Monday, a Firm "eating" with my partners, Japanese-til-you're-stuffed. Tuesday, Burgoo appetizers with clients, a Japanese-Filipino fusion late lunch/early dinner, loads of pizza and pansit palabok by the poolside near midnight. Wednesday, Chinese take-out for lunch, and a Chinese home-cooked dinner with the Board. Thursday, modern Filipino at Mesa. Today, Friday, yet another Firm lunch at Zong.
There really can be too much of a good thing. It's times like these when I long for my grandmother's home cooking; for the fond and familiar comforts of my childhood - the real simple stuff that only my Lola can seem to whip up. Unfortunately, my grandmother's kitchen is almost 500 kilometers away at the moment, and I have to rely on memory and trial-and-error to approximate her cooking.
After an unsuccessful call for assistance to my cousin (grandma was probably still asleep) and a little research on the net, I made a quick trip to Farmer's for some liver and kidneys (luckily available even in the late afternoon) and attempted to duplicate Lola's dinaldalem. While I was at it, I remembered I had some lean pork defrosting in the fridge, and which I'd intended to make into kinamatisan (Web research failed to turn up any information on the particular dish I wanted to recreate). And the results turned out to be pretty good, well worth the choice of turning back in Friday traffic instead of the originally intended night-out.
Abra Dinaldalem
Also known as igado to non-Ilocanos, this dish generally calls for peas, green and red peppers, and a thick gravy-like sauce. We did not grow up on this version - our dinaldalem is dry and unadorned, well-suited for long-term storage, with the meats cut in much smaller pieces than the common igado. My attempt, while not quite approximating the oily yumminess of my grandmother's version, turned out well - I wager it'll even be better after a day or so in the fridge (good luck to that, assuming it survives my brother's late night binge). Here goes:
1/4 kilo (approximately 1 cup) lean pork, cut in small, bite-size pieces
1/4 kilo pig's kidneys, cut the same
1/4 kilo pig's liver, ditto
(I missed getting pig's heart, and if I'd gotten that, it'd go the same way)
2 swirls Ilocos (dark) vinegar; red wine vinegar apparently is a good substitute
1/4 cup soy sauce
freshly ground black pepper
3 cloves crushed garlic
2 swirls cooking oil
Marinate the lean pork, kidneys, and heart in soy sauce and black pepper for 45 minutes to an hour; in a separate container, marinate the liver in the vinegar for half an hour.
Heat up the oil in a frying pan, toss in the garlic - when golden brown, throw in the pork and kidney mixture. Allow to cook for approximately 10 minutes, then add in the liver. Just let it sit there until the sauce is reduced and the oil starts to separate. Remove from heat when fairly dry. Best, like any Filipino dish, with rice!
Kinamatisan
This turned out to be even better than the dinaldalem. Nothing quite like the sweetness of sauteed tomatoes and onions - pretty much a sofrito - to complement tender cuts of pork. Too bad I didn't make a bigger batch.
1/4 kilo lean pork, cut in bite-sized cubes and boiled until cooked in 1 cup water, some salt and a few black peppercorns
2 medium tomatoes, sliced
1 small white onion, sliced
3 cloves garlic, crushed
2 swirls cooking oil
fish sauce (otherwise known as patis, nuoc mam, or nam pla) to taste
sprinkle of sugar (best substitute for MSG), optional
freshly ground pepper
Saute the garlic, onions, and tomatoes in the cooking oil. Drain the pork and add into the sofrito; allow to cook for 5 minutes. Season with fish sauce and sprinkle sparingly with sugar (or a dash of msg if you dare) and freshly ground black pepper. Serve hot with lots of steamed white rice.
So that's what was for dinner tonight - my Lola would be proud!
Abra Home Cooking: Dinaldalem and Kinamatisan
Oysterrific
One of the pleasures my law partners and I have shared since we first started the Firm together is eating - more particularly, eating out and eating well.
