Market Manila

If you asked me a few months ago to recommend a place where you could get a nice lunch in a pleasant, unharried atmosphere, where you can actually converse, with a gentle breeze and a view onto a massive verdant grass field, 10 minutes from the heart of Ayala Avenue and reasonably priced without a parking fee, I would have looked at you like you had had a recent lobotomy. But take a good look at that photo above, a reasonably good osso buco on a bed of pasta with more of the sauce mixed in. Lots of chopped parsley and actual slivers of lemon peel. Where? The Manila Polo Club Sports Lounge on McKinley Road. The cost (besides the cost of the share)? An amazing PHP400; easily half of what a noisy, all tile, no acoustics, expensive parking, neighbors in your armpits mall alternative would charge. Hah! You scoff, Marketman has lost his marbles, you say… The Manila Polo Club has never been known for its food. But if you are one of its 2,500+ members or have a friend that is a member, give it another try on a weekday lunch.

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I daresay you can’t be Pinoy unless you have a favorite “sawsawan” or dipping sauce. Is it patis or fish sauce with some kalamansi or calamondin? Is it coconut vinegar with mashed siling labuyo? Perhaps soy sauce with chopped tomatoes, onions and a touch of vinegar? Bagoong (shrimp paste) with lime? Whatever it is, Marketman wants to know! Perhaps over 4,000 readers will see this post in the next two days and I am incredibly curious what you consider your favorite dipping sauce. I realize folks have special concoctions just for fried fish, or pork, or grilled squid, but which one is your all-time favorite? Please leave a comment with your ingredients and/or methodology for making the ultimate sawsawan.

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My wife and I were walking around the Salcedo market yesterday and she was in search of freshly made piaya that she had tasted there many months ago (she doesn’t typically get up that early on a Saturday to make it to the markets). Thankfully, the piaya man was there and she got a container with 20 small piayas for PHP100. I think they are the only vendor of freshly made piaya in that market. I’m not really sure what the attraction is but I suspect they are a childhood thing for Mrs. Marketman. While they are a delicacy from Negros, she first tasted them in Cebu and has been hooked ever since. Unleavened dough, somewhat akin to the host at a Catholic mass but thicker encases some dark muscovado sugar. In some renditions, there are copious amounts of sesame seeds. While I like piaya, I don’t seek it out as much as Mrs. Marketman does. And with my current attempts to diet, I really shouldn’t have more than one a day…

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Okay, so fried fish doesn’t exactly meet the criteria for diet food. But compared with what I would have likely been eating for lunch before my diet this is an improvement. A market foray yesterday morning yielded a bottle of burong mangga and good looking mustasa or mustard greens…the making of two nice complementary dishes or relishes for a nicely fried fresh fish. So off to the market the cook went to pick up a couple of talakitoks (jacks) and this was our lunch yesterday… On the first platter is a fried talakitok with a side relish of burong mangga and some brown rice. On the second platter, a fried talakitok with a bracing side salad of mustasa greens with a bagoong (shrimp paste) and kalamansi (calamondin) dressing.

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If you have been reading this blog for a while, you would know I am a big fan of just about anything sour. Burong mangga or pickled green mango is a childhood favorite. Along the same lines as crispy green mangoes with bagoong, kamias with rock salt, santol skin (not seeds) with salt, etc. I spotted some bottled burong mangga at the market this morning and I couldn’t resist. It’s relatively easy to make with just salt, sugar and mangoes but I rarely think to make and stock some on my own. After I put some in this glass bowl to take a photograph, I ate half the bowl and it wasn’t even 9am yet! I used to buy this treat surreptitiously outside my grade school in Quezon City way back when my parents use to warn of dire consequences and even death due to eating street vendor food. I also used to buy it at Tropical Hut groceries, where they had the Chinese preserved plums and other salty sweet delicacies, and I would eat it straight out of the plastic bag. Yum. I hope your salivary glands are on overdrive at the moment. I plan to have more burong mangga with my fried fish this lunch. Yum again. I bet these would be good with a really crispy and fatty lechon kawali as well.

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There are two things about our food supply that really underscores the fact that we are indeed still a third world economy. The first is the incredibly erratic supply of produce and other grocery items, and the second is the incredibly variable pricing for the same exact item. The main reasons for this annoyingly crappy retail environment? Consumers that are neither quality nor service conscious, nor as a group possess enough buying power to sway the retailers, lousy distribution capabilities, non-existent proper storage facilities, a lack of real competition and virtual monopolies or oligopolies for vegetables and fruit, tons of red tape associated with importing a head of celery, local growers hit with all kinds of costs on their way to the markets, and the list can go on and on. Bottom line, compared to many of our neighbors, we have unbelievably limited choices, erratic availability and bizarre pricing. Don’t get me totally wrong, things have improved dramatically in the past 10 years, but we are decades behind other similarly situated and economically positioned nations.

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I love the fresh herbs from Zacky’s Farm in Tagaytay. I am always thrilled to round the corner in the chilled produce section at the Rustan’s Grocery Rockwell and find that Zacky’s has had a recent delivery of herbs. That’s usually the case before the weekend. Small portions of herbs are neatly packed in sealed plastic bags and priced from about PHP30 to 60 per packet. You can sometimes get dill, basil, oregano, chives, mint, tarragon, wansoy, Italian parsley, jalapeno peppers, cherry tomatoes, etc. I first started buying from this farm many years ago when they took a stall at the then makeshift market beside the proposed site of the Market!Market! Mall in Fort Bonifacio Taguig. At that time, the table was manned by a very amiable fellow who used to make sure I would get first dibs on any herbs he had that day. Better yet, he would let me order herbs a week in advance, almost certainly ensuring I would have whatever I needed the following weekend, a rare certainty in Manila at the time.

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I was dreaming of carbohydrates last night. That is a bad sign. I never remember my dreams in the morning so if I can distinctly picture potatoes, spaghetti, sotanghon, bread slices et al, that means I am in the “danger zone”. I have not completely given up all carbohydrates in my current attempt to lose some weight; in fact, I am eating some brown rice, some whole wheat bread and yesterday I even purchased some whole wheat pasta. But my body knows when it is under attack or it is being deprived, and the shortage of honest to goodness bad carbohydrates is rearing its ugly side. So when I was passing by the kitchen an hour ago and sniffed something cooking away, I knew instantly it must contain carbs…the bad kind. Boy, was I right. Doesn’t this dish of pancit bihon or bihon guisado just look spectacular?

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