Sunday, May 3, 2009
Prawn and Pomelo Salad
Thursday, April 30, 2009
KULINARYA's Fresh Lumpiang Ubod
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Halohalo ala DEC
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Paying Homage to Her Royal Highness : ALING LUCING
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.
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!
Monday, January 12, 2009
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.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
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.