Pinakbet

One of the dishes I really enjoy here is Pinakbet.  Probably because it includes green beans and squash, two great vegetables.  It was also the main veggie-heavy dish I had at my first restaurant experience on my second day in Davao, so that may be part of the reason also.  I haven’t been trying specific recipes very much, but last night I tried this one.  It uses shrimp paste, something I bought because I noticed it was in a lot of Filipino dishes.  As you can see from the coloring in the photo, I put quite a bit in it.  But surprisingly, once I could get past the color (most pinakbet does NOT look pink), it actually was pretty good and tasted remarkably (relatively) similar to pinakbet.  I’ll call it a success, and nonetheless, I still very much enjoy my green beans and squash. 🙂  (This version I also added tofu.  Traditional pinakbet also includes other vegetables like okra. Seasoning ingredients I used were onions, garlic, ginger, shrimp paste, tomatoes.)