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.
Even as we were eating lunch, we talked of other food. This time, Luchie was waxing nostalgic about the things she missed back home in Cebu. And then she mentioned the kesong puti from Danao. “Wait,” I said, “you have a carabao center right here!”
Doing research for an upcoming trip, I came upon mention of a dish of blood cockles (a species of ark clam) in tamarind sauce. Having always wanted to try litób but with no idea how to cook it — all the vendors could suggest was soup — I was intrigued. As is oftentimes the case, that sent me off on a tangent, and thus the dish here.
My friend Ghia keeps bugging me for crispy fried kangkong. “Babes,” she says, “when are you going to make me some?”
“About never,” I tell her. “Go ask somebody else; you have a restaurant, for crying out loud.”
We share our floor in Cebu with someone who perfumes the hallways with the acrid frying aroma of what I assume is some treat from a distant homeland — Korea, maybe. “They ought to be ashamed of themselves,” Ma mutters. I agree, and more. “We should pay them back in kind.” Imagining: buwad nukos — dried squid, the kind that comes with ink sac and happens to be stinkiest of all.
Although I prefer mung bean stew rich with coconut cream, there is something to be said for the lean version. I had made its reacquaintance at a carinderia in Libagon, along the Maharlika Highway (or AH26, Philippine component of the Asian Highway network). Flavored with shredded bulis (bluefin tuna) and chock-full of kalamunggay leaves, the dish was comfort food at its best. That, and the pork ampalaya.
After two rounds of the market, I finally settled for saminán (trevally, talakitok to you Tagalogs). Just a slice, mind: it’s a fish my father does not appreciate enough. Or, lately, at all, so as long as it was at a disadvantage, I decided to try steaming, of which Pa is also obviously not a fan.
It has come to the point that vendors packed our purchases together. “Hoy, tonto,” I told the fishmonger’s assistant the other week, “I said we were taking half each of that fish head. You billed us separately, did you not?”
Presenting, live, my all-time favorite mollusk: anínikád (plicate conch). Witness how that particularly restless specimen at center slip-slides into the fateful path of the tumbler-cum-scoop. Whoops! Game over.
Kiwi float, anyone? I am far from being fancy, just trying to use up a bunch (Hayward variety, better known as fuzzy) that were starting to turn mushy in the refrigerator. They were supposed to go into a salad but Jenny forgot about them. A float was the only recipe that came to mind, and by that I mean the easiest and cheapest. Recreating the aforesaid salad would have meant buying the rest of the (numerous) ingredients, and I really only wanted to get rid of the fruit.
The Manchurian belongs to the cuisine of India — likely some early Chinese expatriate’s adaptation of a dish from his distant homeland. Here we would call it for what it is: sweet and spicy vegetable.
I had a full plate last week, what with a birthday in the family, and then our high-school homecoming. I only cooked for the former, but the latter was definitely more grueling; it has been 30 years, after all, and there were gatherings all over town: a batch party, another for elementary classmates only, smaller reunions of old cliques. By grand alumni night we had had our fill of each other’s faces. And catered food (not to mention lechon). On my way to the affair, we passed vendors at a corner sidewalk. Bolináw! I called home to have someone check if they had tugnos, the small kind.
It took me a while to become comfortable with the idea of eating lukót. Here was a case of a little knowledge working to my detriment — or, to be apt, discouragement. If you don’t know it yet, lukót, despite appearances, is not a seaweed or some kind of marine plant. It is, in fact, the secretion of donsol (sea hare, a species of sea slug).
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?
“How do you make your adobo?”
Note, if you will, the possessive pronoun. Pancit, pinakbet, pizza — hardly anyone asks how I do mine, just how they’re made. With adobo, everyone has an opinion, a version. It’s common and personal at the same time.
“You go out there,” a friend of my father’s once related, “and you think you’re the surest thing ever. ‘Mayor,’ people everywhere start calling you, and you say to yourself, This is it. I’ve got this in the bag. Then voting time rolls around — and… nothing. Where was the love?”
Girl, for your consideration; I hear you’re looking to move up in that crazy world. You got cheek, though — I have to give you at least that, no thanks necessary.
Oi. I think I’m getting the hang of this. Saw dolphin shells at the market again, this time with a different vendor, and they were already scrubbed clean. My initial experience with taktakon was promising enough (if a little vexing) to whet my curiosity. Really, I wanted to do right by them. At ₱25 a pundok (batch), the risk-to-reward scenario could only be in my favor.
Cephalopod lovers had a field day at the market yesterday. Octopus, cuttlefish (above), and squid of every size and color — and incredibly fresh, too. At one stall, the tile counter was covered with dark-spotted nukos laid hither and yon, and the display shimmered, I kid you not. The squid were changing colors in a desperate bid to camouflage themselves, survive that alien environment. It was both fascinating and poignant to behold. I took a video, telling myself those creatures had no feelings, only instinct.*
I try to rein in my biases, keep an open mind. It’s not always easy. Some fish are downright ugly, slimy, or strange. Not to mention dirty. I mean, just look at those shells, encrusted with rock, sand, weeds, and whatnot. It took an impassioned appeal from my suki to make me glance their way. “I know they look straight out of a horror movie,” she said, “but I assure you they’re good.”
It was raining when we left home. Halfway to Padre Burgos, however, the sun was out. It did not come out, mind you: there was no rain at all, and we could see right across Sogod Bay to the other side of the mainland (it is curved, hence the bay) and Panaon Island next to it. Beautiful.
