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.

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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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For at least 3-4 years now, I have been reading about this ‘nduja in food journals, magazines, books, etc. It has recently reached trendy proportions, and when an aunt asked what she could bring back for us from Rome recently, I asked for some ‘nduja. A cured spreadable spicy salumi made from pork and fiery Calabrian peppers, it is wickedly spicy and makes use of all kinds of porky goodness like the head of the pig, tripe, and other cuts of pork. It has the consistency of a pate mixed with spread. It is salted and cured, and I presume, technically uncooked, like a prosciutto is uncooked.

The first taste came on a cracker (we had no bread in the house due to dietary issues) and it was beautifully aggressive. The texture, fat and porkiness was clearly overshadowed by the spice, that welled up and reared its fire slowly but surely. It was delicious on its own, but even for a relative chili lover like myself, I found it a tad too fiery. Our aunt, who brought it back, viewed it with a bit of disdain, saying her Italian son-in-law threw it out whenever someone brought him some from Calabria. She brought us another milder spreadable salami instead, just in case we thought to throw the ‘nduja out ourselves. It’s quite amusing how Westerners can talk up a specific ingredient, that many locals might turn their noses up at. But I think in moderation and amongst other salumi, it definitely has a place on the table… We have three chunks of the stuff in our fridge/freezer, so I will have to do further experiments using the ingredient to enhance rather than dominate the flavor of a dish.

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When a regular reader emailed me this interesting video, I immediately headed to the kitchen to tinker… I love pecan nuts, and have a few pounds in the deep freeze, but I also had 5 kilos plus of pili nuts, so I thought I would start with those…

Blanch the shelled raw pili nuts in salted water and peel them by slipping them out of their brown “skins”…

…toss the peeled still moist nuts in powdered sugar until well-coated…

…deep fry in hot vegetable oil (I used a thermometer to ensure 325F temperature, removed just before this photo) for a few minutes until caramelized medium brown…

…put them on a cookie rack and separate individual nuts and allow to cool until “glassy hard”…

Results? Just a 7.0/10. And it’s mostly my fault. 1. The pili nuts were rather small, and higher fat content than most nuts, so they cooked faster than pecans — read : they were a bit overcooked 2. The sugar took roughly 4 minutes to reach the right color, and I pulled the nuts out then, but the intense humidity in Manila yesterday means they got hard, but not glassy hard and impervious to near 80% humidity levels — read : they started to get sticky after an hour or so. This could also mean I didn’t cook them long enough or there was too much moisture in the sugar/nuts before frying. Overall? I wouldn’t do this again with pili nuts, but I will definitely do this with pecans as the video shows… And I will wait for a relatively low humidity day to cook them. Thanks F, for the link!

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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!

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Most folks recoil at the thought of ordering a plate of octopus tentacles to enjoy with their ice cold beer or a glass of white wine. But if you had a taste of this latest unplanned octopus experiment, I am almost certain that 98+% of you would have liked this dish. I was at the Carbon market in Cebu earlier today and spied some beautiful small octopus on offer at PHP120 a kilo. I bought just one kilo (should have gotten 5 kilos!) with no ideas at the time. They were roughly 10 inches in total length, from head to tentacle tip. They were babies. Or octo-toddlers.

Back at the office kitchen, I added them to a pot, place them over low-medium heat with a cover on, and let them cook in their own juices. After some 30-35 minutes, they were tender as a baby’s bottom. Drain the liquid away, cut off the heads and innards and prepare a wok with vegetable oil about 2 inches deep over high heat. I quickly marinated the octopus tentacles in the juice of two kalamansis and say a tablespoon of kikkoman and sprinkled on some salt and pepper. These were then deep fried for about 3-4 minutes, just long enough to crisp the ends of the tentacles and skin surfaces, but the meat was still very tender. Drained and served hot, they were SPECTACULARLY good. Tasty, crispy, chewy and totally addictive. Every single person in the office (and most don’t eat octopus except when I cook it) loved it and the platter was wiped out in seconds! If I can manage to secure a steady supply of the baby octopus, this dish is hopefully going to make it onto the menu in the future…

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We had houseguests for the last few days, who had once lived in Manila some 50+ years ago, and were returning on a nostalgic trip to visit their old homes, school and other places. After a several full days of sightseeing, the early evenings were always a time to decompress, relax and succumb to trans-pacific jet lag. I sometimes struggle with pica-pica’s to offer at the cocktail hour, that are both local yet familiar. This one is always a slam dunk. It’s so incredibly easy to do, it is local in flavor yet very much familiar to anyone who is used to smoked fish such as kippers or such, so it has broad appeal.

