Market Manila

I am generally not a big fan of “white food.” And I am not being a bigot. I don’t mean white in a caucasian sense. I literally mean dishes that are a creamy white or have white sauces. However, in the past few years, that pale bias has started to crack and I have taken a liking to dishes such as cauliflower gratins, etc. So after watching some cooking show a while back that featured easy to make chicken pot pies, I thought I should try and make one and see if I could overcome my aversion to white sauces…

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Aside from all of the fish and seafood stalls in the first part of these posts on the Balik Pazari, there were several stunning stalls with vegetables, fruits and herbs on offer. There is something so naturally appealing about seeing piles and piles of fresh fruit and produce and this just serves to increase one’s appetite while strolling these alleyways with fish and produce vendors, delicatessen’s and many restaurants with sidewalk tables… Many of these fruits were local, but others such as Kiwis and pineapples, were obviously imported. But everything looked fresh and appetizing! Up top, melons, several types of cherries, green gage plums, kiwis, avocadoes…

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Reputedly the “best fish market” in Istanbul, the Galatasaray Fish Market or Balik Pazari, located in the bustling Beyoglu district, was obviously a “must see” for Marketman. Frankly, there weren’t more than say 20+ stalls here, and coming from an island nation with fish markets that are simply stunning, I was a trifle bit disappointed by the Balik Pazari. However, I did find fish that I have only rarely seen prior to this market foray… if I am not mistaken the warty fish up above is a turbot. Turbot is a flatfish and very distant relative of flounder and fluke and possibly even our own lapad, but this was only the first or second time I had seen it for sale whole.

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A “Thai Nicoise” salad. That is what I thought after my first fork full of this salad… it was so good we made it for two consecutive lunches! And because of the simple and healthy ingredients, it is now definitely considered “diet food” of the finest kind in our home… Actually, only the greens and tuna make this similar to a real salade nicoise, but I just loved the combination, particularly paired with a bright and flavorful makrut lime dressing. But before I get to the really easy recipe, a word on the tuna flakes that I used… local canned tuna used to be incredibly mushy and unpalatable, until Century tuna decided to address more upscale segments of the tuna consuming public, first with the pricey upper end “for family and friends only” premium tuna fillet I featured here, over a year ago, and which I cannot find in any food stores today. I LOVED that tuna in olive oil, and thought it was on par with the better tunas from Italy and Spain. But recently I tried tuna flakes in vegetable oil, also by Century Tuna, and it was very good as well. It is my default locally canned tuna at the moment. Thank you Century Tuna for doing such a nice job developing and marketing these high quality canned tunas… The other key ingredient for this salad are really good kaffir or makrut limes…

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Ornamental gourds are back and properly timed to the classic Fall season you would normally expect to see them in markets. I first wrote about these ornamental gourds a year and a half ago, here, and wondered if the growers would figure out how to get them to market just before Halloween and Thanksgiving. I found these at S&R at the Fort, but I suspect they would also be in some of the weekend markets. They also had some nice small to medium sized classic pumpkins on offer. None of the humongous pumpkins one might find in the northern parts of the United States at about this time of year, but still pretty good in Manila, halfway around the world and near the equator…

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There are many classic food pairings around the world such as tomatoes and basil, strawberries and chocolate, lemon and butter, cabbage and pork, etc.; but for me, there are few food pairings more personally memorable and intense than green mangoes and bagoong (shrimp paste). If I were simply surfing the net and came across the photos in this post, I would literally salivate. The one thing that I absolutely missed all those years I lived abroad was a bowl of sliced green mango served with good bagoong. I could eat all of this on my own. And I wouldn’t need company. I can feel the crunch of the unripe mango, the slightly astringent, incredibly sour shock to the tastebuds, soon mitigated by the gentle squish of tiny shrimp shells that burst with a salty, briney bagoong flavor. It is the pinoy equivalent of that old “Frusen Gladje” or indulgent ice cream advertisement from the 1980’s. I am a sour and salt fiend…

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This isn’t news, it happened a couple of months ago, but I must have been away or had my head buried in Greek ruins at the time, because I missed it. Basically, a photo or two of Anton Sheker was apparently used in a newspaper article and not credited to him, read about the entire episode here. He then tried to bill them for its use, he wasn’t paid, was then apparently threatened with a criminal lawsuit, and he has fought back by filing a copyright infringement and damages suit against the newspaper. GOOD ON YOU ANTON! It’s about time that newspapers et al understand that stealing a photograph or using it without permission is in fact WRONG. I have had several pictures “stolen” or used without permission from this blog before, but in all cases that I was aware of, I was able to extract apologies, get the photos removed, etc. so a lawsuit wasn’t necessary. But I fully support Anton’s (even though I don’t know him from Adam) cause, and I hope the case prospers in his favor. I would also ask readers to remain vigilant when they read newspapers, magazines and other media and they spot photos that appear to have come from another uncredited source… I know that is how I found out about a lot of the photos that were taken from my blog in the past. Good luck with the case Anton!

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Bakasi are small, 6-8 inch saltwater eels that are plentiful in the town of Cordova, Cebu, on the Southern part of Mactan island where there are really flat and kilometers wide coral reefs under very shallow water… I wrote about these eels here previously, but this is the first time I have watched them being cooked and eaten. Our office security guard in Cebu calls the town of Cordova home, so he brought over two small plastic bags filled with incredibly lively specimens of bakasi this morning. If you have seen National Geographic type programs with moray eels, these look almost exactly like a miniature moray eel, but they are really quite small, and I am told, don’t get much longer than a foot or so…

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