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!

The post Banana Muffins with Muscovado, Golden Syrup & Walnuts appeared first on Market Manila.

Fifteen years ago, in 2006, I posted this recipe of a personal favorite dessert, poached pears with raspberry sauce. This is an elegant, festive, relative easy dessert and always seems to be a crowd favorite. While I make an extra effort to have it at least once during the Christmas holidays, in Manila, it’s really dependent on when the import gods manage to bring in good Bosc pears. Yes, the pear variety matters. If you really can’t find Bosc pears, you could substitute just ripe Anjou pears as a second choice.

So a few days ago, we needed a few ingredients and popped into Landmark grocery (I love their comprehensive selection of goods, but rarely go myself these days) and it’s only my second visit in nearly two years. Lo and behold, right at the entryway, were a display of neglected and unloved Bosc pears, so I bought a few. Over the years, my recipe for this dessert has evolved, and to be honest, I don’t really follow a recipe, so this is how I did this version, and it worked beautifully.

Into a snug-ish pot that will fit your pears and the poaching liquid, add half a bottle or so of red wine (a Cabernet Sauvignon for instance), some water, a cinnamon stick, two star anise, 5 cloves and 3-4 thin orange peel pieces. Add 3/4 cup or so of sugar and bring to a simmer and dissolve sugar.

Meanwhile, peel pears (preferably leaving the stems on) and slice off the bottom so they stand securely and gently add them to the just simmering wine and spice liquid. Simmer covered for some 20-25 minutes and turn it off. Oh, I forgot, liquid should come up to about 3/4 of the height of the pear. Then at ten minutes roll the pears so all areas cook. This is intentional, as the meatier bottom 3/4 will take more time to poach than the thinner tops. When the time is up, stand pears up, cover and let them steep in the liquid for say 3 hours. Take the pears out and refrigerate before serving. This can be done earlier in the day if serving them for dessert at dinner.

Reserve a cup of the poaching liquid and throw the rest out, spices included. In the same pan, add several cups of frozen or fresh raspberries, say half a cup of the poaching liquid and say 3/4 or more of a cup of sugar and bring to a simmer. After a few minutes simmering, blitz in a blender and pass through a fine sieve. Cool and chill, this is your raspberry sauce. Taste this sauce, sometimes I forget and its sometime too tart, a nice balance of sour and sweet is always good.

To serve, place an individual pear on a plate, drizzle over some of the raspberry sauce and put a dollop of heavy cream or creme fraiche on the side and garnish with mint leaves. Because most of the prep can be done well ahead of the meal, this is a great dessert for a fancy holiday meal. But we just had it the other day after a hearty lunch of beef bulalo soup and it worked just as well. :)

The post Marketman’s Updated Poached Pears with Raspberry Sauce appeared first on Market Manila.

So here is the step-by-step instructions for the santol jam that I posted on my instagram account @therealmarketman that elicited so many private messages/requests for the recipe. It’s outrageously simple to make for anyone with basic kitchen skills…

Start by peeling santol, discarding the cottony seeds and soaking the flesh or santol “meat” in water in the fridge at least overnight or better yet, a full 24 hours. Change the water at least once or twice. Do not fret if the flesh turns amber or even dark brown. If you skip this step, you will regret it and don’t send me accusatory emails that I don’t know what I am doing, simply follow the instructions or keep your fingers steady and mouth shut. So bitchy, you think, but I do get many unfortunate emails from people whose sole purpose in life is to make themselves sound stupider than they are, and they are tiresome.

After soaking, drain and bring a pot of water to a boil. Add the santol meat and let this simmer for about 8-12 minutes until softened by not mushy. Time will vary depending on the size of santol and number of slices you used. Drain the santol again, but keep some 4-6 cups of the boiling water (it has flavor) set aside.

Next, pass the santol through a GOOD food mill…

…or if that doesn’t work, use a food processor as I eventually did to make quick work of the pureeing step.

You should have a nice grainy puree which oftentimes gets lighter in color as a result of the boiling. If the puree seems a bit dry, add back 2-3 cups of reserved santol water.

