Nilaga essentials

Boiled meat and vegetable dishes are found across the world. The combinations vary depending on local produce. I grew up on bulalo and nilagang baboy. The vegetables often added to the meat were cabbage and potatoes.

Later on, I would learn to add carrot, squash and corn, and even use chicken for the meat. The added colors and textures were especially attractive to my young daughters. They’d mashed the tubers and mix them with their rice, mold the mixture into a mound on their plate, pour broth around it (they called it “volcano” although it was more like a hill surrounded by a moat) and spoon everything together with their meat and leafy greens.

That was a long time ago. They don’t mash their tubers on their plates anymore but they still enjoy the variety of vegetables in our homecooked nilaga. They especially love squash and corn.

But the keys, really, to an outstanding boiled meat and vegetable dish are just two.

• Meat with bones that need long hours of slow cooking (this is what makes a flavorful broth).
• For the vegetable component, a good combination of leaves and starch.

In the photo above, beef short ribs, bok choy and purple sweet potato soup. Bok choy for the greens is not uncommon but sweet potatoes? Oh, yes, they work. The soup might not look as pretty without bright colors but that was one heck of a lunch when we had that simple pot of nilaga.