The inspiration for this dish was David Chang’s roasted brussel sprouts with fish sauce dressing at a recent lunch we enjoyed at Momofuku in Las Vegas. We don’t often see brussel sprouts on offer in Manila, so I thought I would experiment with other brassica relatives — cauliflower, broccoli and red cabbage.

Cut cauliflower and broccoli into medium sized florets. Wash or soak well and drain and spin dry.

Slice red cabbage so that the central stem holds the leaves together. Heat up your oven to 400F. Into an ovenproof pan, heated on top of a burner, add some vegetable oil (grapeseed, canola, etc.) and add the brassicas and let them be. Once they start to brown slightly, place them into the oven and let them roast on high heat. After about 10-12 minutes, check on the veggies and turn them over for even browning. Cook for a total of 23-25 minutes (cabbage less) until well caramelized and colored.

This is what the veggies looked like after I took them out of the oven… I could have left them in a few more minutes.

Make a dressing of fish sauce, a touch of water, fresh lime (dayap) juice, sugar, chilies and chopped cilantro. Sprinkle dressing generously over warm vegetables and add some chopped wansoy or cilantro, thai basil, mint and green onions.

This was delicious. Not quite the wonderful dish we enjoyed at Momofuku, but brilliant for a first attempt.

The post Roasted Brassica Salad with Fish Sauce and Lime Dressing appeared first on Market Manila.

Bad Saint has received a lot of phenomenal press coverage in the past 3 years since it opened. Reviews often begin with the no reservation policy and the often several hour long wait on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant for a seat. But we weren’t going blind. Isabel, our daughter, had already been 3 or so times, once to take photos for a published review of the restaurant and where she had a chance to taste just about everything on the menu. And she said, “Dad, it’s worth the wait”… so line up on our last afternoon in Washington, D.C., we did. Bad Saint refers to St. Malo, and area of Louisiana where Filipinos who jumped boat (the earliest TNT adventurers) from their galleons in the 17-1800’s took refuge and presumably started to cook Filipino food. The first immigrants… I think it is a BRILLIANT name for a Filipino restaurant in the U.S.

You can tell who the regulars are, they come armed with portable seats, novels, tablets. We had shopping bags instead, to sit on the pavement while we wondered what was on the menu for dinner… The wait wasn’t so bad. But a quick tip for MM readers… just send one person to line up and have your friends come 10 minutes before opening… that’s what lots of other folks did. If you aren’t ion the first 8-10 people in line, you may have to wait even longer for a seat after opening. With just two dozen seats or so, and maybe just 2-3 tables for 4, Bad Saint can’t accommodate too many people at one seating. Maximum group size is 4 people.

A few groups were ahead of us, so we ended in four seats facing out the front windows of the restaurant. The place is tiny, but don’t dwell on the interiors, just focus on the food. The menu listed only 9 dishes that evening + one special. Out of ten dishes, we ordered 7 and the Chef Tom Cunanan sent out another 2, so needless to say, we had 90% of the dishes in that one visit. A bit of backstory, I think one of the owners Genevieve Villamora and Chef Tom were aware, had visited, followed? marketmanila.com and had spotted us in line so we have to be grateful for the extra nice welcome which was like meeting up with old friends, though we had only met them face to face this one time. Genevieve was a gracious host, and well, Tom made sure the dishes sent out of the kitchen aimed to please…

To start off this post-graduation family celebration, Isabel ordered the “Tang” cocktail, a cheeky, nostalgic 60’s to 80’s taste profile that was amusing in name, but surprisingly adult and tasty to the palate… Made with a tangerine juice reduction, fino sherry, tangerine, lime, lemongrass and rambutan bitters. Somehow, this first sip was to herald good things to come…

…Mrs. MM opted for a small bottle of French cider, that was a perfect pairing for much of the food we ate that evening. Light, crisp and clean, the Etienne Dupont Cidre Bouché is something I am going to keep my eye out for to bring back home…

…Chief of Stuff and I had two bottles of San Miguel Pale Pilsen for a direct taste of home (I think these were brewed and imported from Hong Kong, however) and a cheery toast for all to celebrate graduation, moving into a new apartment rental, no more tuition checks for mom and dad, an epic trip to the Grand Canyon and Sedona area, touring a first-time visitor to the U.S., etc. was in order. Now to the food…

Labanos at pinaitum. We didn’t order this dish, but I think the Chef thought we should try it. Thank God for that. French radishes sitting on a bed of coconut meat, burnt coconut meat and coconut cream with honey. I think it was all emulsified and chilled to set. Several garnishes such as micro greens, toasted coconut, etc. on top. The dip almost had a consistency of hummus. It was amazing. Surprisingly delicious, but really delicious, and not really reminiscent of anything Filipino, but somehow it still had Pinoy soul. For a westerner, they would just think it was an amazing dish, regardless of provenance or nationality. Note to self, it was disarmingly rich and only became obvious because of how much we would eat in total that evening.

