let's talk breakfast

Come on in. Grab a chair, sit down and let's talk breakfast...  Usually, you would be offered breakfast with two slices of toast, eggs sunny side up (or scrambled, or overeasy) and some slices of bacon or sausage.. but isn't that too common?

Now, how about breakfast with fried garlic rice? Yummy; now we're talking... but wait a minute! Rice? for breakfast?! Yes, fried garlic rice for breakfast, because we're having a Filipino breakfast, which looks like this:

I guess we Filipinos took the saying "eat breakfast like a king" too seriously!  Let's take a closer look, shall we?

What you see is a serving of longsilog. Let me teach you some key Filipino words. Longsilog is a play on words:  Long is from "longganisa" (sausage), si is from "sinangag" (garlic fried rice), while log is from "itlog" (egg). The great thing about this compound word is how it sums the dish up: sausage, garlic rice and sunny side up eggs. If we were to translate it to English, we couldn't just say saugarsu... so you just have to remember the term longsilog.

This breakfast spread is typical back home. However, since moving to America, we enjoy this sumptuous breakfast only during weekends.  So this weekend, I was in the mood for our -silogs, I made my homemade sweet beef longanisa complete with eggs and garlic fried rice!

If you like this post, stay tuned! I will be sharing with you how to cook other -silog meals, tocino or sweet cured pork, tapa or dried/cured beef and corned beef, for you and your family to enjoy.

Sweet Beef Longanisa

2 lbs  ground beef

2 tbsp hoisin sauce

2 tbsp oyster sauce

minced garlic ( i like mine with lots of garlic)

2 tbsp sugar

In a mixing bowl, mix all the ingredients together: hoisin sauce, oyster sauce, garlic and sugar.  Mix well, allowing all the seasonings to fuse together.  Add the ground beef amd mix it by hand.  Start forming the longanisa into an elongated shape.  I usually freeze it for a few minutes before frying.  

In a pan, spray cooking oil spray.  Brown all sides of the longanisa.

Garlic Rice

2 tbsp cooking oil

4 cloves garlic, minced

cooked white rice (use a day old rice from the fridge not the freshly cooked rice as this is sticky.)

Salt to taste

Direction:

In a wok, add cooking oil and garlic at the same time.  This way the cooking oil will slowly heat up and the garlic starts to brown, this way you won't burn the garlic.  Add  rice. Mix well and then season it with salt. Again, do not use sticky/very moist rice.  It should be dry and it's best to use the refrigerated left-over rice from the previous day.

Enjoy your breakfast with a sunny side up egg, tomatoes on the side plus dip the longanisa with sweet chili vinegar... Enjoy!