A Page from the Journal of an Aspiring Food Writer

Pasig City

May 26, 2009

It has been three years since I left my job in a broadcast network. And today, on the way home from Antipolo from a pictorial with the Cake Queen of the Philippines, Ms. Avelina Florendo, I could not help but look back at the places I’ve been to and people I’ve met whom I never would have seen or encountered had I stayed in my job and sat behind a desk.

CCS student, Julio Lapuz, Jr., Cake Queen Avelina Florendo and the writer

Yes, despite having the perks of a corner office and the oft-imagined glamour of working in a TV network, being on my own has turned out to be really good! I can do things on my own time, go after my dreams and live the life I want to live – even without a regular paycheck!

This year alone, I was able to work in a real restaurant with real chefs in UNO Restaurant on Tomas Morato Avenue in Quezon City. That was such a glorious experience, reminiscent of Bill Buford’s bestelling novel, “Heat,” where a journalist goes on a real-life quest to work in New York’s 3-star Babbo, an Italian restaurant owned and operated by Mario Batali.

What was even better was I got to write about the whole experience in my first full article as a food writer in FOOD Magazine. The writeup will be out this June. And then right after, in July, there’s another writeup that FOOD assigned me to do – on the life of the Cake Queen of the Philippines, a most interesting personality in the Philippine food industry as she just happens to be the guru of cake decorating in the country. The greatest of them all -- Heny Sison, Reggie Aspiras, Penk Ching, Jill Sandique plus the owners of the most popular bakeshops in the country – Goldilocks, Red Ribbon, Julie’s, Dexter’s, Gemmae’s plus a whole slew of them – all trained under Ms. Florendo! Her story as the undisputed Cake Queen of the Philippines comes out in FOOD this July.

If I had not decided to leave my desk three years ago, I would not have met her, worked in UNO, got up the time to go to Bacolod last year to infiltrate the kitchens of Manokan Country and to write about my father-in-law’s great-tasting La Paz Batchoy, which I wrote about and eventually received a prize for!

And, had I not opted out of my cushy job, I would not have had the chance to learn how to cook, formally in a culinary school, and to create new dining experiences for my friends and family. I never would have found the time to actually do my own herb garden in our little backyard – a newfound interest and so totally out-of-character and unthinkable for someone like me three years ago.

It has been a whirlwind of activity these past few years. There has not been a dull moment and though I have my share of woes as a “businesswoman,” all in all I am happy. Letting go has led me to meet more and more interesting people and nothing compares to the experience of learning from their own experiences. I've gone full circle -- being where I first started in my career which is writing, but now, writing about something totally different, new and exciting to me -- food!

Yes, there is life after you’ve lived out most of your dreams! 

Prawn and Pomelo Salad

When you live in a tropical country where fruits abound, you have got to make the best use of them. They were made for eating in this ultra-warm weather -- mangoes, bananas, pineapples, and yes, the pomelo. Citrusy, bitter, and with a soft crunch to the bite, the pomelo cools and refreshes. This is probably why the Thais have made use of this fruit in one of their best-selling starters. Enough to fill you up or whet your appetites and prepare you for their spicy soups, curries, laksas, and the melee of flavors in their cooking.

Here's a PRAWN & POMELO SALAD Recipe that we've tried and tested and makes for a light, healthy, crunchy and delightful starter that is also easy to prepare:

Ingredients:

1 med. size pomelo, peeled and divided into wedges

10 pcs. medium-sized prawns, peeled and deveined

1 pc. chicken breast, cooked and flaked

100 g of beansprouts

1 tbsp. torn mint leaves

2 tbsp. coriander leaves, minced

3 tbsp. ground peanuts (unsalted)

2 tbsp. minced green onions

3 tbsp. toasted coconut flakes 

Dressing:

3 tbsp. lime juice

3 tbsp. Thai fish sauce

2 tbsps. brown sugar

1 small, red chili, sliced to bits

Flake the cooked chicken breast and set aside. Season the prawns with some salt and pepper and lightly pan-fry until it turns pink in color. You may also simply steam them for  a few minutes for a healthier option. It also keeps the prawns juicier that way. 

Quickly blanch the beansprouts in boiling water and then transfer to a bowl of iced water to stop the cooking. 

Divide the pomelo into wedges and further into bite-sized pieces. When all your main ingredients are in place, simply toss them together in a bowl or plate. 

