Chicken broth is universally recognized as being restorative. So when I am out like a light and the cook asks what I would like to eat for lunch, the automatic response is either chicken tinola or chicken arroz caldo. We eat this at least once a month, without illness, and I never tire of it. This version is a little more pungent and flavorful than a classic tinola that is more gentle and light, but with your tastebuds numbed by illness, it is the perfect antidote to the blahs…

First we brown some chicken parts in a heavy enamel coated iron pot. We only had chicken parts on this occasion so we did legs, wings and thighs. Otherwise, break down a whole small chicken and brown those parts in two batches.

Remove the chicken parts, and saute some garlic, onions, lots of ginger, lemongrass, the white part of leeks until softened and aromatic. Add a touch of fish sauce at this point, then return the chicken parts and add water (or better yet, a light homemade chicken stock with little salt).

Adjust fish sauce, season with salt (if necessary) and pepper and let this simmer for 10-15 minutes or so. Taste to ensure it’s just right.

Prepare lots of unripe papaya and a few minutes before sitting down to the table, add the papaya to the pot and let it cook until just softened. I always wondered who was the brilliant first cook who thought to cook raw papaya and pair it with chili leaves, but perhaps the explanation is as simple as a disgruntled cook who thought she had a ripe papaya and when it turned out to be hard and green, she threw it into a pot of chicken soup instead, liking the unlikely results…

We also add lots of chili leaves in our version, better still if a couple of little unripe chilies are included for a bit of heat. Serve hot. I can eat this just by itself, or if you prefer the full-on experience, with lots and lots of steamed rice and a dipping sauce of fresh lime juice with fish sauce in case you still can’t taste anything through that fog of sickness. :)

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After publishing that post on a wonderful street side pad thai from Bangkok a few days ago, I made two batches of pad thai at home, and realize it is an easy dish to master, customize and make one’s own. It takes so little time and effort to make a batch that can easily feed 6-8 hungry folks. Here is a bit more guidance for those of you who sent comments on instagram or questions through my email.

Heat up a well-seasoned wok and add some vegetable oil, say 2-3 tablespoons worth. Add 3-4 eggs, cracked and dropped straight into the oil and lightly scramble them, leaving visible bits of yellow and white, not a homogenous yellow mass.

When it starts to dry out add slices of boneless, skinless chicken breast and let this braise and cook through but not necessarily brown the surface of the meat.

Add some peeled and de-veined shrimp and season with a bit of salt and/or good thai fish sauce or patis.

Toss a bit until all the shrimp and chicken are cooked through.

Meanwhile, into a pot of boiling water, dunk 250g of medium thick rice noodles for say 30-60 seconds until just barely cooked but not overly soft and limp. Better to err on the al dente side.

Add lots of bean sprouts, some brown sugar (or palm sugar syrup if you have it), some fish sauce and mix gently.

I added some homemade tamarind paste (don’t overdo it, the sourness can overpower) and a bit more fish sauce and a bit of sriracha sauce and toss some more until everything is well-blended.

Add some chopped green onions, toasted and chopped peanuts and serve with a side dish with dried thai chili flakes and real limes. This was a hit. Several platters at an office lunch were inhaled in minutes. We did this again at home (the slightly fancier version with shrimp and nuts) to good results as well. A large serving of pad thai is all we had for lunch yesterday. Followed by a macapuno tart/parcel, also homemade, of course. :)

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We had three generous bowls of this amazing tom yam goong alongside the three plates of pad thai and fried rice at a roadside eatery outside Bangkok. It’s hard to describe how darned good this soup was, but visually, you get clues that it isn’t your watery, dubious neighborhood restaurant equivalent of tom yam. Just look at it.

A few shrimp swimming in a sea of sour, spicy, heady, thickish broth. Whole chilies, sliced fresh straw mushrooms, green onions, tomatoes, hints of lemongrass and OMG, this was just as stunningly good as the pad thai. Several of our companions don’t eat spicy food, and if I recall correctly, all three bowls of tom yum were wiped clean. This bowl cost less than $2, and it is the result of a vibrant agricultural economy where produce is so cheap and abundant and of wonderful quality… I can’t really think of much of a local equivalent, but then again, maybe something like this bowl of crab soup for breakfast in Bogo, Cebu would qualify…

As if we didn’t have enough food, I got some stir-fried chicken over rice as well. It was good, but just not AS good as the pad thai and tom yum goong.

And in case your food wasn’t flavorful or spicy enough, how about a spoonful of this sawsawan or condiment made up of chopped chilies, garlic, lime juice and fish sauce? In terms of food highlights, this outside Bangkok road side late lunch was definitely one of the most memorable meals we have had for less than $3 each.

