Philippine – Caldereta

by Fauzan Anandika

Philippine is a country located in the Pacific Ocean has many islands in their region. From history, we know that the Philippine has a strong cultural bonding with Spain. It starts when Spain, colonizing the Philippines in the 15th century. Spain becomes the longest colonizer in the Philippines ‘ history, not only taking their resource Spain also spreading their culture in the Philippines.

When visiting the Philippines, tourists can feel the assimilating culture in music, traditional dance, religion, and food. In Panay island, there is a traditional dance named Carinosa that has some similarity with the Bolero dance from Spain. The Carinosa dance rhythm also has similarities with Spain’s dance rhythm. When we taste Philippine food, they often using the same ingredient as Spain culinary. Caldereta, for example, a curry dish that uses the Spain word caldera that has means cauldron.

Caldereta is a goat meat stew topped with potatoes, tomatoes, bell peppers, olives, and hot pepper. When cooking Caldereta, people in Philippine can substitute goat meat with beef, chicken, or pork to adjust to their taste. Traditionally Caldereta serves for lunch or dinner with a side of white rice. It is easy to finds Caldereta in Philippines parties and festivities.

In some modern food stalls, they add melted cheese into a Caldereta to make it tastier. The cheese will give a creamy texture to the dish and enchant the umami flavor. Cooking Caldereta is pretty simple. If you can cook a curry dish, cooking Caldereta have many similarities to it. So, prepare your cookware and start cooking Calereta.

Ingredient

• 500 grams of goat meat, cut into bite-size.
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 1 shallot, minced
• 3 tomatoes, diced cut
• ½ teaspoon chili powder
• 100 ml tomato sauce
• 200-gram paprika
• 6 tablespoon chicken broth powder
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 50 ml of vinegar
• 1 carrot sliced
• 2 potato dice cut
• 3 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 500 ml of water
• Salt and pepper

How to cook

1. Mix vinegar, salt, and pepper in a big bowl. Soak the goat meat for 1 hour. Remove the meat and set aside.
2. Prepare a medium pan, heat it with medium fire.
3. Stir shallot, garlic with vegetable oil.
4. Add goat meat cook until turns into light brown color
5. Add tomato sauce, chili powder cook for 3 minutes.
6. Add water and boil it for 45 minutes until the meat becomes tender.
7. Add chicken broth powder and cook again for 4 minutes. Add more water if the soup becomes too dry.
8. Add potatoes and carrot cook for 9 minutes
9. Add olive oil and paprika, cook for 5 minutes.
10. Adjust the taste with salt.
11. Remove to a serving bowl.
12. Caldereta ready to be served with warm white rice.

Cooking tips

1. Add melted cheese to give creamy texture, a way to mix traditional food with a modern dish.
2. Thicken it up. These will give a richer taste to the curry.
3. Make it briny. Adding some olive, capers, and pearl onions will add up the salty taste.
4. Add other vegetables. Carrot is not the only one choice to make Caldereta. To upgrading the taste, add up some corn, green peas, chickpeas, or broccoli.
5. Add some cream. Even most of Caldereta dish not meant to a creamy dish but it will become more flavorful when adding a mixed tomato sauce with cream.