Recipe: My Chinese Humba

Humbalicious!

Humba is a dish of Chinese origin. It comes from the Chinese dish called Hong Ba because of its similarities in taste, ingredients and appearance. Like its Filipino counterpart, the Adobo, this dish has a different version in every household and its leftover gets better and better as it gets older. Adobo has his pinoy salty-sweet-sour taste while the Humba has more sweetness, salty and a bit of sour with aromatic Chinese spice aroma.

I remember my Ama used make this using lean pork with thin soy sauce (because she doesn't use cornstarch slurry in the end of the cooking) and its wonderful five spice aroma wafts though the house while she slow cooks the meat to its flaky tenderness. But I realized that by adding a bit of pork fat (well a load full of it actually) makes it sinfully yummy. Forgive me but please pass the atorvastatin 😁😁😁 (an old Lipitor joke). But seriously, high cholesterol and high blood pressure is no laughing matter so please adjust  the fat content according to your diet requirements.... and eat responsibly. 

My version has hard boiled eggs, dried Shitake mushrooms, Chinese sausage and honey in it. This recipe is very similar to my Patatim recipe here except that I use pork data instead.

Preparation time: 30 mins. 

Cooking time: 1 hour

Ingredients:

• 2 tbsp. Cooking oil
• 3 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1pc Chinese sausage sliced thinly 
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 kilo pork belly, cut in 2 inch serving pieces.
• 1 whole piece star anise or 1 teaspoon five spice powder
• 1/3 cup rice vinegar
• 1/4 cup lightsoy sauce
• 1 tbsp Chinese cooking wine 
• 2 bay leaves
• 1/4 tablespoon whole black peppercorn
• 2 tablespoons tausi
• 5 pcs. small dried Shitake mushrooms, soaked (reserve liquid to be added to the mixture)
• 3 cups water
• 1 tsp honey
• 1 tbsp. cornstarch dissolved in /4 cup water
• 3-4 hard boiled eggs peeled or 8 pcs hard boiled quail eggs

Procedure:

1. In a pressure cooker pan, sauté garlic and Chinese sausage lightly and remove them from the pan. 
2. Add 1 tsp of the brown sugar and caramelize them until lightly browned. Careful not to burn the sugar or else the dish will turn out bitter. 
3. Quickly add the meat, the garlic-sausage mixture, star anise, vinegar, soy sauce, cooking wine, the rest of the brown sugar, bay leaves, peppercorn, tausi, mushrooms and its liquid and water. 
4. Cover and pressure cook until meat is tender about 20-30 minutes.
5. Uncover, add honey and cornstarch mixture until thickened. 
6. Add the eggs. 

Happy eats!

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