Mix the ingredients of the dressing in a separate bowl. This should have a sweet, salty, sour and a slightly spicy zing to it. Drizzle the dressing on the pomelo and prawn mixture and you now have a pleasing, appetizing meal to start off a Thai or oriental feast.

Pair with a tall glass of lemongrass iced tea and it's sure to sweep the dark clouds away!

KULINARYA's Fresh Lumpiang Ubod

I've continued road-testing recipes in the book KULINARYA, now considered a national bestseller as it has become a favorite gift to friends and family, especially Filipinos living overseas. I've handed out a few copies of the book myself - to my "inaanaks" or godchildren for the new wives to work their way into the hearts of their new husbands thru the stomachs, and to relatives abroad who long to cook Filipino dishes the authentic way. At the very least, the photographs in the book would be enough to appease their tummies that might have gotten homesick for their traditional Filipino cooking.

So, off to another recipe out of the cookbook which is the most accurate by far that I've read and tested. This time around, since I'm catering for a nephew's one-year old daughter on May 17, I tried KULINARYA's Fresh Lumpiang Ubod (Coconut Pith Spring Roll). The trick to making this dish is to have really good coconut pith - the "ubod" - which means you have to get "ubod" that stays crisp and does not become chewy after cooking. I was able to get fresh "ubod" some from Makro which was already julienned into fine strips (that cut away part of the work for me). KULINARYA suggested that the "ubod" be soaked in some water with a tablespoon or two of fresh milk. I did that to make sure the "ubod" stays fresh. 

The recipe as printed in KULINARYA: A Guidebook to Philippine Cuisine

Of course, the all-important step in the recipe is to make the fresh lumpia wrappers as you can't use the store-bought kind. The lumpia wrapper must be soft yet it should hold the fillings well. It's best to cook the fillings first since you need to let it cool before putting inside the wrapper. 

KULINARYA's recipe for Fresh Lumpiang Ubod is quite simple. The filling was a mixture of sauteed garlic and onions, to which about 100 grams of ground pork is added. After sauteeing the ground pork, peeled shrimps are also sauteed. This is seasoned with some salt and pepper and then finally, the "ubod" (strained from the water and milk mixture) is added and again, sauteed for another 10 minutes or so. As a personal touch, for color, I added julienned carrots.When the filling is seasoned to one's taste, you can strain the cooked mixture and let cool. 

Meanwhile, you can do the fresh lumpia wrapper, quite tedious since you have do it one wrapper at a time. I used a 10-inch non-stick skillet, swirling 1/4 cup of the batter made of flour, cornstarch, egg, salt, oil and water, to make a perfect wrapper, although I was expecting something with a yellowish tinge. The other recipes I read used more eggs - maybe that's the trick to adding color to the wrapper. Nonetheless, the wrapper I made was soft and held the fillings well. 

Lastly, you need to make the sauce - a sweet, thickened soy sauce-water-sugar mixture. The recipe calls for caramelizing the white sugar first and then adding water and soy and thickening that with some cornstarch mixed with water. 

Finally, you can assemble the spring rolls! One lumpia needs one lettuce leaf on the wrapper, plus the filling and if you want, you can put in the ground peanuts and some of the sauce before wrapping and rolling the lumpia. Now, to serve, you just drizzle the sauce on top of one lumpia and add ground peanuts and minced garlic. Voila, you have a merienda delight that's fresh, healthy and bursting with a sweet, salty, garlicky flavor. A Filipino spring roll that rivals fresh spring rolls of our Vietnamese and Thai neighbors!

Halohalo ala DEC

Nothing beats the heat during a scorching hot summer day than a big bowl or glass heaping with sweetened tropical fruits, beans, gelatin, strips of macapuno or langka, a spoonful of ube haleya or ube ice cream with leche flan and pinipig packed with crushed ice, milk and sugar!

In the Philippines, that mix-mix mixture is called "halohalo." No self-respecting person from this country, young or old, male/female or any other sex, can say that he is a true-blue Pinoy if he does not know what "halohalo" is and what it tastes like. No summer in this tropical country can go without one dipping a long spoon into a tall glass and doing an up and down movement with it to make the ice melt, mix the sugar and milk down to the layers of sweetened saba, red beans, sweetened chickpeas, langka strips, kaong, gelatin and whatever else is there in the glass of "halohalo." 

