Sometimes we seek comfort in a bowl of soup. In this case, a 4+ hour slow-cooked beef bulalo that gurgled away on the stove while we puttered around with gingerbread, cookie dough and other kitchen duties. I have featured a similar recipe before, here, and a Cebuano-styled one here, or this “more-ish” version here, but this is an upgraded version that is sure to please most soupies…

I started with 5 pieces of Australian beef shank, rinsed then blanched in hot water to remove some of the impurities. Then we put it in a large heavy enameled pot, covered with water, and let it gurgle over low heat for some 4 hours or so, until the meat was really soft, softer than I have ever gotten it before. This was noting but beef and water. Season later as the salt may actually help to toughen the meat if introduced earlier rather than later. Keep the lid slightly askew so the broth boils down and the flavor is concentrated a bit. However, even at the end of 4 hours, the broth wasn’t flavorful enough, so I added two cans of beef broth with no added MSG. Then season generously with salt, a tablespoon or two of fish sauce and a tablespoon of soy sauce. Add freshly cracked black pepper, some sliced tomatoes (unusual for bulalo, but adds color and flavor) and onions and let this gurgle for another 10-15 minutes. Add the corn, then the cabbage and other greens if using them. Serve piping hot.

This bulalo was SUPERB. And oddly, even better the day after as the flavors melded even more and the cabbage actually tasted meaty. We serve this with lime or kalamansi, patis and chopped chilies on the side for sawsawan. We a couple of foreign friends over for dinner and they happily scooped out the fabulous bone marrow and enjoyed it on toast with lots of salt. Notice how much marrow is still intact, despite over four hours in gurgling liquid. I had this with way too much rice, thank you. :)

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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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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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I have written about vegetable soup before, but without firm recipes, as mine changes with whatever is in the fridge or I find in the market. But here are some of my tips and tricks for a really hearty and tasty vegetable soup. First, start with a wide variety of ingredients, the more the merrier, almost. Don’t throw everything in your fridge into the mix, there has to be a bit of method to the madness. I usually have onions, carrots and celery. I add some cubed potatoes and sweet potatoes when I have them. Green beans or overgrown haricots vert are another staple, as is cauliflower, occasionally broccoli, mushrooms, cabbage, kale, etc. Kalabasa or kabocha squash, zucchini (green or yellow), tomatoes, red bell peppers, etc. all work as well.

But my best vegetable soups aren’t vegetarian. They are flavored with pancetta or ham or both. So below are my personal tips for success with your next soup…

Start with your fat (olive oil for me) and the pancetta, carrots, onions and celery. Let this saute for a good 10 minutes until they are well cooked, and a bit of brown stuff shows up at the bottom of the pot. I use a heavy enameled cast iron pot to make my soup in.

I find many cooks aren’t patient with this step, the sweating of the veggies, and rush through it. For me, it is the first essential step to eventual depth in flavor. Don’t rush it. Add some of the other harder veggies like sweet potatoes and green beans and saute for several minutes more. Slowly add all the other veggies besides the greens and saute further. I used some leftover white wine in the fridge to de-glaze the pan and a small tin of canned Italian cherry tomatoes as well.

At the end of the lengthy saute, perhaps as long as 20-25 minutes in total depending on how large of pot of soup you are making, the veggies should look good enough to eat as is. Vibrant, fragrant and softened. If you’ve ordered veggie soup at restaurants and find that its has hard-ish veggies in a watery flavorless broth, they skipped this lengthy saute phase. It happens even at our restaurant, and it freaks me out no end.

Next I add a freshly made broth with ham bones, onions, celery and carrots that is another key step for building flavor. I always buy the ham bones from grocery ham vendors and stock them in our freezer so I can make a ham broth whenever we need it. The bones are the cheapest natural way to build depth of flavor, and it beats canned chicken or other broths by a mile. If you don’t want a pork-based broth, then a good chicken stock is a great alternative.

