Gata + Siling Labuyo Makes These Spicy, Creamy Recipes

Gata or coconut milk is a sweet, creamy ingredient that goes fabulously well when made spicy using bird's eye chili peppers or siling labuyo. This combo of creamy and spicy is a well-known flavor pairing in the Bicol area in Southern Luzon. It's where the famous Bicol Express came from! It's spicy, creamy, sweet, and savory all at the same time!    

If you're suddenly craving for a big mound of steamed rice to pair with a dish that combines all of these flavors in one fantastic dish, here are recipes that make this flavoring pairing so irresistible: 

Photo by Miguel Nacianceno

1 Bicol Express Recipe  

When it comes to spicy and coconut dishes, this is the dish that comes to mind almost immediately. This classic recipe is both spicy and creamy and hits all the right spots when it comes to being delicious. If you love dishes that are both of these flavors, then this is the recipe to try out first. 

Photo by Majoy Siason

2 Bicol Express Pork Chops Recipe 

Pork chops are the easy pork cut that you can cook at any time of the day! That's why it's also just as easy to make it taste even better. Why not make a spicy coconut cream sauce and pour this over simple fried pork chops? 

3 Chicken Bicol Express Recipe 

For those days when you want that spicy creamy dish but discover you have no pork to use for the dish, this chicken version of the Bicol express should still satisfy the craving without needing to go out and buy pork.   

Photo by Patrick Martires

4 Stuffed Bicol Express Recipe 

For the serious sili fans, this leveled up recipe has to be on your list of must-try dishes. Similar to the dynamite cheese sticks recipe, these are stuffed siling haha, siling pangsigang, or green finger chilis instead of its spicer sister, the siling labuyo or bird's eye chili. However, it's the perfect size to make these stuffed chilis! You can still use siling labuyo for the spicy coconut sauce but if you find that you just can't stuff these sili, try bell peppers instead for quick hack of this recipe.       

Photo by Miguel Nacianceno

5 Ground Pork and Green Beans In Spicy Coconut Sauce Recipe  

Also known as gising gising, this too is a Bicol recipe that marries the siling labuyo with coconut. In this spicy recipe, it's ground pork instead of pork chunks used and chopped up green beans are added to the mix to inject color. The taste however is pretty familiar but cooks in half the time needed for the more traditional version.   

Photo by Majoy Siason

6 Spicy Ginataang Hipon Recipe 

Not all spicy coconut recipes are Bicol express! This ginataang hipon recipe is just a spicer version of the tamer tasting ginataang hipon recipe. Sometimes, the difference between delicious and irresistible can be just one ingredient. 

Photo by Dan Eric Rivera

7 Spicy Chicken in Gata Recipe 

Spicy chicken recipes are plentiful but only Asian recipes will make a spicy chicken recipe and remake it into a sauce that's worth slurping. Instead of using boneless chicken chunks, use whole chicken pieces instead to use in this simple but tasty chicken stew. No need to debone that chicken!

Photo by Riell Santos

8 Laing Recipe 

This recipe is a more vegetable-friendly dish that shares the same flavors with the Bicol express. Instead of pork, gabi or taro leaves are simmered in the spicy coconut sauce. We used dried gabi leaves for this recipe which eliminated any mistakes in the preparation of the leaves that could leave your mouth itchy.  

Photo by Majoy Siason

9 Ginataang Langka Recipe 

Green langka or unripe jackfruit is not your usual ingredient. However, when you do get your hands on it, it's a fantastic ingredient to use for many dishes. It's one of the main ingredients in the Ilonggo dishes KBL, or kadyos, baboy, at langka, and the kansi recipe. It's also the main ingredient in this lightly spiced ginataang lankga recipe. It is your typical ginataang recipe but using that unripe, green langka instead. The result is a meaty dish that doesn't have any meat at all! 

There really are many ways to use this flavoring of bird's eye chili and coconut milk to make delicious recipes. Give one or two of these recipes a try to discover which is the combination that you like the most.  

ALSO READ: