Humba



1 kilo pork pigue or pork kasim, whole
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup water
2 tbsp. soy sauce
2 tbsp. brown sugar
1 tsp. salt
½ cup vinegar
1 spring oregano
½ bay leaf (laurel)
1 heaping tbsp. tausi (salted black beans)
2 tbsp. fat

Mix all ingredients and cook until pork is tender. Slice pork into serving pieces. Arrange on a platter, set aside.
Strain sauce and pour over pork. Serve hot.

Trivia:
Humba is part of our culinary heritage though it surely originated from the Chinese because of the black beans and peanuts that go into the dish as well as the name which includes the syllable "ba" and which means pork in Chinese. We have translated the recipe to please our Filipino palate bycovering the bottom of the clay pots in which the humba is cooked with banana leaves. Filipinos love to wrap, steam and broil food in banana leaves, and the humba is no exception.

In Leyte, the humba is cooked in either clay pots or heavy calderos. At the bottom of the cooking pot is placed an inverted porcelain plate so that the pork does not stick there when cooked. The dish is popular not only because of its delicious flavor or the way the pork fat almost melts with the long slow cooking but because it keeps for days, an important factor in the era before electricity and refrigeration reached this island province. Like the adobo, the humba is better tasting days after it is cooked.

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