Pinoy pasta with itlog na maalat

I am no Pinoy (Filipino) and I am proud to have created this pasta recipe with a truly authentic Filipino flavour.

I am Chinese and, hey, the Chinese eat salted eggs too. In fact, I won't be surprised if itlog na maalat was adapted from Chinese salted eggs. But the Filipinos usually eat their salted eggs with fresh tomatoes whereas the Chinese eat it as an accompaniment to rice porridge and sometimes cooked with spinach and other dishes.

My Filipina friend had told me about itlog and when I researched it on the internet, I came across some Filipinos living abroad saying how much they missed this. It seems that itlog na maalat is a food close to the hearts of many Filipinos.

But when I first saw the dish, at a cafe in Lucky Plaza, where Filipinos in Singapore gather, I was most unimpressed. What I saw was just a salted egg cut into two halves, served on a small, styrofoam plate with slices of fresh tomato. It looked most unappetising.

"I can do better," my ego told me. And the idea of a pasta salad using Itlog na maalat immediately came to mind. This was how I did it...

Pasta salad with itlog na maalat

• 4 itlog na maalat or Chinese-style salted eggs, cut into small chunks
  
  
• 2 cups ripe, cherry tomatoes, cut into halves
• I small cucumber, sliced very thinly
• 1/2 carrot, cut into fine strips
• 4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• generous pinch of sea salt
  
  
• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1/4 cup natural vinegar (see note #3 below)
  
  
• 300 grams dried pasta, cooked according to instructions.
  
  

Method:

1. Very simple - mix all the ingredients together and toss together with cooked pasta.
   
   
2. Or, for a better presentation, arrange the salted eggs and vegetables on top of the pasta. Mix the oil, vinegar and salt and dribble over the plate.
   
   

Notes and suggestions:

1. I have made this as a raw pasta salad, as occasionally I enjoy eating some raw garlic and this is one way to eat them. If you find raw garlic too pungent, fry it first with the olive oil, then toss into pasta before adding the other ingredients.
   
   
2. I've added a bit of salt to this recipe because I find that most salted eggs nowadays aren't very salty. But if your salted eggs are, indeeed very salty, then omit the salt and maybe even use fewer salted eggs.
   
   
3. Vinegars are big in Filipino cuisine and the country has many different types - made from coconut, sugar cane, nipa palm, pineapple, etc etc. And a typical household might use several litres of vinegar per month. So use a Filipino vinegar for a more authentic taste. As to the type... well... ask a Filipimp to recommend.
   
   Otherwise, use balsamic vinegar - and maybe less vinegar - to make this dish more "Italian". Or use something like rice or malt vinegar for a more neutral flavour. Whatever the case, do not use cheap artificial vinegar. That is not suitable for human consumption.
   
   Note also that good quality vinegars tend to be mild-tasting, without that sharp bite. Once, at a dinner with macrobiotic teacher Michio Kushi, he passed around some vinegar that, he said, was "made according to a thousand-year-old recipe". It was so mild we could drink it straight.
   
   
4. Click here for a more recent variation of pasta with itlog na maalat.