Weigh this mixture and add an EQUIVALENT amount of white sugar. So if you have a kilo of puree, add a kilo of white sugar. Then I added 1/2-3/4 cup of good dark muscovado sugar. Not light brown or brown sugar, muscovado sugar. We happened to have fresh limes from our garden, so I added a tablespoon or less of lime juice. You could add 1/2 a tablespoon of kalamansi juice if you prefer.

I used a copper jam pot that distributes the heat evenly, but any heavy bottomed enameled cast iron pot would work well as well. A thin aluminum/stainless pot is your last choice and you must watch for scorching due to the uneven heat on the bottom of the pan. Place over high heat and stir occasionally until all the ingredients have blended and melted into each other. If you have a sweet tooth, an additional cup of white sugar earlier on might be more to your liking. I like the jam to be sweet, but also have that natural tartness and strong santol flavor.

Meanwhile, get some jars and place them in boiling water to sterilize. Dry the bottles off. And when the jam is ready (after say 12-15 minutes of bubbling), add the hot jam to the dry bottles, seal and boil in a pot of water for another 12 minutes or so if you plan to preserve your preserves for several months. If you are going to eat the jam within a month’s time there is no need to heat treat the bottles, just refrigerate once cooled.

And voila! santol jam pouring into the bottles. Makes for great presents. Terrific with cheese an crackers. Delicious in pan de sal with butter. Enjoy!

The post Santol Jam a la Marketman appeared first on Market Manila.

I am always intrigued by new and unusual produce…

So these “cabaluyan” lemons piqued my interest… and with little on the internet about them, I was inclined to guess that they were a result of randy lemons in the wild chasing DNA amongst pomelo, lemon, dayap and other citrus cousins. Even the vendor wasn’t quite sure what they were and what to do with them.

As suspected, they held little juice or appealing pulp, and they possessed the unusually thick rind reminiscent of a citron that I have written about several times in the past. I decided the best possible use might be to try and candy the rind and see if they turned out edible…

Cut into 2-3 inch sticks with a bit of the white pith included.

If you are a chef or pastry person, you would take great pains to get this all equally sized and probably longer then these in the photos.

Boil the rinds in water for approximately 10 minutes, then drain and repeat. I did this two times. Some folks would go to 3 times, but the results would suggest that twice was fine.

In a heavy enameled pot, add 3 cups of sugar and 3 cups of water and simmer the boiled rinds for some 2 hours or so, taking care not to caramelize the syrup with too much heat.

Dry the rinds on a cookie rack. The results? Very, very good. I hint of bitterness with the sweet of the sugar syrup. These will be perfect dipped in dark chocolate. And we put this little glass container out the same evening after a dinner at home with friends, and they managed to eat about 1/4th of it just nibbling along with their teas and coffees.

The post Candied Cabaluyan Lemon Peel appeared first on Market Manila.

The purpose of this post is simply to make your sweet tooth tingle, or mouth water. It was such a pain in the neck to cook this native purple rice that we never made it again since shooting these photos a few years back! Pirurutong from the hills of Mindoro were first soaked for hours to soften then cooked with water and coconut milk then steamed to result in this amazing purple mass that was delicious but just a lot of work…

…pair it with brilliant ripe Cebuano mangoes and it was a treat. Visually stunning, utterly delicious. But we need to find a way to soften the pirurutong faster. Enjoy! :)

The post “Sticky Rice & Mango” a la Marketman appeared first on Market Manila.

Emptying out the post-holiday food stocks often takes up to a month or so… just about the last remnants of Christmas emerged from the deep-freeze in the form of 3 ensaimadas that survived the 3-4 weeks rather nicely, despite the frosty temperatures. While the default use in our home would be this superb ensaimada bread pudding, we decided to just toast these up for a quick breakfast treat…

Take the ensaimadas and cut them into quarters (we make very big ensaimadas) and brush them with lots of unsalted butter.