My final trick is to put one or two rinds from used up parmesan cheese. You can store these in your freezer as well until you make a pot of soup. It’s like the best and most natural source of umami.

I add the chopped herbs about 10 minutes before finishing off the soup, with the cabbage and kale put just minutes before turning off the flames. This is delicious served up shortly after cooking. But honestly, I think it tastes better much later in the day or the next day even. if you plan to serve it later, it’s a good idea to hold the kale or other leafy greens until you are about to serve them, so there’s a bit of freshness to the texture and taste of the soup.

I find great comfort in cooking up a huge pot of vegetable soup. First, all that chopping is therapeutic. Second, extended saute is mindless and soothing, but critical to the outcome. The homemade broth is amazing to behold — for so little work, it creates such a flavorful base. And the end result, a hearty flavorful soup is so well worth the effort. With the local rainy season just starting, I expect to make several batches of soup in the months ahead.

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This is an extremely rare photo of Mrs. MM sitting on a low seat in a somewhat grimy alley in Xi’an, China. Let me stress, this is NOT her comfort zone. But when traveling, we almost always do things that we rarely, if ever, do at home, it’s just part of the adventure. Actually, the alley wasn’t that bad really, but just before we managed to get this particular table, it was filled with other people, and let’s just say there were projectile this and that which was enough to make one’s eyes roll here and there. :)

Stop #2 on the Lost Plate Food Tour that morning was a ginormous cauldron (batya or filipino laundry basin more accurately describes it actually) of steaming soup. Thick enough to be a stew, it was a stick to your ribs (literally) type of breakfast treat. This couldn’t have been much past 9 in the morning or so, and there were lines for this particular purveyor.

The soup, made with little lamb meatballs, cabbage and various other vegetables, probably a starch thickener of some sort, or one of the veggies acted as a natural thickener, was heady with aroma and chockfull of stuff. at about $1 or just a little more, it seemed like an incredible bargain, all over again.

Several ladles full of soup are placed in a large bowl. The man serving it makes very, very pointed efforts to count the number of meatballs that get included in each bowl, then you can choose a little or a lot of chili sauce, chopped herbs and greens to go on top of it.

I love how abundant these servings are, you don’t get the feeling that it’s all carefully costed and measured to the gram (except for the meatballs, of course)… and it definitely looked like one got his money’s worth. It’s heavily vegetable inclusive, but the strong flavors of lamb also make this meaty at the same time.

You get an old or dry piece of bread for each bowl (we split one order into three bowls) and you break this bread up into little pieces. Ladle the soup over this and mix until the bread absorbs the liquid and it all gets even thicker and heartier. It’s got your carbohydrates, vegetables and protein all in one bowl. I found this a bit heavy and I have never liked starch-thickened soups, but I must say, it was delicious nonetheless. I don’t think I could have finished a whole order, but it was definitely worth the experience. It was still a bit cool the morning we set out on this tour, so a bowl of hot soup was a welcome treat.

We were increasingly flabbergasted by how economical and abundant the meals on this tour were turning out to be. I can’t imagine doing a similar tour anywhere in the Philippines with the same kind of reaction, perhaps only in places like Bacolod or Pampanga, but at PHP40-60 per large serving of anything? Not so easy… After the soup we got back in the tuktuk and headed to the nearby Muslim market…