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So the lechon was carrying twin chickens, that were in turn surrounded by several dozen homemade chorizos. That was the experiment a few weeks back when a supplier sent us a “U.S. sourced pig that was frozen and sent across the Pacific” and is now in use by some local places that cook lechon… It was a sample, so we decided to do anything but the ordinary.

First we cooked up several dozen homemade chorizos which we don’t add food coloring to, hence their somewhat pallid hue…

…then we stuck two chickens into the lechon cavity, along with lots of aromatics and the chorizos, closed it up and roasted for some 2.5-3.0 hours over coal.

The results were a bit alien looking (imagine cutting into the side of a pig, to find two fragrant but almost poached looking chickens while little chorizos come tumbling out…) but the aroma was something seriously appetizing.

We have done chickens in pigs before and they turn out amazing. Salty and tender and melt-in-your-mouth goodness without the classic caramelization of skin that one tends to look for in a bland chicken. The crew were amazed. But what wasn’t amazing was the quality of the U.S. sourced pig. The meat turned out dry and way too lean, and while the skin was good, it wasn’t as good as a local pig’s skin. So no worries, we are strongly bound to local sourcing on our backyard raised pigs, and we are pretty sure any discerning diner can tell the difference between a local and imported lechon. Note, “discerning” diner. :)

And just in case you wanted a visual for the “Alien” quip…

The post “Lechichor” (Lechon, Chicken & Chorizo) a la Marketman… appeared first on Market Manila.

Chicken in the “hunter’s style” — In other words, cooked on the spot, possibly in the woods, with whatever game one had been fortunate enough to shoot and kill. Cacciatore usually includes tomatoes in some form, onions, herbs, peppers, mushrooms, etc. I can’t imagine carry all that in my backpack while I hunted for rabbit or wild fowl, but suspend reality for a moment… and go ahead with the spirit of “hunter’s style”. I had been fooling around with pizzas in the brick oven all afternoon, and we decided rather late in the day to make a cacciatore style dish in the remaining heat of the oven coming down from 700F and at just before dinner time roughly 450F…

First, I browned some chicken pieces in some olive oil in a frying pan and placed them in a large Spanish cazuela or clay dish. I returned the frying pan to the heat, added some sliced onions, tomato paste, mushrooms, small cherry tomatoes, peppers, olives and herbs and whatever else from the fridge that seemed to make sense. There was some leftover wine so I added say half a cup of red (can’t recall what kind) and let that simmer a bit before plonking all of that over the chicken and placing the cazuela in the oven for some 20-25 minutes to cook and for all the flavors to meld a bit more. The resulting dish was absolutely delicious, and it was so incredibly easy to make. If I had to do this again, I might add some chunks of bacon as well.

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I kid you not. One of the few places on the planet that you’ll find a quick demo on the proper technique of searing a piece of foie gras on the SIDEWALK! Done with another pilgrimage to my favorite kitchen supplies store Dehillerin, we walked down the street to other nearby stores and ran across this gentleman from one of the stores that specialize in foie gras…

… the unmistakable sizzle of nearly pure fat combined with the aroma of foie had attracted a small local crowd of mostly elderly folk, who patiently listened to the instructions, until it was appropriate to tuck in and get a free taste of this love-it or hate-it ingredient.

At Euro42 a kilo (or so I recall) it didn’t seem that extravagant, considering that just 50-100 grams would satisfy a craving! If we hadn’t been headed back to London before Manila I would have definitely tried to bring back a kilo or two in our luggage.

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Another leftover dish that was as good as the duck the first time around… Fried rice is a such an easy format for leftovers, but with a really flavorful duck, the rice is transformed into a flavorful all-in-one dish.

You know the drill, take previously cooked and preferably cooled or cold rice and break it up from clumps. Chop up all the ingredients in the photo above (onions, garlic, spring onions, red bell pepper, carrots, pickled carrots and radish, dried chinese mushrooms reconstituted in warm water and shredded and chopped duck meat). Heat up a wok or large frying pan and add some vegetable oil (peanut oil if you have it) and sauté the ingredients, add the rice and add some hoisin and soy sauce and mix until well combined. Garnish with chopped cilantro.

We served generous portions of fried rice with a dish of choy sum with oyster sauce for an incredibly quick, simple yet delicious and satisfying lunch. Hmmm, the more I think about it, the more I wonder why I haven’t come across a cookbook that focuses on leftover recipes rather than first time dishes… :)

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We were a bit crazed this morning with last minute preparations for several balikbayan houseguests arriving later this afternoon, and at about 1120am, I realized we had nothing for lunch. There was some freshly defrosted chicken, a quick look in the fridge yielded about a cup or more of kadios or fresh pigeon peas I bought at the market last Saturday, and we decided to make a quick stew of sorts. Without any langka or pork, we couldn’t make a more classic KBL, but we took a crack at a dish anyway…

Into a pot we added a bit of vegetable oil, then sautéed some sliced ginger, some peeled garlic and some bruised tangled or lemongrass stalks and waited for that to soften and get fragrant. We turned the heat up, browned the chicken, added some patis or fish sauce and added in several cups of rice washing water (cloudy starchy water when you rinse rice) as well as the kadios or pigeon peas. Let this simmer for some 15-20 minutes and adjust liquid levels and seasoning if required. You could have also used some nice chicken broth if you had it to ramp up the flavor.