Drizzle them with homemade guava jelly and pop them in a toaster oven for 8-10 minutes until just slightly toasty and resurrected from the deep-freeze. The guava jelly disintegrates in the oven is absorbed into the bread.

You could opt to add the jelly after you toast the ensaimada, as you please. This and a cup of hot tea was a perfect, nearly effortless breakfast of leftovers. :)

The post Toasted Ensaimada appeared first on Market Manila.

I should have known those remnant Portuguese genes would kick in sometime. My mother’s family claimed that they traced their heritage on one line back to Portuguese ancestors. Well, last year, Mrs. MM and I took a DNA test in the U.S. and it seems that at most, only 1.5% of my blood is from that area of the world. Mrs. MM is a bit more interesting with significant blobs of British and Iberian blood in her system. But that doesn’t seem outrageous at all… 100% first gen, 50% second gen, 25% third gen, 12.5% fourth gen, 6.25% fifth gen, 3.125% sixth gen, and 1.5625% seventh gen. Assuming none of my other ancestors had some blood from that area, then the completely “watered down” portuguese connection could have been 7 generations back or some 140-170 years ago, roughly 1830-50’s or so. Cool, huh?! That’s a long introduction to this simple but utterly fantastic guava jam, cheese, spread, which is also quite popularly known as “goiabada” in the former portuguese colonies, particularly Brazil, that had a surfeit of guavas.

Almost ten years ago, on this blog, I wrote this post on guava jam. I just made it naturally as an extension of some guava jelly I had made and wasn’t sure what to do with all the pulp. I thought it was a superb substitute for membrillo or quince paste, and it paired well with cheese and crackers. I didn’t make the connection that folks have been doing this for centuries in other places then, but now I know. I am surprised we don’t have more of this in the Pinoy diet. It’s SO DARNED easy to make, it’s sweet, it’s intensely flavored, and it’s perfect in pan de sal. Recipe in original post. Make it so that it firms up and you can use it as a spread or cut it to place on crackers. And yes, Betchay, Greens Blossoms and Nacho, I have your bottles of guava jelly that I made myself… will email you soon for pick-up. :) And I only made 7 bottles of this “goiabada” but if there is enough interest, I could raffle one off to readers if I can send them to you by courier in Manila or my Chief of Stuff can meet you in a convenient mall or 7-11 somewhere… If you want to try your luck at winning the bottle, just leave a comment below and I will randomly pick a winner! Good luck! :)

The post “Goiabada” or Guava “Cheese” a la Marketman — WIN A BOTTLE FOR FREE!! :) appeared first on Market Manila.

“OMG, that’s so clever, so earnest, so simple, but so darned good.” That is almost always my reaction when we or someone in our office discovers another simple provincial delicacy or recipe that isn’t so common in the city anymore, and which I feel like we should all do something to save it from possible extinction. That’s the way I felt when I discovered buri cakes (the flour made from the central pulp of fallen buri tree trunks) that I have been hunting down a source of the flour for years to no avail, or the way I felt with my day with Manang Lima over 8 years ago when she taught me how to make her budbud kabog, or most recently today when I was shown how to make this simple but enchanting cassava cake. From the moment I was shown the cooking vessel, I knew this was something long-time readers would want to probably read about.

I am just posting the process first, as we aren’t totally happy with our version yet, and I do hope to be able to offer this in stores so that if people try it, buy it, and we continue to make it, maybe it will stay in our current list of local kakanins rather than falling off to the way side… Start with good cassava root, peel and rinse well. Pass it through the grating mechanism of a food processor (you can certainly hand grate if you prefer), then squeeze out the liquid and sift repeatedly through a large then fine gauge sifter. You end up with really fine damp cassava flour.

To the cassava flour add brown sugar (a nice deep dark brown sugar or muscovado that has been sifted) and some freshly grated coconut, not quite at its driest stage and not wet either.

