Market Manila

I typically love the still lifes of produce that I shoot after a visit to the Herbana Farms stall at the Salcedo Market on Saturdays. Their selection of produce is unusual and the vegetables and herbs always look so genuine… Yesterday was no exception and my haul included several bunches of organically grown sweet baby carrots with tops (our pet rabbit loves these carrot tops). I also got some fresh soybeans (edamame) that taste great simply steamed and make for incredibly healthy munching. I also got some kohlrabi and tamarillos (that for some reason everyone seems to call Japanese or Spanish tomatoes…).

Read more…

“Tita” Cely Kalaw must certainly qualify as one of the icons of Filipino food and cooking. At 69, still a “Miss” and as spry and energetic as someone half her age, she is an absolute joy to behold. She was mentioned in this blog early on when I featured Bicol Express and some discussion ensued about her “inventing” the dish… Well, she certainly named it, and while her version is based on a long-standing Bicolano dish Gulay na Lada, it is her version that has spread like wildfire to local restaurants who have adopted her wonderful name for the dish as well, based on the trains to the Bicol region, not any other silly suggestions like an express trip to the John after eating it… At any rate, my parents were frequent customers of Ms. Kalaw’s restaurant, The Grove, in Malate in the 1960’s, where my father would get a taste of Bicolano dishes, where his father was born and raised. She is not my biological tita, but she prefers that she is everyone’s tita, if you know what I mean… after all, she called me “Tito” Marketman, which cracked me up no end…

Read more…

We just got back from the movie “No Reservations” with Catherine Zeta Jones… I enjoyed it immensely and it was the perfect antidote to a very, very busy (exhausting) week. The last time there was a food related movie in town, Ratatouille, a reader likened me to Anton Ego, and I must say, that amused me immensely. So I figured I would pre-empt any readers this time around and try to figure out if I was like any of the characters in this movie. I was amused to see my orange crocs on Nick, the male chef with a penchant for opera, and a preference for Italian cooking… However, I really did have to laugh out loud when a customer at the restaurant complained (twice even) about his steak not being rare enough and Kate (Zeta-Jones), stormed out of the kitchen with a raw steak impaled on a carving fork and she thwacks the steak down in front of the customer, the tines of the carving fork stuck on the table. Mrs. MM and The Kid stared directly at me in the dark movie theater with this incredulous look… After the movie was finished, they relayed that if I ever opened a restaurant, I would MOST DEFINITELY pull a stunt like that, BUT MOST DEFINITELY. Just so you know. And I do want to learn how to whip a tablecloth off of a table with plates and cutlery on it. :)

Read more…

I did a quick blurb on Marta’s Cakes, the new store of Marta Matute at Serendra, a day after it opened. I had never met Marta before, and she had no clue who I was. I promised myself I would return to the shop a month or so later to give them time to get settled and stock their shelves. I did the follow-up visit a couple of weeks ago. However, I must say that I visited the store several times in between and since then, as The Kid and some of her friends are absolutely smitten with Marta’s cake/cookie decorating kits.

Read more…

Here is the second sago post, originally dated July 2005. Sago is apparently NOT tapioca. Sago is apparently NOT tapioca. That is not a typo, I did that on purpose. I am just so used to seeing sago translated as tapioca in menus, recipe books, etc. that I assumed it must be tapioca. My research suggests it most definitely is NOT. Tapioca is made from cassava root. Sago is made from the pith of a Sago or related palm. Since we were up to our eyeballs in cooked sago as a result of the previous entry, I was searching for other ways to use these balls and tried this delicious mango and sago concoction that is attributed to Glenda Barretto, who calls it “Mango and Tapioca Pearls…” Hmmm…

Read more…

This post dates from July 2005, and decided to post it again today as I am very busy and in transit, thus unable to write something new. I am feeling like something sweet and sago-ey so I will post two desserts in a row with sago… yum. Enjoy! We had a taste for some sago in palm sugar and ice the other day in the sweltering heat and rushed out to the grocery to buy a small pack of sago and a bunch of ripe saba cooking bananas. Just before starting to make minatamis na saba (stewed bananas in syrup), I noticed that it would take a whole day to reconstitute the sago! I have obviously never made sago at home. What the heck is this stuff made off that it takes longer to reconstitute than dried legumes? Sago is actually made from the powdery starch that is obtained from the pith of sago and related palm trees. The starch is often used as a food thickener and in some places a textile stiffener (according to a Princeton University site)!!! Yikes. Here are some reference sources. Grown in the Southern Philippines (typically in marsh areas), Indonesia and Malaysia, the sago palms yield oodles of these starch balls that are sold in all different sizes and sometimes artificially colored. Cook, soak overnight, blanch again, soak again and you end up with these gelatinous, somewhat tasteless soft marbles that many of us have grown used to in Asian desserts and drinks.

Read more…

Just over a half hour drive out of Laoag, and past increasingly beautiful and less populated vistas of the South China Sea, one comes up to the Cape Bojeador lighthouse sitting up on a hill. A quick ascent in our car and a few dozen steps got us to the base of this impressive lighthouse that is more than a century old and still very much functioning and guiding ships through the Northernmost passages of Luzon. No other visitors were around and we got to spend some time chatting with Mang Celso, a 4th generation lighthouse keeper whose father, grandfather and great-grandfather had the same career. On duty for 3 months at a time, then taking a week off before returning for another 3 desolate months, it is an amazingly solitary assignment, or is it?

Read more…

I was simply stunned and overwhelmed by the reader response to this earlier post on Marketmanila t-shirts. It isn’t often I get 160+ comments on a post so seemingly innocuous in nature. I was even more stunned when Lee, a regular reader and commenter from Bacolod, sent these totally unsolicited and amazingly cool t-shirt designs. I asked Lee for permission to post these graphics and I must say, I thank him profusely for taking the time to come up with these original designs. A wonderful graphics artist, Lee went so far to assure me they are not simply clip art drawings but actually original designs… I am truly amazed… At any rate, what is the hubbub about? I figured I should give you all an early, possibly premature heads up to better gauge the potential reader response. Everyone assumes I am selling shirts, which I am not…so here is the plan or intention…

Read more…