Market Manila

Okay, I failed. I admit it. My goal to get to 170 pounds by May 1, 2007 that I boldly broadcast on this blog, in a fit of euphoria or unbridled optimism on New Year’s Eve 2007, was just too hard to achieve. Or perhaps I just couldn’t concentrate on a diet when I had to write about food constantly! Whatever the reasons, the 173.6 in the photo up top is the closest I am going to get, since I am now gearing up for a long holiday and eating is definitely a major part of the plan. I suppose I could starve myself for 24-48 hours and not drink water and intentionally dehydrate myself the same way Manny Pacquiao does before his pre-fight weigh-in, and that might get me to 170 lbs by midnight of May 1st, but I am not that desperate. From a high of 194 or 195 lbs a couple of years ago, I brought that down to about 185 at the end of 2006, and I wanted to go all the way back down to 170 one more time in my life, before going with the flow… Actually, in the post on December 31, 2007, I specifically state I was targetting 170-175 lbs which I have achieved. But in my poll that ran that week, I laid down the gauntlet at 170 pounds. So in the past 4 months, despite 150+ posts on food and eating, I managed to lose about 12 pounds of fat, actually, maybe 15 pounds of fat, and added some 2-3 pounds of muscle for a net loss on the scale of about 12 pounds. I may never look like Daniel Craig / James Bond in this photo here; I am, after all, an ectomorph rather than an mesomorph like Mr. Craig. And, I might add, I wasn’t paid $20million dollars to get my chest in shape. But here’s the silver lining, folks…

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The temperature in Manila has been unbearably hot during the past week or two. On some days, it feels like well over 100 F or 40 C, and even the airconditioners are straining to cool it down a little. So it seemed like a perfect time to make some fruit based ice candy with the langka (jackfruit) that we still had in the freezer. Fruit based ice candy is a classic summer time treat across the Philippine archipelago. When several tropical fruits are ripening almost all at the same time in the sweltering heat, and you have fruit flavor and sugars up the wazoo, it’s time to make ice candy. Our cook, Jane, made these yesterday and they tasted fantastic. She put roughly 1 kilo or more of langka into a food processor or blender (chop coarsely before putting into a blender unless you have a heavy duty one), a can of condensed milk and a little water if the mixture is just way too thick to pour. Pour these into little plastic ice candy bags and knot them firmly. Place in a freezer until nice and hard, in this case, it took overnight.

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Just a quick post for those in search of mascarpone (quite a few folks, judging from comments in my recent post, “Where can I find…”), that Italian cream cheese that is the cause of many an expanding waist or thigh. It is soft, creamy, luscious, a hint of buttery and wickedly fat filled. Essential for tira misu, fantasic on a nice piece of hearty toast, or sublime served with berries or other luscious baked desserts. I found this small tub at S&R Fort Bonifacio a few days ago at about PHP250+ which seemed like a pretty good price… Actually, the dairy offerings of S&R are really quite a find for me… great yoghurt, better Australian butter which is terrific in cookies, a sometimes interesting cheese selection, and other goodies. And no, I am not related to S&R ownership or management, I just spend an inordinate amount of my food budget there. The mascarpone is in the chiller section. Enjoy!

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I don’t know about you guys, but in our household, when I was growing up, papaya was a very big thing for breakfast… I hated it. But the ancestors were big fans, constantly mentioning its lovely “roto-rooter” qualities that were better than any drugstore-purchased laxative. The way they were touting this fruit, you would think they were constantly plugged up…who knows, maybe they were…heeheehee, gosh that’s irreverent! At any rate, they didn’t have many of these cute, almost identically sized and highly standardized mini-papayas that Dole now sells in the groceries; they had those humongous whopper of a papaya versions that you had to slice lengthwise, resulting in many sections per fruit… My parents were big on the red ones, claiming they were more tasty, sweeter, etc. Yet oddly, my parents always added a squeeze of calamansi AND a sprinkling of sugar to their slices of papaya…

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With a couple of kilos of ripe langka in the deep freeze, the question was what to do with it… We had enjoyed langka fresh, frozen and eaten plain, frozen and served with some brandy, cooked into banana turon, and in the past, preserved in a simple sugar syrup for future use in halo-halo’s, but I had never baked with langka (jackfruit)… I searched the internet and found a langka empanaditas recipe that looked interesting (though I was almost certain that the amount of dough mentioned was insufficient for the filling) and remembered that I once did a pie crust triangle or turnover with a filling of santol jam, so I thought I would experiment… Here are the results… flaky, buttery pie crust triangles filled with a delicious, pungent and tasty langka filling…they were very good eating!

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There are few snacks or desserts that enjoy more than banana turon. This is definitely on my Top 5 list. We purchased a huge langka (for PHP250 or so) from a Batangas roadside stall (note, NOT overpriced Tagaytay fruit highway robber stalls) on the ride back from the Holy Week holiday at the beach. We waited a day or two until it reached its peak ripeness and split it open and savored the pungent and unique aroma that I have to believe is an acquired smell. We split up the “meat,” removing the seeds and sent it home with staff or to neighbors. I understand the seeds should be boiled but I have never done that so in this case, they were chucked into the garbage. After the “distribution” of langka bounty, there was still two large ziplock bags of the fruit left and that went into the freezer. If you have never tasted pieces of frozen langka (jackfruit), you are missing a spectacular sensory and taste sensation. The half-frozen, slightly crunchy and oddly chewy fruit hits your tongue cold but rapidly defrosts and you get the unique flavor as you chew it… And if you want to dress it up a little, friends of ours introduced us to cold langka drizzled with brandy or rhum, it is SUPERB!

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If you are not a daily reader of Marketmanila, consider this an early head’s up… If there is one day next week that you should check out the posts on this blog, please try and visit on Monday from early morning to late in the day only. I won’t tell you why, but it may be your only chance ever to …………… on Marketmanila. So consider this an early warning for the occasional visitor. Remember, Monday April 30, 2007!!! Nobody can say I didn’t give them a few days advance notice…heeheehee.

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Good grief… Whew!!! Who knew the response would be so rapid and so intense??? HEEHEE!!! You guys are too much!

Within hours of posting the trivia contest, my site was burning up with folks coursing through the archives trying to find the answers! At any rate, I have more than enough entries and by now all winners have been notified by email. So here are the answers for those that are curious.

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