The inspiration for this dish was David Chang’s roasted brussel sprouts with fish sauce dressing at a recent lunch we enjoyed at Momofuku in Las Vegas. We don’t often see brussel sprouts on offer in Manila, so I thought I would experiment with other brassica relatives — cauliflower, broccoli and red cabbage.

Cut cauliflower and broccoli into medium sized florets. Wash or soak well and drain and spin dry.

Slice red cabbage so that the central stem holds the leaves together. Heat up your oven to 400F. Into an ovenproof pan, heated on top of a burner, add some vegetable oil (grapeseed, canola, etc.) and add the brassicas and let them be. Once they start to brown slightly, place them into the oven and let them roast on high heat. After about 10-12 minutes, check on the veggies and turn them over for even browning. Cook for a total of 23-25 minutes (cabbage less) until well caramelized and colored.

This is what the veggies looked like after I took them out of the oven… I could have left them in a few more minutes.

Make a dressing of fish sauce, a touch of water, fresh lime (dayap) juice, sugar, chilies and chopped cilantro. Sprinkle dressing generously over warm vegetables and add some chopped wansoy or cilantro, thai basil, mint and green onions.

This was delicious. Not quite the wonderful dish we enjoyed at Momofuku, but brilliant for a first attempt.

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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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I love to find fresher, lighter preparations for some locally available vegetables, a refusal to believe that we just don’t have that many vegetable-based dishes in our repertoire in the Philippines. Recent data suggests that as a nation, we consume a phenomenal amount of meat, and that’s odd given the region’s seeming love affair with not only delicious, but economical and healthy vegetables and herbs. I am a carnivore, and couldn’t be otherwise, but I do love my vegetables and salads. This one experiment, a variation on this thai dish, is different enough, delicious enough and unique enough for me to cheekily add “a la Marketman” to it’s name.

Start with beautifully fresh sigarilyas or sigadilyas (winged beans) and cut them to small pieces and blanche in boiling water for a minute or less and shock in ice water to stop the cooking process and retain that vivid green color. Steam or blanche some shrimp until just cooked and peel and devein if necessary. Make a dressing by adding fish sauce, fresh lime juice (dayap), some sambal (not too much) a touch of homemade tamarind puree, a touch of brown sugar and mix until dissolved. Toss the vegetables and shrimp with the dressing, and add a couple of tablespoons of coconut cream just to mute and balance out the flavors. Taste and adjust as you desire. At the last minutes, I spied the preserved limes in the fridge so I added a scant 1/4 teaspoon full of finely minced lime rind (no pulp) to the dressing.

Chill for a few minutes in the fridge as the flavor meld together. Serve slightly cool. I added some purple basil for color but they were irrelevant. This salad was FANTASTIC. The little bits of powerful flavor from the preserved limes really provided an unusual punch. The whole thing just worked really nicely. Mrs. MM and I nearly finished this entire salad, and it was quite large. We left some on purpose so the crew could taste it and replicate it for future meals. It’s not really a filipino dish, but who cares, it tasted wonderful. Any reason to use more veggies and get us all eating them is a good one, as far as I am concerned.

Old post on sigadilyas, here. And here’s an interesting take on “Bicol Express” with sigadilyas.

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I have always loved a properly made Melanzane a la Parmigiana or Eggplant Parmesan. There’s something so incredibly comforting about the texture, the oozing cheese, the tomato sauce that makes this almost as comforting as Spaghetti with ragu or Bolognese sauce. It’s also pretty high calorie, I suspect. But sometimes you just want a shortcut version, or at least I do. So when I came across this recipe from the New York Times, and I happened to have several large western eggplants wallowing in the fridge, I decided to make my own version for dinner that evening.

Instead of frying the eggplant naked like in the NYT recipe, I decided to coat the eggplant slices in a bit of seasoned flour, egg and breadcrumbs and deep fry them for a couple of minutes and let them rest, hoping the heat would fully cook the eggplants interiors, and they did. Just make sure you don’t cut the eggplants more than say 1/2 inch thick or you risk a bit of raw eggplant at the center, and that’s unpleasant.

