Salmon Cooked in Tamarind (Sinigang na Salmon)

Asians love sour soups.  The Chinese people have Hot and Sour Soup, the Thais, Tom Yum Soup while the Vietnamese, Pineapple Lemon Grass Soup.  The Filipinos have their Sinigang.  

Sinigang is a popular and well loved Filipino dish featuring meat or seafood cooked with tamarind (sampaloc)  to give the dish its distinct and characteristic sour taste.  One can use pork (baboy), beef (baka) or combination of pork and beef.   Fish, the most popular of which is milkfish (bangus) is also commonly used as well as large shrimps (sugpo).  Typical vegetables that are added to complete the dish are kangkong (water spinach), labanos (daikon radish), tomato, onions, string beans, okra and taro tuber (gabe). Banana peppers can also be added whole which I love to do. 

During the despedida party given by our classmate Boy Garcia and his wife Girlie for the Class '65 of St. James Academy, (it will be in a future post) they served Sinigang na Bangus sa Bayabas (guava).  They used milkfish (bangus) and added guava (bayabas), a tropical fruit for additional flavor.

I live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where we have some of the major sports teams in the US, namely the Steelers (football), the Penguins (hockey) and the Pirates (baseball).  And yes we are also famous for having three rivers.  Yeah.  All these but we do not have fresh bangus or milkfish available here like in California.  Only frozen ones from the Asian stores.  But I want my Sinigang using fish that is more readily available.  How do I satisfy my craving for this dish then?  Use salmon.  Yes that fish that is in every menu in America. 

How about the tamarind?  Well I succumbed to convenience.  Instead of using tamarind paste or powder readily available in Asian stores here, I used a packet of Knorr brand Tamarind Soup Mix.  (I have also used the other brand, Mama Sita).  It does have a flavor enhancer (MSG) in its list of ingredients.  Please do use the tamarind paste or powder if you are allergic to MSG or monosodium glutamate the manifestation of which is a headache.

I like this recipe because it is fast.  It took only 8 minutes to cook and you practically just need to cut some ingredients in big chunks or as is to prepare the ingredients.  The key here is not to overcook the fish.  Five minutes into cooking time, try using a fork to test if the fish is done.   If you overcook the fish in the broth, it will lose its succulence.

There is an advantage to using salmon also.  I can eat the skin which I love rather than discard it without my worrying about scales.  The frozen bangus that I can buy have scales which I either remove (too much work for me) or live with it but my husband will not.

As for vegetables, I have a lot of kale in the fridge when I prepared this dish so I used it and it turned out to be a good leafy vegetable to go with the sourness of the broth.  It is also convenient to use.  Since it is hardy unlike spinach I can add it at the very beginning and not worry about it being overcooked.

Here is the recipe of my now favorite fish dish, Sinigang na Salmon.  Move over bangus.

Salmon Cooked in Tamarind (Sinigang na Salmon)

Ingredients

• 1 lb salmon
• 1 tomato, sliced into wedges
• 1 onion, sliced in wedges
• 4 cups fresh kale leaves, cut into bite size pieces and stems removed
• 1 banana pepper, whole
• 1/2  of a packet Knorr Tamarind Soup Mix (available at Asian Stores) 
• 3-4 cups water

In a large pot, add the water and then whisk in the tamarind soup mix into it till the mix all dissolve.  Add the rest of the ingredients with the salmon last.  Boil for around 8 minutes or until the fish is done.  You can eat this with rice and a side of fish sauce (patis) for additional saltiness.  This dish can be eaten as a main dish or it can be the soup to be served with grilled pork chops.  Try it.  It is heaven on earth.


Notes:

1.  As mentioned in the introduction,  guava (bayabas) has been used as an added flavor to the sinigang.  Danny, a classmate from Class '65 at St. James, suggested to add miso paste for added depth to the taste of the sinigang.

2.  If you are using tamarind paste or powder, you would need to add salt or fish sauce.  The Knorr Tamarind Soup Mix is already salted thus I did not list salt in the list of ingredients. 

3.  Another option from Paeng Robles, another classmate from Class '65, is to add rice flour (glutinous rice) dissolved in water to make the broth of the soup cloudy and a little thicker.  We customarily add to the water the washings of raw rice (hugas-bigas) so this rice flour takes the place of that.