Mix this by hand until you get a crumbly slightly damp consistency. I wanted to add some coconut or cow’s milk at this stage, but was told that was a modern twist and we should do it the traditional way first. :)

Meanwhile make some bukayo, which in these parts is large strings of coconut cooked with brown sugar. They look a bit like slimy worms but they taste wonderful.

Now starts the interesting part. Place a small palayok over a gas burner (or charcoal of course if you like) then place a “bao” or coconut shell with large holes cut into the bottom and seal in the steam so that a sort of pressurized steam pushed up through the ingredients to steam a cake. I think this was a simple dough that was used to encircle the bao and create a seal.

When the water is boiling, add some of the cassava mixture to the bap and cover it with banana leaves and steam for a couple of minutes…

…use a bamboo spatula to scrape the edges…

…add the bukayo to the center…

…cover with more cassava mixture and cover with banana leaves and top with something heavy like a pot lid and let this steam for a few more minutes.

Just when you think that’s really simple, then you have to scrape the sides, and with two bamboo spatulas, you have to turn this OVER! and steam that side so it cooks evenly. Yipes.

When it’s done, top with some latik and or more bukayo and enjoy. It was DELICIOUS, kind of chewy, moist and dry all at the same time. The texture of cassava is unmistakable, the flavor of coconut strong and it’s sweet. I don’t know why this isn’t available as street food in Manila. It wasn’t all that cheap, but it is oh so sustainable, local and right.

We are still testing variations, trying to figure out a less labor intensive way of cooking it (though a lot of the charm is in the cooking vessel) like steaming batches in a normal steamer (doesn’t work as well so far)… so this is a work in progress. But I thought I should record this process so it’s on the net somewhere, lest I forget. I strongly encourage all readers to watch, learn and record special recipes and delicacies from your neck of the woods to help preserve these for future generations, even if, right now, you are shaking your head at finding this cooking vessel at your nearest kitchen store.

P.S. Pls. no ribald comments about that last photo or two, I thought about mastectomies briefly as well. But banish the thought. :)

The post Puto Balanghoy / Steamed Cassava Cake with Coconut appeared first on Market Manila.

I think I like this (almost single-use) pot even better than our fish pans… This copper jam pot was the item I was holding in this old post on Dehillerin in Paris (my favorite cooking utensils store). At the time, I was a bit crestfallen, and this pan was my “consuelo de bobo” after a brief possibility of acquiring a brilliant large copper ham braiser, that turned out to be mispriced by a factor of 7x. :(

Copper is the material of choice because it conducts the heat better and more evenly, avoiding super hot spots on the bottom of the pot. The wider top of the pot allows the moisture from the jam to evaporate faster, and prevents boiling over that tends to happen in a straight sided pot. It also looks just stunningly beautiful when it just sits around and can double as a flower vessel, fruit bowl, Christmas goodies bowl, etc. Surprisingly, it doesn’t need much polishing if you use it fairly often. The inside is brilliantly polished after a batch of jam or jelly, and the outside looks properly used and you can use copper polish in case you want that looks like new feel all the time. I also raise my eyebrows when I see “show kitchens” with all gleaming copper pots. Absurd.

In these photos, is a batch of native guava jelly in the making. Prior to the photo up top, several kilos of native guavas were washed and sliced up and placed in a large pot with water and brought up to a boil. After say 15 minutes, we turned off the heat, let the pot cool and carefully strained the liquid through cheesecloth, taking care not to press the solids to a mush so that the jelly is the clearest it can be. The straining took several hours so that we collected all of the flavorful liquid.

You then place that guava broth into the copper pan, turn on the heat, and reduce it by about 10-15%, to concentrate the intensity of the native guava. Add sugar (photo up top) and stir gently and some pectin mixed in with sugar as well. Stir every once in a while and bring to a boil, making sure you have a candy thermometer to keep track of the temperature of the mixture. Skim the scum off the surface. The color with turn a deep amber and the bubbles get much larger as it nears the ideal temperature around 220F. Do a freezer test on the jelly if you want to be sure.