Next to arrive was ginisang ampalaya, which was beautifully done, the twist being the addition of salty black beans (or soy beans?) that ramped up flavor and minimized bitterness, though I seek the bitter. Even Isabel, who is an avowed anti-ampalaya stalwart, seemed to enjoy it. I loved it. This and a bowl of rice, nice vegetarian meal on its own. Note the ebullient use of garnishes, not just to prettify it, it was to add flavor, texture, contrast and it really did work well. Philippine cuisine doesn’t use much in the way of herbs, so playing with other strong flavors is a good way to tickle one’s palate.

The third dish to arrive were these nearly coal black adobong sugpo. Made with squid ink (wrong guess, my bad) pureed black garlic and bay leaves (some ingredients left out), it was swoon-worthy. Again, this single dish on its own with rice would have made a meal. But I like how Chef Tom doesn’t plate up to western expectations, but rather suggests family style servings with multiple dishes to enjoy a myriad of flavors and textures. This was a dense coating of squid ink, not the watery adobos you might be more familiar with from back home. The crisped rice lightened up the look of the dish, but as Isabel put it, they look a bit like fried maggots and to some, might not be so appealing. :)

I had to include another photo of the prawn dish to show how sticky and viscous the sauce was. Note the amount of rice I was consuming with each little bit of shrimp. They deliver unlimited amounts of rice to you, which was appreciated.

Next, dinuguan na bagnet or deep-fried pork belly on a blood stew. Delicious. Only the faintest of metallic taste to the blood; I am not normally a huge fan of dinuguan, but I liked this dish a lot. More on this in the Part II of this post… coming up soon.

The post Bad Saint, Washington, D.C. (Part I) appeared first on Market Manila.

I worked in Jakarta for the better part of 5 years, on and off. And at around 3 or 4 pm in the afternoon, the administrative staff on our floor would often head down to the street to pick up a snack or merienda. During the summer months, when fruit was in season, they often came back up to their desks and unraveled a waxed paper bundle with this pungent fruit salad called “rujak”. Think sliced fruit with salty, pungent “terasi” (a form of shrimp paste of dry bagoong), salt, sugar or palm sugar, salt and chilies. Depending on the ingredients, pineapple, apples, guavas, makopa, green mangoes, singkamas, tamarind paste, chilies, etc. you ended up with a crunchy, smooth, sour, salty, sweet and pungent afternoon delight. I haven’t had rujak in many, many years.

But today I realized we had lots of fruit in the house and the neighborhood, freshly made tamarind puree in the fridge, some bagoong, chilies, etc. so off to the kitchen I went. This is my version of an Indonesian (and Malay) classic. I was salivating all throughout the prep process, and managed to eat roughly a third of this hefty bowl of rujak! Into a bowl, add some homemade tamarind puree (made with ripe but sour tamarind, brown sugar and water). Next, some bagoong, sambal and chopped chilies and generous amounts of salt.

Assemble an interesting mix of fruit. Pineapples are classic (but I am very allergic to them), green and semi-green mangoes, tambis, makopa, papaya, apples, pears, pomelos, singkamas, guavas, etc. Think of sweet, sour, crisp, soft, etc.

Slice either in flat shapes or sticks, depending on your preference.

Toss to mix up fruit. Add the tamarind and bagoong mixture. Add more bagoong or salt or chilies as you desire. Mix well.

