Mango Jam Cookies a la Marketman
Mrs. MM speaks fondly of a masa podrida (sort of like a shortbread cookie) from childhood with a filling of dense homemade mango jam that her yaya/cook used to make. I have yet to successfully replicate it. First, I haven’t found a decent masa podrida recipe and the purchased versions are not up to snuff. Second, you just can’t sandwich jam between two cookies, you need to bake it all together to get close to the cookie Mrs. MM describes. Also, for some reason, I seem to have issues with delicate cookies with fillings…maybe my fingers are too big or I just can’t figure out how to roll the dough thin enough or moist enough to fold it over without cracks… the same goes for empanadas… I am challenged in this area but am determined to figure this out someday. At any rate, with gobs of recently made, brilliant mango jam, I decided to experiment with some leftover pie dough that I had in the fridge…
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the age of 42, the kidney problems were not diagnosed until about December of 2005, he was then put on dialysis in January of 2006, told several weeks later a kidney transplant was his only hope, and passed away several months later, leaving a widow, child and several stepchildren behind. It was an extremely tragic situation, but through all of the last months of his life, he focused on his family and never seemed to lose hope. It was extremely difficult to watch him and his family go through this, and I can only imagine how much more difficult it was for them. Eli was more than our “bantay” or watchman at the beach… he could accompany guests out on a banca if they wanted to go fishing, make short shrift of a would be intruder with his extensive security training, and happily putter around the garden. He planted lots of papayas in the empty lots next door, raised okra, malunggay, tomatoes, eggplants, herbs, etc. He planted several kinds of fruit trees on his family’s property in the nearby barangay.
all the great things you can do with them. I was thrilled with my success with the 
remember one of the first fast-food halls at the basement of Shoemart Makati in the late 1970’s… my favorite stall there was called KIMCHI and today they are all over the city in nearly every major food hall. At the time, I would get either the bulgogi (Korean barbecue) or their beef stew that was sweetish, salty, pungent and served with bean sprouts, kimchi and rice for some outrageous price like PHP15 or 20 only. I recently visited a KIMCHI outlet last year but was sorely disappointed by the quality of the food, the size of the portions (and soup that tasted like soap water) and, of course, these days, the soaring price tag. Plus they actually had no kimchi in stock…how outrageous is that?? I had never made Korean style short ribs before so I turned to a new cookbook I purchased for some guidance. The Complete Meat Cookbook by Bruce Aidells and Denis Kelly has a wealth of information on meat in general, but they also have an international selection of recipes, including the one I used as a basis for this version…
thrilled to find a fairly huge offering of Australian Beef at the large Rustan’s in the Makati Commercial Center. I haven’t been to this Rustan’s branch since it changed hands and Shopwise management has taken over, and I have to say, the offerings were generally disappointing for a flagship store…I mean, I couldn’t even finish half of my usual grocery list here since the shelf contents were so incomplete. I also think it is really quite expensive with lemons, for example, at Landmark that cost PHP11.50 each were PHP15.00 at Rustan’s (or 30% more)! So the nice beef selection was a pleasant surprise. The meat looked like meat, and the prices seemed to be quite reasonable.