The dish was done before noon. And while it didn’t exactly look terribly appealing (it had that muddy brownish gray tinge) and unlike this equally bizarre purple kadios and chicken dish I did in the past, it tasted wonderful for the minimal effort expended. It also felt relatively healthy, though I consumed an inordinate amount of steamed rice. I’m sure I have probably offended some Negrenses by cooking this dish in such a casual manner, but it was delicious nonetheless. Now if only I had some batuan fruit, I could have done this version of KBL… :)

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After several holiday dinners featuring western fare, our Christmas Eve dinner with family and friends was more Asian in nature. I had ordered a Southern ham to be delivered to our daughter’s college address just a day or two before she came home for the holidays, but an administrative mix-up meant we didn’t get our ham at all, and I had to resort to a “Plan B” for the Christmas Eve meal. Not to worry, “Plan B” is never a bad thing in these parts…

The full red tablecloth used the night before was replaced with more informal quilted red placemats, and the flowers and nuts re-used. Silver candles upped the holiday glimmer and just 8 guests made for an intimate and enjoyable meal. Snazzy napkin treatment courtesy of an overzealous crew member who I once had read a napkin folding book years ago and who never forgot the 20-25 ways one can fold a napkin… :)

We started with a winter melon soup with shrimp and bits of ham (sorry, no photo), then proceeded to a main course buffet that included a WONDERFUL roast duck that we re-heated from the deep freeze. A gift from our GM in Cebu, the ducks (we had two but enjoyed on different evenings) were from a small home purveyor called Duckk Rotiserrie of Mr. Timothy Go, in Cebu. Apparently Mr. Go went to Hong Kong to learn how to roast ducks and other meats and now offers them on a pre-order basis. They were delicious re-heated, and I can only imagine how good they would have been if we had them fresh and hot. I would definitely order this for myself again, Bravo Mr. Go! If curious, his contact details are duckkrotisserie@gmail.com.

Mrs. MM had discouraged me from buying a fabulously fat and brilliant looking fresh goose at the Borough market in London a few weeks ago, but instead she arranged for a roast goose from Hong Kong that we also served at the Christmas Eve meal. There is absolutely nothing like the fat that oozes out of a roast goose, it’s fantastic! I completely agree that a roast goose is the quintessential holiday meal. We also had a rack of szechuan spiced lamb that I forgot to photograph on its own (a rib is on the plate in the top photo).

Some szechuan cabbage (poorly executed, if I may diss my own dish).

Some chili eggplant that was delicious.

Chinese greens with oyster sauce.

We also had some XO Fried Rice using a batch of XO sauce a la Bettyq that I made a few weeks before and placed in the freezer. This was a meal on its own. So rich and fragrant and festive.

Kinda weird to follow a Chinese/Asian meal with cheese, but we brought out a large cheese board nevertheless, as my nephew and others at the dinner are HUGE CHEESE FIENDS. Trust me, they decimated this cheese board.

Finally, a simple salad of ripe mangoes and strawberries, a good excuse to use the sterling silver berry spoons…

The post Roast Goose, Duck and Lamb Chops for Christmas Eve… appeared first on Market Manila.

Mid-morning and we had already had two meals since 5pm the day before… but we were HUNGRY. :) So this is the meal we cobbled together from the Raspail market purchases. First up, a fantastic salad of heirloom tomatoes (how do they get them this ripe in November?! in a hothouse?) with mixed olives and two kinds of anchovies (plain and spicy). Splashed with a simple bottled vinaigrette, this salad was utterly delicious.

The tomatoes that were just brilliantly ripe for late November… I had to wonder if they were imported from warmer climates.

The mixed olives in a “small container” that we barely managed to consume half of in 4 days of munching on them.

A large whole roast chicken with tomatoes and onions, which cost just Euro6.50 and we only managed to eat half of the chicken at this meal, I ate the rest of it early the next morning shredded on salad greens.

For dessert, some sweet clementines from Spain. These kinds of meals were so satisfying, and yet, cost no more than Euro5-6 per person or roughly PHP300-350! Now that we were fortified and adjusted to the local setting, we set off to conquer Paris with our long list of to-do’s and must-eats!

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