Market Manila

Don’t do this more than once a quarter! Don’t say I didn’t warn you. As I finished this bowl of goodness at lunch, I was silently singing “killing me softly with this adobo, killing me softly, with this adobo, spending my whole life, at Vicky Belo’s, killing me softly…” :) You know the song. Oh, and I don’t mean any harm to Ms. Belo’s business in any way, I just meant I would need her services to rid my mid-section of its unusually high fat content if I kept eating more of this! At any rate, what was I to do with about a third of a large garapon (jar) of slowly cooked, no soy sauce adobo, that I did a post on earlier, here? Adobo rice topped with shredded re-fried adobo, OF COURSE!

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Happy Mother’s Day! I know a lot of folks head out to eat on Mother’s Day, mostly to give mom a day off from some kitchen work, but we tend to stay IN on holidays such as this one since the malls, restaurants, etc. are jampacked and you are more likely to get a mediocre, overpriced and somewhat stressful meal instead of a calm and enjoyable one. Of course there are exceptions, but today is a great day to enjoy food at home, as long as “mom” doesn’t have to prepare it. So here was Mother’s Day lunch at our place…

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I set out to make a pork adobo the way I suspected my forefathers did a couple of hundred years or more ago. And it turned out to be the BEST ADOBO I have ever made and/or tasted. THE BEST ADOBO. Knowing that I did it from scratch, and toiled over a palayok (clay pot) on a wood fire for nearly three hours, perhaps I was just woozy from the smoke and loss of body fluids and salts or simply romanticizing the results. But a few days later, I tasted the adobo again, after it sat on the kitchen counter in a large garapon (glass jar) under a layer of solidified lard, in the sweltering tropical heat, and I knew this was the real deal…

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My father was a HUGE fan of guinamos, all manner of small fish (sometimes shrimp), mixed with salt, and allowed to rot to the desired level of pungency. It was the color of death, and death in a bad way, or at least I always thought so as a squeamish kid, but was smart enough to never say it out loud. It sounds like a horrific process, the slow decay and disintegration of a fish in salt, not to mention the naturally gray color… I believe what you don’t see made, bothers you less… and this supports my personal theory why almost everyone loves patis and that less than 5-10% of the readers of this blog have seen it made, which can sometimes make one’s stomach turn inside out… But my recent post on small fish with beady eyes, which I also think are anchovy fry, set off a lively discussion in Mrs. MM’s Cebu office and one of her crew mentioned that he had a “tita” that made a fantastic guinamos sinabado… and like magic, a week later, while I was in Cebu, this small but incredibly pungent container of the stuff showed up on my desk at the office in Cebu, made just a day or two before…

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Fresh and simple = incredibly satisfying. Our stomachs were grumbling after an early morning start and drive from Cebu City to Bogo, and seeing all the spectacular seafood at the market was really making matters worse… Then I turned a corner and spied this tindera’s (saleslady’s) simple breakfast and I nearly offered to buy it! But I had more manners than that, and asked for permission to photograph her and her breakfast instead. A simple soup with a crab, a small fish, some veggies and salt served with several cups of boiled rice. A meal for two set up on a bench right inside the market. Yum, is right. As I said in an earlier post, with seafood this fresh, you don’t need to do much to it to enjoy a superb meal.

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We were so thrilled with the results of our Barako and Mangosteen ice cream, not to mention the earlier attempts at mango sorbet and blackberry/mango popsicles, that we decided to make a huge batch of creamy and fruity mango ice cream. I simply followed the recipe for peach ice cream in the instruction manual of the White Mountain churner, but added more heavy cream and upped the amount of ripe mango pulp to ensure a strong flavor of mango in the final product. The results were absolutely delicious. But again, I would be wary of trying to replicate this on a smaller ice cream machine in tropical weather as the results have always been rather disappointing for me; it doesn’t seem to get cold enough to churn the mixture properly… I am very biased to the White Mountain Ice Cream Freezer. Nothing seems to beat lots of ice and salt!

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This is just a play on favorite pinoy ingredients and flavors. Some really tart green carabao mangoes, shredded on a benriner for a uniform thin julienne type cut. Add some thinly sliced tomatoes, seeds and watery inside pulp discarded. Then take some good bottled bagoong (spicy if you can handle it) and heat it in a small frying pan and add immediately to the green mangoes and tomatoes and toss to mix. This is perfect with grilled pork or fish. I made some for the crew to enjoy with their grilled liempo, but I was salivating so much by the time I finished the dish that I swiped a small plate of it to accompany our “Korean” meal… Super easy, incredibly mouth watering. :)

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The table was set with bursts of color. So the meal had to pack a punch as well. We occasionally hanker for a korean meal, and though we are more likely to satisfy the craving at a restaurant or homes of Korean friends, we occasionally try to cook a Korean inspired meal at home. In this case, a modified barbecue menu was the perfect menu for a hot summer’s day meal with color and spice…

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