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Once guests sat down at the dinner table, had a glass of champagne after a brief holiday toast, the meal began in earnest. The first plate served had “eight bites” of seafood and pickled vegetables, to awaken the palate. From the top left, heading clockwise, the appetizers included (a) large cross crabs or alimasag that were steamed earlier in the day, lump crab meat picked by hand, and mixed lightly and gently with a mayonnaise, lemon and tarragon dressing, served chilled and garnished with fresh tarragon (b) homemade salmon gravlax topped with salmon roe served with a little wedge of lemon and garnished with fresh dill (c) lightly pickled thinly sliced radishes and half a teeny weeny baby carrot and a few arils of deep red fresh pomegranate for color and texture (d) homemade boquerones on top of freshly roasted red capsicum or bell pepper, garnished with micro arugula (e) tuna tartare with a soy and sesame dressing garnished with toasted sesame seeds and minced chives (f) three kinds of pickled beets – red, golden and candy cane(?) (g) small mussels with a mustard and shallot vinaigrette served cold, garnished with flat leaf parsley and finally, (h) prawn cocktail on a tomato, horseradish, tabasco and lemon sauce garnished with purple basil.

The menu with the evening’s meal.

While guests were gathering, pica-pica included some sliced jamon serrano, three kinds of sausage (venison, boar and pork) we brought back with us from the Borough Market in London as well as mixed nuts, pistachios and macadamias (nuts not photographed).

We also had some of Marketman’s “adobo rillette” which is essentially 3-4 hour slow-cooked adobo served shredded with it’s own lard. Served on toast, it was utterly delicious but intensely calorific.

After the seafood appetizers, a hot appetizer plate included roasted organic/free range beef bone marrow served with a gremolata and pink hawaiian sea salt, a small ramekin filled with callos with beef and chorizo and topped with a bread crumb, parsley and parmiggiano reggiano mixture that was baked crisp and finally, an unusual but delicious oxtail marmalade. A pea shoot salad made with green and yellow pea shoots was added for color and to break the richness of all of these three dishes. Served with 3 pieces of toasted baguette, many guests took several more pieces of bread to finish off their plates. Honestly, we could have stopped here. But it was the holidays, so we continued on…

Next up, a half bowl of roasted butternut squash soup with chestnuts, olive oil, piment d’espelette and chopped chives. Rich but very satisfying. I tried to replicate a soup we had enjoyed immensely on our recent trip to Paris. It came pretty close, but the muddy color of locally grown squash can’t compare with the incredibly orange meat of the “potiron” in France.

The main course included oven-roasted prime rib, here already sliced. This particular roast was overcooked by say 10-15 minutes, the one on the following evening was more on point. I like the center of the roast to be rare rather than medium, but our meat thermometer seems to be playing tricks on me. We served this with a simple gravy from pan juices and beef broth and bit of roux.

Roasted potatoes with goose fat. Was originally planning to do a yorkshire pudding but there were too many things going into the single oven so I bagged that idea. My bucket list includes a double oven in our Manila kitchen eventually…

Haricots verts with butter and herbs, roasted cherry tomatoes and roasted asparagus to ease the guilt of eating so many other calorie laden dishes.

After a brief pause, we brought out the acacia board with five kinds of cheese, and lots of plump fresh dried fruit, also carted back from markets in Europe a couple of weeks beforehand.

A wedge of aged manchego with dried golden raisins, dried golden cherries and apricots scattered around the cheese.

A log of chèvre and a delicious stilton with dried figs and dried strawberries…

…and a double cream brie and a substantial cheddar that was just lightyears way better than any cheddar you can find from local sources. The pitted dates were also creamy and moist.

There were small creme brûlées, chocolate mousse, pecan hand pies and an apple crostata for dessert. Sorry, no photos of the first two items.

Some dark chocolate covered orange rind from Carpo in London, dare I say better than La Maison du Chocolat’s (our favorite until now) and cheaper to boot. Guests over two nights went through two boxes of these goodies.

The chocolate bark I wrote about a few posts back, along with the nut and seed salty/sweet brittle as well.

Pate de fruit or concentrated fruit essence with gelatin and sugar, just one is a herald of the holiday season (along with say the candied chestnuts or the chocolate dipped orange rind)…

Salted caramels, and if guests were up to it, we had cookie jars nearby with chocolate chip, chocolate shard with cacao nibs, gingersnaps and raspberry filled butter and almond cookies as well.