Serve immediately (or if you leave a few minutes, it weeps and makes a sauce of sorts) with bamboo sticks (polite) or just attack with your fingers, licking the pungent dressing every now and then. Are you salivating yet? Salivating yet? :) Do not start typing your blog post until after you have washed your hands twice. :)

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We eat a lot of hummus in our household. And I have made hummus with lots of different things mixed in like roasted red peppers, beets, coriander, etc. We have also tried white bean and other versions, but never really thought about mung beans or monggo. I was trying to think of healthier ways to eat classic pinoy dishes and decided to experiment with a monggo or mung bean hummus. A quick google yielded a couple of distinctly western takes on the spread, so I wasn’t being too bizarre. But I didn’t really follow a specific recipe and just boiled up some green mung beans until cooked, but not overly mushy. Into a food processor, I added the mung beans, tahini, salt, pepper, water, some garlic and blitzed that for a minute or two. You really have to whip it up to lighten it, and you need quite a bit of liquid. The results were surprisingly good, if a bit bland for my taste. Maybe if I used a really flavorful vegetable broth instead of water… I was also planning to make a tinapa or smoked bangus dip, but my “aha!” moment was to ditch the tinapa spread, and put flaked smoked fish into the monggo hummus instead. This worked wonderfully. The familiar flavor and a creamy texture of mung bean and the sharp salty hints of smoke and savoriness from the fish. Now I am wondering if I should have used coconut milk somehow as well. At any rate, garnished with more tinapa or smoked fish, some chopped chives and a healthy swoosh of good olive oil and it was a slam-dunk hit at dinner with Canadian friends, who lapped it up.

Still of the pinoy theme but presented a different way, I decided to make a simple tomato salsa to serve with the monggo and tinapa spread. Some dayap from our garden in Cebu, seasonings, olive oil and a bit of red wine vinegar. I didn’t use cilantro or wansoy as I knew one of the guests had an aversion to it. But wansoy would have been better than chopped green onions. This salsa was nothing unusual, but its presentation alongside the other spread was giving me serious pinoy meal vibes, but in a chilled appetizer guise. Had we put finely chopped salted red egg, this would have really been cool and reminiscent of hundreds of similar such meals I would have enjoyed growing up.

We served these dips/salsas with slices of toasted pita bread and everything was consumed in a flash. Even our cook, who sometimes raises her eyebrows at my wacky experiments, said the spread was delicious. If I play with this a bit more, I would have an appetizer dish for the restaurant even… think base of vegetarian monggo hummus, which could be varied with tinapa or even tuyo, or topped with lots of crushed chicharon, or deep-fried lechon flakes or served with other vegetarian salsas and dips. It would be pinoy style ingredients and preparations at heart, but presented in a different way. :)

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This is one case where BITTER is definitely BETTER. Meals in Rome and other parts of Italy are often accompanied by a side dish of bitter greens. There are several varieties of chicory or dandelion greens that are used, and the foil of rich meat or grilled fish against a bracingly bitter vegetable is a classic mouthful of flavor. I happen to like bitter greens these days (though not always) so I was intrigued by the rather vibrant bunch of “Italian Dandelion” that I spotted at the Teraoka family farms stall at the recent Philippine Harvest bazaar. I bought two bunches…

The leaves struck me as being a bit bigger than they should have been, either a result of our bright sunny hot weather at the moment, or they were left too long before harvest. So I expected that what is normally bitter, even for Romans, would be even bitter-er, if you can imagine that.

When we returned home, I immediately cut off the tougher ends of the stems, near the roots, and soaked the greens in cool water for 30 minutes or so, to rehydrate the leaves. I find this a useful step in our incredibly hot and humid weather. It’s amazing how lively your greens will look after the soak. Store in the fridge until ready to use. Cut the greens into 2-3 inch pieces.

If I were using younger more tender greens, I wouldn’t bother with this next step, which was to blanch the greens in salted boiling water for say 30 seconds or so, to tenderize the stems a bit more, and perhaps modulate the likely bitterness factor. Drain well.

Into a medium sized pan, add some olive oil and several cloves of garlic and saute until lightly browned. Add the dandelion greens and cook for some 5 minutes or so over medium heat (not wok sizzling heat) and salt generously and add some cracked black pepper and dried chili flakes. Take off the heat and serve hot, or at near room temperature, as desired. This batch was WICKED BITTER. I could only manage a third of this small dish of greens, but they were delicious nonetheless.

The post <em>Cicoria alla Romana</em> – Roman-Style Sauteed Chicory/Dandelion Leaves appeared first on Market Manila.

A very tall white brunette, who was born in Manila to a British father, who later voluntarily opted to take on Filipino citizenship because he loved the country that much, and an American mother. She attended Assumption college in the early years and spoke Filipino probably better than I did by high school, and we were classmates and good friends at the International School. She is in town to visit her mom, and we had both of them over to dinner last night. As we do for all balikbayan friends, we ask them for whatever food cravings they might need to fix, and this was the resulting meal, based on her requests…

They had already had several heavy meals rich with food and desserts and requested a “green start” — so first up, a platter of seaweed. We used to head out to their beach house in Batangas in high school and this was a trip down memory lane to a time when seaweed was abundantly available and utterly simple and delicious. We have a vinegar, lime, fish sauce dip along with the seaweed but you didn’t really need it to enjoy the pops of brine liquid in the tiny grape like sacs.