Turn off the heat, let the bubbles all settle and after a few minutes, place in bottles and put the bottles in a pot of boiling water for say another 10 minutes to vacuum seal them and make them last well over a year in storage. We made several batches recently, to stock up of guava jelly for our new pasalubong outlet in Cebu. Here’s an insider tip. Every single bottle of guava jelly we sell is made in Marketman’s home kitchen, in this copper jam pot. Kalamansi marmalade and mango jam are now made in our commissary kitchens (still in small batches) but if you want a bit of this arte pot for your breakfast pan de sal, get the guava jelly that is only in stock for a couple of months a year. You’ll know I picked out each and every one of those guavas myself. :)

While I think the days of histrionic reactions to jam pans (or fish pans) are long over, here are the details for those of you raising your eyebrows. I bought this pan for roughly Euro110 or roughly USD130 at Dehillerin without VAT, as I was a tourist. You can order it online for just a tad more, here. It was hand carried on a train back to London, where it was safely packed into my luggage and hauled back to Manila. If you are in the U.S. and flush and impatient, you can order it here, for more than double the price at USD280++, and I’m sure other folks carry it as well.

So roughly PHP6,000 for the copper jam pot. If I make 600 bottles of jam in it, then roughly PHP10 per bottle is the amortized cost of the flashy copper pot. Hmmm, not bad at all. And I am pretty sure we make 500+ bottles of jam per year! Now if only I could say I would make 600 hams a year (instead of 2 or 3), that large copper ham braiser for nearly Euro800 that’s still on my bucket list might be easier to justify. :)

The post A Copper Jam Pot from Dehillerin… appeared first on Market Manila.

When you drive up to Northern Cebu on the eastern coast of the island, you will pass by some 15-20 roadside vendors in Catmon selling bibingka. There seems to be no visible differentiation between the stalls, that stand side by side, and the prices are very competitive. We often stop here, a habit on trips up North, and consume way too many freshly cooked bibingka, at a few pesos a piece. I wrote about them in 2008 here, and again during our relief operations after Typhoon Haiyan here.

So when we passed this isolated little bibingka stall in the hills above Catmon, where just a few motorcycle drivers and passengers pass by, and maybe a vehicle or two every half hour, we decided to stop and see what the bibingka tasted like. It was SUPERB! Made only with rice, water, sugar and coconut meat/milk, this simple, simple cake was sublime. It definitely tasted better than the sum of its parts, and perhaps because it was so isolated, so freshly cooked and so earnestly offered up, I think it beat the many vendors on the main road in Catmon by a mile.

Cooked in the simplest of terra cotta containers (it look like the underdish of a plant pot) over coconut husk embers and topped with a thin piece of galvanized steel with coconut embers atop it, the makeshift ovens made bibingka one at a time, and depending on the heat, to mixed results of perfectly caramelized to slightly burned.

The dried coconut husk is used as fuel, instead of charcoal that would cost more and apparently not burn as hot.

The lady operating this stall only did it for 1-2 hours a day, as she had to drop off and pick up her kids at school down near the main road. We were lucky to catch her open with freshly cooked bibingka, and after discussing her techniques for a few minutes, asked if she was willing to come to Cebu for a day trip to teach us how to make bibingka her way. She agreed and we had those lessons the day after our trip to the Catmon hills.

We used a gas oven, charcoal and a charcoal oven and believe it or not, got our best results from the charcoal oven, where we could cook a dozen or so at a time, and they emerged with that characteristic slightly charred surface and springy interior crumb. We are still perfecting the recipe to our uses and plan to sell Catmon style bibingka at a new retail shop we have near the Mactan airport. I offered the lady a space at our new “strip mall” pasalubong center set-up, but she was concerned about life in the big city, and so we may do it for her instead…

I think this type of bibingka is a taste acquired early in one’s lifetime, as its simplicity might not impress folks used to more tasty and substantial ingredients like the inclusion of eggs, milk, salted eggs, cheese, etc. But sometimes, it is the simplest of concoctions that are the hardest to perfect. Oh, by the way, the exact same batter steamed instead of baked in an oven also tasted terrific!

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