finishing my lunch of fried tilapia (oh yes, fish), vegetable lumpia (spring roll) and green salad with French dressing in the cafeteria when I jolted from my seat to see one of my doctor friends who invited me the other day to attend the “fish” party he is throwing out for the OR staff.

To save my self from immodest embarrassment for not attending his “fish” party, I decided to show up and assumed that I can politely walk away afterwards. I never actually had taken it seriously that the “fish” party would be in the OR so I was definitely taken aback when it was indeed in the OR. And so I joined the other Surgery doctors and nurses who were still clad in scrub suits, eating fish. I was delighted to see that the party was held at the waiting anteroom although the prep-room and OR theater were just gasped away.

I was so enticed to ask the old doctor friend why he needed to take pride of his recent fishing adventure by throwing out a “fish’ party in, of all places, the OR. But I guess I was so caught up in the moment that I forgot about it. Thinking about the place where you slice and butcher human beings to remove or repair human body parts made eating those fried fish an adventure of my very dull unenvied sterile life. I have to swear though that it was undeniably a splendid fish-eating experience.