Japanese Dinner

Tuna croquettes (マグロのコロッケ)
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Baby potatoes fried in duck-fat with gomashio ♥ Truffled foie gras
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Oyako Don (親子丼)
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Miso soup with acorn squash & ginger
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Greens with calamansi vinaigrette
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Homemade Japanese pickles — carrot; watermelon radish; ginger ♥
Winter vegetables in tare sauce.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The CC was "traditional" — American, Filipino, French, Indian, Italian, Japanese. (Thai couldn't make it sadly.)

Lamb chops with rosemary & anchovies
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Brussel Sprouts with parmesan & pomegranates
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Stuffing with chestnuts & sage
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Champagne with pomegranates
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"Fruit Salad" with apples, tangelos, pomegranates

Sri Lankan Fish Patties (Malu Paan)

One of the great things about "fusion" cooking is how seamless it can actually be.

Canned tuna is not exactly the most exotic of ingredients. It's quite boring and bourgeois and very middle-American. We're just going to use Sri Lankan magic to amp it up a few notches.

There's nothing new about Sri Lankan spices either. They're all there in India but it's the combinations that are new and as the CC has pointed out endlessly, this is just a combinatorial game.

You're most likely to encounter this stuff as "fish cutlets" — the mixture is deep-fried. However, a little dig underneath the surface and you see it also as "fish patties" and "fish rolls" and "fish balls".

There's also the ubiquitous malu paan which is the same fish filling inside a bread that is baked.

For the record, the paan is from the Portuguese pão and is the same as the Japanese パン (pan), the Filipino pandesal (bread with salt), and the Indian paav (a much more accurate transcription of pão.) The Portuguese spread the cult of yeasty bread baking all along South-East Asia.

What matters, of course, is the filling at the center of these concepts.

All the CC has done is to take the patties and stick them in a burger bun (which is vastly simpler) and achieves the same purpose.

Dinner is served.

Ingredients

1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp coriander seeds
1/2 tsp fennel seeds

1 tsp black pepper

1 sprig curry leaves
1 piece of fresh turmeric (or 1 tsp ground turmeric)
1" ginger
4-5 green chilis

2 large potatoes
1 can tuna

1 medium-sized onion (diced finely)

cilantro (finely chopped)
1 lime

salt (to taste)

Note 1: The combination of cumin, coriander, and fennel in the ratio 2:2:1 along with ground turmeric is often used in Sri Lankan cooking particularly in dishes involving fish. It gives it that characteristic "Sri Lankan" taste.

Note 2: While this mixture is freely available in Sri Lanka pre-made, the CC assumes that the majority of the audience will not have access to this. Also, if you're going to add black pepper to the final mix, you might as well grind it all together.

Note 3: Fresh turmeric adds a complexity that ground turmeric simply doesn't. The CC vastly prefers the former but feel free to use the later.

Recipe

Grind the spices to a fine powder.

Grind the ginger, green chilis, and turmeric to a paste. (If you grind the spices in a mortar and pestle, you can do this in the same step.)

Boil the potatoes in water until tender. Peel and mash gently.

Heat some oil in a pan. Add the diced onions and curry leaves and fry for a bit until the onions have softened. Add the spices and ground paste and fry till the raw smell has dissipated. Roughly 2 minutes.

Add the tuna from the can and break it up. Let it cook for 4-5 minutes. Add the boiled potatoes and mix it all well together.

(If you are going to deep-fry into "fish balls", make it drier than normal. Otherwise it should be wet enough to form into patties.)

Dump the whole stuff into a bowl. Let it cool for a bit. Pick out the curry leaves and discard. (They don't do this in Sri Lanka but then the leaves there are more tender than the ones found here.)

Add the chopped cilantro and the juice of one lime and crush gently using a potato masher. Mix and check for salt.

To make the patties, you can just either pan-fry them with some oil (which is the way the CC prefers) or for a fancier richer taste, do the same after an egg-wash and coated with breadcrumbs.

The Dark Side of Food

One of the most important concepts associated with food is that it is pretty much the only activity that we do daily. There's also shitting but that's the end result of eating.

We eat to live. Literally. Our bodies are just a mechanism by which food gets transformed into fuel for our brain.

Every other activity that we do daily is basically optional but not eating.

There are many consequences to this simple observation. We'll proceed from the relatively trivial to the relatively profound.

No, your mother's version of that dish is not the "best". It's not even "typical". It's probably even shit. Let's start with that.

It's just something you ate on a daily basis and hence established the basis on which you rest your (very shaky) foundation of food. You may even perpetuate that because it's the only thing that you know. If you want to break out of the arbitrariness of your birth, and it is extraordinarily hard to do so, then you must first accept this brutal fact.

Did you notice that the CC referred to your mother's cooking as "shit"?

Notice how the metaphor neatly connects to food. We work symbolically through food. Everything from "no free lunch" to "corny" to "sour grapes" to "dish fit for the gods" — Shakespeare made the last one up as he did also "salad days", "in a pickle" and "the milk of human kindness".

There are literally no languages that don't have wondrous phrases related to food. It's so elemental that it's taken for granted. Everything from "essere buono come il pane" ("to be as good as bread" = "as good as gold") to 羊頭狗肉 ("sheep's head, dog meat" = "false advertising".)

Since eating is literally the only mandatory activity that we do, it goes without surprise that it's the ideal mechanism of enforcing group conformity.

