Bas-uy is a food specialty of many Negrense families. Often served for breakfast, this soup is enriched with protein, including pork meat and innards like the liver. It is best served with warm white rice, scrambled eggs, and dried fish, or, with the local chorizo recado.
If served for breakfast, Bas-uy is paired with garlic fried rice, scrambled eggs and dried fish.
Bas-uy, with the addition of onion, ginger, and salt, makes this dish surprisingly flavorful. The taste of the pork meat and liver, when eaten together, creates a balance between the bitter, sweet, and savory.
These Bas-uy ingredients are necessary to temper the pork taste.
Others would mistake bas-uy for batchoy but to the more informed ones, there is definitely a distinction between the two and they cannot be interchanged. Batchoy has noodles and uses other ingredients. While that is true, many will contend that the difference between the two goes beyond the noodles. The flavors of the broths are quite distinct, and no noodle can bridge that.
Bas-uy can also be found in carinderias or other households. Replacing the liver and pork meat, they now use either ground pork or beef and their choice of vegetables like pechay (bok choy cabbage), kalubay or upo (Bottle gourd), patola (Silk squash), and cabbage with cubed potatoes.
Liver, found in bas-uy, is known as a superfood filled with protein and vitamins.
Bas-uy is definitely a family heirloom that has been shared with pride from one generation to the next and because of its originality, people have looked forward to having it like a novelty dish.
The pork meat in bas-uy is slightly sweet and savory.
Negrense /neg-REN-se/ n. the people of Negros Island in the Philippines. The island is divided into two provinces, Negros Oriental to the east and Negros Occidental to the west.
Ingredients:
6 cloves garlic, sliced
1 knob of ginger, roughly the size of the thumb, sliced
1 thumb ginger, finely chopped
1 medium onion
½ kg. pork tenderloin, thinly sliced
¼ kg. pork liver, thinly sliced
Water for boiling
4 stalks spring onions, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
Fried garlic, optional
Procedure:
1. In a pot, saute garlic till brown. Add ginger. Then the onions.
2. Add the pork tenderloin and liver.
3. Keep sautéing until pork and liver are tender.
4. While pouring in water, keep stirring. This will help in maintaining the transparency of the soup.
5. Add the spring onions and cook for a few minutes.
6. Salt and pepper to taste.
7. Garnish it with spring onions. Fried garlic is optional.
Ginger and spring onion counters the rammish taste of the meat.
Makes 4-5 servings.
Recipe shared by Nanay Lucita Divino Tonato
77 years old
Head cook of the Velez-Gamban and Locsin-Gamboa families
Nanay Luz has been cooking these family recipes that have been passed on for generations. She learned how to cook from her mother at a young age and became proficient with some of the heirloom recipes of the families she worked with.
Text by: Massah Gonzales-Gamboa
Photography by: Project Twenty Six
Food Styling by: David Dadivas
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