Before I knew what swakî (collector urchin) looked or tasted like, I was already acquainted with its supposedly salutary effect on the male libido. “Pampa-utoooog!” we would bellow in reply to some ambulant vendor’s announcement. As a young boy, it never occurred to me that I would have any need of it.
When Jenny mentioned that she needed to get some black pepper, I seized the chance to pitch for whole over her usual pre-ground.
“Is there a difference?”
“Only a world of it.”
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.
Every culture has its own idea how to nourish a woman who has just given birth. Here at home, the traditionally prescribed dish is soup of lean white fish. Contrast this with the Cambodian post-partum diet of hot and spicy (also salty) food, plus alcohol — no fruit of any kind, since fruit cools the body, hence supposedly bad.
The problem with working from a recipe is when one lacks a frame of reference, in this case, first-hand experience. From what I had read about scallion pancakes, they are supposed to be flaky. Well, I know scallions, and I know flaky — how hard could it be? After trying three different recipes, none yielding anything near that textural profile, I was about to call it quits when I wondered if Kenji had anything to say on the subject.
A torrential rain fell as we were having dinner. I thought, There goes tomorrow’s fish. Earlier that afternoon, we had checked out the Bato market a town away as there was nothing locally but mackerel tuna and milkfish, only to find more of the same there. Worse, the tuna looked like they had spent too much time in the icebox.
The box had my name on it. Problem was, I did not remember ordering anything. “Maybe it’s for someone else with the same name,” offered the delivery guy. “With the same address?” I said. “Unlikely — take it back.” “Are you sure?” “No. Wait.” I dialed my mother.
“It could be a bomb,” she said. “Whatever happens, don’t open that box.”
Not too long ago, my mother took out some Chinese chorizo from the fridge, went to attend to something else, and when she came back to cook the sausages, they were gone.
A late-morning visit to the fish market yielded only saminán/talakitok (trevally). It was bitterly cold last night, discouraging fishermen from going out into an otherwise calm sea, thus the empty stalls. Indeed, the saminán was the only fish that looked fresh.
Every now and then, you come across a recipe that flies in the face of what you have been taught about cooking. Such is Roy Finamore’s broccoli cooked forever, in which the vegetable cooks for two hours.