There are absolutely no religions in the world that don't have a mandatory taboo on some form of eating. Judaism has kosher laws, the various religions in India have strange forms of vegetarianism, Christianity imposed rules of eating on Fridays, etc.

Needless to say this is all bullshit. Humans are famously omnivore. What one group eschews another embraces. The Chinese would laugh at the Jews. The meat-eaters mock the vegetarians. Fish on Fridays? Please.

Notice the bullshit metaphor also works via food. The only thing worse than your own shit would be the shit of a bull.

These rules have nothing to do with food and everything to do with enforcing group identity. You define yourself not only by what you are but also but what you are not.

The group identity mechanism works via what the Japanese would call  内外 ("uchi-soto" = "inside-outside"). Follow the food rules and you're an insider. Don't and you will be brutally excommunicated.

Lest you think that this mechanism is "religious" in nature, the CC will be happy to pontificate.

Try arguing barbecue in the US. There's great barbecue everywhere from Virginia to South Carolina to Kentucky to Texas. However, none of these groups agree with each other. Everyone seems to think their own version is the "best" — an entirely laughable notion that any outsider (like the CC!) might care to disabuse them of. They're all great; they are just different.

So you see, your mother's version of that dish is not the "best". It's your own fierce form of enforcing identity. You are sticking by what little you know and even if your mother is a terrific cook, you are trying futilely to convince others that it is food fit for the gods.

The most famous example of this "food as identity" enforcement was the Spanish Reconquista — the re-establishment of Christian rule in Spain. The Arabs and the Jews were forced at sword-point to eat pork in public as proof of their "conversion" to Christianity. The Spanish then took their concept to the Philippines which had no particular ban on pork and hence turned the pig into a newly formed "religion".

The great ramen maker, Momofuku Ando, neatly also turned these religious identity rules to his advantage by casually observing that there was no religion in the world that didn't embrace the chicken. The first ramen noodle flavor was chicken. (He wasn't particularly interested in the vegetarians.)

Which brings us to the fact that vegetarianism is another example of an entirely post-facto-rationalized system erected on extraordinarily shaky foundations.

Humans are omnivorous. We will literally eat anything which you can plainly observe because what one country or ethnic group rejects, another will happily eat. Since they all can't be right and they're all equally human, it stands to reason that they all must be wrong.

Science backs it up in spades. We are omnivorous, and we definitely evolved because of our capacity to eat meat. Arthur Clarke famously points this out in 2001: A Space Odyssey and Kubrick gives this profound notion the utmost respect by filming it most memorably with a magnificent jump-cut.

We even have specialized meat receptors in our stomachs. Evolution at its finest. It gave us a powerful concentrated source of fuel and pushed our brains to much larger sizes.

Is there a point to this depressing discourse which is almost tailor-made to offend just about everyone? Why yes, there most certainly is.

If you really want to get to understand another culture, the ideal mechanism is through its food. Not only will you be wearing a different identity, it will make it far easier to discard your own. Discarding your identity is not for the weak. You will be left adrift and will be forced to fend on your own. The group enforcement mechanism will kick in dressed in full riot gear.

However, it's one of the few ways to throw off the arbitrariness of your birth (which you had no choice over) and get to enter into entirely new mindsets.

When phrased like that, you're looking at the greatest adventure in life. Needless to say, it's highly recommended.

Life's Ceviche, and Then You Die!

The empire of raw fish eating encompasses many realms but the basic idea is very clear. The freshness of the fish is paramount.

Even in older times, people were intuitively aware of the need to "sterilize" the surface of the flesh. They may not have not known about bacteria and clean workspaces but they had empirically figured out that the surfaces of the fish get contaminated quickly in a hot climate.

The solution was a quick bath of the fish in an acidic medium — lime, lemon or calamansi juice, various vinegars, etc.

Different cultures produced variants that lie along a spectrum —  sashimi and sushi (Japanese), kinilaw (Filipino) and ceviche (South America and then transmitted further via the Spanish Empire.)

They range between raw and "cooked" via acid. There's also some form in pickling in the mix.

Sashimi for all its vaunted "heritage" is only possible thanks to modern-day fish processing. It's only modern freezers that allow fish to be consumed safely.

Sushi is an older idea where fish were placed with vinegared rice and allowed to partially ferment to develop intense umami flavors. This older style of sushi is seldom found any more. In fact, even slightly recent forms of sushi (Edo-sushi) are rarely found today. The modern-style involves raw fish placed over mildly vinegared rice. (A full treatment of all the sushi styles would take up a book not a blog post!)

Ceviche is widely known these days. Raw fish is mixed with lime juice, spices, peppers, cilantro and sometimes all kinds of incongruous ingredients (avocado?) — this idea from South America spread across the globe with the Spanish Empire. The idea is that the intense acid "cooks" the muscles of the fish. It's easy to prepare to keeps easy with modern refrigeration. No wonder it's a hit at restaurants since it can be made ahead of time.

Kinilaw (or kilawin sometimes) is an ancient style of  Filipino cooking. Even though it's tempting to assume that the idea came with the Spanish Empire, the evidence overwhelmingly suggests it was an original ancient indigenous idea that the Spaniards encountered and recognized as being analogous to something they already knew.

In fact, for an ancient idea, kinilaw comes closest to the modern-day ideal of sashimi. The fish are bathed in an intensely acidic broth but they are consumed right away within seconds. Kinilaw connoisseurs can feel the toughening of the fish fibers as the minutes tick away.

