"a fish needs a bicycle."

(please excuse the poor quality of the photos!)

we were in the province a couple of weeks ago, and just as the sun had set, we heard a bell tinkling at the gate. it was a man on a bicycle, with bamboo baskets piled behind his seat. it was a traveling vendor from a neighbouring village, selling tinapa, or smoked fish. he and his wife work at home, preparing various fish that they procure from the wet market in the morning, or sometimes from their own nets. they work hard at this backyard tinapahan--the catch they get in the morning is more often than not smoked and sold by sundown.

making tinapa is slightly different from the traditional western style of smoking fish. the local method involves the fish being boiled in a brine first, then arranged on a bistay, or woven bamboo tray that is a signature of trade. they are dried in the sun before going through the smoking process; hardwood and sawdust is often used, and the smoking time usually around four to six hours.

the fish were still warm by the time the vendor reached our house. he pulled out his inventory, carefully setting the bistays on newspaper he laid out on the ground before him. (unless there are some curious puppies, in which case, on a nearby table.) my aunt inspected them thoroughly, amiably chatting with the vendor, but also asking many questions about the provenance of the fish. he only had galunggong or mackerel scad left; it is a common fish, quite oily but tasty. it was once known as "the poor man's fish" in the philippines, but has gained quite a bit of popularity in the past decade and purportedly it now has to be imported from china to keep up with the demand. however, today's catch, he assured, came from local waters. my aunt remained a bit skeptical, but the fish were firm of flesh, plump, and the smoky aroma was irresistible. we bought out the rest of his supply, which he carefully wrapped in bundles of six, in half sheets of newspaper. amusingly, my little bundle was decorated with news of lindsay lohan. a little entertainment for the evening.

although tinapa are thoroughly cooked, most people fry the fish before serving. we don't; just a little time in the oven or microwave heats them through, without drying them out or diminishing the lush smokiness. served with a simple vinegar mixed with sliced shallots and a pile of rice suffices. nothin' poor about that.

cool you

i've blogged about it before but i love this stuff. guinomis, a tasty (vegan!) treat of tapioca pearls, agar gelatin, palm sugar syrup, coconut milk, toasted pinipig rice flakes, and lots of shaved ice. just a little something to cool you down and fill you up. deliciously.

breakfast at noon.

which of course, is nothing more than brunch, but i'm going for a continuity thing here. indulge me, people!

kinda like what we did here: challah french toast, slathered with nutella and drizzled with raspberry preserves, topped with caramelized bananas, crispy bacon, and powdered sugar. served with maple syrup, whipped cream and whipped butter. AS IF. surprisingly not as sweet as you'd think, plenty savoury without the bacon, which in fact was just another example of how bacon does NOT make everything better.

and then we tried to be a little healthy with the salmon mousse plate: marinated salmon, salmon mousse, poppy seed onion bagel crisps, caper berries, sweet fig marmalade and fresh dill.

guess which one got demolished.

gratuitous shot of good-looking waitstaff. why not.

mr. jones
greenbelt 5, garden level
legaspi st, legaspi village
makati, philippines
501.3682/83

breakfast at midnight.

it seemed like a good idea at the time. the pancakes themselves were heaven--lemon ricotta blueberry pancakes that were light and fluffy, tender, and only a little bit sweet, studded with fat, fragrant blueberries, dusted with powdered sugar and topped with candied lemon zest. phew! AND there was whipped cream, whipped butter, and a maple-y syrup on the side. not that they needed any of that.

but i did need a wheelbarrow to be rolled outta there afterwards.

brought to me by this guy, at mr. jones. (more on this place later)


mr. jones
greenbelt 5, garden level
legaspi st, legaspi village
makati, philippines
501.3682/83

bakery bench

did you know that the house that fried chicken built has a bakery? it's a pretty good one, too. it's called max's corner bakery and you can find it...in the corner of max's restaurants. HA. some of them anyway.

i was walking by the one near my flat early one morning, and came across this lovely tableau of assorted pastries, waiting to be arranged on their tidy shelves. i rather like where they are.

name that fruit!: lanzones.

one of my family's most favourite fruits is lanzones, or Lansium domesticum, from the family Meliaceae. this tropical fruit is thought to have originated from malaysian peninsula, and is found in great abundance in the southern provinces of the philippines, including sulu and camiguin; it is also found in the laguna province of luzon. camiguin is known for having particularly sweet and desirable fruit, and has a festival in the fruit's honour in early october. however, now is the (short) season for laguna's bounty.

