Pancit Miki With Patola

I learned to cook this recipe from my mother-in-law, who loves to cook and does it really well. She's my cooking mentor especially with home cooked comfort food that my hubby loves to eat. This recipe uses miki noodles that is used in cooking Chicken/Beef Mami and Pancit-Miki Guisado. In cooking this pancit you can combine shrimps, pork and chicken to make it more flavourful. In this recipe I used chicken, and it still tastes just as good.

Ingredients:

¼ kg Chicken Thighs and Legs, cut into small pieces

10 pieces Squid Balls, cut into two

500 gms Miki Noodles (rinse noodles in running water, drain and set aside)

3 pieces Patola, sliced into bite-sized pieces

2 pieces Medium Sized Carrots, sliced into flower shapes

5 cloves of Garlic, crushed

2 Medium Sized Onion, chopped

1 tbsp of Atsuete seeds soaked in 1/3 cup of water. (Tip: pour a little bit of lihia in the astsuete seeds, make sure all the seeds are well-coated. Rinse well before soaking in water. This helps extracts the orange color of the seeds, giving additional color and flavor to your dish. Lihia is also labeled as lye water and is used in making kutsinta and suman)

3 tbsp. of Cooking Oil

1/3 cup Fish Sauce (Patis)

1 tbsp Brown Sugar

1 pinch of Ground Black Pepper

2 cups of Water

Cooking Steps:

1. In a medium pan, saute garlic, onion until fragrant and golden brown. Add in chicken pieces and cook until the oil from the skin comes out. Add in the fish sauce and the squid balls and saute until slightly browned. Add in carrots and cook for about a minute.

2. Add in 2 cups of water. As it simmers, season with a pinch of black pepper and 1 tbsp of brown sugar.

3. Pour in the water colored with atsuete seeds.

4. Add in the patola and the miki noodles. Mix well. Cook until noodles are tender.

5. Serve hot with pandesal and a squeeze of calamansi juice (local lime).