It's served with rice. Rice is everywhere in the Philippines even for breakfast! The CC's passion for food has limits. More rice? Again?!? SIGH.

There are also added vegetables — radishes are classic but the CC bets that halved summer cherry tomatoes would be killer too from the umami. There is also lato but you can't find that outside the Philippines. SIGH.

As would the dried anchovies known as dilis in the Philippines although the idea of pairing dried and fresh fish would be looked upon as total heresy. The same idea with dried fish is a "separate" dish. SIGH.

A word about calamansi — these intensely flavored citrus limes the size of a small marble are unique. If you can't find them, the next best bet are the yuzu you find in the Japanese markets. If you can't find those, use a mixture of orange and lime juice but you will not reproduce the intensity and uniqueness of calamansi.

Kilawin is also made with cooked pork and goat. It's a pretty general idea and the general etymological difference between kilawin and kinilaw seems to be whether it's cooked meat or fresh fish. (This is a bit unresearched and sorta folksy, and the CC might be wrong.)

Given the sashimi nature of the dish, if you want great kinilaw, you must make it yourself. There is no other choice. At the CC's farmers' market, there is a local fisherman supplying two kinds of sashimi-grade seafood — tuna and scallops. Hence, the CC makes tuna and scallop kinilaw since that is what is possible outside of the absurdly magnificent "wet markets" of the Philippines.

Ingredients

1 shallot (diced fine)
1" ginger (cut into fine slivers)
2 garlic cloves (diced fine)
2 Thai bird-eye chillies (diced into very thin rounds — add more for spice)

1/2 cup coconut vinegar
6-8 calamansi (squeezed fresh)

salt (read below)
fresh black pepper

2 red radishes (cut into thin half-moons)

1/2 lb sashimi-grade tuna (diced)
6 scallops (cut into 4 half-moons each)

Recipe

Mix all the ingredients except the fish together. Taste. It should have an intensely sour taste but it should also be "rounded". This is hard to explain but easy to taste. You typically won't need salt but you might need a pinch. It should sit together for at least 30 minutes for the flavors to "blend".

Store the mixture and the diced fish in the fridge separately. Mix right before serving.

Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. The clock is ticking. Eat right away if you want magic.

The Rrrruff!! Guide to Eating

The CC is a big fan of the author James Hamilton-Paterson who has probably led one of the most picturesque lives among writers. He spent the 80's living on a remote fishing island in the Philippines — not some picturesque romantic "desert island" but one with real dog-shit on the beach which the "pigs ate for breakfast."

This amazing article was published in the Guardian on May 18^th, 1996. The Philippines banned "eating Fido" in 1998 but of course, you can make all the laws in the world but you can't so easily change eating patterns as the Japanese might tell you.

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I first woke up to how rigidly one’s own culture defines the edible when I spent a year in Libya back in the mid-sixties. I was interested by my initial revulsion to eating a live locust. Tripoli then was something of a hick town, many of whose older inhabitants were true sons of the desert. In the locust season these people could be seen sitting outside their houses, gossiping and idly eating the insects alive. As though shelling peanuts, they would strip off the wings and legs and pop the body into their mouths.

The day inevitably came when I was hospitably offered a locust. It was partly a tribute to public school food that I was able to eat it with stoical panache, but only partly. I was curious, and that helped. The taste was faintly greenish and suety, and I remember being anxious to chew it all at once before my tongue could detect any tiny movements of protesting mandible or pulsing abdomen.

The tradition of eating in a spirit of curiosity exists even in Britain. Eminent Victorian naturalists such as Frank Buckland and Vincent Holt did it all the time. Buckland ate anything, including exotic zoological specimens, and was the one who wrote “A roast field mouse – not a house mouse – is a splendid bonne bouche for a hungry boy. It eats like a lark.” Holt’s excellent book Why Not Eat Insects? (London, 1885) was full of satisfying dishes which any Briton with access to a garden could prepare, such as Boiled Neck of Mutton with Wireworm Sauce and Moths on Toast. Some years ago a reception was held at, I think, the Royal Geographical Society, at which cocktail sandwiches spread with Holt’s woodlouse paste recipe were served. “Better than shrimp” was the widespread verdict, and one might think a taste for it would catch on if only woodlice were conveniently available by the pint, like winkles. Wake up, Sainsbury’s.

I thought about all this on my most recent spell in the Philippines, which remains my favorite country bar none partly because it offers novel experiences of every conceivable kind with high good humour. Among these are gastronomic pleasures and challenges which leave one lost in admiration at human ingenuity and discrimination. Discrimination, because the recipes often rely on a palate tuned to fine shades of flavour that elude the untrained.

The supremacist reputation of French gastronomy and oenophily have tended to bludgeon us into thinking that tastes become cruder the further one gets from Europe. Yet it is not just Basque chefs who can identify from a beef stew the exact pasture where the animal grazed. Tea experts from Darjeeling to Japan will often identify a source of water from taste alone. Similarly, I discovered, a feaster in the mountain provinces of the northern Philippines can tell to the nearest day how long a piece of salted pork was packed in its earthenware crock simply by its flavour.

I had long since tried all the old party favorites in the village where I live: bayawak (a large, iguana-like lizard); dog in one guise or another; fruit bat; and, of course, that ubiquitous national favourite, balut. Balut are hawked in the streets of almost any town: hard-boiled duck eggs which have been fertilized and in which the embryonic chick’s tiny beak and little folded wings are well defined but still soft. Eaten warm with salt they are superb as well as nutritious.

