Chili has been part of the culture and food diet among Filipinos nowadays. Everyone would always find a way to include chili in any recipe they make including the local cuisines as well as delicacies. Yes you hear it right, even delicacies that is supposed to be literally sweet is combined with spicy flavor to make a new trend of the supposed-sweet products. Street foods, appetizers and ‘pulutan’ (food that goes along with beer or alcoholic beverages) will never taste good unless there is spicy taste in it.
Crispy Sisig is the most famous cuisine that has chili in it to make it so hot and spicy when consumed. This food served in sizzling platter tend to be mouth watering and can be still enhanced through toppings such as egg and green veggies or corn. Of course, Chili con carne will always be all time favorite which was inherited from Spanish ancestors is a beef stew that is topped with veggies such as tomatoes and beans which has exact spicy taste from the chilies or chili powder and is good main course during meal.
Spicy fried rice is also common as breakfast meal that is so easy and very simple rice dish. Different regions has its own recipes of spicy recipes such as pinangat, laing, bicol express and kinunot from Bicol, kinilaw na tuna from General Santos City, spicy dinuguan from Cebu, insarabasab from Ilocos, and spicy sisig from Pampanga. These are the pride of Filipinos, but aside from cravings, chili is a very good source of Vitamin A and can be very helpful among women who are near in giving birth.
Even street foods are becoming dependent to chili to make it more tasty and appealing to the consumers. Spicy chicken feet (also known as adidas), quail eggs (kwek-kwek), pork barbeque, fish balls and sometime even banana cue tend to have spicy flavor now. The new trend in street food is the chili itself where it is commonly known as dynamite lumpia where the chili is the main ingredients and stuffed with pork, or chicken (any meat) along with cheese wrapped in a lumpia wrapper and fried.
So now that chili has been part of most recipes in the market, maybe it is time to place chili plant in the garden.
