Market Manila

When I am not having a brilliant classic pinoy breakfast of tuyo, tinapa, tapa, tocino or lamayo with rice and fried eggs, I happily turn to a freshly baked ensaimada served with extra butter and superb homemade jam. Imagine rising early one cool morning, heading out to the garden, greeting your attention deficient labrador “good morning” and sitting down to the breakfast setting in the photo above… it doesn’t get much better than that! Add a nice ripe cebu mango, a hot cup of tea and I am in a much better frame of mind to tackle the trials of the day… The following ensaimada recipe is based almost entirely on the one provided by my sister. However, I have changed some of the measurements due to the quality of flour in Manila and the humidity and temperature while baking here. I have baked it 6-7 times and still haven’t “perfected” it.

Read more…

In the run-up to Christmas 2005, I had fully intended to post an ensaimada recipe. By late last November, I had already tested a recipe several times but still needed to get it tweaked just right. I boldly handed out samples to Marketmanila “eyeball” participants to get their reactions but I was still fooling with the recipe. Then I got distracted by other matters and didn’t get to post the recipe. So when the topic for this month’s Lasang Pinoy came out and Joey over at 80Breakfasts said it was time for “pinoy breakfast fare,” I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to post an ensaimada entry. I love ensaimada for breakfast rather later in the day (though merienda is a close second). But first, some background… The ensaimada recipe will follow in a second post later. Our ensaimada must be in some way related to the bread/delicacy from Mallorca of the same name. Their version is quite large and filled with a sweet cream of sorts rather than smaller individual servings more common in the Philippines. Their version is made with lard and though I haven’t tasted it myself, has been described to me as being significantly different from the ensaimadas now sold commercially in Manila today.

Read more…

Also at the markets last Saturday were these brilliant Thai pea eggplants (Solanum torvum) that are perfect in thai curries like this one I featured a few days ago but didn’t have the pea eggplants to add to it. These tiny little eggplants are the size of peas or slightly larger and look like unripe green tomatoes but with a thicker skin. They have a really tart/sour flavor that mellows a bit when cooked. A small bunch perfect for a small curry was only PHP30 at the market. Keep your eyes out for them the next time you are shopping…a nice authentic ingredient to add to your possibly packaged curry mix…

Read more…

There was a lot of interesting stuff at the markets on Saturday. I got several items that I will feature in the coming days. The most unusual item I spotted were these fantastic looking “Japanese tomatoes” - according to my suki. He only had a dozen or so pieces and I was kind of intrigued but shocked by the PHP350 a kilo price so I bought just three pieces. I have never read about, seen or run across these tomatoes before. They have an elongated shape with somewhat pointy ends. My reference books have yielded nada on the fruit and a quick search on the internet didn’t yield any additional information. Even more reason to be intrigued, I thought. Probably not even a tomato… I have done several entries on tomatoes before but the shape, color, smoothness of the skin and firmness and density of flesh really had me wondering…

Read more…

I have written about obscene or mutant fruit before, and oddly, the pineapple seems to have a lot of issues in the warped genes category. Thank goodness I am allergic to it. Heehee, actually I miss eating this delicious fruit. I spied this totally bizarre mutant pineapple on a drive back from the beach a few days ago. It totally represents the way I feel (imagine Marketman’s head represented with fruit) when I open up my website these days and find over 300 spam messages that litter the landscape in just say 8 short hours. I spend nearly half an hour clearing everything out and cursing the perpetrators to hopefully doom them to several lifetimes as cockroaches in hell. I even seriously considered stopping all comments period but that would ruin this site and eventually mean I would have to stop the blog… May ten thousand pins laced with tuba vinegar be pierced into your rears, silly spammers. You have truly ruined the name of a noble and wonderful canned concoction of pork shoulder and ham… I would like to shove a thick sugar cane from Negros up where the sun doesn’t shine… slather you with molave honey and tie you to the tamarind tree in our backyard that is ground zero for the most humongous red ants… and finally, grease your fingertips with french butter before forcibly searing them on my finest copper fish pan (so we can do both hands simultaneously) that has been left on high heat for 30 minutes prior to the sizzle that will hopefully cure you from the bad habit of sending out all this blasted garbage. Oh, and I forgot, I would also force feed you 500 cans of spam and nothing else until you signed an apology to all those you have annoyed!

Read more…

I always feel that it’s a nice touch to have fresh flowers on the table when you’ve invited someone over for a meal or to stay the weekend. This is particularly true when that someone is of my mom’s generation and the standards of hosting are at a more genteel level. But it isn’t always practical or possible to think ahead and you often just have to make do with what you have around you. That was the case a few weekends ago when we had a houseguest at the beach. I decided to snip a few lush blooms from the tons of white bougainvilla plants that surround the property and mass them in small celadon colored bowls…

Read more…

I needed something relatively healthy to eat. My body was screaming “save me, save me” from all the post holiday fat and calories so I thought to have some sautéed leeks and celery with tokwa (tofu) for dinner last night. It is really easy to do. Here is the how to: slice up some nice leeks (include dark green leaves if you want but the cook didn’t slice them up for this particular dish), some nice celery, and cube some soft tofu. Saute some chopped onion and garlic in vegetable oil, add some sliced pork, add some peeled shrimps if you have it (I didn’t), a little patis (fish sauce) and ground pepper and add the celery, leeks and lastly the tofu. Cook until leeks are just wilted and serve hot.

Read more…

What is it about deep fried porcine epidermis that makes it taste so incredibly good? I am not that big of a fan of dried squid, sisig or bull’s balls but give me a freshly made bowl of salted chicharon and some good vinegar and you have given me a taste of heaven on earth. I was trolling around Market!Market! yesterday looking for some potted phaleanopsis orchids to give as a present but was unsuccessful and on my final steps towards the car, I decided to pop into Lapid’s freshly popped chicharon stall and decided to buy a few bags. While choosing my chicharon, they fried up a fresh batch of pork rinds right in front of us and the sizzle, crack, smell and sprinkling of salt was enough to make me buy three bags of chicharon! I couldn’t wait till we got home and ate a good portion of one bag in the car on my way home…thank goodness I wasn’t driving!

Read more…