Spicy Minced Pork With Long Beans

See the little slices of bird's eye chillies (Siling Labuyo) on the dish? That's a warning for you... this dish is very, very hot! And we like it that way. Bird's eye chillies are the small, tapered, red or green chillies that are pungent and very very hot! Do not be deceived by its small size (around 1 inch in length), it packs a lot in the hotness scale! Once when we treated a Korean friend to a Filipino dinner, our table was given an assortment of condiments for us to pour and mix ourselves. There were bottles of fish sauce, vinegar, calamansi and of course the bird's eye chillies. Our Korean friend asked what the small chillies were, after we told him the name, he promptly popped one into his mouth! We did not even have time to warn him. We know Koreans are used to eating hot dishes but still, this friend was so shocked by the hotness of the bird's eye chillies, he had to gulp it down with a cool drink.

Sometimes, we crave for a hot, spicy dish. Are we masochists or what? Eating a spicy dish in this hot tropical weather that will make us break out into sweat!? But it tastes good, specially good when paired with a bowlful of warm fragrant rice!

Of course, you can always tone down the degree of hotness of any dish by decreasing the amount of chillies you put in or change bird's eye chillies into finger chillies or even bell peppers!


1/2 K lean ground pork, marinated in
1 T soy sauce
1 T fish sauce
2 T cornstarch

1 bundle (around 200 gms) long beans (aka Baguio beans), trimmed, sliced
1 carrot, peeled, julliened
3 - 5 pieces bird eye chillies
1 can coconut cream (or make coconut cream -Kakang gata - from scratch)
4 T cooking oil
2 slices ginger
4 T garlic, minced
salt and pepper to taste


1. Heat up some oil in a non-stick wok or cooking pan. Saute ginger and garlic until fragrant but not burnt. For a fiery dish, you can add chillies at this point or you can add it later.

2. Add in the marinated ground meat. Stir fry for a while until cooked.

3. When meat is nearly cooked, add in the long beans, carrots and chillies. Stir fry for a while until vegetables are nearly cooked. Add in the coconut cream. Let boil.

4. Season with salt and pepper. Serve immediately.