There's simply no substitute for the experience of mixing the blend down to a cool, sweet, colorful, milky sensation that pops in your mouth:  bits of fruit mixed with crushed or shaved ice, then off to a soft piece of jelly to a pasty bit of red bean or chickpea. And if you ordered the "special" with a scoop of ice cream that's usually ube flavored, then you just turned your day around. "Halohalo" is bright, colorful, sweet, cold - what's there not to like? 

These days, most everyone goes to Razons of Guagua for a glass of "halohalo" with just three ingredients: sweetened saba, macapuno bits and leche flan, for P75 per glass. There's even an urban myth that goes around -- that these ingredients were made every night by the grand matriarch of the Razon clan back in Guagua. I almost believed that until I found the Razons commissary tucked somewhere in Pasig. Some even say that the secret is in the milk that is used, fresh carabao's milk. But really, it's only evaporated milk sweetened with condensada. The only honest thing about Razons' version is they reinvented it by using shaved ice instead of crushed ice. THAT makes a whole lot of difference! Take note, CHOWKING! 

Razons has made its mark in the "halohalo" world here in the country. But more variations of the sweet iced dessert are cropping up. It was my daughter, the aspiring pastry chef, who introduced our family to DEC's Halohalo. To most, DEC's is a Chinese deli selling kikiam, siomai, siopao and other Chinese foodstuffs. But this summer, we discovered that they made really good "halohalo" with a mixture that outnumbers Razons' magic mix: red beans, buko strips, saba, round gelatins, different types of jellies, leche flan, ube, and instead of pinipig, the mixture is topped with crunchy cornflakes! There is no secret ingredient - just evaporated milk mixed with condensada and of course, shaved ice. 

Since we like our "halohalo" packed with color and flavor, this is our hands-down choice for the best "halohalo" in town. We found DEC's at the ground floor of the Provident Building at the back of OB Montessori Greenhills. And for just P60 per glass, it comes with a disposable tall spoon and a huge straw so you can sip the goodness of the milk and "halohalo" bits at the bottom -- no need to turn a tall glass over onto your mouth to drink the milk! 

Paying Homage to Her Royal Highness : ALING LUCING

I had meant to write this article after going on a culinary day-tour that ended in a pilgrimage to a culinary shrine, Aling Lucing’s Sisig in Pampanga. Upon reaching the eatery one rainy afternoon, it certainly felt like setting foot on hallowed ground.

Having heard so many stories about the award-winning sisig place, I was determined to find out why the 80-year old culinary icon was befitting the title of royalty bestowed on her: Lucia Lagman Cunanan - SISIG QUEEN. What was the secret behind her tasty take on the crunchy mix of boiled and chopped bits of pig’s cheeks, ears and snout? What set her apart from all of Pampanga’s and the nation’s sisig-churners, enough for her to be hailed the Grand Slam Winner of the 2005 Sisig Festival in Angeles City over 176 competitors? 

Of course, my personal curiosity over Aling Lucing’s success came from my desire to improve on our own sisig dishes served in our food establishments. But after reaching Aling Lucing’s restaurant to unravel the mystery behind her sisig right where it all began, I stood there amazed at the Queen’s tenacity, her own passion to be the best among her fellow Kapampangans who are all known to possess high-grade culinary genes in their DNA. She is proud to be the best in a league of her own, dishing out what is the most flavorful showcase of the “pambansang pulutan.”

I have not had the chance to sample the other sisig recipes of Pampanga or those that competed versus Aling Lucing’s Sisig. But having a spoonful of freshly prepared sisig in her store raises your eyebrows, widens your eyes and makes you believe that the judges had good reason to laud the dish and heap awards on it.

Aling Lucing’s pork sisig, the original kind served in her restaurant since 1974, had just the right salty-crispy taste. Its crunchiness came from grilling the pork over hot charcoal and then chopping it to bits before it is mixed with mashed chicken liver and minced onions. It is laden with MSG which enhances the flavor of the dish and then sprinkled with calamansi juice and served with a dipping sauce of soy and vinegar with chopped onions and siling labuyo. It is also served on a sizzling plate to keep the dish hot, allowing the diner to scrape the scrumptious crunchy bits that cling to the hot plate. 

It has been two years since that trip to Aling Lucing’s in Pampanga and exactly a year after her tragic death – a stabbing that has been left unresolved. Her death was made even more tragic by nasty jokes that alluded to her having the same fate as the main ingredients of the dish that made her famous. Certainly, Aling Lucing was herself famous as the “rich and famous” park their SUVs alongside the humble eatery near the railroad tracks to have their fix of the most devilishly-delightful pulutan ever created.

