Market Manila

It’s the day after a spectacular meal and you have lots of roasted baby lamb leftover… now what? Besides sandwiches with mint or guava jelly, Ms. Fores suggested I do a lamb adobo… so I did. We sliced up the leftover lamb, threw in the fragile ribs and meat into a pot, added some good cider vinegar, some kikkoman soy sauce, fresh bay leaves, smashed cloves of garlic and some pepper and some water and let it simmer until the pieces of meat were incredibly tender. This was very good adobo. I served it with some homemade acharra and rice and it was a quick and easy lunch. The unique flavor of lamb was still noticeable but given the classic adobo treatment…delicious!

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Mrs. MM and The Kid apparently wracked their brains to come up with a birthday present for Marketman and when they drew a blank, they apparently decided to bring in professional assistance… So imagine my surprise when I found out that the dinner was going to be catered by Margarita Fores of Cibo and Pepato fame. Mrs. MM had met her at a dinner a few weeks ago and later decided she should ask Ms. Fores to craft a surprise dinner for just 9 guests for my birthday!!! So here is the special meal that evening; hold onto your belts, it is really rather amazing… But before I continue with this post, and before anyone rapidly shoots off a comment about misplaced extravagance, let me just say we don’t do this often…in fact, in our 10 years back home, we have only had 2 meals in our home catered, and that includes this one. We typically cook most of our own meals, so this was a special treat indeed… If you have read this blog over the years, you would know that a special meal a la Marketman sometimes starts with foie gras and that is exactly where we begin… up top, superb foie gras (duck or goose liver) “lollipops” with chestnut honey, szechuan peppercorns, pili and pistachios. These were a dream come true, cool, soft silky foie gras with a spicy, textured and sweet counterpoint. Excellent, but EXCELLENT.

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The first clue that dinner wasn’t just a simple pasta and salad affair came from the table settings. But I had been shooed out of the house mid-afternoon to take The Kid somewhere and we eventually ended up at Fully Booked at Serendra which is always a nice hour or so spent in the cookbook section, so I didn’t see the table until right before dinner. Our 12 foot + (two 6 foot+ tables) dining table was draped with a fabulous linen tablecloth that was sent to us (Mrs. MM and myself) as a combined birthday present from my sister. Made of 100% heavy weight linen with a beautiful pattern in an unusual beige/grey color, this tablecloth was made in Russia. On this were laid our ever trusty plain white Limoges restaurant china…

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In the midst of our baking extravaganza yesterday, we made the filling for the chocolate tart, but since I changed the sizes of the tart pans used, we ended up with two cups full of chocolate “filling.” An earlier post a couple of days ago described a hot chocolate/sikwate made with tablea, and posed a question wondering how a really thick and brilliant hot chocolate version in Barcelona must have been made… well, this accidental version seems pretty close to the hot chocolate I was dreaming off… Take some good thick cream or in this case whipping cream, add some milk and put this on the stove over medium heat until it just begins to boil. For about 1.5 cups of milk/cream, prepare about 6-8 ounces of finely chopped up GOOD bittersweet chocolate such as 60% Valrhona and place the chocolate in a heat proof stainless steel or glass bowl. Then pour the hot milk/cream over the chocolate and allow this to steep for about 45 seconds then whisk until it is well mixed and smooth. Let this cool for about 5 minutes, then add a whole raw egg at room temperature and whisk to mix it in. Add sugar if you like but the intensity of chocolate flavor was enough for me and The Kid. Serve in small cups. Accidentally but utterly delicious. This is literally liquified chocolate, so thick it forms a crust on the surface within seconds or a minute of pouring it into a glass. A single broas could rest on the surface without sinking. This was the ultimate “pick-me-upper” in the middle of a baking frenzy…

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I woke up early yesterday knowing that there was a small dinner planned on my birthday. Best I could figure, my roomate from college 20+ years ago and his wife were guests, as well as a good friend from the days we lived in Jakarta 15+ years ago. So I thought it was a reunion of old and dear friends and I figured Mrs. MM was going to cook a simple pasta dish and we could all catch up on old times. But up at 6 a.m., I noticed there was little or no activity in the kitchen at all, and I was wondering what the dinner menu would include if the ham wasn’t even soaked yet, and there was no serious prep work in progress in the kitchen. Not knowing what the dinner menu would be, I decided to make several desserts, after all, what better day to eat whatever you feel like with a minimum of guilt… First up, I made a classic apple pie, using a tried and true recipe that I first learned from my sister 30+ years ago, and have since made hundreds of pies over the decades. It always sells at the dessert buffet and I figured friends who have known me for 20+ years would appreciate some pie, the way I have always made it…

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At least three of you nailed the mystery dish. Myra P. got it squarely on the head. Onion soup is one of the most common restaurant menu choices in Manila, and it is almost always poorly executed, in my opinion. I cannot explain it other than to say, “why bother if they can’t approximate a decent version?” This is the soup equivalent of the ubiquitous Caesar salad that is also done poorly in 90% of the cases… At any rate, how hard can it be? Onions, butter, herbs, beef broth, bread and cheese. But I have stopped asking how easy simple recipes must be because I am finding out that the simplest recipes are often the hardest to perfect. So I set out to make a French onion soup from scratch in our home kitchen. And once you have tasted a properly made crock of onion soup, you will be spoiled forever…

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Wow! One day off from the blog and 170+ comments?! That is overwhelming and I thank you many times over for all the birthday greetings! In the next couple of days, hang on to your stomachs (virtually) as I post the “mystery” dish and more importantly, the surprise meal that Mrs. MM arranged for dinner last night… If only we could have had all of you over to join us… it was a very memorable and special meal.

As for the many guesses in the previous post on what was cooking for so long, many of you guessed pata tim which I have not yet featured on this site, callos was another favorite guess but that too, I have not attempted due to an aversion to cow stomach lining, duck confit, fabada which we eat often but whose recipe I have not posted yet, and very astutely, someone said croissants which I have never made from scratch…

But for some of the other guesses, I do have posts in the archives for the curious:

Crispy Pata a la Gardenman
Morcon a la Chef Chris Bautista
Wagyu Osso Buco a la Marketman
Kare-Kare

So hang on, wait a few hours and check back as I write up the posts from yesterday’s activities. Many thanks again for all the greetings… :)

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Today is my birthday, so I am taking the whole day off from blogging. I have been cooking something for the past 5-6 hours (Sunday afternoon and evening) and that is only the first few steps in the whole process… After cooling it down and an overnight snuggle to marry all of the flavors nicely, I finish the dish off tomorrow in time for a fabulously simple lunch. It is a dish that I absolutely love when it is done right, but regrettably, I have NEVER had a stellar example of it at a Manila restaurant, so I have decided to make it from scratch, and the first few tastes of the dish bode very well indeed. Oddly, it is a dish you OFTEN see on restaurant menus, but it almost always falls short of expectations. Many of you have tasted this dish, but ahhh, have you eaten a version that is truly memorable, and properly cooked? It is rich, flavorful, salty, sweet, herbaceous, probably unhealthy yet downright satisfying. I have never featured it on Marketmanila.com before. Care to guess what it is? If you guys figure it out I may even share some photos and a recipe…

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