While the different schedules we keep have had us meet over the dinner or lunch table infrequently, Macky proposed a new Firm policy: a partners' meeting every week to discuss caseloads, clients' concerns, and the culinary offerings of whatever new restaurant we may be meeting at. Resolution passed, unanimously :-)
Macky has extremely good taste in food, so we invariably end up dining at restaurants of his choice (Kenneth, whom I meet up with at the office once or twice a week, is happy with whatever might be prepared by the staff - and for the most part, so am I). So last Monday, after a client call, Macky suggested Mr. Rockefeller (Steaks, Ribs, Spanking Good Oysters) in Greenbelt 3.
The well-appointed space is quiet enough for conversation, and the service is beyond reproach. Patrons that evening ranged from a big family celebrating a birthday in the segregated dining area, to office executives enjoying a beer and a smoke al fresco. Mr. Rockefeller, with its predominantly American menu, also seems to be favored by the expatriate and Western tourist crowd - at one point there were as many foreign diners (curiously, all men - but hey, it's a steak place after all) as there were locals.
To start off our meal, we had a platter of Original Buffalo Wings served with a side of Mr. Rockefeller's version of blue cheese dressing (I'm pretty sure it wasn't blue cheese but instead some milder, less pungent alternative), and, since Kenneth hadn't yet arrived, a half-dozen order each of Buddha's Heaven (fried battered oysters with Thai chili dressing) and Boursin Oysters (named after the peppery sour Normandy cheese they slather on the steamed mollusks).
The wings were deep-fried to perfection, with just a hint of spicy Tabasco-based sauce drizzled over them - none of that floury batter or heavy ketchup sauce concoctions that has you go into a state of surfeit after one bite. I would have happily been content with the wings alone to accompany our icy glasses of San Mig Light, but with the piece de resistance still to be presented in different manifestations, I grazed through the entire evening.
The service was impeccable, and extremely considerate. I'd only just suggested to Macky that he line his empty stomach with some amount of food before proceeding to the oysters, when the server presented us with two demitasse servings of French onion soup, precisely for that purpose. The oysters themselves were delish, though I wouldn't binge on either Buddha's Heaven or the Boursin due to the extreme complexities of the flavors. But between the two of us, a couple of each was enough to satisfy our curiousity.
Since Kenneth had arrived, another round of oysters was in order - this time, in a simpler variation: the classic Oysters Rockefeller (to "honor" the name of the restaurant, according to Macky), and the Fresh Oysters on the Half Shell (you could actually order Fresh Oysters, unshucked - but who has the time or the patience to do that?). But by that time, I'd had my fair share of the slippery morsels.
Apparently my two growing partners (both are almost six foot, with appetites as big as their physiques) had only just started their meal, so they went on to plates of Batangas Tenderloin steak served with sides of buttered corn off the cob and baked beans. The bovine pride of Southern Luzon was buttery, well flavored, and tender as a steak should always be. My grazing was getting the better of me, so I just ate off Macky's plate for a bit before ordering the Grilled Kielbasa with a side of cole slaw and fries (I only got through a quarter of my meal before I had it bagged for later).
In all, the meal and the restaurant left us extremely satisfied. At only about PhP1,000 (US$24) per person, including several rounds of beer and other drinks, it was pretty much - pardon me - a good bang for our buck. I regret that I didn't take any photos, but that's pretty much all we ate. :-)
Mr. Rockefeller is at the 2nd Level, Greenbelt 3, Ayala Center, Makati City.
Phone Number - (632) 757-4802.
Off With Its Head!
One of my favorite places to lunch is a small, non-descript eatery called Ulo-Ulo sa Veteran's (Project 6, in an alley behind the Veteran's Memorial Hospital). The specialty of the house: sinigang na ulo-ulo ng maya-maya (red snapper heads in tamarind-soured broth), which is served, steaming hot, in humongous proportions to droves of diners from all walks of life who pack the place to the rafters by the time noon comes around. To avoid the midday rush, I've always made it a point to either order carry-out (as early as 10:30 a.m.) or actually eat there way after the lunchtime crowd has dissipated (2:00 pm onwards), so it's really not a place to have a (comfortable) noontime meal on a whim.
