When my father told his guest that I had prepared something special for lunch, I knew I had the osso buco down pat. Pa is so finicky, I had long given up trying to figure out how he comes to decide what it is he likes — little wonder Ma gave up cooking for him a long time ago — making the rare pronouncement like this music to my ears.
My friends love balbacua (ox-tail soup (stew?)). I always counter that if I have to go to the trouble of tenderizing ox tail, I might as well go the extra mile and make kare-kare, with vegetables in creamy peanut sauce, served alongside sautéed fermented shrimp paste. There just isn’t much flavor in ox tail — texture, yes, but I find it terribly one-dimensional.
How can something so easy taste so good? As you can see, I am not a little enamored with spring onion sauce, which I hesitate to call “sublime” because, like any good condiment, its magic only becomes apparent when paired with something savory.
My back’s acting up again, but I could not help myself. The mud crabs, see, they looked to go perfectly with the spring onion sauce that I served alongside grilled trevally the other day. And I was right too. Oh so painfully right.
I admit I do not eat enough greens. My mother and I are both on blood thinners, hers more aggressive than mine, so much so that her doctor has forbidden her from consuming green, leafy vegetables. Coupled with my father’s aversion to all but a few kinds of seafood, it limits my marketing choices considerably.
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.
The Philippines has the world’s oldest Chinatown district, which I have yet to set foot in. “Funny, lah?” our cabbie had said. “Now heah in Sing’pore you wan’ see Chan’town!” He himself was from Thailand and had admitted to the same quirk.
This is a dish that earns the “butter” in its name, although not so much in the prawns as in the accompanying egg floss. Amazing, really, considering how delicately fluffy and light that topping is. Definitely not the ideal thing to have the day before going for a lipid panel, ha-ha.
Just because you have the option to be lazy doesn’t mean you have to eat poorly. Of course, it also helps if you only have yourself to feed. Warm chunks of old brioche, add sliced tomatoes, cucumber, and onion, toss with vinaigrette (I used honey-lemon), garnish with basil leaves, and you’re set. Just count on hunger pangs a few hours on. Well, it’s your kitchen.
Did you know that the Olympic torch relay was first introduced during the 1936 Berlin Games? The Nazis saw it as a way to “connect” the Aryan race to classical Greece and its ideals; nowhere was this more eloquently put forth than in Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia (1938), a piece of propaganda that nevertheless remains one of the greatest motion pictures ever made. Is it any wonder people are fascinated by them to this day?
