Thai cucumber salad presents wonderfully, but I must admit I have never really taken a shine to it. I love cucumber and I love chili. Together, however, I find that the latter dominates. When garnished with peanuts, well, I come close to hating the dish.
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.
It is said that there is a fiesta somewhere in Bohol province for every day there is in May. The joke is that you could hop from one place to the next and never go hungry — indeed pay for a meal — the whole time.
“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.
Darkness falls too soon these days. It is only 5PM but the fast-fading light tells me it is already time to make dinner. That means I have to hit the market even earlier.
Pork face salad is a bizarre reason to travel 90 minutes for. Everyone else goes to Baybay for barbecue. I am, of course, referring to those joints that once lined the pier there, some of which, like Alcuino’s,* have found a permanent home along 30 de Deciembre Street. The story goes that they use a milk marinade, although my new friend Cocoy insists that it has more to do with the meat being only the freshest and that definitely doesn’t hurt — it even ties in nicely with the kilawin.
“Manang,” I tell the help, “can you get me some of that, uh… you know, that leaf from the garden?”
“That that?” Later: “You mean this?”
“That.”
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.
I used to wonder why the tuberous root of sweet potato is kamote while its leaves are called ganás. Now I know better. Ganás, like talbos (Tagalog), actually refers to the young leaves/tendrils of a climbing vegetable, so it is more proper to say “ganás sa kamote” — those bunches of tangkong and alugbati being ganás, too (and I anal).
