Longanisa

There's also an updated, slightly prettier version of this recipe, if you're interested.

Longanisa is a Filipino sweet sausage that I first tried at a restaurant a few months ago. My sister and I were craving it but the restaurant was kind of far so we decided to just make it ourselves. We looked up a few recipes and compared ingredients and I adjusted it to suit our tastes and what was available in our local grocery store.

1 lb ground pork

1/3 cup light brown sugar, lightly packed

3 cloves garlic, minced (I used a garlic press)

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon soy sauce

1/4 teaspoon turmeric

1/4 teaspoon oregano

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

Combine the ingredients (by hand) and then form it into patties or logs, whatever your preference is.

We cooked ours in a frying pan, no oil.

And then we ate them with some rice (fried in a bit of butter) and kale (wilted in bacon fat with garlic and hot pepper flakes).

YUM.

These were really good and tasted surprisingly similar to the ones we'd had from the restaurant. I say surprisingly because it was so easy to make, I can't believe we hadn't thought of it before.

Drool.