In the previous post, I mentioned a recipe for ukoy by the late gourmet chef, restaurateur, cookbook writer, and TV host Nora V. Daza. It was from A Culinary Life: Personal Recipe Collection (with Michaela Fenix, 1992), which I have only now started to read in earnest despite the fact that we have had the book for at least 20 years.
I try to keep an open mind about ingredients that normally don’t appeal to me. Litób (blood cockles), okra, alugbati (Malabar/vine spinach): they’re slimy, a texture I am averse to. Still, I try to find ways of cooking them that minimizes that undesirable aspect. Failing that, as with litób — eh, too bad; at least I gave it a shot.
Last Christmas a friend gave me a bag of salted egg-coated potato chips. I liked it a lot, to the extent of looking it up online, which was how I discovered it had been some sort of craze in Manila a while back.
Traffic worsens whenever fish vendors make an impromptu market of the corner sidewalk in front of Andok’s. The area is at the heart of the commercial district. We parked the car in hazard mode, hoping the traffic aides would understand: it had been a good long while since we had seen bolináw.
How to tell if ampalaya is bitter just by looking at it? Some say that the more pronounced the ridges, the less it is so. I had never bothered to look into the validity of this assertion; if the thing is fresh and firm to the touch, I buy it.
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.
Our last meal in Singapore was the most expensive of the whole trip — and the least satisfying. This was at Makansutra Gluttons Bay, across the river from Marina Bay Sands. It had not been on our itinerary; that would be the Supertrees at the Gardens by the Bay, but a sudden downpour had us confined to our hotel room for the rest of the afternoon.
It’s fun to goof around in the kitchen, more so when the result comes out looking (and tasting) like this. That’s simply fried egg ringed with slices of Chinese chorizo (Kwong Bee brand), finished with a healthy smattering of sriracha sauce and plopped on a bed of steaming rice. Yummeh, as Coco Martin would say.
I have featured tortang bolináw before, and I can say that this version is much better, not to mention easier. Foolproof, as the buzzword goes. It calls for fewer ingredients, fries faster — or so it seems to me — and comes out crispier (stays that way longer, too). So what’s the secret?