To make, fry up a whole medium sized tinapang bangus and flake the meat, you will end up with roughly 1.5 cups worth or so. Place that into a food processor. Add 1.5-2.0 bricks of cream cheese, some light cream (or yoghurt) to loosen things up, some chopped green onions, salt, pepper, a few dashes of worcestershire sauce and tabasco and a final spritz of fresh dayap juice (or kalamansi or lemon will do). Blitz this until well blended and serve with some toast points, bagel chips, etc. Delicious. I find that it’s terrific in hot pan de sal as well. If you store this in the fridge, make sure to take it out 30-40 minutes before you serve it so it warms up a bit and is easier to spread. Garnish with chives or green onions if you like.

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I haven’t been experimenting as much as I used to. It’s something I really miss doing, but all the other things that vie for attention have gotten in the way recently. For months now, I have had this idea on the back burner, and yesterday we were able to finally take a first “crack” at it. I wanted ginormous chicharon. More for the novelty factor and to have something on display for tourists at our airport kiosk this summer that would draw attention (good or bad)… but also so a bunch of friends traveling together might break off bits of chicharon while chatting about nothing in particular. A social chicharon. :)

In theory it seemed simple enough, take a huge piece of skin (skin only in this case, as skin and fat as we normally use for our meaty chicharon is too big and cumbersome) and boil it until tender then render it in lard and finally deep fry it in hot, hot lard. But in practice, it’s hard to prevent the skin from curling up, and thinner parts burn faster than thicker parts, edges cook faster than the center, etc.

So I approached our chicharon supervisor and explained what I wanted to attempt. He was a bit skeptical at first, but no one is really allowed to be skeptical at Zubuchon, since they have seen bizarre idea after bizarre idea end up working, and I simply told him to experiment, and not to worry if we ended up going through several skins in the process. I sort of gave him a couple of weeks to play with the idea. But he is an overachiever, so about 4 hours later, he presented me with the platter up top! OMG, that’s a show stopper of a chicharon, if you ask me. Wicked good with chili vinegar. Not perfected yet, but way ahead of the experimentation curve, if you ask me!

To prevent curling, Gidor inserted bamboo sticks into the skin to keep it spread out. He rendered it in lard as other typical pieces of skin/fat were being rendered. Then he removed this, heated up a vat of more lard and flash fried the rendered skin to see that final miraculous explosion into chicharon occur. He proudly brought it into the office with a smile on his face, as if his earlier skepticism was now well and truly gone. Of course we are still several versions away from the final, as we have to figure out how to produce this in bigger quantities?, how do we package it so it doesn’t soften, how much seasoning is required?, how can we make it even more ginormous? etc., etc. Then of course I want to try the long curly chicharons from Bangkok markets, tiny bit sized pieces of thinly cut chicharon, and so many others… :)

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This dish was unexpectedly rich and flavorful. On first glance, you might expect a toned down flavor profile, but wait till you taste your first bite! Boil a large pot of water and add lots of salt then your mini-penne to cook roughly 9-10 minutes. Meanwhile, take out a food processor…

…and add in some home-made oven roasted tomatoes that are still a bit moist. I flavored our tomatoes with salt, olive oil and some dried oregano. I also added some toasted Italian pine nuts, freshly grated parmesan cheese and some of the olive oil we used to store the tomatoes in. Add a bit of salt (not too much as the cheese can be salty) and lots of cracked black pepper. If you had some garlic confit or slow-cooked garlic that would work well here as well. Blitz this all until it has a classic pesto texture. This one is a bit thick, but don’t fret, you can thin it later when mixing with the pasta.

When the pasta is cooked, drain it, saving some of the pasta water, and toss it with the tomato pesto adding some pasta water if it looks like it needs it. Add some grated cheese and chopped Italian parsley and serve hot. The rich pesto finds its way in to the holes of the pasta and this makes for a delicious pasta that is so incredibly easy to make.

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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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