The original recipe came from “Sally’s Baking Addiction”. We have baked it half a dozen times since and every so often I have swapped out ingredients and made some minor changes. So this is the last version we’ve used and it’s my favorite so far.

Ingredients:

3 cups very ripe bananas, mashed in your mixing bowl with paddle attachment

Whisk together in a bowl:
3 cups All-purpose Flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 tsp powdered cinnamon
1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg

Mix together in another bowl:
3/4 cup melted butter
1/2 cup Muscovado sugar (we like the dark kind)
1/2 cup white sugar
1/3 cup Lyle’s Golden Syrup (if you don’t have this add equal measure of white sugar)
2 whole eggs
2 tsp good vanilla extract (we use homemade that is intensely fragrant)
2 Tbsp of good banana compound if you have it (see tips below)
4 Tbsp whole milk

1 cup of chopped pecans or walnuts

Put your mixer on medium and mash the bananas, add the wet mixture and mix well. Add half the dry ingredients and mix briefly. Use a spatula to scrape edges then add remaining dry ingredients and mix until just incorporated. Add nuts and mix for just seconds.

Place batter in 24 lined muffin tins and put into oven at 425F for 10 minutes and lower heat to 375F until cooked. Check to see if a toothpick comes out clean after say 25+ minutes of baking.

Marketman tip #1. If you have just one or two bananas that reach the spotty overripe stage from a bunch, just peel it and throw it in a ziplock bag and into the fridge. Keep doing that until you have enough bananas for baked goods. They thaw a little soft, but that’s good in recipes like this one.

Marketman tip #2. Good quality banana compound is basically concentrated banana flavor from natural sources like puree that is the secret of good bakers and commercial bakeshops. It is much better tasting than the cheap artificial banana flavor that comes in bottles and whose ingredient list doesn’t seem to include any real banana. If you are going to pump up banana flavor, use the compound, not the artificial flavor (the latter is what is in most modestly priced banana breads and you can discern it by the strong aroma and sharp flavor that is, well, artificial. :(. I found the compound by chance at an SM Hypermart along with raspberry and other natural flavor compounds.

Enjoy!

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The house is awash with tamarind puree. That’s what happens when something seasonal hits its peak and I get so excited to have the ingredient, that I stock up as though next year would never come… So while at the office in Manila the other day, our Caviteña accountant asked if I had ever tried pinangat na bangus made with ripe but sour tamarind. I hadn’t, and based on her quick description, I headed to the kitchen as soon as I got home and tried to make the dish on my own without a recipe. It isn’t as authentic as it could be (probably doesn’t have young garlic and would be better made in a palayok) but this turned out BRILLIANTLY for the minimal amount of effort required. I bet 90% of marketmanila readers could do this and the flavors would be so familiar for them to wonder why they had never cooked or tasted it before. Think a variation of paksiw na isda, but with a far more sophisticated sour than bottled (and in most households, horrific tasting) vinegar used for most paksiw. This is humble home cooking, but just a few tweaks would definitely elevate this dish to restaurant worthy special.

You will need either whole de-boned bangus, sliced into steaks, or if you are simply reaching into your freezer for the easiest option, then bangus bellies like I have here. You will need a big handful of fresh ripe sour and peeled local sampalok. I happened to have sweetened sampalok puree so I was determined to use this. Salt. Some folks use ginger, onions, garlic. But I am told others eschew the use of the last three and rely purely on the salt and tamarind to work their magic. I thought a touch of homemade lard couldn’t hurt, and our accountant suggested a touch of soy sauce near the end for both color and flavor, just as the dish was “drying out” as they preferred it served closer to a dry consistency than saucy.

First, make a light broth from the tamarind, water and salt. Strain this through a sieve. Into a pan, add the bangus segments, the tamarind water, some tamarind puree if you have it (or more concentrated tamarind water and a touch of brown sugar), salt, pepper and young garlic. That’s what I did. Alternatively you could melt lard, saute the ginger and onions and garlic, lay the fish on top, add the tamarind broth and continue cooking. I added the lard last as I nearly forgot to put it.

Cover and let this come to a boil and simmer for say 15-20 minutes or so. Apparently the goal is to get the fish to absorb all that sour goodness without it disintegrating, so don’t move the fish around too much. Also, some folks like this drier and that’s what my goal was as well. Notice how the water, tamarind and lard guile into an almost emulsified sauce that coats the bangus pieces, I really liked that effect.

Halfway through cooking, I was worried that the flavor might not permeate all the fish, so I carefully flipped them over. In retrospect, you might start off this way and flip them the other way around so the skin crisps up a bit in the minimal fat in the pan when you are nearly done cooking. Add some soy sauce and season with salt to get the right level of saltiness to your liking nearing the end of cooking. I pulled this off the heat just as most of the liquid had evaporated. Think of this as a variation on paksiw, or acid braised fish, so essential in the times with no refrigeration and it could sit out for hours without spoiling.

