Market Manila

While this should really be treated as the official “Round 1″ lechon attempt, the first dry run described here yielded very decent results, so I guess this is now officially Lechon #2… All you have to do is a take a good close look at the lechon skin in the photo above to know this was an improvement on the first roasted pig. Not wanting to re-invent the wheel, we decided to engage the services of a traditional and “professional” town or barangay lechonero, Mang Fredo, and see what he did differently to ensure a delicious lechon. This was certainly a wise move. And thankfully, he was a “classic” kind of lechon guy, not many tricks or shortcuts up his sleeve, just good old common sense, a few flavoring tricks, and the patience of an ox.

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When are they in season? I haven’t the foggiest clue. It used to be that they were abundant from November to March, and I thought that was the peak of the season when I wrote this earlier post, here. Then for a couple of years, last year in particular, there was a dearth of pomelos around at that time. And supplies are erratic, of poor quality and often outrageously expensive. My Doreen Fernandez book on Fruits of the Philippines states that pomelo is available from November to January. But on a trip to Bicol in March one year, I spotted a few fruit on a tree, barely halfway to maturity… could it be they now fruit year round? Perhaps readers from Mindanao can enlighten us… A good pomelo is definitely one of my favorite tropical fruits. Juicy, sweet and yet with a hint of bitterness, it is excellent when eaten peeled and chilled. Also terrific in a spicy Thai style salad. And somewhat a surprise, a friend’s family serves the sweetest pomelo with some fried bagoong alamang on the side, and it is a perfect match! So I am ALWAYS on the lookout for good and reasonably priced pomelos… and last week, in Cebu, we hit the jackpot. Victor, my Carbon specialist in Cebu, informed me on my arrival in the city, that pomelos were aplenty… so a quick trip to the Carbon yielded 20 kilos of fruit for just PHP460, or PHP23 a kilo! The same fruit in Manila was retailing for well above PHP100 a kilo!

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Just a quick blurb to announce that there is a Pampanga Food Festival at the Salcedo Market tomorrow, Saturday, June 21, 2008. There will be several restaurants serving kapampangan cuisine and other vendors with sweets and other native delicacies. If you are a fan of Kapampangan food, don’t miss it!

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I have always enjoyed “Greek-style salads,” despite never having visited Greece in my first 43 years on this planet. Yet like Cesar or Caesar Salads, the versions of “Greek Salad” that you get in restaurants vary so much in quality that it is truly a hit and miss proposition. On the “miss” side are versions with watery tomatoes and cucumbers, lousy olive oil, puny amounts of totally crumbled feta, a lack of oregano, and a mushy consistency… Now that I HAVE been to Athens, and in the course of a week tried about 7 different greek-style salads, I think I understand the basic dish and a superior version is no mystery at all… You need superb tomatoes. Very crisp, smaller/thinner cucumbers. You need a hunk of cheese. Fresh or freshly dried oregano, rubbed in one’s palm before being added to the salad to release more of the herb’s aroma. You need mild, thinly sliced red onions and green peppers. Based on the salads I tried, olives may or may not be used (I suspect the saltiness of the cheese often suffices), and a few pickled mildly spicy green peppers are another optional ingredient. Generous amounts of FANTASTIC Greek olive oil and some mild red wine vinegar or a splash of lemon juice and salt and pepper seals the deal. So back at home in Manila, and writing the previous posts on the trip to Greece, I wondered out loud, is this impossible to do in Manila???

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After a morning spent climbing the Acropolis, then walking to and through the Athens Central Market, we were famished. And being in the hometown of the gyro (pronounced yee-ro), it was definitely the first thing we wanted to eat. So just after leaving the fruit and vegetable section of the Athens Central Market, we spied a very local looking kind of eatery, and decided to plunge in and eat our first gyros. First of all, the nomenclature is a bit confusing. If you eat at a restaurant, and you ask for a souvlaki, you will often end up with an overpriced plate of sliced meat or kebab meat with greens and tatziki and get charged way above a more typically expected pita gyro or souvlaki. Do not fall prey to that tourist trick. Make sure to ask for a gyro pita and you will get the meat and fixings inside a soft pita rolled into a conical shape and it will run you just 1-3 Euro depending on location of the vendor. Gyro pitas are typically sold from small stalls, and there are hundreds of them all over Athens…

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While the meat and seafood sections of the Athens Central Market were spectacular, I was a bit mystified as to why I couldn’t find the produce section as easily. It was definitely not the main feature of this market, and that is a bit unusual when compared to other large city markets. I later learned that there are other produce markets and many of them sprout in particular neighborhoods on particular days, so it wasn’t such a big deal at the Central market. After searching for fruits and veggies and not finding it, I actually stopped two Filipinas that were obviously doing their marketing and asked them for directions… they pointed to an area OUTSIDE the covered markets near a parking lot and there were some 20-30 stalls selling fruit, vegetables and other market goodies. The volume of goods may have been relatively small, but the quality and prices were stunningly impressive! Up top, a selection of yellow and green zucchini/squash, large long eggplants and the most incredible ripe tomatoes I have seen since we were last in Italy… At 49 cents per kilo for the tomatoes (roughly PHP30 kilo), I was truly amazed. Superb quality, at some 1/3rd the price in Manila!

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The same day that we climbed up the Acropolis, we walked back down into the Plaka district, then decided to make our way to the Athens Central Market on foot. The main market of the city was moved here in the 1870’s, and for the most part, is famous for its meat and seafood offerings. Housed in two rather attractive buildings with high ceilings, the meat and seafood sections stock a very impressive array of ingredients… Dozens of brightly lit stalls lined pedestrian hallways with tourists often gawking at the whole carcasses of young lamb and huge sides of pork which seemed to be the main feature of the market. If you aren’t into wet markets and seeing entire animals without their skins, this place could be a bit stressful for you. Each stall seemed to have chillers in the back and whole sides of hogs, cattle etc. were brought out with meat hooks on suspended runners…

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It’s nice that there is a day to honor your Dad. And I was thinking of writing another reflective Father’s Day post like this one I wrote in 2006, and another in 2007. But I woke up in a jet-lagged daze this morning and opened our newspaper only to be bombarded with all of these feel good, oh aren’t they superhuman, I owe them everything articles on brilliant fathers out there and I realized, from a contrarian’s point of view, that not all father’s are the cat’s meow, God’s gift to humankind, or even deserving of a Hallmark card. What about folks this morning reading their paper who just couldn’t relate to all the niceties, who had simply wicked, outrageous, abusive, uncaring fathers? Some of the statistics are glaring. Abandonment, lack of support for childcare, food, shelter, education, etc. I could go on and on with this negative train of thought, but suffice it to say this: NOT ALL FATHERS ARE NECESSARILY SO GOOD. And to anyone that believes the opposite (that father’s can do no wrong, it’s unthinkable) what is your current address in lalaland? So there. We all have our pluses and minuses. But some are really more wicked than others. Ever wonder why the term “wicked step-mother is so much more in use than wicked step-father?” And we tend not to discuss bad fathers a lot. Possibly ashamed that having a lemon in the family reflects on the children themselves (not true at all), when the whole concept of chicken before the egg (or sperm, in this matter) is clear.

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