Guests at our second Holiday dinner (they were held on consecutive nights, to save on prep, flowers and crew effort) before we brought out the instant snow (yes, I made snow…), an xrated party favor and…

…some party poppers! I think we all had a really good time, and everyone left fed up. :)

The post Holiday Dinners Circa 2014 appeared first on Market Manila.

Here is an excellent use for a meaty leftover roast turkey carcass. It’s a riff on a classic chicken sotanghon soup. I’ve decided I am not a huge fan of roast turkey unless it is brilliantly done and served still very warm, since it has a tendency to get a bit dry and frankly, tastes less appealing that other fowl or red meat. But I do love stuffing, and lots of the side dishes as well as the hubbub around say a Thanksgiving or other celebratory meal with turkey as the meal’s centerpiece… It’s always a bit of a challenge to come up with a recycled turkey recipe that pleases everyone in our household. If the volume of a recipe consumed is any indication, a ginormous pot of this soup was inhaled by 8 people in record time. Yup, it was surprisingly good.

Take your turkey carcass and strip it of most meat and hand-shred the white and dark meat and set this aside. Put the turkey carcass in a large pot, cover it with water and any remaining turkey stock that you saved from the holiday meal, some chopped onions, carrots and celery and let this simmer for say 2 hours until you have a flavorful broth. If you are concerned about not having enough flavor, you may wish to add say a can or two of low-sodium chicken stock. I also added in a cup full of leftover dark turkey gravy and about 3 tablespoons of Kikkoman soy sauce. Once the stock is done, strain it and return it to the stove over medium heat. Add in the shredded turkey meat, some julienned carrots, and taste it and season with salt and pepper to your liking. I then added some sotanghon noodles, chopped up bok choy and some cabbage and let this cook until the vegetables are just cooked. Serve with soy sauce and kalamansi and you have a hearty, flavorful soup (with a pinoy like twist) with lots of meat, noodles and vegetables. It was so easy to make, and it was approved by all in our household. :)

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I think most people in Cebu would associate the soup “linarang” with a a soup from stalls near the Pasil seafood market in the wee hours of the morning that is made with large or small eel and or other fish. It is hot, slightly sour, slightly spicy and incredibly hearty… sometimes referred to as literally “recovery food” after a night of drinking. Reputedly, the eel has “warming” capabilities so in addition to the spice, the “heat” generated by the eel is an added benefit or side effect. A bit of googling yields a definition of a larang as a stew with coconut and seafood. But more interestingly, larang in Malay is something that is forbidden, and I actually like that definition in the context of eating something just slightly unusual or uncommon — in some case linarang can be made with pufferfish, stingray, shark and other species that frankly, aren’t kosher to eat these days.

So the version we made, while true to form as far as the broth is concerned, used talakitok or mamsaa instead of the traditional eel, or other more “exotic” species of fish. We sautéed some onions and chopped tomatoes in a bit of oil, add some garlic or ginger if you like, then some water, green onions, iba or kamias, unripe tamarind broth, some fish sauce and salt and pepper. Add some chopped finger chilies for heat. Keep tasting the liquid until you have the preferred balance of saltiness, sourness and spiciness. Add the fish, sliced into smaller pieces, and when it’s just about done, add some chili or sili leaves and turn off the heat. Serve soon after with lots of rice on the side. It’s actually not unlike a sinigang, but with some spice added in… delicious on a cool and rainy day!

The post Linarang na Isda / Sour & Spicy Fish Soup appeared first on Market Manila.