this ovoid-to-round fruit is about the size of the a large concord grape, the skin is yellowy beige, which covers the opaque, segmented flesh that is mostly seedless; there can be, however, one large seed, bitter with tannins, hidden in one of the segments. the flesh itself is sweet and juicy, with a texture similar to lychees and a flavour similar, but without the florally finish. the fruit grow in grape-like bunches off of tall and lanky trees, which give off a sticky resin when the fruit is picked; the resin is thought to protect the stomach from alcohol, but is bitter and difficult to actually imbibe. the bark of the tree contains anti-inflammatory properties and thought to be an anti-spasmodic--traditional medicines made from it are used against everything from dysentery to scorpion bites. which, i don't know, could be handy where you live.

saturday market finds at salcedo.

the saturday market at salcedo is one of the nicest markets i've attended; it's not just that there is a nice array of produce and handicrafts available, nor is it just that there is a staggering assortment of prepared foods, but it's also in really lovely park with shady trees filled with fairy lights and plexi-shapes that dance in the wind. it doesn't matter how warm it is or if it's raining, the trees and canopies shelter the shoppers and the lively and easygoing atmosphere keep you from caring anyway.

giant jackfruit

mounds of mangosteens


lovely lychees


beautiful birds of paradise


piles of peanuts


squash blossoms, okra, and cilantro for home


bounty of fruit for immediate and ecstatic consumption


these little piggies went to market

impromptu visit.

when will this monsoon season ever end? i was about to go mad with the sound of horrid rain, day in, day out...so i hopped on a plane, bound for manila, just for the weekend. even though it was overcast there really wasn't any rain to speak of (stupid or otherwise), but there was a nice cooling breeze. perfect for a stroll through saturday's salcedo market, again. just some scenes from the village:

katuray and bagbagkong, edible flowers


caimito (star apple), lanzones, chico, sampalok (tamarind), and bananas


cotton candy floss vendor


"dirty" ice cream


barbecued pusit (squid), hito (catfish) and bangus (milkfish), pork


roasting chestnuts


guess we know what fidel's up to these days.

banguera.

one of my favourite features in our family's ancestral home: bangueras. these are decorative ledges that jut out from the windowsills in the dining area and kitchen, and served as drying racks for the freshly washed dishes and glasses.

which, in this case, is one of my grandfather's favourite types of drinking vessel: an old nescafé coffee jar :)

back to the old house (again).

i'm still blogging at third and fairfax, but i've actually left the big city, and went to another big city :) i did spend some time in the province, though, as i hadn't been since...well, since the last time i blogged about it. i am constantly surprised with how much the province has developed in the last few years, but remain delighted that life in our little town pretty much remains the same.

our families in the province do not have very big refrigerators nor freezers; almost everything is bought fresh from the markets for cooking that day. whenever we need ice, we have to go to the ice house in the center of town--thankfully for my cousin minky, it is a very short bike ride away. it is a small, open-fronted shop (without electricity) lined in galvanized steel, with giant blocks of ice covered in rice hulls for insulation, stacked on the floor. the blocks are hand-sawn down to these manageable blocks to take home, where we further chisel them down with an ice pick into jagged rocks to cool off our drinks. i know they are essentially the same as premade ice cubes, but somehow the quartz-like chunks do seem to make our drinks taste better than the ones that required so little effort.

fruit vendors, binondo, manila, philippines.

roll with it: from baguette to pandesal and back (eventually).

it was maki who introduced me to that popular no-knead bread recipe; i enjoy a bit of mild pummeling, so it's not for me. it did get me thinking about bread making again, which i used to do on a fairly regular, fairly obsessive basis. i do bake bread occasionally, but have avoided the simplest, yet trickiest one for me: french-style baguettes. i could make very good ones, but the decade i spent away from regular bread baking has made me lose my touch. practice is all it really takes, but it really does take a lot of practice.

imho, the best dough for baguettes is the simplest: hard wheat flour, salt, yeast, water. obvs technique is the key. i still haven't perfected the richard bertinet kneading technique which calls for a wetter dough and a lighter touch, but i'm working on it. one of the things that bertinet recommends if you are a beginning bread baker is that one should try making little rolls or shapes instead of a whole loaf the first time. i was sceptical of this--i thought why not have one big failure instead of a dozen little ones?--but having done it, i concur with mr.b. the dough is easier to work and shape properly, the moisture in the bread dough is wicked away quicker in the smaller masses (which makes for a better crust and overall texture), and it takes less time to cook, for the anxious and excited amongst us.