Today, sisig is no longer just bar chow. It has evolved to being a regular viand, eaten with hot steaming rice and sometimes even with a side dish of vegetables. Too bad, Aling Lucing did not live long enough to see her legacy being continued. But time will tell if the passion that set Aling Lucing apart from the rest will be carried on by her heirs and yes, her franchisees. For there are Aling Lucing stalls now in foodcourts and some dine-ins in the metro. It is up to us to see if they live up to the memory of the one who is to be known, perhaps for all time, as the QUEEN OF SISIG. 

Long live the Queen! 

Kapeng Barako - Proudly Our Own

Ever since the opening of a new road going to Tagaytay from Sta. Rosa, Silang Road has literally been the road less taken by motorists on the way to this cool and breezy city south of Manila. Back in the days, it was on Silang Road where most of the good stops have been for pasalubong and for lunch or dinner going back to Manila.

While there are fewer passersby and motorists, some of these local stores have remained standing as Tagaytay’s testament to fresh and good quality food. One of them is a small coffee shop, Nature’s Original Kapeng Barako, which continues to make coffee that is truly Filipino and undoubtedly, the best.

My family and I have always dropped by the quaint store owned by Mr. and Mrs. Jun Dimapilis. We were first lured by its “vintage” look from the outside and the huge words “Kapeng Barako” and “vegetarian” written on the store’s frontage. We’ve never seen those two words used in a single sentence or on the façade of just one store.

The doorbell chimes loudly as one enters the tiny store where upon setting foot, one is amazed at the number of lovely knick-knacks, saucers, cups, coffee makers that are on display. One’s eyes wanders at the shelves where you can check out a Star Wars’ Darth Vader telephone, a plastic panic button that customers can actually press, dessert plates that bear Monopoly signs and so much more. All these capture your attention and you suddenly forget what you came in the store for: coffee.

The store is run full-time by the Dimapilis family who regale customers with information on how to brew your coffee, where they get the beans and how they have been in the coffee business for a long time in this part of Cavite. It turns out that the family once supplied coffee to Rustans but that bigger competition with snazzier packaging had gotten most of their business from the company.

Small as the business may seem, Nature’s Original has their mission and vision – just like big corporations – to which they remain true to this very day. All the coffee they harvest are processed by the family to maintain the quality. And over the years, they have begun to offer not just the Kapeng Barako which is widely-known in Amadeo and Batangas, but nowadays, Kapeng Alamid or the coffee beans from civet cats which foreign coffee connosieurs buy at steep prices.

They also have several variants now including hazelnut coffee, rice coffee and other blends of Arabica, robusta and more. What draws us to Nature’s Original is also their ginger tea or “salabat” which comes in powder form and is already flavored with muscovado sugar. One teaspoon in a cup of hot water is enough to give you the calming soothness of ginger with a sweet taste that goes down well in the stomach.

Everything that the store sells is natural or pure in essence. They use our own ingredients and products that are harvested within the area or in their own small farm or from suppliers of natural and vegetarian food.

While waiting for your beans to be ground and re-packed or while getting your orders set, Mrs. Dimapilis is quick to offer customers some coffee or tea – for FREE. In a small corner of the tiny store, you can enjoy a sip of our very own Kapeng Barako which leaves you wondering why you even go to Starbucks at all. For here in this road less taken in Cavite lies a store that enlivens the spirit and gives you a new sense of wonder as it also sticks to a path that it has vowed to take for over 20 years – to bring Filipino coffee closer to the hearts of our own people and to awaken our souls to the many wonders that nature offers. 

Batchoy: The Soup that Lives up to its Name

This article that I wrote last year placed third in the 2008 DOREEN FERNANDEZ Food Writing Awards. An extra bonus that came after my experience in Bacolod last year. It was definitely one of the highlights of my life. Hopefully, more blessings to come in 2009!

What kind of people would name a dish after “FAT?” Yes, only the Filipino can! We have named a best-loved comfort food after the very thing that would clog the arteries of U.S. FDA authorities in a heartbeat. Its very name is enough to send your cholesterol level soaring to new heights.

