My friend Eva is a wonderful cook, but don’t tell her that. It embarrasses her. She thinks that because she is basically self-taught, it disqualifies her cooking from any praise — as if a simple meal well executed couldn’t in itself be considered a culinary achievement. She’s so damned modest, it drives me nuts.
Good food is good food; it matters not if it is cooked for an hour or not at all, served on the finest china or wrapped in banana leaf, made from an age-old recipe or simply invented right on the premises — like Anthony Bourdain says, it’s all about the food. Please pass the rice and a big shout-out to the cook, never mind if it’s Hannibal Lecter — he would know how to take a compliment.
Fine, you say — but what has that got to do with those shrimps?
Oh, but they look good, do they not? I chanced upon a fresh batch in front of the fish market and they had “dinner” written all over them. I love small shrimps. They appeal to the lazy cook in me because you could fry them whole with a minimum of prep time and ingredients. Simply trim their “beards”, season with some rock salt, lime juice, ground black pepper, a few drops of sesame oil, and a sprinkling of flour, then deep-fry. So easy, so crispy-licious, so… loaded with uric acid. But to hell with that — and carbohydrates, too: I paired it with sautéed carrots and broccoli florets in oyster sauce served on a bed of fried egg noodles. So it wasn’t exactly dinner at Cibo, but man you should have heard the crackling and popping at the table — it was intense!
Eva dropped by the house the next day after a trip to the market. “Sus, do you know how much maya-maya (red snapper) costs these days?” she asked. “It’s criminal!”
“I do,” I said, “and it is. I was there yesterday and it was PhP220 a kilo. But I bought a bunch of small shrimps for PhP70.”
Her eyes lit up. “You had ukoy for dinner? Nam-nam!”
“Do I dare? My fritters suck.” That’s the truth. “You should teach me some time, though; you make fine ukoy.” That’s true, too.
But would she have any of that? Oh, no… Her fritters were “nothing special”; they were mountain people fare (“binukid”), “too Bisaya” — whatever that meant. Fact is, the woman is simply terrible — terrible! — at taking a compliment. She ought to take a cue from someone.
Like me, for example. I take compliments where I can. “Agoy,” Ma had sighed when she sat down for that meal, “are you trying to kill me? Because if you are, this would be a nice send-off.”
Check that.
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