We added two other salads — first a pako or fern salad with cherry and pear tomatoes and a soy vinegar dressing, and a sigadilyas and grilled chicken salad with a coconut milk, lime and fish sauce dressing. It looks like a lot. We had to refill the platters and there were only four of us. :)

A seafood heavy dinner request almost inevitably means steamed and chilled alimasag or cross crabs in our household. These ones were particularly meaty, soft and sweet. I could have eaten 3 of these with the accompanying red vinegar and garlic dip. But I was good and had just one.

Large prawns with garlic butter is another seafood staple around these parts, and these large prawns were perfectly cooked, redolent with butter and softened fragrant garlic.

Finally, our friend requested lechon, and on short notice and for four people, we opted to re-heat a kilo pack we had in the freezer. It still provided that porky hit and surprisingly, if you watch the skin closely while it roasts in a hot oven, you can get it back to pretty darned crispy condition! You know you have hit the spot bang center, when most of the food is wiped clean off the platters, the conversation goes on and on, and you manage to have serious portions of three different desserts including sans rival, a chocolate meringue cake and a dayap pie on top of it all! We are always so happy to see old (meaning from way back when, not aged, hahaha) friends, have them over to dinner, and hopefully, satisfy most of their food cravings!

The post Dinner for a “Balikbayan” Highschool Classmate… appeared first on Market Manila.

I love to find fresher, lighter preparations for some locally available vegetables, a refusal to believe that we just don’t have that many vegetable-based dishes in our repertoire in the Philippines. Recent data suggests that as a nation, we consume a phenomenal amount of meat, and that’s odd given the region’s seeming love affair with not only delicious, but economical and healthy vegetables and herbs. I am a carnivore, and couldn’t be otherwise, but I do love my vegetables and salads. This one experiment, a variation on this thai dish, is different enough, delicious enough and unique enough for me to cheekily add “a la Marketman” to it’s name.

Start with beautifully fresh sigarilyas or sigadilyas (winged beans) and cut them to small pieces and blanche in boiling water for a minute or less and shock in ice water to stop the cooking process and retain that vivid green color. Steam or blanche some shrimp until just cooked and peel and devein if necessary. Make a dressing by adding fish sauce, fresh lime juice (dayap), some sambal (not too much) a touch of homemade tamarind puree, a touch of brown sugar and mix until dissolved. Toss the vegetables and shrimp with the dressing, and add a couple of tablespoons of coconut cream just to mute and balance out the flavors. Taste and adjust as you desire. At the last minutes, I spied the preserved limes in the fridge so I added a scant 1/4 teaspoon full of finely minced lime rind (no pulp) to the dressing.

Chill for a few minutes in the fridge as the flavor meld together. Serve slightly cool. I added some purple basil for color but they were irrelevant. This salad was FANTASTIC. The little bits of powerful flavor from the preserved limes really provided an unusual punch. The whole thing just worked really nicely. Mrs. MM and I nearly finished this entire salad, and it was quite large. We left some on purpose so the crew could taste it and replicate it for future meals. It’s not really a filipino dish, but who cares, it tasted wonderful. Any reason to use more veggies and get us all eating them is a good one, as far as I am concerned.

Old post on sigadilyas, here. And here’s an interesting take on “Bicol Express” with sigadilyas.

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We were in the middle of the most ginormous wholesale mall on the planet in Yiwu, China. Or at least that’s what it felt like. Having walked a good 12 kilometers so far that day, with a bum foot, I was relaxing on a bench while our managers were scouring stores for more stuff we needed to buy for the restaurants. And along comes this vendor, pushing a cart down the hallway on the fourth floor of the building!

He stopped a few feet away from me and started peeling something as several customers came up and bought little bags filled with small little fruit or vegetables. On closer inspection, it turned out to be freshly harvested water chestnuts.

He would peel the water chestnuts so that customers wouldn’t have to bother with that task once they got home and prepared their dinner. Some folks popped a few chestnuts into their mouth like you might do with peanuts, though these were significantly bigger! And hadn’t been rinsed after they were peeled. :(

The peeler was a bit intimidating, much bigger than a standard western kitchen peeler, but it seemed to do the job well. I was worried that he would shave off part of his finger as he made quick work of the peeling, while smoking a cigarette, no less.

