Inabraw is an Ilocano soup dish prepared with string beans, eggplant, okra, jute leaves and bitter melon flavoured by fermented fish sauce and sometimes etag (a type of dried and salted pork/meat) then served with fried fish
I enjoyed a lot of my teenager years in Baguio City and I miss that place a lot specially the food, the cuisine of this region is one of my favourite regional cuisines in the Philippines as it showcases a lot of fresh indigenous vegetables and offal A place known for being frugal, there are no meat parts that are thrown away, from blood and intestines everything is prepared into a delicious meal, it even uses a lot of flora and that are unknown to other parts of Philippines. Food was cheap during my university days, with PHP 10.00 to 15.00 in our school cafeteria I already have rice, 2 viands (a meat and vegetable dish) plus a bottle of soft-drink, dishes like dinakdakan, insarabasab, pinapaitan, igado, dinaldalem and dinengdeng are the regular ones you can order.
Today I am making one of those regular fare, a personal favourite, the Inabraw. Inabraw may not be for all, it a bitter slimy vegetable soup, it takes a while to get used to but once you are hooked you will look for it every time. A vegetable medley of string beans, eggplant, okra, jute leaves and bitter melon that is cooked soup style flavoured by fermented fish sauce and sometimes etag (a type of dried and salted pork/meat) then served with fried fish. It’s a comfort food and a healthy one.
Inabraw is an Ilocano soup dish prepared with string beans, eggplant, okra, jute leaves and bitter melon flavoured by fermented fish sauce and sometimes etag (a type of dried and salted pork/meat) then served with fried fish