The result? For minimal effort and no reference point? Was nothing short of WOW, just WOW! And there are so many ways to enhance this, refry it, serve it saucy, etc. Totally instant comfort food. So worth trying. And so seasonal if you are using fresh tamarind…

The post Pinangat na Bangus sa Sampalok / Milkfish Soured in Tamarind Broth a la Marketman 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. :)

The post “Rujak” a la Marketman appeared first on Market Manila.

Our wonderful guide Ruixi had been previously advised that Marketman was big on markets, so she made sure that a market was on our itinerary that day. After the fried pancake and hearty bowl of lamb meatball soup, we needed a short break from the eating. The market in the Muslim quarter was bustling, and we only managed to see a small fraction of it, but it was totally worth the trip. As soon as we got out of our tuktuk, we were greeted with this abundance of freshly picked strawberries. Wow!

Dried lotus seeds…

…goji berries…

…black raisins still with their stems…

…green or golden raisins (a personal favorite, so I bought a kilo’s worth) sourced straight from the farms…

…oddly shaped nectarines…

…mulberries, or I think they are mulberries…

…dressing a chicken (why do they say that, when Undressing the chicken is probably more descriptive) or is it a pigeon?…

…lotus roots…

…various green chilies…

…fresh water chestnuts…

…the most incredibly intense red dried chilies I have seen in a while…

…and crushed or ground as you pleased…

…sichuan peppercorns and star anise…

…seeds of all kinds, melon, squash, etc.

I can’t remember what these were, but if I had to guess, seaweed of some sort.

Tons and tons of apples. One forgets when you are conditioned as a child that all red apples are from Washington state, that they probably grow more apples in China than anywhere else on the planet. In fact, China grows nearly half of all the apples commercially sold on the planet, or a whopping 8x the apples grown in the U.S.!

And finally, walnuts and dates. If we weren’t headed to another city and we weren’t so limited by minimal luggage allowance, I would have filled a box with things we saw that day. More market finds in the next few posts…

The post To Market, To Market, in Xian, China appeared first on Market Manila.

Every year I look forward to the months after the Christmas holidays, because unless storms have ravaged agricultural areas, the produce in markets only gets better and better. That is, of course, until the wicked heat of the summer months brings it all to a sweet end with all those fabulous tropical fruits. These beautiful native “heirloom” tomatoes are one of my favorites… with thin skins, tasty and less acidic flesh, I love these in simply thrown together salads, or mashed with some bagoong and lasona for a classic Northern condiment called KBL. They are starting to appear in markets now.

Other older posts on native tomatoes here, here and here.

The post Native Heirloom Tomatoes Starting to Appear in Markets Now… appeared first on Market Manila.

It looks a bit like a brain, doesn’t it? This one kilo block of “ripe” sampalok cost me just PHP60 ($1.20) at the FTI market the other day. I keep typing “ripe” as it wasn’t exactly naturally sweet like the whole tamarind pods that come from Thailand (do they sweeten those somehow without peeling them?). In fact, this tamarind was so sour I can’t imagine how much more sour it was when it was green and unripe!

I put the entire block of tamarind into a pot, added maybe 7-8 cups of water and turned the flames to medium high. I wrote about some freshly peeled ripe sampalok before, here and here, and I wanted to make some sampalok puree once again for other uses… I added 2 cups of white sugar, tasted it and freaked out at just how sour it still was. I added another 2-3 cups of brown sugar and it took on a beautiful deep caramel color and it started to taste nicely tart and sweet at the same time. Once it was just the right consistency (it thickens a bit as it cools, I took it off the heat and passed it through a sieve

Once it was just the right consistency (it thickens a bit as it cools), I took it off the heat and passed it through a sieve and bottled up half the yield for uses in marinades, sauces, etc. Now if only I could get my hands on say 100 kilos of this stuff, I would make hundreds of bottles of tamarind puree to use in our restaurants… because right now I realize we use commercial thai tamarind puree (for our roasted chickens) that costs 5x the cost of doing it ourselves, with local produce to boot!

The post Sampalok / “Ripe” Tamarind appeared first on Market Manila.

I found myself with lots of red fruit leftover in the fridge, a post-Valentine surfeit shall we say. And a couple of packages of young spinach from Malipayon farms still unused, half a block of feta cheese, and nothing much else for lunch… The salad isn’t as odd or unique as it sounds… watermelon and feta, is another fruit and salty cheese combination I’ve done before for example.

So wash and dry some young spinach, throw it into a nice photogenic bowl. Slice some leftover strawberries in half and sprinkle those over top. Take a couple of tablespoons of leftover pomegranate arils and add that to the colorful mix. Crumble feta cheese all over in what begins to look like an Italian flag of sorts… then take a tablespoon or so of leftover raspberry coulis, add some white wine vinegar, salt, pepper and olive oil and drizzle that all over. It was a surprisingly tasty combination. Visually stunning, and the berries and salty cheese worked quite nicely together.

