Market Manila

Every once in a while, usually towards the end of the month, or after serious holiday feasts, I do a “reconnaissance mission” through our refrigerators, freezers and pantry and try to use up odds and ends. I like to refer to these meals as “vacuum cleaner” meals, sucking out leftovers, miscellaneous food items, pairing them with staples, and creating meals that help us clean up the supplies and be as efficient as possible about our food stocks, which are typically rather voluminous when compared to most households… I think this is how many folks actually cook, not necessarily with all of the stated ingredients in a recipe, but improvising based on their tastes and supplies on hand. So here is what we had for Sunday lunch…

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We purchased a package of “Chorizo Macau” that was made in Cebu (go figure), and sold at a Chinese Food Store at the ground floor of Ali Mall, Ortigas Center. It was vacuum sealed in plastic and didn’t need refrigeration. It was something good to bring to the beach and have as a “back-up ingredient”. This type of chorizo macau is totally filipinized, in my opinion… it is so sweet to the point of it being practically a dessert. And so red it would qualify as a color of paint at the local hardware store. At any rate, for PHP180 for a small package, it was good to have this “on-reserve” in the pantry.

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I ran across this palanggana of stunningly vibrant small fresh leaves of an herb (?, I am assuming) or plant, at the entrance to the Nasugbu market several weeks ago. At PHP10 for a small cup or palm full, the vendor said it was “sanselera” or SOMETHING that sounded like that. I purchased two little plastic bags full and went around to my sukis in the market and asked each of them what it was called and got salsalera, salselera, etc. and I assumed I could figure it out once I got home. They advised that it was incredibly bitter, but incredibly good for you… in the same manner that say ampalaya’s bitterness must be balanced off with fantastic healing or rejuvenation benefits…

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My post on curacha a few days back lead me to Joey’s post on the creature and the recipe she cooked did some “Alavar” sauce… Marketman & family received a large package of Alavar sauce from a friend several months back and this is what we used it for… prawns in Alavar. Alavar, I gather, is a famous seafood restaurant from Zamboanga and later Cebu, and now Manila. We have never eaten at Alavar’s though we have heard about it several times. The famous sauce lists as its ingredients “Coconut Milk and Spices.” Obviously, it is a secret concoction, but my best guess is that it kind of approximates a curry sauce, possibly thickened with aligue from the oodles and oodles of crustaceans they serve at their restaurants. It is a bit on the sweet side for me, so we added some sauteed aromatics and chilies to the sauce before adding the prawns…

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Nearly a dozen readers and friends have emailed me about Earth Hour this Saturday. I have waited to do a post until just the day before the event so that people would be less likely to forget about it. And I fully support this symbolic gesture where households and businesses around the world will turn off their lights for one hour to remind ourselves that just a little effort on everyone’s part can have a noticeable impact on global warming. I know, I know, it may seem cheesy to some of you, these drop in the bucket efforts, BUT NOT IN OUR HOUSEHOLD. We realize we leave a far bigger carbon footprint than the average human beings, driving cars, using airconditioning, spending hours on the television and computers, cooking like crazy for this blog, etc. Though we have done our own little things to help preserve if not restore the natural environment, recycle, use less plastics, eat more locally sourced produce, etc., it is nowhere near enough. While I am of one mind that folks need to curb population growth (we only added one to the planet, after all, a negative growth rate, possibly) dramatically, as well as reduce resource depletion, I also believe we need to take personal responsibility wherever possible… So follow this link if you want to find out more about Earth Hour. But for an hour this Saturday night, it’ll be lights out at our house. And not just the lights. No airconditioning, no computers, driving, and if possible, no tooting either… those are still gasses, after all. :)

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We have enjoyed salted fish fried rice in Chinese restaurants across Southeast Asia, some with a perfect balance of saltiness and moisture and flavor, while others poor pretenders at best. While we enjoy the dish immensely, we haven’t tried to cook it at home, but the purchase of some spectacular dried lapu-lapu was the catalyst for this attempt… The results were startlingly good. I understand Chinese restaurants use a particular kind of dried fish, but I have not figured out what it is… I just went on gut feel that this meaty lapu-lapu would yield a very edible version of Daing Fried Rice.

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This has to be the most premium of the premium dried fishes, or at least one of them. A roughly two kilo live weight grouper or lapu-lapu, split open and bathed in a salt solution then rubbed with organic sea salt and left out in the sun to dry, just. Still a bit moist in the meaty parts, this was a feast for the eyes when still wrapped in heat sealed plastic. A few days before our long beach holiday, I was in Cebu on business, and I wanted to bring some dried fish back to Manila for the lenten holiday meals. So I sent Victor, my expert “food acquisition specialist” off to the Tabo-an market in downtown Cebu with a list of things to purchase. He came back with this beauty (and 3 more like it), among other dried fish wonders. The Tabo-an market has one of the best selections of dried fish I have ever seen and it is a pleasure to visit, but you will walk away with an incredibly pungent aroma on your clothing and body… But back to the Daing na Lapu-Lapu. At PHP490 per kilo, this seems like an incredibly pricey purchase, but a little goes a long, long way…

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We made several popsicles, sorbets and ice creams over the long holiday at the beach; they were the perfect antidote to rising temperatures… The first experiment were some simple fruit based popsicles. We purchased this old-fashioned styled plastic mold at Crate & Barrel for 80% off at their outlet store, so we try to make popsicles whenever there is good fruit around. In this case, we had some ripe and dense local Batangas mangoes and I happened to have some frozen blackberries in the freezer…

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