How Grandma's Sinigang Recipe Survived Three Kitchens

Every time I open the lid of the tamarind concentrate, I pause for a moment. When the sour smell of the brown liquid on my fingertips rises, I feel like I'm standing not in this narrow kitchen in Philadelphia but in Lola's kitchen on the outskirts of Quezon City. Lola is Filipino for grandmother. The fan turning lazily, steam rising from the stainless steel pot, and Lola stirring the broth with a wooden ladle, keeping me by her side without a word.

Lola's sinigang was not a special recipe. Pork ribs, tomatoes, tamarind, eggplant, string beans (sitaw), kangkong (water spinach), and a little chili pepper. There were no measuring cups. Lola would only say, "You'll know when you taste it," and when I asked about quantities, all she'd do was show me a handful or half a handful. I was about eight years old when I first stood beside her, snapping kangkong stems. She only taught me to add the leaves at the very end. The stems need to boil for a long time, but the leaves wilt quickly.

That was the entirety of the recipe I received.

The First Kitchen, Quezon City

My mother's kitchen was a twenty-minute drive from Lola's house. Not long after Lola passed away, my mother began making sinigang. Unlike Lola, she was the kind of person who tried to write everything down. On a yellow lined notepad she wrote "pork ribs 1.5 lbs, 3 tomatoes, 8 cups water," then erased it and changed it to "6 cups water," then erased that too. She wanted to reproduce Lola's flavor exactly, and each time she would take a spoonful of broth, close her eyes, and taste it. "It's a little different," she would always say.

I was fifteen then, and barely any help in the kitchen. I just watched as my mother alternated between tamarind concentrate and fresh tamarind. Boiling fresh tamarind in water and straining the pulp through a sieve was Lola's method. My mother found the process tedious, but she would say, "I think this is right," and go back to it again. In the end, her notepad had two versions side by side: the concentrate version and the fresh tamarind version. Both accompanied by the note, "Not Lola's flavor."

The Second Kitchen, a Studio in Jersey City

When I came to New Jersey at twenty-one to start working as an interpreter, I barely cooked at all. The studio kitchen had only two electric burners and a small sink, and I owned just one pot. With that single pot I boiled pasta, made ramen, and occasionally steamed eggs.

The first time I tried making sinigang was one Sunday afternoon, when a sudden craving for that flavor hit me. I bought a bottle of tamarind concentrate and frozen kangkong at an Asian market. Instead of pork ribs I chose thinly sliced pork belly, because it was about $3 cheaper than ribs. Two tomatoes, one onion, fish sauce. That was it. No eggplant, no string beans. The fresh eggplant at that market didn't look very good, and I figured there was no point in assembling every ingredient for a single bowl I'd eat alone.

I sautéed the onion and pork belly first in the one pot, crushed in the tomatoes, then added water. One big spoonful of tamarind concentrate, then another half spoonful. I seasoned with fish sauce and added the kangkong last. I kept to the order Lola had taught me. Stems first, leaves at the very end.

When I took the first sip of broth, I understood my mother's feelings for the first time. "It's a little different." The exact same words came out. The sourness was there, but the depth was missing. The sweetness from the tomatoes was lacking, and the broth was thin. Without what the pork rib bones release, it was bound to be that way. But the texture of the kangkong just before it wilted, still vivid green in that fleeting moment, was exactly the same as in Lola's kitchen.

After that day I made sinigang two or three times a month. It came out a little different each time. Some days I added radish, some days an extra chili, some days I tried shrimp. The shrimp version had a much lighter broth, but it was good in its own way. I didn't keep notes the way my mother did. I remembered things only in my head, and more often than not, I didn't remember exactly.

Philadelphia, the Kitchen I Have Now

When I moved to Philadelphia last year, my kitchen got a little bigger. There are four gas burners, and I now own three pots. Inside a care package my mother sent, there was a yellow lined notepad. It was her sinigang notebook. Layers of corrections, erasures, and rewrites covered the pages, and on the last page it said this: "Just make it the way it tastes right to you."

I stared at that sentence for a long time.

That was the conclusion my mother had reached after years of trying to restore Lola's flavor. An exact recipe does not exist. Lola, too, must have made it a little differently each time. If the tomatoes she bought at the market that day were riper, the broth would have been sweeter. If the tamarind was old, the sourness would have been milder. Lola's sinigang was not a fixed recipe but a dish born each time from the ingredients at hand and the instincts of the moment.

It took three kitchens for me to understand that.

These days, the sinigang I make goes like this. I put pork ribs (bone-in) in water and bring it to a boil to skim the scum. In fresh water I add the ribs, onion, and tomatoes and simmer over medium heat until the meat is tender, usually an hour to an hour and a half. In the meantime I cut the eggplant into thick pieces, trim the sitaw, and separate the kangkong into stems and leaves. When the meat is done, I add the eggplant and sitaw, then the tamarind concentrate and fish sauce. A few minutes later, the kangkong stems. A few minutes after that, the kangkong leaves. I float one whole chili on top. That's all.

I don't measure. I taste the broth, and if it needs more sourness I add more tamarind. If it needs more salt I add a little more fish sauce. Just as Lola did. "You'll know when you taste it."

When people attach the word minimalism to cooking, they usually think of reducing ingredients. I once thought the same. Making sinigang with four or five ingredients in my Jersey City studio, I believed that was simple cooking. But for me now, minimal cooking is closer to letting go of unnecessary control. The obsession with finding perfect measurements, the compulsion to restore the original, the expectation of producing the same result every time. Letting go of all of that.

Sinigang is that kind of food by nature. It differs from household to household across the Philippines, from region to region, and even when the same person makes it, it differs from day to day. Some families use sampalok, a different sour ingredient instead of tamarind, and some use fish or shrimp instead of pork. That variation itself is sinigang. The effort to find one definitive answer, in hindsight, was at odds with the very character of this dish.

My mother's yellow notepad now sits on the shelf in my kitchen. I open it from time to time, but I don't follow it. The traces of erasure and rewriting say more than the numbers written there. My mother, too, learned to let go, and the notepad that shows that entire process is more precious to me than any finished recipe.

I'm planning to make sinigang again tonight. There's one eggplant left in the fridge, and the kangkong I bought yesterday is still fresh. The broth won't taste the same as yesterday's, and that's a good thing.