This time, though, my travels took me some hundred of miles to the north, to the late Ferdinand Marcos’s home territory of Ilocos Norte. I remembered Libya as soon as I encountered pinaluksong hipon or “jumping salad”. The hipon are tiny live shrimp which leap and squirm on the plate. I was told they could be subdued with a squeeze of lime juice, but this seemed only to provoke mine. Maybe the juice stung their eyes.

The taste is wonderful, quite unknown to people who have never eaten seafood which has not been locked in ice since it died. They do twitch a little in the mouth: the effect is not unlike the crackling sherbet (Space Dust and Moon Rocks) British children could buy a few years ago.

When you eat jumping salad it is easy to believe in sympathetic magic, which claims that the soul or essence of the victim passes into the devourer – the theory which once gave us larks’ tongue pate. It made me feel sprightly for hours afterwards. Don’t be tempted to dust the shrimp, however lightly, with black pepper: it overpowers them. A judicious drop or two of fresh ginger juice adds bite. 

Like any other civilized people, Filipinos make a firm distinction between pet and pot. Times would have to be hard indeed before old Rover made the supreme sacrifice. Dog dishes are often referred to generically as asosena. This is a felicitous pun on the Spanish word lily (azucena), that deathly plant introduced for their cemeteries by the Philippines’ first colonisers. But in Tagalog aso is dog, while cena is Spanish for supper; so with a small triumphal act of semantics, an indigenous eastern dish flowers to outrage the European invader.

Up in northern Luzon one can eat a satisfactory array of dog recipes, though in the town of Baguio the meat is often sold from door to door already butchered, and gastronomes will tell you it’s important to know the breed you’re cooking, as well as its age, and vary your recipe accordingly. This is where a discriminating palate pays off, since true dog lovers will know whether the dish’s lead character was a dog or a bitch, especially one on heat. Of course puppies, like veal, need bland and delicate cooking.

Filipinos, like the people of many other nations, generally kill their animals by cutting their throats and keeping the blood as a separate ingredient. One reason for this may be that bloodless meat tastes less malansa – an impossible word to translate since English doesn’t recognise what it defines. Dictionaries usually give something like “the smell of fresh fish”; but that’s not precisely it, and both fish and meat may be described as tasting malansa. It’s interesting to discover a sensory perception that is simply not recognised by one’s own culture. Bearing this in mind (for Filipinos consider malansa unpleasant), there are half a dozen common ways of cooking dog – other than straight roasting over an open fire – and plenty of regional variations. It should be remembered that most rural Filipino cookery is of the “open fire” rather than the “oven” type, which gives a distinctive flavour.

Kalderetang aso (caldera, of course, is Spanish for cauldron): A classic dog dish. Garlic and onions are fried in coconut oil until brown, and reserved. The meat (chopped Chinese style, with the bones) is fried in the same oil until tender, then the onions and garlic are put back in and a cupful of soy sauce added. When that has bubbled and seethed enough, any or all of the following can be added: tomato ketchup, peanut butter, margarine, peppercorns, chili, pickles, potatoes, carrots. The ketchup and margarine give a debased and over-sweet taste and may safely be omitted. The peanut butter imparts a slightly Indonesian flavour. To this is added a bottle of San Miguel beer – one bottle per dog – and the whole thing allowed to stew gently for an hour. A fancy asosena might even include pineapple chunks. Adobong aso (adobo being Spanish for pickling sauce): This gets rid of any malansa flavour by a different method.

Here the meat is boiled first in coconut vinegar and soy sauce. It can be embellished into adobong aso sa gata by adding turmeric and fresh ginger and then coconut milk at the end. Depending on the quality of the dog, the flavour emerges rich and clear and muttony. 

Bulacan dog: In Bulacan Province they have a method of boiling the meat with tamarind, onions and garlic to achieve a good, sour, sinigang flavour. Then the meat is patted dry and fried in plenty of oil. It is served with a dip made of soy sauce, chili and ketchup. This is delicious, though I can’t recommend it for cat, which is a dry meat and easily becomes stringy and floury if fried as well as boiled.

I am now in a position to promote dog done alla Toscana, which I tried out in Italy last autumn after a huntsman foolishly shot his own hound. I roasted a haunch in the oven with olive oil, garlic and rosemary. My house guest considered it a great success. Sadly, owing to the lack of rosemary and olive oil in the Philippines provinces it would be hard to introduce this taste sensation there. I feel something very good might also be done with a stuffing of basil, prunes and lemon, held together with mustard flour. Certain Italian friends affect horror – as do some of my Filipino friends – but this is a received response and not based on experience. (Hypocritical, too, since dog meat is still occasionally smoked in the Italian Alps). It’s the old argument of the ayatollahs who hadn’t read a line of Rushdie. “Oh, taste and see,” is the reasonable response.

In any case, cane alla Toscana suggests a whole range of possibilities using exotic ingredients but in a European style. I am familiar with adobong sawa, which is python, and am eager to invent python steaks in Trieste fashion, with white wine and anchovy fillets. They would be fabulous. But alas, it is an idle dream. The most one could hope for here in Europe would be an occasional adder stew with shallots.

The Philippine provinces also have some unusual culinary specialities which, for sheer inventiveness, are a tribute to the human spirit. There is a dish from the mountain provinces that requires a chicken to be plucked before it is beaten slowly to death with spoons. The theory runs that the beating mobilizes subcutaneous fat as well as breaking the capillaries, and produces a flushed, creamy texture.