Shortly after arriving at Singita, we decided to head to the outdoor deck for some lunch. We had been traveling some 24+ hours door-to-door including stopovers and had a total of 10 takeoffs/landings so we weren’t in the mood for anything heavy. We had a brief chat with the sous-chef, and although I mentioned an interest in “local food” — it was clear that the menu was really skewed to a very international set of favorites, with the chefs’ twists incorporated. I loved the menu, but was a bit disappointed about the lack of local dishes (which I would learn more about over the course of the next few days)…

Mrs. MM started off her lunch with a brilliantly hewed chilled cucumber soup (top photo), a good antidote for the warm noontime temperature levels. Our “butler”, Vivian, poured us glasses of sparkling water, as well as a cold crisp white wine and would soon learn I was addicted to Coke Light with lots of ice. She then brought a basket with two kinds of bread, and served that with a trio of tapenade (olive), chakalaka (spicy vegetable) and pesto (basil) spreads. The chakalaka was an instant hit, and Mrs. MM would eventually ask them for a recipe which they kindly provided for the simple sauté of vegetables with tomatoes and chili. The tapenade and pesto were delicious as well.

For her main course, Mrs. MM had a panzanella salad with toasted cubes of brioche. Simple and delicious. With just 28 guests in the hotel at any one time (there must have been roughly 20 guests when we were there), this would be like running a kitchen in a large home with very discerning guests with an international palate. The menus were limited, but I could have eaten each and every item on offer. Considering we were in the middle of nowhere, and several hours from the nearest grocery, the line-up of dishes was nothing short of impressive.

Tables for lunch were set up under a large ebony tree, and staff kept a watchful eye for monkeys that had a habit of poaching bread or other goodies right off the breakfast buffet table or even from your bread plate. No wonder they had “slingshots” as part of the “equipment” in the villas, along with emergency horns and flashlights. :)

I started off with a terrific caesar salad, complete with marinated whole anchovies, not the really salty canned anchovies. The marvel here was the triumph of thoughtful simplicity. A few crisp romaine leaves, with large shavings of parmiggiano reggiano in between, several whole fillets of marinated anchovies, freshly made breadcrumbs (probably from uneaten home baked breads from breakfast buffets) a few quail’s eggs and just perfectly dressed. Not overdressed. And while the portion may strike some as being modest, you could literally have as many portions as you desired…

In the brief interval before the main courses arrived, we looked out at the opposite bank of the sand river and were a bit giddy with anticipation for our first game drive. The following day, just after lunch, a female leopard apparently strolled through the hotel grounds, passed right under the lunch deck, and spent a few minutes in front of a villa before heading home. It’s the stuff of dreams — you can’t make these things up. For my main, I had a bowl penne carbonara, with particularly flavorful bacon. It was delicious, but you must understand now why food (my near lifetime obsession) took a supporting role to the game watching.

Our daughter, still a bit out of sorts from all those take-offs and landings (I was quite prone to motion sickness when younger as well), opted to have just a light serving of samosas with tatziki and herbs. The samosas were beautifully executed, with wafer thin skins instead of the doughier consistency of a classic samosa. We returned to our villa for a quick nap before heading out on our first drive…

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After shopping at the Bantayan fresh seafood market in this previous post, we took our purchases to one of the cooking stalls at Sugar Beach, left some instructions on how we preferred each type of seafood cooked, and went back to our hotel to pack up and check out before lunch. When we got back to the beach, there was just enough time for a dip in the sea before lunch was being delivered to our little nipa huts…

We had two large grilled fish, a talakitok up top, and I am not sure what the second fish was (acquired from the cooking stall to augment our meal. It didn’t quite look like a maya-maya or snapper, but it was similar.

Next a tray of grilled alumahan or mackerel scad that were so incredibly fresh when we bought them at the market.

We had a pot of simple fish tinowa made with 2-3 small talakitok. The fresher the fish, the better the tinowa.

Deep-fried danggit or rabbitfish.

Salted danggit bihud or fish roe sautéed with tomatoes, onions and garlic. This was wickedly salty, but really delicious. Perfect as condiment to fried and grilled fish.

And some chilled leftover steamed crab from the day before’s bounty of fresh crab. Lots of rice, eating with our hands, and it was a delicious, economical and very satisfying beach lunch.

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