Happy Halloween!!!
I have been away for several days over the weekend, madly testing ensaimada, leche flan, 
lenguas de gato and other recipes for my Christmas special at my far away test kitchen… suffice it to say I started with 100 eggs, a sack of “primera” or hard wheat flour, 15 pounds of butter and 5 kilos of sugar, but I’ll leave that story for another day. We dashed back to Manila so my daughter could trick or treat with friends… at 10 years of age I suspect it’s more the social aspect of roaming like nutcases through a tropical village in mid-afternoon (who the heck thinks trick-or-treating should start at 3pm???) rather than the candy count in their bags at the end of it all. At any rate, what is Halloween anyway? And why do we give candy (tons of it, as you can see by these photos taken by my daughter minutes ago) or treats? Does anyone really do tricks anymore?
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The number of vendors and the lack of variety and quality of merchandise was truly disappointing. I think the concept of regional trade fairs has had their heyday and Marketman boldly, though sadly, predicts their imminent demise. The Fair had some of the same old products such as abaca bags and placemats and pili nuts but there was no ooohs, no ahhhs, and must haves! I have never visited the Bicol trade fair and purchased less than 2 dozen abaca placemats, this year I got zero. Many of the vendors were already established elsewhere in Manila and the stuff didn’t seem unusual enough to really get you to open your wallet. I did, after much scouring, find one good thing at the fair… some tuba vinegar. Made from the sap of a coconut tree’s inflorescence, the freshly collected juice is actually sweet and extremely delicious and thirst quenching. After a few days it begins to ferment and eventually becomes vinegar.
almost certainly one of the easiest. Gratification to effort quotient is really good. I can eat this with some steamed rice without a meat or fish dish and would be perfectly happy. But it does also go well with a nicely fried fish or some wickedly fatty fat. I think many Filipino vegetable dishes are overcooked or allowed to sit for too long before they are consumed, as a result, I find veggies are overshadowed at most meals. Instead, they are relegated to side dishes or make cameo appearances in soups, stews, etc. The vegetable section of most menus at Filipino restaurants is usually rather anemic, and it is increasingly annoying me because it is so easy to do tasty, nutritious and economical vegetable dishes right!
(long bean, yard-long bean, snake bean) are sometimes referred to as being longer string beans which is incorrect. Apparently, according to several books I have consulted, long beans are more closely related to black eyed peas than to string or pole beans. Native to southern Asia, where is not known really, these beans thrive in the tropical climates nearer the equator and are sensitive to colder air. They grow in abundance in Southeast Asia and are available almost year round. They are nutritious, delicious and affordable and figure prominently in the cuisines of southern China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. There are at least two varieties – one which is paler and the other that is darker green. Many Asian cookbooks suggest that the darker beans are the more preferred of the two. When buying, look for the beans that have no blemishes or wrinkling, as these indicate the beans were harvested several days before. I have eaten sitaw for as long as I can remember… I can almost smell the aroma of sautéing pork, onions then sitaw and some patis (fish sauce) just from memory! When allowed to mature, the bean inside gets bigger and when dried it looks very similar to black-eyed peas.
Between typhoid, cholera and intestinal parasites (just some of the supposed evils associated with street food at the time and, perhaps, still today), I was not allowed to purchase anything from a street vendor, not even dirty ice cream. I may be just a bit older than most of my readers as I actually recall that the vast majority of street food on offer when I was a kid was not hot, fried (or grilled) and oily. There were several barbeque, fish ball and other ambulant vendors, but I remember mostly the fruit and snack vendors – street food was predominantly snack food back then. Without a doubt, my favorite street food is a crunchy sour green mango, sold with bagoong or shrimp paste. I went to grade school in Quezon City and right outside my school there were several vendors and despite the ban on anything streetside, I used to occasionally buy some green mango. I never did get sick but the dire warnings of the plague usually meant I enjoyed this snack at home in more hygienic conditions. The sourness of the mango and the jolting saltiness of the bagoong are a match made in heaven. I also liked the sweeter and less acidic 
Who is behind the conspiracy to import the mealiest, most tasteless, inedible apples the planet has to offer? Why have our choices been so drastically curtailed and the quality of fruit sunk to the level next to that given to cows to munch on? I am not amused. I have not had a decent apple more than once in the past 12 months! I am not just being bitchy…I want better apples!!! Given all the modern advances in freight and importation rules that allow us to have the latest original Zara t-shirt for just PHP495 flown in from Europe 3 days after it is sewn (when the local bazaar is selling supposedly overrun GAP t-shirts — read seconds, fell of the truck, fake –at PHP550), it boggles the mind that we cannot get decent apples…
And better yet, it is really pretty simple to make. I have made this tart at least half a dozen times and it has never failed to awe dinner guests and dessert aficionados alike… Disarmingly simple to look at, it is liquid gold in your mouth. I normally save this tart for very special dinners and the Christmas holidays but I will occasionally whip it up for a birthday or other special occasion. I am posting it now so that you guys can try it once before the holidays then you will be well prepared to make it for the holidays… I kid you not, this tart beats most homemade desserts by a mile. Rooting around one of our refrigerators the other week, I came across a stash of Valrhona chocolate – what to do with over 1.5 kilos of the stuff! – a tart of course, then soufflés, sorbets, hmmm…
Have I stumbled on a piece of culinary trivia that has not made itself obvious to Marketman before? If you are to believe the website of Imarflex, they invented the turbo-broiler in the Philippines in the mid to late 1970’s. My mother pined for one in the 1980’s and I think it was the late-80’s before she ever finagled one out of my dad. What was the big deal, anyway? Was it the compact heating element above the glass bowl that allowed you to see in while this naked chicken was then blast roasted to a nice golden brown? Was it the fact that chicken grease was so visibly extracted from the bird and dripped to the glass bottom of the contraption, making this seem such a health-conscious alternative? Wasn’t this just a smaller oven with heat and the addition of a fan that coursed the heat around the space to cook the meat in a shorter time while forcing it to extrude fat?