Hopia Baboy
by Marketman
How’s this for a blast from the past? As a child, I LOVED hopia with munggo or mung bean filling. I don’t recall ube hopias in the late 60′s and early 70′s. I suppose for a kid, the sweetish buttery munggo filling was as good as a protein rich beans were going to get. Fresh hopia purchased on occasional Sunday “paseos†to Binondo with our family were definitely a treat. As much as I loved munggo hopia, I absolutely despised hopia baboy. There was just something about this savory concoction that was a real turn-off. And now that I think about it some more, I think it was a particular Sunday, when in my single digits, I tried this version of hopia, and I got what felt like the most repulsive chunky piece of mushy slow-cooked fat in one of my bites. Without asking anyone, I just assumed it was solid fat, and I decided then and there that I would never again ate a hopia baboy… But here’s the real rub, it turns out that there isn’t much baboy in hopia baboy at all! It seems many recipes call for kundol or wintermelon cubes slow cooked in pork fat or lard. Or in the absence of kundol, sliced onions are sometimes used as an alternative. Now that I know that, maybe that silly piece of fat was in fact a very mushy piece of lard infused kundol!
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