He didn’t speak a word of English so I couldn’t ask how much the water chestnuts were, nor what people tended to cook with them, but it was a nice diversion to watch him for a few minutes while I tried to give my feet a rest. :)

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I have written about vegetable soup before, but without firm recipes, as mine changes with whatever is in the fridge or I find in the market. But here are some of my tips and tricks for a really hearty and tasty vegetable soup. First, start with a wide variety of ingredients, the more the merrier, almost. Don’t throw everything in your fridge into the mix, there has to be a bit of method to the madness. I usually have onions, carrots and celery. I add some cubed potatoes and sweet potatoes when I have them. Green beans or overgrown haricots vert are another staple, as is cauliflower, occasionally broccoli, mushrooms, cabbage, kale, etc. Kalabasa or kabocha squash, zucchini (green or yellow), tomatoes, red bell peppers, etc. all work as well.

But my best vegetable soups aren’t vegetarian. They are flavored with pancetta or ham or both. So below are my personal tips for success with your next soup…

Start with your fat (olive oil for me) and the pancetta, carrots, onions and celery. Let this saute for a good 10 minutes until they are well cooked, and a bit of brown stuff shows up at the bottom of the pot. I use a heavy enameled cast iron pot to make my soup in.

I find many cooks aren’t patient with this step, the sweating of the veggies, and rush through it. For me, it is the first essential step to eventual depth in flavor. Don’t rush it. Add some of the other harder veggies like sweet potatoes and green beans and saute for several minutes more. Slowly add all the other veggies besides the greens and saute further. I used some leftover white wine in the fridge to de-glaze the pan and a small tin of canned Italian cherry tomatoes as well.

At the end of the lengthy saute, perhaps as long as 20-25 minutes in total depending on how large of pot of soup you are making, the veggies should look good enough to eat as is. Vibrant, fragrant and softened. If you’ve ordered veggie soup at restaurants and find that its has hard-ish veggies in a watery flavorless broth, they skipped this lengthy saute phase. It happens even at our restaurant, and it freaks me out no end.

Next I add a freshly made broth with ham bones, onions, celery and carrots that is another key step for building flavor. I always buy the ham bones from grocery ham vendors and stock them in our freezer so I can make a ham broth whenever we need it. The bones are the cheapest natural way to build depth of flavor, and it beats canned chicken or other broths by a mile. If you don’t want a pork-based broth, then a good chicken stock is a great alternative.

My final trick is to put one or two rinds from used up parmesan cheese. You can store these in your freezer as well until you make a pot of soup. It’s like the best and most natural source of umami.

I add the chopped herbs about 10 minutes before finishing off the soup, with the cabbage and kale put just minutes before turning off the flames. This is delicious served up shortly after cooking. But honestly, I think it tastes better much later in the day or the next day even. if you plan to serve it later, it’s a good idea to hold the kale or other leafy greens until you are about to serve them, so there’s a bit of freshness to the texture and taste of the soup.

I find great comfort in cooking up a huge pot of vegetable soup. First, all that chopping is therapeutic. Second, extended saute is mindless and soothing, but critical to the outcome. The homemade broth is amazing to behold — for so little work, it creates such a flavorful base. And the end result, a hearty flavorful soup is so well worth the effort. With the local rainy season just starting, I expect to make several batches of soup in the months ahead.

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Seafood Sunday seems like a good idea. It’s market day if you happen to be by the seashore (or even if you are not), it’s time to enjoy a long meal at the lunch table with family and friends, and it happens to be Lent just in case that affects your dietary choices.

Hit the local markets and stock up on whatever looks fresh… young squid, fresh fish, prawns, shrimp, etc.

Marinate seafood briefly in soy, kalamansi, dalandan, olive oil, lemon, salt and pepper, whatever you like and throw it all on the grill. Here some baby squid cooked just right (not overcooked), some shrimp with leftover Iloilo made prosciutto wrapped around it (it was delicious, but you can leave out the meat if you desire)…

…some prawns and some small talakitok or jacks grilled whole.

An eggplant and tomato salad for that texture and acidic contrast to the incredibly fresh, slightly briny seafood. And yes, somewhere off camera is a nice big bowl of steamed rice. In this case, no utensils required. But Mrs. MM had a fork and knife. :)

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