“Batchoy” is the vernacular for fat and to some, slang for “fatso.” No one would want to be called “batchoy” or “tabachoy.” It  has same ring as “baboy” or swine. The Wikipedia says that the dish traces its name to the Hokkien term “ba-chui” or “pieces of meat. But to us, “batchoy” stands for food indulgence of the highest order. And no Branding Guru will ever get us to change its name to sound less threatening.

The popularity of the “batchoy” dates back to the 1940s in Iloilo’s La Paz Public Market where an enterprising butcher decided to create a dish out of the nasty bits left over from main cuts of meat. The dish has since evolved and with the array of added ingredients, it has reached a level of perfection that sends you straight to heaven once you finish an order of the “Special” – a really big bowl with the works: a fresh egg, three heaping spoonfuls of chicharon bits plus snippets of chicken liver and pig’s brains, and a killer dose of MSG.

However, to our family, the “batchoy” has a different meaning. We owe our life of comfort to this humble noodle dish. In the 1970s, my father-in-law set up a “batchoy house” in Bacolod after several failed businesses. He opened a hole-in-the-wall eatery in Burgos Market. Soon, his “batchoy” enabled him to set up a small dine-in in a more populated area along Smith St. and the rest, as they say, is history.

The brisk sales of “batchoy” in that small diner sent my husband to the Ateneo. I was waxing sentimental about this when I made a trip this year to Bacolod to witness how “batchoy” was made in my father-in-law’s eatery, Super Batchoy, one of the last few bastions of batchoydom in Bacolod. It stands quietly on a busy street where at 3:00 p.m., students and workers fill up the place for a jolt of steaming hot “batchoy.” It is their daily ritual. It not only quiets the rumblings of one’s stomach on a rainy afternoon. Interestingly, its rich mix of ingredients leaves one with a sense of yes, wellness.

Making “batchoy” is never easy nor cheap as I discovered. The cooking starts in the wee hours of the morning. You need to clean the pork innards very well under running water for an hour or so while you boil chunks of beef bone marrow and pork bones in a vatful of water and let it simmer for several hours to extract their fullest flavor for the broth or the caldo.

Generations of Ilonggo cooks have many well-kept secrets to make the broth burst with flavor. Super Batchoy’s very own Roger, who has been with us for over three decades, has his own take on the dish, ranging from what type of oil to use to sauté the garlic and onions (not to mention what kind of onions to use), how much ginger and sugar to put, plus the blending of a special type of shrimp paste known as “guinamos” to the mix of meat strands and innards.

To the uninitiated, “batchoy” is just a bunch of thin yellowish noodles served with hot broth. But to true-blue Ilonggos, there is no substitute for a very special type of pancit miki bought only in Bacolod. The variety sold in Manila is way too salty. Roger swears that the miki can keep for days in the chiller after it is blanched.

For a perfect order of “batchoy,” ladle some steaming caldo on strands of miki at the bottom of a large bowl topped with slices of pork and liver. Garnish with chopped spring onions and then the kicker: a generous sprinkling of crunchy chicharon. But to make the dish really “special,” a whole egg is cracked at the side of the bowl. The egg is cooked by the boiling broth and mixed with the rest of the ingredients for a truly sumptuous meal.

In Super Batchoy, the “batchoy” comes with pan de siosa, a soft, sweet bun that blends well with the saltiness of the broth. A bite of the pan de siosa followed by the warmth of the caldo in your mouth will make you want to go down on your knees to thank the kitchen God up above who led us lowly mortals to the discovery of such a spectacular pairing of food.

My father-in-law beams with pride whenever a customer finishes the soup first, leaves noodles at the bottom of the bowl, and then asks for more soup for the noodles. To him, that is the ultimate testament to the goodness of his caldo. He then gladly obliges the satisfied customer with more hot caldo PLUS a sprinkling of more chicharon! On a rainy day, Super Batchoy can serve up to three hundred bowls of the super hot soup!

BATCHOY – even in a plain styro cup, its aroma arouses the hungry beast in you. In an office, it makes you drop whatever you are doing and drift to where the seductive smell of goodness is coming from. Yet to those who find comfort in a steaming bowl of soup, there’s no better way to treat life like there’s no tomorrow than with a bowl of “batchoy.” For despite its last name, LA PAZ BATCHOY, with all its killer richness, does live up to its first name – LA PAZ. It is wellness in an instant, aptly bringing to our restless stomachs a sense of calm and peace or “paz,” the town after which it is named. A way to celebrate life through simple indulgence.