Kalamansi / Calamondin Marmalade a la Marketman
Orange marmalade always struck me as being a bit bitter. It seems the finest ones in the world are, in fact, rather bitter, and traditionally made using Seville oranges. Cheaper orange marmalades are often made with rinds from sweeter varieties of oranges and also contain a phenomenal amount of added sugar, not to mention food coloring. My mom was a huge fan of orange marmalade and when there wasn’t anything else for breakfast, I inevitably had a couple of pieces of toast with butter and some of her orange marmalade stash. If the source of the marmalade was an aunt in Australia or a visitor from Europe, the marmalade was the bitterish version. If it was a local grocery purchase, it was sweet and probably artificially colored. Oddly, I liked the slightly bitter version, despite an aversion to ampalaya and almost all other bitter foods at that stage of my tastebud development. As the years progressed, the only place I would come across orange marmalade was on long plane rides (front end for business) or in hotel breakfast room service trays where the marmalade came in cute little glass bottles. Oddly, I never bought any for myself.
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Though the basic ingredient list is short, the proportions, type of ingredients, substitutions and type of meat matter a great deal. First there is the meat… you can use the strangely named filipino steak from the grocery which is probably from a tough part of the cow, then take it home and beat it with that spiked wooden mallet in your kitchen (pha-taly bet it, translate as “fatally beat it” according to a security guard who was called to our house when snakes were discovered in our yard and his solution was to pha-taly bet it!). Or you can spring for the good stuff and get some sirloin steaks sliced very thinly. Next you have the soy sauce - some insist on a darker marca pina type soy sauce while others like the clean taste of say an imported Kikkoman. Next the souring agent - either little or lots of kalamansi or some like lemon (especially if you are abroad and have no kalamansi). Finally, the last key ingredient are onions, and I tested three different ones with my last Bistek to give you my opinion which was the best…
scoop under several spears of asparagus then gently hold them in place with a flat top portion and transfer the asparagus to one’s plate. Note that there is a little “lip” in the upper silver paddle so that the asparagus don’t slip out easily. It is really quite stunning to behold, with intricate patterns in sterling silver. An English William IV antique, it dates back to 1830 or so. Yipes, that is OLD?! Frankly, I think this is a very useful utensil, particularly if you serve asparagus often…
Besides, what if I have access to superb Cebuano mangoes but mediocre Indian mangoes – that wouldn’t be a fair comparison, would it? Instead, I would rather be utterly and obviously biased, and say that “Philippine Mangoes are Simply The Best.” However, the sleuth in me isn’t so careless, so I DO TRY to taste as many mango varieties as possible, whenever the opportunity presents itself. I recently got to taste some pretty impressive Australian hybrid mangoes that had been grown on the Cojuangco farms in Mindanao… I bought them in Cebu at PHP80 a kilo and used them in a prawn and mango salad that was utterly delicious. The mangoes were sweet, albeit with that apple/mango flavor, and the meat dense and less fibrous than other Australian mangoes I have tried. They had a buttery mouth feel. When ripe, they would be a reasonable alternative to our own carabao mangoes…but not quite. Then at the market a couple of weekends ago, I spied these two other varieties of stunning reddish-orange skinned mangoes…
