Even though I keep saying that we are sick of eating bolináw at this point in the season, the truth is that it comes in handy when bigger fish are scarce. There are only a handful of ways you can prepare it, so the trick is to do them in rotation, in smaller quantities — like a side dish, a “healthier” complement to the often inevitable meat entrée.
Sooner or later I was going to have to take on the balantiyong (bottle gourd). I have nothing against this vegetable, just that it is unremarkable in appearance, if not exactly in taste — like that nerdy classmate you had who went on to top the board exams. “Oh, her?” you say. “Yeah, she’s got a good head on her shoulders.” And then you move on to the next topic.
“Your cooking’s off these days,” my mother says.
“Is it?” I say, rather defensively. “It’s him, isn’t it?” I mean my father; he has not touched my food in days, preferring the morcon from Hobie’s instead. It’s good, the morcon, but I hate to think about all the Magic Sarap/Ginisa Mix that had made it so.
I did say I would get back to you if the anchovy patties turned out any good fried, right? Well, you know what this means.
We celebrated a friend’s recent birthday with a pulutan set of almost exclusively maskara or pork face. It was not lost on us that at our age we should not have been indulging in such high-calorie stuff, but waddaheck.
Anything is bound to smell wonderful cooked in banana leaf. There is an earthiness there that you can never get from tin foil or wax/parchment paper. And banana leaf has antibacterial properties, too, especially that of Musa paradisiaca or the common cooking banana, which “showed highest activity against tested pathogens, particularly E. coli,” as per this study.
Now that I have tried my hand at chai tow kway, I realize the one I ate at Makansutra Gluttons Bay that had impressed me so much was scant on the eponymous ingredient. That would be the carrot cake, which was not at all made of carrot, but radish.
This article came out April of last year, but I have only recently been made aware of the family connection. I am understandably excited to learn of the achievements of Chef Patrick Enage (a cousin on my mother’s side) and wish him continued success in his culinary endeavors. After his stint at Wink & Nod in Boston, MA, Chef Patrick is set to (re-)open his restaurant, Akinto, later this year (Twitter).
Barracudas possess powerful jaws and teeth that serve them well as voracious marine predators. While attacks on humans are rare and never fatal, these fish, says Wikipedia, “display a disconcerting habit of curiously following divers and swimmers.” That, I assume, was how this one ended up on our table.
There I was the other day, trying to come up with something to prank my handful of readers with, when I realized it was almost noon. So I got up and made lunch — porcine ears, sliced thinly and sautéed in chili oil, like at Chong Qing. But even better, I had dared hope, since my maskara was not only boiled, but grilled as well. And I had abalone-flavored macadamias in lieu of peanuts.