On a large platter, I put down a bed of of wild arugula, topped that with the fried eggplant slices, a quick tomato sauce made from canned san marzano tomatoes crushed and sautéed with olive oil and salt and pepper, then slices of good mozzarella, lots of ripe tomatoes sliced in different ways, lots of shredded basil and drizzled some olive oil and balsamic vinegar over everything. Oh, don’t forget some salt and pepper as well. This wasn’t really a gooey eggplant parm, more like a hot and cold salad with all the right flavor highlights. It was a HUGE HIT at dinner that evening, and something we will definitely be doing again soon.

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Seafood Sunday seems like a good idea. It’s market day if you happen to be by the seashore (or even if you are not), it’s time to enjoy a long meal at the lunch table with family and friends, and it happens to be Lent just in case that affects your dietary choices.

Hit the local markets and stock up on whatever looks fresh… young squid, fresh fish, prawns, shrimp, etc.

Marinate seafood briefly in soy, kalamansi, dalandan, olive oil, lemon, salt and pepper, whatever you like and throw it all on the grill. Here some baby squid cooked just right (not overcooked), some shrimp with leftover Iloilo made prosciutto wrapped around it (it was delicious, but you can leave out the meat if you desire)…

…some prawns and some small talakitok or jacks grilled whole.

An eggplant and tomato salad for that texture and acidic contrast to the incredibly fresh, slightly briny seafood. And yes, somewhere off camera is a nice big bowl of steamed rice. In this case, no utensils required. But Mrs. MM had a fork and knife. :)

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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… :)

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Jet lag is a bummer. But it can have a silver lining — you can add meals at the oddest time of the day or night and have a perfectly good excuse to indulge… Here’s one of my nearly instant midnight snacks in our little rented Parisian flat (finding this kind of food at midnight in a snazzy hotel is a little harder to do). Take out three bags of different types of pre-washed salad greens from the fridge and pile some onto a plate. Add some sliced golden apples for flavor and texture. Dress with some bottled Maille Vinaigrette. Yup, bottled grocery purchased salad dressing. I don’t often buy salad dressing, but this is one of the best I have ever purchased. I liked it so much (good red wine vinegar, obviously some maille mustard and just the right balance of salt and other seasonings), I wanted to bring a few dozen bottles of salad dressing home!

A few slices of bread, some slices of jambon or ham and a shmear of brie (or was it camembert?) and I was one happy camper. It’s hard to go back to sleep right after this midnight snack, but at least there’s no risk of getting hungry before a proper breakfast.

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I absolutely love canned tuna. Ever since my high school days when our cafeteria at school had these phenomenally large hot pan de sals that they used to fill with a tunafish palaman or spread. In college, I had canned tuna at least twice a week while on a very modest food budget. Despite warnings of potential mercury content, higher income in the years since, I still looked for canned tuna at least twice a month. I once wrote this post on some superb premium quality Century Tuna several years ago that caught the eye of the company that very kindly offered to send me a box of the extremely hard to find stuff, and I agreed, but I insisted on paying for it. Our top local canned tuna is high up there when compared to several European brands, in fact, I understand that several European brands actually can their stuff in General Santos, and have the tiniest reference to the source of Pacific tuna instead of mediterranean fish. However, there are, to this day, incredibly premium bottled and canned tunas in Spain that command prices of up to PHP8,000+ for a bottle roughly the same size as the one above. Are they 20x better tasting or more satisfying than Century? I think not. But are really pricey women’s handbags really worth 39,000 bayongs or market baskets? :)

I decided to try a new recipe for “canned” or “bottled” tuna. The last time I made some, the tuna was poached in olive oil, and it turned a bit harder than I would have liked, see post here. For this version I used a recipe from the cookbook A16, and bought 1 kilo of premium tuna, removed the blood veins and skin, cut this up into large chunks and salted it generously all over and let it rest in the fridge for 3-4 hours, covered. In a pot of water, I added some chopped up fennel bulb, celery, onions, and two cloves of garlic and several fresh/dry bay leaves and a tablespoon of peppercorns. Bring this up to a gentle simmer, add the fish and let this cooke for roughly 8-10 minutes until just pink at the center (check a piece with a knife). Don’t overcook, and don’t leave the centers raw either. Take the tuna out and let it cool to room temperature. Add the tuna to a sterilized bottle and pack tightly and fill with very good olive oil. Make sure all the fish is covered with oil and try to get out any air bubbles. That’s it. Store in fridge for up to a week or so.

