I’ve been wanting to make this dish for quite some time. tried maybe a couple of times in the past but for some reason, I cannot get the taste right. It always end up tasting like another Filipino dish called mechado. For years, I did not want to even try learning how to cook this again. When I go to the Filipino store close to my apartment, I just buy cooked beef caldereta if they have it that day.

Anyway, beef caldereta is a hearty Filipino beef dish simmered in spicy tomato sauce with potatoes, carrots, and bell pepper. Very simple to cook, but like I said, I was having trouble with it. Before, I cooked it by taste, this time I decided to follow a recipe just to get started (Spicy Beef Caldereta by Kawaling Pinoy).

I used pretty much what was listed except for olives. I was never a fan of olives. From my experience, olives tend to overpower other flavors. So I decided not to use it in this dish. But I did use onions, garlic, potatoes, carrots, bell peppers, Thai chili, liver spread, tomato sauce, tomato paste, cheddar cheese, and salt and pepper. However, I did not follow the measurements exactly. I tend to cook by feel and taste, so I never follow recipes to the exact measurements. I pretty much followed the steps on the recipe except #1. I went straight to sautéing the onions and garlic. But the recipe itself acted as a guide for me this time.

For the first actual try, I thought I did decently. Chris liked it. I appreciated the heat from the Thai chili, I used 4 reds and 6 greens. Surprisingly it turned out pretty good considering the recipe called for 10 red Thai chilis. I wanted to start moderately on the spiciness. But at least 4:6 was a good ratio for my taste. The flavors were better the next day, like any Filipino stew dish.

However, I was not satisfied. It was not the caldereta that I grew up in. I would need to tweak the recipe a bit to make it my own. I was looking for a full-bodied flavor that I was not able to recreate this time around. Chris added some fish sauce while eating it. It gave it a good flavor. But I was thinking of cooking the beef with soy sauce first before adding the tomato sauce, tomato paste, and water next time. See if that helps the flavor a bit. Maybe it would make the dish closer to how my mom’s side of the family cooks it.