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around the same time i read maki's post, i read my cousin's post on a pandesal bakery in the manila 'burbs of marikina. supposedly they make "authentic" pandesal, which, as sassy says, could be the national bread of the philippines if the philippines had such a thing. the name literally translates to "bread of salt" (pan + de + sal), but almost every version i've had has been sweetish, not particularly salty, and frankly a little meh. neither here nor there--either too soft or too hard, too sweet or just bland. marketman lamented that true pandesal is difficult to find these days; the product of the 'fifties and 'sixties, according to marketman's sister, had a "hard crust, tender airy crumb and...It must have that distinctive crack down the middle." (i imagine that it probably tasted better too.) i found a photo of the pan de amerikana version, but it looks much like what can be found elsewhere. not as soft and spongy as commercial varieties have become, but my gut feeling is that it's not what the spanish or portuguese brought over back in the day. wiki saved the day with an excellent pandesal entry on the probable history complete with ingredients, which funnily enough are the basis for a good french baguette: hard wheat flour, water, yeast, salt. hm.

so, out came the pans and bowl. 500g of flour, 350g of water, 10ml of yeast, 10ml of salt. first, the yeast was dissolved in 100ml of water and left to bloom for 10 minutes. all ingredients then combined and kneaded to make a soft, elastic dough which should be allowed to double in a warm place. like guam, because it doesn't take an hour to do that. dough punched down, divided in half and formed into logs, which are cut with a sharp knife into equal pieces; each piece is placed cut side up on a baking sheet, and again, left to double.

a crispy crust that shatters is easy enough to get with a little steam during baking. the bread bakes in a 475˚F preheated oven--just slide the pans into the hot oven and use a spray gun filled with water to mist the sides of the oven and the tops of the bread with at least 10 squirts. close the oven door, leave for 5 minutes, then mist again. baked for another 15 minutes, the rolls should be golden brown, with a crunchy crust and tender, airy crumb.



hey it works :)

i don't actually know if this is really like the pandesal of the past so here are some questions for you, if you don't mind. has anyone out there tried traditional pandesal? does this look similar? and is it actually, um, salty in taste?

and for the french bread eaters out there, what is it that you look for in a good baguette?

it's saturday so it must be salcedo.

i am nothing if not predictable about my routine in manila. i usually take the friday flight right after work in guam, and arrive in makati just before most of the restaurant kitchens close. saturdays start early with a couple errands, and then off to the market at salcedo village.

predictable, but considering the variety of food and produce available, not exactly boring. and not particularly expensive either--the current rate of exchange is about 49 pesos to the US$1, so i can usually get a great meal and enough fruit for the weekend for about US$5. la-la-love a (relative) bargain, baby.

i was looking at photos from produce markets at tableau vivante and she who eats, and thinking that i'll never get such gorgeous artichokes nor delicate tulips here, but then again, i don't think frost damage is ever really a concern for the local crops, either.

and it never fails, i always find something new. spices 'n flavours run a stall there, with a small but fairly intensive selection of their merchandise. i picked up a small tumbleweed of dried oregano, and a packet of kasubha (Carthamus dentatus Blanco), which is similar to saffron but not (used much the same way, though); it was there i noticed a steel bowl filled with these almost coal-like fruit fossils labelled "black lemons."

preserved lemon, certainly, and a little interrogation of the shopgirl revealed it is from india, but no recipes were offered. has anyone ever used black lemon? does anyone out there know how? anyone? anyone?

bueller?


tagged! manila makati philippines salcedo produce market

manila: merienda.

much like siesta is considered an integral part of spanish culture, merienda--a mid-day snack--is integral to filipino culture. yes! how i heart a land where food is so important that 3 meals are not enough. traditionally, merienda is taken as a mid-afternoon repast, but a mid-morning snack is equally as acceptable (or as bowb or saffron might put it 'the second breakfast.') merienda can be anything from a small item to a full-fledged meal; there is nothing unacceptable as a merienda item, although some foods are traditionally considered so, like freshly baked bibingka or a hot pandesal bun--literally "bread of salt," (but really, much, much more than that)--straight from a pugon, a wood-fired clay oven, along with a cup of hot coffee or tsokolate. also, to some people, if there isn't a pile of steamed rice involved, then it's just not a meal, it's merienda. on this last jaunt, i definitely had my share of merienda, which ranged from the traditional to the not-quite-so, the snack-sized to um, a full fourth meal. shhhh.

one of the 'second breakfasts' i had was from an omnipresent coffee house chain, seattle's best (i have more or less abandoned the 'bucks because they no longer carry coffee jelly--although, fabulously, wendy's offers it as an add-in to their frosties). this SB has coffee toddy--cold-brewed coffee--which imo, is the best kind of iced coffee. if made correctly, it is smooth, rich, without the usually bitterness and not as acidic (as i mostly drink stupendous amounts of coffee black, this has saved my stomach from eating itself alive). this was accompanied by a somewhat filipino-ized coconut macaroon, which was more like a cupcake made from dessicated coconut, condensed milk, and the barest minimum of flour. the cake was quite moist and achingly sweet, but very coconutty and also surprisingly light in texture. its sweet milkiness complemented the strong black coffee nicely.