This batch turned out utterly delicious. A lot less hard than the last version I made. And the huge flakes make it clear this is a premium homemade version. But the catch? This bottle of roughly 1 kilo of tuna had a total cost of roughly PHP800 because of the fresh tuna, fennel and oil, and six cans of of Century tuna is roughly PHP240 or so, or 1/3rd the price! Was the homemade version 3x better? I’m not sure about that, but it was obviously different, artisanal and delicious! For my next tuna experiment, I will try this Saveur recipe/version now that we have a pressure cooker in the house.

Wondering what to do with the freshly made canned tuna? Try this recipe for a Salade niçoise, deconstructed. Or this terrific Thai tuna salad. Or an Italian tuna and bean salad, here. Or a “Malipayon” salad with Gejo’s wonderful produce, here. Or maybe a tuna fennel and celery salad? Or you can always just make a good old tunafish sandwich. Or tuna melt even. Can you tell I really like my canned tuna? :)

The post Tuna “Conserva” or Bottled/Canned Tuna… :) appeared first on Market Manila.

The summer heat has started to get to me. It’s just been WICKED HOT in Manila lately, and if I had to choose, I would definitely pick a cool rainy day rather than a sweltering hot and humid day in the city. But heat has its benefits… and spectacular tomatoes are definitely one of them. In the past month I have ramped up the tomato purchases and have enjoyed them in salads, on bruschetta, sandwiches, etc. I have oven semi-dried several kilos of tomatoes and if I find the right type, I may even bottle or freeze some in the weeks ahead.

The biggest surprise were these teeny tiny cherry tomatoes, grown entirely in our own backyard, just beside the laundry area. Seeds came from some overripe tomatoes we had in the kitchen a few months ago, and we just planted them hoping something would grow and bear fruit. They look FABULOUS. And we harvested them when they were at their ripest. Or so we thought. They tasted horrific! So sour I could make “champoy” with them if I soaked them in salt for a month! Evil. :( But then again, long-time readers know I don’t have a green thumb, so while these bore fruit, they were shockingly bad. :)

Thank goodness I don’t earn a living from growing tomatoes, I would be in serious debt. And thank goodness Toscana farms in Tagaytay is at just about the peak of tomato season around now. A farm visit to Toscana in time for the Easter week holiday at the beach meant we loaded up some 10+ kilos (of at least four kinds of tomatoes) into our car.

We visited the farm at Toscana’s invitation, as they are testing some new heirloom tomatoes, and that’s all I can say about them except that the photos here look, well, rather spectacular, don’t you agree?

An eggplant and red wine and cherry tomato salad.

Heirloom tomatoes and boconcini (little mozzarella balls) and basil.

Finally, a mixed tomato and basil salad. And it isn’t just the snazzy tomatoes that are worth hunting down these days. Weekend markets are filled with several varieties of tomatoes in their ripest splendor, so indulge, folks!

The post Hot Tomatoes appeared first on Market Manila.

I saw a similar recipe to this in a vegetable cookbook a while back and kept it in the back of my mind until I had the ingredients readily available. Avocados, and some BRILLIANT avocados at that, are now abundant in weekend markets and I bought a couple of kilos a week or so ago and let them ripen fully at home. I peeled and sliced an avocado and placed the slices in a shallow bowl, added some peeled and sectioned pink grapefruit, made a simple vinaigrette with the juice of the grapefruit remnants, some good olive oil, some salt and dressed the fruit. A light sprinkling of Piment d’Espelette and some coriander leaves and it was done…

While the combination may strike you, as it did me, as being rather unusual, it was refreshing, tasty and incredibly easy to make and eat. I don’t think I would go out of my way to assemble this salad again, but I would make it if I happened to have everything within reach. This is all part of a personal campaign to eat more vegetables and fruit — and while I am successful in that quest, I have also been eating lots of everything else, hence my current state of blimp. :)

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