I have to report – regretfully, in view of the bird’s protracted demise – that in my case it was all for nothing since it tasted to me like roast chicken by any other name. Evidently my palate is still poorly educated. I gather the Ewondo of Cameroon use a similar method on plump dogs, which are tied up and tenderized for a day with small canes before they are cooked in a complicated nine-hour procedure. In any case, readers wishing to try for themselves this method of preparing a chicken are urged to use nothing heavier than one of those light wooden spoons from Habitat. The point is not to break any bones.

Also, the sensitive are advised that even in the cheerful outdoor context of tribal cookery the scene is not without its pitiful aspects. I suppose the bird might be given an anaesthetic; yet this would violate the no-chemicals rule.

Also from the north is pinik-pilkan, which I have yet to try. It, too, starts with a chicken being beaten to death, this time with its clothes on. Once dead it is briefly roasted in its feathers before being cut up and cooked in the normal fashion. A tasty combination is for it to be mixed with itag, which is belly of pork dried and packed in salt in earthenware crocks until it becomes maggoty. This, when cooked with the chastised hen, yields a greeny-greyish sauce described as “hearty”. The sum of its parts is apparently far greater than their individual promise.

Buro dishes, a Pangasinan speciality, are also something I have never eaten. Buro refers to a way of pickling in brine. One celebrated version starts with a stew of pickled vegetables which is allowed to cool before being fed to a dog that has been starved for a couple of days. The dog wolfs it down and after an interval, someone gives the animal a special blow behind the ribs with the edge of the hand which induces immediate vomiting. The regurgitated stew is caught in a bowl, re-cooked with additional herbs and eaten. The dog, which is more cross than injured, is rewarded with a meal which this time it is allowed to digest completely.

A friend who has tried this dish, as well as another version involves fermenting fish and rice in a crock for several weeks, says buro is something you need to acquire a taste for, like kimchi, the Koreans’ pickled vegetables. Yet another Pangasinan dish involves a goat being fed as much grass as it will eat before it is killed and cooked with the grass still inside. The grass-filled stomach is allegedly delicious.

There is a range of papaitan dishes from Ilocos (pait means bitter) which have percolated south to the extent that one can find workers’ restaurants in Manila specialising in them.

A good papaitan will present an interesting taste to a European who is otherwise accustomed to bitterness only in tonic water, or in vegetables like chicory. It is well worth trying and nothing like as bitter as it sounds – far less so than some varieties of Italian salad greens, for instance.

I returned from my trip up north to my home village to find somebody’s birthday being celebrated with an old favourite – a brilliant campfire version of duck à l’orange called patotin. The duck is lightly spit-roasted and then transferred to a large iron saucepan, in the bottom of which is a bed of the Chinese fermented black beans which come in tins. A bottle of Sprite is added (though Fanta is equally satisfactory) as well as a large lump of ice. The ice slows down the cooking – heat control is always a problem with an open fire. After an hour or so the patotin is ready.

Free range duck is delicious in any case; but what makes this dish is the fizzy-drink-sweetened black bean sauce.

It used to be obligatory to end a food article by quoting the 18th-century French lawyer and gastronome, Brillat-Savarin,“Dis-moi ce que tu manges, et je te dirai ce que tu es” (Tell me what you eat and I’ll tell you what you are). I haven’t the least idea what he meant. What kind of judgment was he threatening to make? A class one? Racial? Nationalistic? Economic? Religious? Or merely implying a confident assertion of his own bon goût?

However, if he meant,“You are a curious traveler, soon to be dead and happy to try anything once,” one might allow the old fraud some points. The only form of abuse I remember without pleasure from my schooldays is gastronomic. It is a reminder that we come from a culture which thought nothing of giving Spam fritters to impressionable children. We owe it to ourselves to put our cast-iron digestions to better use, and abandon taboo in favour of new taste experiences.

Any visitor to Manila wishing to do the same might make a good start by dining at Patio Mequeni, a restaurant near Remedios Circle in Malate. Nothing too outrageous, but an interesting range of regional Filipino dishes.

The deep-fried mole crickets to nibble with a cold San Miguel as one waits for the main course are highly recommended, and would have made Vincent Holt’s evening. They rustle agreeably on the plate but are still squidgy and peanutty inside.

Dog-fanciers, on the other hand, will have to ask around, since the restaurants they are looking for tend to lie outside the touristy areas. If you find a taxi-driver who pretends not to understand, you can convince him by telling him you’re looking for aw-aw (rhymes with bow-wow). You can’t get clearer than that. 

Weekend Menu

Three meals. Recipes to follow.

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"Shirred" eggs with snails, persillade & tomato paste

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Filipino Meal 

Kinilaw "Guisado" with bamboo shoots, dried shrimp & kale Umami rice
Salt pickles

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Sautéed pea-shoots with garlic & soy sauce Lobster ravioli in vanilla butter sauce

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The Adaptation & Appropriation of Dishes

The CC really wanted to include this article under that of The Naming of Dishes but there was a lot more to be said about this subject than just the naming portion so he decided to spin it off into its own little post.

The world has always been global.

We've had traders and merchants traveling the seas trading across countries and continents. It's not uncommon even today to find Roman coins in India when land gets dug up for some new project. The largest collection of gold artifacts in the world was discovered in Surigao in the Philippines in 1981 as part of an irrigation project. Its connections to ancient India of the 10th century is quite well established (Source: Ayala Museum.)

