The bagnet has been associated with Ilocano delicacies. Despite it's cholesterol rich nature, a lot of people consider this as their favorite.
From what I heard, the pork cuts are cut to size and is boiled in pots of water, then hanged to dry. Then, the pieces are deep fried until bubbles start to appear in the skin. About twenty minutes after the pieces were taken out of the oil, the process is repeated until the skin pops further.
A kilo of bagnet is about 300 pesos as of this writing. When I took this image May of 2008, I was with my aunt and her former high school classmates. We made a quick stop in Vigan Market from our road trip, and it was the first and the last time I had a taste of bagnet. I whispered to my aunt if we could ask her best friend to allow me to taste it, and she gave me a small piece. I thought that by the looks of it, this food is dry.. but when I tasted it, it was very moist and tender. No wonder a lot of people loves this!
The market also sells pork pieces that aren't fried yet, for the people who would want to prepare their own bagnet. I still look forward to the time I could eat a full serving of this. I heard this taste great with KBL - Kamatis, Bagoong, Lasona (or onion in Ilocano dialect). Some prefer to dip this in spicy vinegar. Bagnet is ready to eat as is, but some people use it as their meat for some dishes like ginisang munggo, pinakbet, and chopseuy.
*** Jenn ***
I come from a family who loves cooking and eating. I never had any formal training in cooking and that I taught myself how to cook based on the handed down recipes, but I could say that I can cook good food. In 2008, I started documenting my food trips for my