Phillippines - Longsilog

Background
The title of this week's breakfast is longsilog. The name comes from a portmanteau of the three main dishes: longganisa (sausage), sinangág (fried rice), and itlog (eggs). This method of naming meals is common in the Philippines. The fried rice recipe was found in The Food of the Philippines by Reynaldo G. Alejandro. The sausage recipe was found in Memories of Philippine Kitchens by Amy Besa and Romy Dorotan.

Longganisa (Sausage)

• 1 ½ lbs ground pork
• 1 tbsp annato coloring (powder, available at Latin markets)
• 1 tbsp chili oil
• 1 tbsp rice wine
• ½ tbsp rice winegar
• 1 tsp minced garlic
• 1 tsp lime zest
• ½ tbsp salt
• ½ tsp fresh ground pepper

1. Combine all of the ingredients in a mixing bowl, being careful not to pulverize the meat too much.
2. Divide the mixture into 10 balls all of the same size.
3. Shape these balls into sausages 3 inches long and about an inch in diameter.
4. Refrigerate the sausages overnight to give the flavor time to blend and to make handling easier.
5. Heat a frying pan to medium and put a thin layer of water in the pan. This helps to prevent sticking.
6. The sausages cook in about 5-7 minutes.
7. Place done sausages on a plate and keep warm in an oven.

Philippine Fried Rice

• 4 tbsp vegetable oil
• 2 tbsp minced garlic
• ¼ cup minced shallots
• 4 cups of cooked medium-grain rice mashed lightly with ½ cup water
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• ¼ tsp ground black pepper

1. Cook garlic in oil until golden brown.
2. Add all remaining ingredients and cook, stirring, for 10 minutes to ensure the rice is evenly heated.
3. Serve hot.

Scrambled Eggs
Scramble eggs in some of the grease left over from the sausages, top with crushed red pepper.

Results and Discussion
The original recipe for the sausages called for wild boar meat and pork fatback. Clearly the sausages would have been much more awesome had they been made of wild boar meat. I am a city dweller and wild boar hunting season in Somerville city limits is not until the fall. We were left with the choice of lean ground pork. The lean option left the sausages with too little fat and they were a little dry. I would recommend adding some fat back to help prevent this problem.
We used short-grain sticky rice in the fried rice. The stickiness of the rice caused lumps to developed as we fried it. In future attempts at fried rice the medium-grain variety will be used with the hope of minimizing the stickiness.
This was a pretty simple breakfast except for some challenges in finding certain ingredients. The most difficult was the annatto oil called for in the original sausage recipe.  We only required a small amount and all of the recipes yielded 2 cups.  It is because of this that we used annato powder to give the sausages the correct color. I really enjoyed making sausages from scratch and hope to some day be in a position where I can grind my own meat. I hope that will line up with boar season.