Along these trade routes flowed something else besides spices, grain and gold — recipes and techniques for recipes.

The most famous of these routes is undoubtedly the Silk Road over land but equally important were the three sailing routes. One across the Mediterranean from Alexandria (modern-day Egypt) hopping counter-clockwise, hugging the coast, all the way to Rome and also from Cyrene (modern-day Libya) and Carthage via Alexandria to Rome. The other was the route from the modern-day Gulf of Eden hugging the coast of the modern-day Middle East all the way down the western coast of India to Calicut (modern-day Cochin). And finally the extension of this route around the southern tip of India hugging the eastern coast of India to Burma and from there on to Thailand, Indonesia and the far East.

The most powerful of impulses that the traders appealed to was that of the "exotic". Anything remotely exotic is lapped up by any population as long as it is not too far off from their own conception. Whether these are colorful clothes or dishes or spices hardly mattered to the traders just as long as it could be sold for a profit.

Not knowing anything about a foreign culture — remember travel was hard before the last 75 years or so — local dishes with some exotic ingredient are just the ticket for a sharp businessman with a marketing strategy.

Exoticism sells. Nobody from emperors to laymen are immune.

This is not just a theory. We have evidence.

Queen Victoria was crowned the Empress of India in 1876 and the British went crazy over "anything Indian". There were "Indian-themed" parties and "Indian food" marketed by the East India Company. This is also the birth of the infamous curry powder — a non-existent concept in Indian cooking. This powder marketed globally is now ubiquitous in such far-flung places as France, Thailand, Singapore and Japan all thanks to the marketing of the East India Company.

In the 1950's and 1960's there was a worldwide craze of "Hawaiian". Needless to say the folks from Italy and India and Vietnam or even most of the United States for that matter had never been to Hawaii but "Hawaiian Salad" was all the craze globally. The exotic element was pineapple. Take a typical salad with a mayo-based dressing and toss in some pineapple to get the afore-mentioned dish. Needless to say this had about as much to do with Hawaiian cuisine as chalk has to do with cheese. There were "Hawaiian cakes", "Hawaiian cocktails", you name it! All with pineapple. It was all marketing, of course. (Yes! The "Mad Men" had their hands all over this. We have the ads to prove this.)

The relatively recent movement towards "authenticity" is not more than about 30-40 years old. Sure there were pioneers even in the 1930's towards an honest and detailed assessment of global cuisine but its mass adoption is a relatively recent phenomenon.

This trend towards exoticism isn't relegated to dishes. Ask yourself if you really know what entrée means. It means "appetizer" in French from the verb entrer — to enter. Same goes for hors d'oeuvres which means "first course" in French but has taken on the meaning of "appetizer" in English. (Appetizers would be des toasts — "nibbles" in French.) Clearly some things got lost just getting across the English Channel and if that's the case, you can just imagine how much got lost when recipes migrated longer distances in older times.

Every culture appropriates dishes. Whether it is the Sicilian adaptation of Arabic eggplant recipes or the Malaysian appropriation of Indian recipes (roti canai — canai probably comes from Chennai but the concept is, quite likely, from Kerala), or the Japanese versions of "spaghetti" and "ma po tofu", it's universal. You also have wholescale adaptations like the Hakka-originated "Indian-Chinese cuisine". Not to mention chop suey and the like which are American adaptations of Chinese dishes.

Italian cuisine is a particularly special case. There's the Italian-American branch but that, at least, can be understood as the reaction of new immigrants to a foreign land and its native resources. What no Italian would recognize is Japanese "spaghetti napolitan" (sic) or Filipino "spaghetti" (made with banana ketchup!) or even Indian "masala spaghetti".

It's lost in translation but why?

To truly master a cuisine, you must first internalize its grammar. And every cuisine has an unmistakable grammar. A set of rules, techniques and ingredients that work in a specific set of combinations and in a very narrow context (historically) to create a meal. Only after you know this grammar backwards and forwards can you truly break free into true creativity. Science helps.

Needless to say, mastering different grammars is insanely hard work. It's far easier for cooks to get a superficial understanding of some foreign cuisine, just use the local grammar of cooking instead of mastering a foreign one, and make something vaguely in that style. It would've been even more the norm in older times since travel and authenticity were so hard. In time, the dish gets appropriated into the local cuisine and becomes "native".

So how does one distinguish incompetence at rendering a foreign cuisine from a slapdash effort from a  deliberate rethinking/reworking?

The answer lies in a similar one from the world of art.

In order to break the rules, you first have to understand and master them.

Not many people know that Picasso was a master draftsman and painter. His early paintings where he copies the classical works and even the Impressionists and out-flanks them are not well known. It's only after complete mastery of older techniques that that he broke new ground both aesthetic and technical. The same goes for Matisse.

It always pays to master different grammars. Picasso "borrowed" shamelessly from African art, and almost all painters of that era borrowed extensively from Japanese art. So it goes with any artistic endeavor.

The bias should be towards mastery of grammar and technique. The "going beyond" follows as a natural consequence.

Halo-Halo

In today's absurd New York heat, the CC could really go for a halo-halo right about now.

The CC is not a big fan of desserts as many of you might have noticed but this one is different. It's textural complexity and visual delight lead many into temptation.