Today, I decided to take a shot at making my own version of this comfort food favorite, especially conducive on this nice rainy day. I picked up a salmon head and some salmon bellies (I'll deal with them later this week) for a steal at Makro last weekend, figuring that they'd make a great sinigang - and I wasn't disappointed.
I have no photos as of yet (don't worry, I had the whole head chopped nicely such that I didn't have to stare back at a decapitated fish in my soup), but the whole experiment turned out pretty well. I like my sinigang slightly spicy, so aside from the green siling mahaba, I sauteed some chopped siling labuyo (bird's eye chilis) with tomatoes, onions, and ginger (which is not traditional in Tagalog sinigang, but works so well to add flavor and eliminate the lansa or "fishyness" of the salmon). Sinigang na ulo-ulo, with a side of bagoong na isda with more crushed labuyo and a mound of freshly steamed rice...a relatively healthy meal that's just super saraaap to the (fish) bones.
Sinigang na Ulo-Ulo ng Salmon recipe here.
Puttanesca and Chicken Cordon Bleu
Last Saturday afternoon, I put in some assisting hours at Landmark Education Manila's workspace. Since I'd be working through the day and heading off to an Introduction to the Landmark Forum afterwards, I brought some lunch - not just for myself, but, upon special request, for some of the other assistants as well. The meal turned out nicely: puttanesca and chicken cordon bleu (one of my new culinary challenges is to feed my friend and fellow Landmark graduate Chill, who doesn't eat red meat, on a weekly basis).
I learned to make puttanesca many years ago from my best friend Miles - it's a simple enough dish to whip one when company comes over (I remember her having a full-blown conversation with me while she was chopping and cooking away). 
On the other hand, chicken cordon bleu is something I'd never tried making before (link below goes to Tyler Florence's recipe, which I adjusted to what I had on hand), but I used to order it all the time at Full House, one of our old college haunts on Katipunan Avenue. However, their version had pure butter in it, instead of the traditional ham and cheese, so when you cut into it, a river of yellow creaminess would inundate your lunch plate. Gooood stuff.
Puttanesca and Chicken Cordon Bleu recipes here and here.
Heaven on a Stick
I stepped outside a climbing gym's party last night for a few minutes, and espied a fond and familiar sight: a fishball vendor!
I have loved those little deep-fried pieces of piscine-flavored batter (cornstarch and flaked fish according to a recipe) since I was knee-high and strictly forbidden to buy the stuff off the streets. Then again, I've never been one to listen to the "You can't" command, which I guess explains my predilection for fried fishballs and reckless stunts. At any rate, the parental injunction was not without sound basis: it wasn't the fishballs per se that were the problem, it was the sauce. Those three magical and mysterious jars of sweet, sour, and spicy condiments of varying degrees of heat were potential breeding grounds of nasty transmittable diseases, such as hepatitis or cholera. In fact, a friend of mine from law school came down with a bad case of hepatitis A just as the Bar exams were underway - fishball sauce being the culprit. Wait, that's an unjust accusation; it's not the actual sauce that's to blame, it's the abonimable phenomenon of the *shudder*... double dip!
And thus it was with some trepidation that I approached the unfamiliar vendor - I only usually get my hit on the UP campus where sauce sanitation is zealously guarded by vendors armed with slotted spoons. But the temptation was too much to resist, even if I did find out much later (after single-dipping and ingesting two and half sticks' worth) that Manong Fishball also peddled his goodies on campus and observed the requisite sanitary standards.
So anyway, I had a fine time conversing with the toothless vendor about the economy of scale, the rising prices of gas and fishballs (50 centavos each!), and the peculiar physique of rockclimbers. By the time I left the party, and as I'd foretold, he'd gone home, his stock and sauces sold out.