P.S. If you’ve been missing your regular dose of marketmanila, I have been reasonably good on instagram, so just google “therealmarketman” and “instagram” and you can view the feed on-line instead of having to sign up for instagram. Next up, our Valentine’s dinner at home… :)

The post Spinach & Strawberry Salad appeared first on Market Manila.

I love figs. Fresh figs with cured meats like prosciutto, with yoghurt, or just looking beautiful on a cheeseboard. I love dried figs as well. So when I spied “fig” trees several months ago at weekend markets, I was intrigued, but my brain said they couldn’t possibly grow in our weather. Or could they? It turns out we have dozens of native varieties of “figs” and trees like the Banyan or Balete are cousins of sorts to the classic mediterranean figs I like to eat. So at the Centris market today, where I only went to buy some herbs so I had just one basket of light veggies in tow, I decided to check the fig tree seedlings out…

…and ended up buying three to take home. I sure hope these are the figs that I like to eat, and that they will thrive in our yard, but I remain a tad skeptical for now. The leaves sure look terrific, and these ones actually have small fruit already on the trunk, which is a good sign, I suppose. But I would be utterly ecstatic if these turn out to be true-blue delicious, soft, seedy figs!

I am sending two of these trees to the beach house in Nasugbu, because everything I read seems to point to liking a seaside location, the sun, the relative lack of attention and care, and erratic water supply. Keep your fingers crossed on this one, as if we have an abundance of fruit a decade from now, I will gladly share some with you. But as a back-up, even if they don’t fruit properly, I still get to use the beautiful leaves to garnish cheese and fruit platters, and as a last resort, if someone steals my underwear, I can always grab a fig leaf to cover up the family jewels. Hahahaha. :)

P.S. The trees were PHP800 a piece ($18) which I thought was rather reasonable. And i could have gotten larger ones for the same price, but they wouldn’t fit in the car… If you have experience growing figs in the Philippines all the way to the fabulous fruit, please let me know and I would appreciate any growing tips as well. Many thanks!

See this old post of mine of a mature fig tree in Spain/Morocco, the leaves look almost the same!

The post Philippine Grown Figs? appeared first on Market Manila.

Jealous. Absolutely. Instagram, blog posts, magazines, on-line articles all showing off homegrown tomatoes in backyards in temperate regions, particularly North America right now have me green with envy. I love tomatoes, and I love watching tomatoes grow and ripen, and frankly, there aren’t too many available in Manila right now that are even a fraction of the quality and variety of the ones in the West. The photo above is a casual one taken on an iPad I gather (sorry, not too focused) sent to me by Betty Q, our long-time reader and active commenter from Vancouver, Canada. This is just one day’s harvest from her backyard garden. ACCCKKKK!!! They are stunning. And another reader, friedneurons, posts photos on his instagram of backyard tomato bounty from California, and so many others… I want to get on a flight right now to visit friends in San Francisco, and from there inhale tomatoes up and down the California coast, maybe even heading as far north as BettyQ… Thanks Betty for sending that photo. :)

The post Green with Tomato Envy… appeared first on Market Manila.

I have been to this organic market several times. But I NEVER tire of it. One of the primary reasons for setting up this blog was to write about markets and the produce in them, and I always feel a shot of adrenaline when I stroll through street markets in Paris, provincial markets in Albay, the sprawling Queen Victoria market in Melbourne, the Union Square market and similar markets in dozens of cities around the world. I draw inspiration and energy from the markets, it’s hard to explain, really. So without much more commentary, here are the photos from this particular trip to the Raspail organic market…

Citrus, apples, pears and mangoes? Hmmm, maybe they are from Africa or India…

The squashes were the star of the season.

Mushrooms, turnips artichokes(?)… these may be organic, but several items are “out of season” it seems… the wonders of greenhouses I suppose.

Radicchio treviso, cherry tomatoes on the vine and mushrooms.

Pomegranates and figs… the latter at Euro14.80! That’s nearly five times the price of figs in Lisbon last month! :)

Amazing blueberries or myrtilles.

Organic chickens, ducks and other types of meat.

Just a fraction of the cheese selection.

Carrots, celery root, cauliflower and savoy cabbage.

An amazing selection of produce.

The attention to displays and lighting is impressive (you don’t see this as much for their regular market days) and partially explains the high prices.

Oysters can be shucked for you at 8 in the morning…

…or you can have fish…

…or other seafood. When you are visiting Paris for only a few days, the selection of produce is overwhelming as you simultaneously want to have the bitter salad greens, with lots of the squashes, and and oh the chilled celery root salads, the citrus, etc. and there just isn’t enough time. NOT ENOUGH TIME. :)

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