Two entirely different renditions demonstrate how generic and "meta" the recipe really is. The second is made with one of the best renditions of classical flan that the CC knows — remember that the Spaniards ruled the Philippines for almost 400 years so they've had a lot of practice.

Sinigang na halaan

This is a Filipino meta-recipe.

You can have Sinigang na X where X can be a large variety of different kinds of meats and seafood. The three classic versions for the X would be pork, chicken and bangus respectively.

A word about bangus (milkfish). It's a fish that was traditionally found in the sea but can grow in brackish water. It's one of the older examples of aquaculture — at least 800 years old in the Philippines. The fish are bony — very bony and it's a skill to eat them.

Sinigang is a sour clear broth with one or more sources of meat and/or seafood, a ton of vegetables, and one souring agent. There is a purity of flavor coming from one very clear-cut souring source which neatly dovetails into the umami of the broth from the meat/seafood.

It is traditionally eaten with rice. The rice is frequently topped with fried garlic and/or fresh scallions but these are all details.

There are traditional recipes but there are clearly two dimensions to the dish — what meat/seafood you choose and what souring agent you choose.

Filipinos love sour food. This is a necessity forced by a tropical climate and a few millennia of no refrigeration turned into a cultural trait. It's one of the few ways to preserve food in a tropical climate so that there is no wastage. There is a difference though. The souring agents are cooked through. It gives them a "rounded mellow" flavor rather than the aggressive hit of acidity that you would get without cooking. There has to be enough sourness to wake up the taste buds but not so much as to make it pucker and inedible.

The list of souring agents is endless — vinegar made from all sorts of sources (coconut, palm, sugarcane, pineapples, etc.), tamarind, calamansi, kamias, santol, green mangoes, green guava, star fruit, green pineapples, even leaves of various plants, etc. This list barely even scratches the surface of this subject. The Philippines probably has the longest list of souring agents of any culture that the CC knows about.

Needless to say the souring agents are not substitutable for each other. It does matter whether you are making a sinigang with a hearty ingredient like pork or delicate ones like seafood. Santol which has an astringent tannic component would be most inappropriate for a seafood sinigang while almost all delicate fruit-based versions would work wonderfully.

There are also some classic touches about the choices of vegetables in a sinigang — a starchy root (taro, banana hearts or "New World" potatoes), some "green protein" typically long beans, and some greens in many many different forms — everything from sili (chili leaves) to bok choy, kang kong, and malunggay. Needless to say once tomatoes were discovered and transferred to the "Old World", they became irresistible additions for reasons we have covered on the blog before.

The ingredients are rotated with the combinatorial game that we have talked about extensively on the blog — you will see corn, carrots, radishes, eggplants and all kinds of other vegetables in there. There's a pairing bias though. You see lighter vegetables with seafood and more aggressive ones like eggplants with meat which makes logical sense based upon the palate profile.

Make no mistake though. The star is the sour broth.

One last word about the use of Filipino-style fish sauce called patis. It's basically the same concept as the Roman garum or the Thai nahm pla but it's arguably different. The CC would have no trouble distinguishing it in a blind tasting. You could substitute but it won't be the same.

Just like in Thai recipes, you don't add salt to the dish. The salt comes via the addition of the patis. Additionally, for this recipe with clams, they will give off plenty of salty liquid. Traditionally, the patis is always added towards the end where you can control the level of saltiness. (It also adds substantial umami to the dish.)

This makes a perfectly good soup even in the absence of rice which is heresy as far as the Filipino world is concerned but the CC can live with that.

After all this long explanatory buildup, this is not a difficult recipe. It's what Filipino moms make when they are too lazy to make something. It's really so simple as to defy its excellence.

Sinigang na halaan

Ingredients

1 large onion (sliced)
1" ginger (chopped thinly)
2 pieces ginger (chopped thinly)
1 chili (sliced lengthwise - optional)

2 small tomatoes (chopped into large pieces)
24 clams
2 cups tamarind water (read below)
2 cups water

1 lotus root (cut into 1/3" slices)
2 cups long beans (sliced into 2" pieces)
4 pieces baby bok choy (tough bottom parts cut off)
2 sprigs chili leaves (sili leaves)

patis (to taste)
vegetable oil

Recipe

Note: Various markets (Filipino, Indian, Thai) carry frozen "green fruits" and both fresh and dried tamarind. They are perfectly excellent in making the various sour broths because the textural component is not important in the least.

First make the tamarind water. Heat up 2 1/2 cups of water with tamarind pods and bring to a boil. Simmer for 10 minutes. Let it sit in the cooling water. When it has cooled down, separate the water from the pods using a strainer. Discard the solids. Retain the tamarind water.

Heat up the oil in a sturdy pot. Add the onions, ginger, garlic and chili (if using) and fry for a bit till soft. Roughly 6 minutes.

Add the tamarind water, the water and bring to a boil. Add the lotus roots and let cook for 3 minutes. Add the long beans and let cook for 4 minutes.

Add the clams. Let them cook till they open. Roughly 8 minutes.

Turn off the heat.

At the very end, add the tomatoes, the bok choy and the chili leaves and let them sit for a few minutes to wilt. Add the patis to taste.

Serve immediately with rice (or not.)

Fusion

The CC has never been against fusion. How could he?

We are nothing but the sum total of all our influences and that is true about all cuisines.