as i was out and about for most of the weekend, i ended up having afternoon merienda instead of full luncheons; one of my favourite things is fresh lumpia ubod (pictured above), made with grated and sautéed fresh hearts of palm, wrapped in an eggy rice flour crêpe, and served with chopped peanuts, a generous amount of minced raw garlic, and a sweet soy-based sauce. the flavour of the lumpia itself is delicate, and is more or less a spectacular vehicle for the raw garlic and sauce, but the crêpe and palm heart filling more than substantial for a light meal. try eating one of these, then shopping at a beauty counter. the saleswoman you breathe on will never forget you.

far more filling is a chinese-inspired staple, lugaw, or rice porridge. i went to a rather old-school café, via mare, which served up this behemoth bowl of rice porridge topped with fried tofu, fried wontons, pig's ears, tripe, salted egg, adobo flakes, green onion, and served with patis (fermented fish sauce) and fresh calamansi lemon. mix everything together, and be prepared to spend the rest of your afternoon wondering what might be in the next bite.

along the way, i'd pick up a couple of smaller items, like polvoron, which are a little crumbly biscuit made from toasted flour, dried milk, sugar, and a variety of different flavourings--anything from butter, toasted rice, to coffee and cookies and cream. these are odd little things that are not unlike that cosmetic powder that turns into cream; they crumble like dust on your tongue, but are smooth and moist all the same. freakishly addictive.

also freakishly addictive is baye-baye, a regional specialty made with coconut water, coconut, and sugar. and um, something. these are both grainy and chewy at the same time, and neither particularly sweet nor coconutty. i cannot figure them out. i'm not sure i like them, but i ate more than one of them, and not just for curiosity's sake. i picked these up from the salcedo market, along with some chicken-filled empanaditas that were so tasty i ate them before i had a chance to take a photo. the little turnovers (you can just see a peek of them on top in the cardboard box) were the thinnest, flakiest pastry surrounding a fine paste of chicken, carrot and raisin, a sweet and savoury combination often found in the philippines. some people (like myself) get to hate it after awhile, but then sometimes begin to miss it when the whole raisin issue no longer becomes one. the empanaditas were very, very good and worth seeking out.

little turnovers seemed to be a theme as we picked up more empanaditas at the blue kitchen later in the day. although i have passed by this food shop many times, i had never stopped until i read marketman's profile. true to their idea of using native products in western culinary traditions, there were quite a few old-fashioned baked goods with tropical fruit incorporated. we tried a mango shortbread bar and mango-filled empanaditas, both of which used a buttery short crust and lots of dried mango (for a more intense flavour). a little too sweet and rich for me, but that's why they are little :)



i am not a big fan of the whole kettle corn thing (or popcorn overall, actually), but let me tell you, chef tony's popcorns are seriously. THE. SH*T. so good it's profane--always crispy and light, not too sweet, not too salty, not covered in gloopiness nor oiliness. all the flavours seem to be based on the kettle corn sweet and salty concept, even the pesto popcorn. yes. sweet pesto. sweet jeebus, you are saying, is this one of those girl things? yeah maybe. so what. is it really a merienda item? when you eat a whole bucket of it, it is.

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dang, this is a long post.

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it was only when i started to listen to a lot of older ska and rocksteady records when i realized how many chinese immigrants had settled in jamaica. chinese workers began pouring in during the 19th century, and many of the esconced families have been in jamaica for generations (hey, naomi campbell's dad is chinese-jamaican. i had no idea.) a decade or so ago, a prominent chinese-jamaican family, the chan/chin fees, brought to manila their version of the empanada, the patty/pattie, a savoury turnover of flaky crust surrounding a spicy beef filling. there are several shops that sell these, but i think the best are from the original, quite aptly named de original jamaican pattie shop. they are easily portable, and actually perfect for the 'foodwalk'--although the spicy filling is quite juicy, it is thick enough not to drip out, and as you walk, the tender flaky crumbs fall to the ground.

speaking of portability, mcdonald's is encroaching onto mos burger territory and offering rice burgers--beef patties or fried chicken fillets sandwiched in between two grilled rounds of pressed and formed rice, and brushed with a soy sauce and sprinkled with black sesame seeds. do you know i'd never been in a mcdonald's in the philippines until that week? there are so many food options, that scottish restaurant (as man that cooks sneers) was never really a priority (speaking of local options, does that hamburger place, tropical hut, still exist?). however, i am a fan of the mos rice burger, so i wanted to check it out. this one doesn't quite compete, but it's decent enough. the chicken version is much better than the beef burger, and is the only product on the menu that uses whole pieces of chicken instead of processed extruded chicken, or whatever it is that they normally use. the rice is a bit mushy but holds together well--perhaps it could benefit from some extra whole grainy-ness or even brown rice. however, there is a nice little bundle of lettuce and red cabbage thrown in there for texture and colour.

wow. i am getting sort of hungry now. and, hm, it's right about merienda time here, i wonder what i can scrounge up this time....

update 24 october: hey, hobbits and bavarians know of the second breakfast!