I think will never make fishballs from scratch because, though the recipe seems fairly simple, you can get a big bag to stuff yourself with for a little more than PhP50 (US$1.20) at the nearest Filipino supermarket or Asian grocery store. I like the good old fishballs - those slightly squashed grayish discs - as opposed to the modern pristine-white squid or cuttlefish balls, or, good grief, those nasty chicken balls. And I personally enjoy the balls fried to a crisp, dipped once in sweet-spicy dip and a second time in the vinegar-chili-onion jar. The only thing that used to suck about eating fishballs at home was that I couldn't quite replicate the sauce (maybe I couldn't quite get the right proportion of bacteria or virii? Heh heh), but today I hit paydirt after just one try. No need for two sauces with this one; it came out exactly the way I like it, just as if I had it off the street. Even the household help, who I fried up a whole batch for, couldn't stop saying "yumm."
Fishball sauce, street-style, here.
Fidel
I recently saw the documentary 638 Ways To Kill Castro, and I found the man fascinating. Not that I agree with the way he runs his country, or with his ideology, but boy, you gotta admire the guy for his cojones. The dictionary should have a picture of him under the entry "underdog."
Anyway, I will not go into the state of US-Cuba relations or engage in a diatribe on American foreign policy. I will instead, in the spirit of magnanimity and world peace, bring the nations to the dining table with my take on a familiar recipe attributed to Castro's beloved island state.
Arroz a la Cubana was one of the first things I learned to cook, especially since it's one dish I really enjoyed eating as a child. I still love how the combination of all its elements - the fried saba, a spoonful of egg, the meat-raisin-potatoes-peas mixture - results, with a mouthful of steamed white rice, in one perfect bite. There is simplicity in its complexity, if you catch my drift.
Today I took the old recipe out and gave it a little spin. For all the ingredients involved, it's nevertheless an extremely affordable dish to prepare - I used to serve it up to the streetkids at the mission (anything with sauce to go with mounds of rice always stretches the budget). One of the little innovations I made under those constraints was replacing the sunny-side up egg with slices of hardboiled eggs instead (it's much prettier to look at too).
For this particular version, I used a pack of those frozen vegetable mixes that had corn niblets as well as peas and carrots. And, since I was going for a little twist, I diced up the saba bananas instead of the traditional lengthwise slices and deep fried them to lend a little more crunch into each lovely bite (plus it saves you the hassle of cutting up the banana with each spoonful). The result was scrumptious - the photo a lot less so. I'm learning, I'm learning!
So, ladies and gentlemen, I give you Arroz a la Cubana version 20.08, which I have lovingly christened...Fidel!
Recipe for Fidel here.
Munggo a la Cebu
Just flew in from a weekend in Cebu, and I now I have to deal with the "excess cargo" of that brief adventure. As always, our meals were abundant and extremely satisfying - to the point that I had to frequently order a hot cup of water or tea to digest everything properly (i.e., matunawan). I was there less than 72 hours, but I think I ate enough to last me 'til Christmas!
Anyway, one of our favorite things to eat in Cebu is the outrageously delicious munggo soup at Chika-an on Salinas Drive - a divine symphony of lentils and vegetables simmered in a hint of coconut cream. Totally TDF.
Today, I had another failure to lunch - or to breakfast, for that matter, so I decided to whip up a nice dinner of munggo guisado, adopting some of Chika-an's flavors and doing a little experimentation of my own. In honor of the Queen City of the South, I threw in a tribute to the famous Tabo-an dried fish market: sauteeing onions, garlic, and tomatoes with dried dulong instead of the traditional hibe (dried shrimp) and topping off the whole thing with pan fried dried and shredded squid. Eat with a "main course" of tocinong pusit and a smidgeon of rice...busog gyud! Pass the hot water, please.
Munggo guisado a la Cebu recipe here.
(Can you tell I was playing with Photoshop? Because it's raining outside - perfect munggo weather - the indoor lighting conditions were crummy...and so too the photographer's skills :-) )
