02 Sep2010
All things must come to an end. When I started this blog, I had no idea where it would lead. At worst, it would fail to attract any readers besides relatives and friends and it would die a natural death a few weeks or months after it was born. Instead, it took on a life of its own, and in the past six years or so I have written some 2,700 posts in 2,100 days, or roughly 1.3 posts per day on average. Many of the posts were brainless, but others took several dozen hours to prepare for, mostly the heirloom or special recipes featured. Over the six year period, readers have clicked on some 23+million page views, for me, a totally mind-boggling number, and have left nearly 90,000 comments that have in many cases added so much to our collective understanding of a topic under discussion. Even so, over the lifetime of this blog, less than 5% of readers have ever left a comment, and just a little more than that have ever participated in a poll. Over the past year, as best I can figure, there have been some 6 million page views, most coming from a regular readership (visit at least 1x a week) of some 15,000-20,000 people from around the globe. It is my personal belief that the blog “peaked” during this past year…
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POSTED IN: General
01 Sep2010
It’s nice if you have either a clay or steel bottomed tagine, but it isn’t absolutely necessary. You could make this dish in a heavy, enameled Le Creuset or Staub or similar pot just as easily. First heat up some olive oil and butter and add some chopped onions, ginger, chopped chilies and fresh rosemary and saute for a minute or two.
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POSTED IN: Chicken/Fowl, General, Main Courses
01 Sep2010
This is heavily influenced by salads we enjoyed during our recent trip to Morocco. But I don’t think this would be considered totally authentic as I substituted several ingredients out of necessity (made on the fly with whatever we had in the house). First, I cut the peel off of two pink grapefruits and three small oranges. Slice the citrus into discs and remove and discard the seeds. Lay the slices on a serving plate/platter. Add some sliced or whole olives, black preferable to green ones. Add some very thinly sliced red onions and place this plate in the fridge to chill for at least half an hour before serving.
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POSTED IN: Fruit, Salads, Vegetable/Salads
01 Sep2010
All the posts on our recent trip to Morocco resulted in a craving for Moroccan food… Discovering a tube of instant harissa paste at the grocery a few days ago meant we had a “jumping off” point for a dinner with friends. We started with a citrus salad with olives, nuts and an argan oil dressing (recipe up soon). then we had a large platter of couscous, surrounded by a wonderful vegetable tagine that Mrs. MM made, aren’t the colors just incredible?
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POSTED IN: Beef/Lamb, etc., Chicken/Fowl, General, Main Courses, Recipes and Menus, Rice/Noodle/Starches, Salads, Vegetable/Salads
31 Aug2010
The Cebu “wholesale” flower market has some interesting blooms on offer. Some roses, like these yellow orange ones, are far more “natural” than the greenhouse raised ones you might find in Manila, grown in the North. These yellow orange roses, if left in loose arrangements, open up like you would expect to see in a backyard rose garden. They are smaller blooms, but spectacular nevertheless and they still retain that distinct rose fragrance. We had several dozen leftover blooms and this is the rather unusual arrangement that one of the crew came up with.
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POSTED IN: Flowers
31 Aug2010
Every time we enjoyed a Moroccan meal at our hotel or an upscale restaurant, there was a veritable explosion of unusual flavors, the result of a very liberal use of spices (flavoring, not necessarily chilies) that are used to infuse stews, slow roasts, salads, etc. On top of that layer of flavor, there was an occasional hit of rich nutty oil that turned out to be argan(e) oil from Argan trees native to Southwestern Morocco and now an endangered species.
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POSTED IN: General, Other Produce/Ingredients
31 Aug2010
Our stay at Amanjena included all meals, so we ate in most of the time… Here a smorgasborg of photos and dishes, just to whet your appetite. Dinners started with little bowls of olives with chermoula.
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POSTED IN: General
30 Aug2010
Almost every single week I get an email request regarding frozen puff pastry. I have almost always been able to find it in the freezers at Santis Delicatessen’s (less than PHP200 for a small package) and sometimes at S&R. I can’t imagine what all you folks are making with it, but it IS a really convenient, “instant” ingredient that is useful for both sweet and savory concoctions. And something I wouldn’t bother to make from scratch in our hot and humid weather. I got some the other week and had it in the freezer when I chanced upon some rather decent ripe plums at the SM grocery fruit department. Plum tarts are a personal favorite, and while you can get a bit more fancy by adding a layer of pastry cream below the fruit, you can also make them plain and serve with some good heavy cream, creme fraiche or vanilla ice cream to jazz it up.
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POSTED IN: Desserts/Baked Goods/Sweets, Fruit
Older Posts
30 Aug, 2010 by Marketman
Our first “practice” session cooking rice in fresh bamboo poles turned out surprisingly well, earlier post here. So the next day, to celebrate the birthdays of three people in the office, we decided…
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POSTED IN: Chicken/Fowl, Fowl/Poultry, Meat, Other Recipes, Pork, Rice/Noodle/Starches
29 Aug, 2010 by Marketman
Tinola in Bamboo. If we went further, this could have been a Binakol na Manok in Bamboo as well. Take half a “section of fresh bamboo, with a diameter of 4-5 inches and…
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POSTED IN: Chicken/Fowl, Fowl/Poultry, General, Soups
27 Aug, 2010 by Marketman
The last time I made guava jam about a year ago, here, I was trying to replicate a superb bottle of guava jam from La Maison du Chocolat, apparently made in France from African…
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POSTED IN: Desserts/Baked Goods/Sweets, General, Other Food Products, Kitchen Equipment, Etc.
26 Aug, 2010 by Marketman
Several years ago, while on a trip to Subic Bay, a local Aetan man showed us how they cooked rice while foraging in the forest. They take a section of a large fresh…
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POSTED IN: General, Other Recipes, Rice/Noodle/Starches
25 Aug, 2010 by Marketman
For many years, one my food “quests” has been to learn how to make the thinnest lumpia wrappers. Freshly made, they were to envelope freshly cut heart of palm (ubod) stewed in lard….
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POSTED IN: General, Other Food Products, Kitchen Equipment, Etc.
25 Aug, 2010 by Marketman
Okay, so this isn’t “major, major” like losing the Ms. Universe pageant, a possible reality the other day, what with Ms. Philippines’ idiotic answer that the vast majority of Filipinos may think was simply…
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POSTED IN: Marketman's "Consumer Reports", Rant & Rave
24 Aug, 2010 by Marketman
Our sincerest condolences and prayers go out to the families of Hong Kong tourists who were killed in yesterday’s hostage taking situation at the Quirino Grandstand at the Rizal Park. And more prayers…
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POSTED IN: General
22 Aug, 2010 by Marketman
We had just arrived from the beach and had a relatively simple steak dinner at home for my birthday. The Teen and Mrs. MM were a bit crazed and certainly not in any…
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POSTED IN: Desserts/Baked Goods/Sweets