Market Manila

I was doing a reconnaissance mission through our pantry (actually a large closet) which is jam-packed with stuff and I came across the salt “section.” Tucked away behind 10 inches of shelf frontage were about a dozen different containers of salt! And this only covers the imported salts! I also stock local rock salt from Batangas, and chi-chi varieties like branded Guimaras salt… There has been so much written about salt and the best mini-story I read about the subject was written by Jeffrey Steingarten in one of his books… essentially, since the base ingredient of sodium is the same in all salts, its just a question of the different other mineral contents, the structure of the crystals, and the price you pay that probably sways your taste buds! I can definitely taste the difference between iodized and non-iodized salt but I have to admit great difficulty in discerning between non-iodized salts in a blindfolded taste-test. So, basically, I admit it’s a bit ma-arte to have so many salts in stock but that’s just me…

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I was at a bazaar at Fort Bonifacio yesterday and noticed several food vendors selling “Food for the Gods” so I decided to buy several of them and compare them against each other in a Marketmanila taste-test… First of all, these are nothing more than Date & Walnut Bars, so whoever came up with the name “Food for the Gods” was of the “Bicol Express” ilk… great marketing, if you ask me. For a predominantly Catholic country with supposedly only one God, it’s amusing that we would take so readily to a food for the other “Gods”… heehee, I am kidding, of course. If any God had too much of this confection they would sink out of the heavens due to its density and caloric count! As with other popular sweets/desserts/breads, it seems this has also evolved over the years. In the “old days,” say 20 years ago, I only recall the really heavy, very moist, sweet foil wrapped versions that one would keep in the fridge and consume by the square inch at most. Today, things seem to be lightening up and the sweetness quotient is through the roof! Air and sugar in abundance is definitely the evolutionary theme of sweets in the Philippines. I think it is directly correlated with the drop in average household incomes. Here are three commercially purchased versions of this confection and one that I whipped up myself from a Maida Heatter recipe.

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Mixing too many ingredients, flavors, cooking methods, etc. can very easily result in a horrific meal. Luckily, this experimental Pan Asian Fusion Meal I created for Lasang Pinoy 12 or the first anniversary edition, turned out remarkably good. I didn’t go to the market that day with a specific list in hand. Instead, I just bought things that looked good, sounded interesting or I thought I might be able to use. I didn’t even have a menu in the morning and it evolved as the day went by and I looked at what was in stock in the fridge along with market purchases. By 4 p.m., I decided on several dishes, looked up some recipes, decided to modify where I thought appropriate and by 7 p.m. this meal was on the table…

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The twelfth edition of “Lasang Pinoy,” is this month, and the theme, by host Ces of Essences, is fusion cooking. Frankly, I thought I would have great difficulty coming up with something for this month’s LP12 entry. I considered skipping it all together. I typically cringe at the thought of fusion cooking as it seems, at first go, somewhat contrived to mix ingredients and styles from diametrically opposed corners of the globe. I generally try to serve meals from one area, where ingredients are common… so perhaps I would offer an Italian style meal or if I mix it up a little maybe some antipasto then a large paella…but Spain and Italy are right next to each other… I also try to keep some regional integrity here in the Philippines and serve perhaps more of Bicolano or Tagalog meal rather than a selection of pinakbet, laing and a malunggay soup, for example. And yet, I do see the advantages of say a sinigang na ulo ng salmon, or a spaghetti with talangka, or chico with prosciutto. Experimentation is good and after all, if it tastes good to you, why not right? At any rate, as I prepared my LP 12 entry, I decided to do an entire fusion meal and not just one dish…and to start, here is the fusion table that I set for the LP12 anniversary dinner…

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Every once in a while, we get a hankering for halo-halo and we set out a “Halo-halo Buffet” at home consisting of bottled beans, macapuno, kaong, nata, etc. or homemade ingredients such as minatamis na saging, ube jaleya, langka, etc. Once everyone has picked the stuff they like (amazing how many folks can’t stand one ingredient or the other yet love others with a passion), we shave lots and lots of ice and get out the can of evaporated milk and, of course, the ice cream and sometimes the leche flan to add even more calories and richness to the halo-halo. While traditionally halo-halos in The Philippines seem to be served in tall fluted or float type glasses (a throwback to American soda shops perhaps), I actually think it works best when served in a wide-mouthed bowl. It’s so much easier to mix everything and fish out the stuff you want to eat when it is served in a bowl. In the photo at right, I actually tried to serve the halo-halo in a small cylindrical flower vase…though it looked good, it was still a pain to scoop out the stuff. This dessert has closely related cousins across much of Southeast Asia…in Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia they have all sorts of beans and fruits also in an ice bath as a refreshing snack.

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Based on the recent Marketmanila survey on favorite pinoy dishes…Sinigang na Baboy (Sour Soup with Pork) came out in the top 3 individual dishes, while sinigang as a dish (fish, prawns, pork, beef) was clearly the number one favorite overall… As I reviewed my archives, I realized I had done a post on Sinigang na Sugpo (prawns) made with fresh tamarind and a version with kamias, and a Sinigang na Bangus (milkfish) made with guavas, but had never put one on Sinigang na Baboy…so here it is. The past few days have been wetter than usual in Luzon and while our roof leaks, yard floods and school is called off yet again, the perfect antidote to feeling like a large mold spore is to have some nice comforting hot soup…

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I was clearing out an old ancestral house of my parents a few months ago and came across these great shots of my mom with a platter of her “famous” lumpiang ubod. I put them away and forgot about them until last week when my daughter’s homework was do a family tree with photos. I pulled out my files and was able to reconstruct our family tree back five generations on my side and seven generations on my wife’s side. I found photos back five generations…not bad huh? Now that I think about it, there wasn’t a major party or meal at our home while I was growing up that didn’t have a Cebu lechon, some of my mom’s paella and a platter of freshly made lumpiang ubod. I wasn’t particularly fond of vegetables or gulay so this dish was low on my radar screen. However, once you drowned the lumpia in the sweet sauce and peanuts, it tasted pretty good to me. As I got older, I realized this was one of the few things that was in mom’s party and entertaining arsenal…she liked to putter in the kitchen but didn’t really cook serious meals that often…she more like directed or dictated to the troops. She made a very good lumpiang ubod in retrospect and I regret not learning it from her or getting her recipe…though I am sure my sister has it down pat from memory…since she makes a good one as well.

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Ubod or heart of palm is the fibrous pith from the central core of the coconut palm tree. I always assumed the entire center core was edible, but it seems the ubod that you buy tends to come from the top of the palm tree, nearest the leaves…essentially it is the youngest part of the trunk. Removing the ubod kills the tree, so it is usually a byproduct of a naturally fallen tree (as a result of storms, for example) or because a tree is cut to make room for other agricultural crops, construction, landscaping, etc. Growing coconut trees simply to kill them to extract the ubod would be a highly uneconomical venture… While it is a common ingredient here in the Philippines, it is special in that most folks (at least in the city) don’t eat it that often. In other countries, particularly those in Europe where it is known as coeur de palmier, it is consumed in salads and other preparations and their starting ingredient is a canned version of the palm heart. Frankly, I find that it doesn’t have much flavor but it is great at absorbing the other flavoring agents that are cooked with it, hence it is a good vehicle for transporting flavor. It provides bulk, fiber, sustenance. I have really only eaten ubod in lumpia (a fresh spring roll with heart of palm) or as part of a stirfry… I bought the fresh ubod photographed here already cut but I prefer to buy a whole piece and julienne it myself to get a finer cut…

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