Squid Ink Pasta, Prawns & Pancetta a la Marketman
I was rooting around the pantry yesterday and found all kinds of goodies that I had nearly forgotten about. I decided to use some of them for dinner but I wasn’t quite sure what to make. I found some 
nice dried grayish-black squid ink fettucine, sun dried tomatoes, red pepper flakes and good olive oil in the pantry. Some onions and garlic in a basket. Basil in the garden, prawns in the freezer and some great pancetta I hand-carried back from Italy. I didn’t have a recipe so I decided to make one up. Pairing a nice salty pancetta with seafood is a classic move, but I also added some spice, some tomatoes and hoped for the best. It turned out extremely well…not the most photogenic dish as the sauce drowned the noodles but the taste was great and in person, the dish was truly stunning… The black and red color contrast, the saltiness of the pancetta and the sweetness of the prawns and basil, tomatoes, etc. all together made a very satisfying dish…
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I decided to do a large Caesar salad. Here are Marketman’s tips for a delicious homemade Caesar salad. First, the key is to get good fresh sweet romaine lettuce. I know, I know, I can be a pain in the neck about my absolutes, but iceberg lettuce does not make a good caesar salad in my personal opinion. I bought 3 packages of romaine hearts from my suki lettuce source Fresh Fields at Market!Market! These were then washed, dried and returned to the fridge for at least 3 hours to crisp up the leaves as much as possible. I purchased the leaves just the day before I used them. Longer than a couple of days old and the lettuce starts to lose its freshness and the sweetness associated with freshly picked leaves. For the sake of presentation, I sorted the leaves from 10 romaine hearts from biggest to smallest and recreated a giant “head” of lettuce in a large 20-inch wide narra salad bowl. It looked pretty cool, don’t you think?
The bottom line, I would need a seriously well-connected guide to get me into the back doors of all the old estates in order to eat like royalty (not to mention photograph and write about it). While there are a few people I know from Bacolod, none were in the mood to get fatter alongside me in a multi-day eating and market tour. And I suppose families guard their special recipes like precious heirlooms. There are some faithful Bacolod-based or bred readers of the blog who have graciously offered suggestions of places to see, eat, etc. and I am still hopeful that one day soon I will make the trip. The one specialty that I have had several times in several different places, but never in Bacolod, is their famous Chicken Inasal or Grilled Chicken. What’s the big deal, anyway???
life, the turning point for me as a cook to take notice of this incredible herb was during our honeymoon many, many moons ago spent at a spectacular hotel in Bali. One of the dishes we ordered at a lunch was a stunningly delicious, nearly clear tomato consommé that was infused with the subtle citrusy flavor of lemongrass… it was a memorable bowl of soup and I have never even attempted to replicate at home as a proper consommé can be a royal pain in the rear to make… Ever since that day, I have noticed tanglad as a major flavoring ingredient in food in Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and back here in the Philippines…
out to the markets early and came home with banana leaves, malagkit and coconut milk…she had decided Marketman needed a dose of kakanin for his birthday, isn’t that just really nice? First up was a very simple yet incredibly satisfying malagkit. A concoction of glutinous rice, coconut milk, ginger, sugar and some salt, this mixture is first stirred until the right consistency then steamed in a bowl. This is easier to do than suman but the simplicity is definitely part of the charm. Once it is done, single serving portions are wrapped in banana leaves. Served with mango, it is a pairing made in provincial heaven and rarely replicated in a city restaurant. You don’t mess with a good thing. Forget about measurements, she does this by feel.
is probably how to negotiate a bulk discount from Vicky Belo for a half dozen liposuctions… I jest, of course. Anyway, I had planned to make a special lunch for everyone yesterday, Saturday. In preparation for the lunch, my wife and daughter decided I could open one of my birthday presents early, since I would probably want to use it while preparing lunch… Inside the wrapped box was a chef’s jacket, with “Marketman” embroidered on the upper left of the jacket! Yahoo!!! I have always secretly wanted a chef’s jacket, even though I never attended cooking school nor would I ever call myself a chef. It may be a bit tacky to want this, kinda like someone wearing a fake pilot’s uniform or worse Superman tights (ever wonder why superheroes tend to wear their underwear OUTSIDE their tights???), but I have always wanted one. So here is my custom-made, heavy white twill, black buttoned and black piped chef’s jacket… I am amazed that they got the fit fairly close without measuring me!
meals, doodads, gifts, et al in the next day or so. I turn 42 years old today. That’s an amazing 15,340 days or 368,172 hours or 22,090,320 minutes old!!! Yipes! Life has been good so far and I am grateful for every single one of those twenty-two million minutes, even the nasty ones, and the roughly 7 million minutes where I was fast asleep as well (see the absolute importance of getting the best possible mattress on the market and brilliantly high-count cotton sheets?). I figure I have spent approximately 1.1 million minutes eating meals or snacks and that is just 5% of my total lifetime. If you sat down and roughly calculated what you have done with your so many million minutes, it may give you reason to pause…what do the figures show? How many minutes did you spend in the bathroom? With your kids? Working your rear off? Daydreaming? Watching TV? Playing sports? Studying? Commuting? Doing the things you really love? Etc. Calculate it now, spend just 10-15 minutes to figure out how you’ve spent your time on this planet so far…maybe you’ll decide to make some changes! If you spend more time commuting than with your kids…