Indian food, both classically and modern, is an outgrowth of Persian cooking and New World foods. Japanese curry owes itself to British traders and an American commodore. New Orleans cuisine is based on French and African models with innovations (shrimp!) pushed by Filipino workers. Brazilian food grows out of Portuguese and African models and is reinforced by the importation of Japanese agricultural workers — the largest Japanese-speaking population outside of Japan.

Spanish cooking is based on Arabic models. In fact, most of the words for food substances have Arabic origins — aceituna (olive), azafran (saffron), naranja (orange). The word "lemon" comes from the Spanish limón which in turn comes from the Arabic laymoon which in turns come from the Chinese limung (modern-day Chinese: níngméng - 柠檬.)

Chinese food owes itself to Persian models with the extraordinarily heavy influence of Buddhism from India. Japanese food is an import of classical Chinese models. Even the language is an import of Chinese (kanji) and Indian phonetic models (Sanskrit - hiragana and katakana.)

Americans brought beef to Japan and its influence owes itself to the British Empire which in turn owes itself, ironically, to classical Persian models. The idea that meat was the food of the "rulers" not the "ruled" is based in ancient Persian hierarchical ideas about cuisine.

In the native Americas, Mexican cooking was heavily influenced by the Spanish invasion. Filipino food is based on Spanish and Mexican food because it was administered by Spain through Mexico.

 

Ancient Greek and Egyptian cuisine grows out of Persian models and even ancient Roman cooking is unambiguously based on Greek and Egyptian models (thanks Cleopatra!)

The CC can go on forever.

If one wants to look at the truly ur-models then it would be the Babylonian and after that Persian models (wheat, barley) because that's where the crux of all political organization (and hence cooking) began.

So whither authenticity?

All food is ultimately fusion. It just matters how far you go back and look.

That's because humans have been trading with each other for millennia and good ideas have a way of germinating in other places and great ideas spread fast.

The traders were the original internet.

The Chinese traders taught the Indians how to steam circa the 10th century. The British brought curry powder to the Japanese and the French. The French brought classical technique to Haiti and New Orleans.

So anytime someone complains about "fusion", the CC just goes "Huh?!? What are you smokin'?"

For the record, even marijuana has Persian origins. Quelle surprise?

Ginataang Hipon

This is a superb Filipino dish. The CC has already written about it before.

Like all cuisines, it lives and dies upon the excellence of its ingredients.


Ingredients

2 fresh bamboo shoots
1/2 lb long beans (chopped into 2" segments)
1 cup corn
1/4 cup chilli leaves

2 cups coconut milk
2 tbsp patis

16 fresh shrimp (peeled)

Notes about ingredients

You can find fresh bamboo shoots and long beans at any Chinese grocery store. You can find the chilli leaves at a Filipino store or you can just pick your own if you have a chilli plant.

Patis is Filipino-style fish sauce. Use the Thai nahm pla as a substitute but be warned that they are similar but not the same. (The CC can effortlessly tell the difference in a recipe!) If all fails, bung in a crushed salted anchovy because that's what the fish sauce is actually doing.

Use frozen corn if it's not summer. These days coconut milk comes from a can. The CC would rather you make your own but do what you have to.

Fresh shrimp is non-negotiable.

Recipe

NOTE: You don't need salt in this recipe because of the patis. Just taste it and add some if needed.

The bamboo shoots must be sliced really thin using a mandoline.

Combine the shoots, long beans, corn and coconut milk and heat gently for about 10-12 minutes. Be careful because if you boil the coconut milk it will curdle.

Add the shrimp and chilli leaves and cook for just under a minute.

Serve with rice.

What a Wonderfully Odd Fact!

Sometimes the best part of an article is a throwaway sentence that illuminates so much.

The process of sun-drying shrimp was introduced to Louisiana over a hundred years ago by Chinese and Filipino immigrants who saw the shrimp-rich region as an opportunity for export.
 

How wonderfully amazing!

And then local cooks started incorporating the concentrated flavors of the dried shrimp into their gumbo!

Tortang Talong (Eggplant Omelette)

Summer means eggplant, and there's no better way to start off a Sunday than with this sublime combination of smoky eggplants and eggs.

Incidentally, the Filipino world is divided into those that add ground pork as a topping, and those that don't. The CC refuses to take sides in this particular debate. De gustibus ..., etc.



Ingredients

(serves 2)

2 eggplants
2 eggs

1 tbsp patis (substitute with salt)
oil

Recipe

Grill the eggplants until the skin is charred. If you don't have a grill (like the CC), stick them directly on top of the flame of the burner. Keep turning until it is nicely charred. Set aside.

When cool, the skin will peel off quite easily.

Gently smash the eggplant with a fork into a flat roundish shape (like the picture above.) Try not to puncture it. (If you do, don't worry too much. The eggs will seal it.)

In a separate bowl, crack the eggs. Add the patis and whip till blended.

Each eggplant will be dipped in this mixture and pan-fried.

Heat some oil in a skillet. When shimmering, add the egg-dipped eggplant. As the egg sets, you will need to gently wrap it around the eggplant.

Serve hot. (The topping above is Sriracha, of course!)

Ginisang Ampalaya (Sautéed Bitter-Melons with Egg)

This one is for the bitter melon lovers out there. (You know who you are.)

It's a straightforward Filipino breakfast dish. You sautée some bitter melon rounds with onions, patis (fish sauce), garlic, black pepper and eggs.

You can add ground pork, or not. You can add bell peppers, or not. You can add tomatoes, or not.

There's a lot of that "or not" in Filipino cooking.

Only constant here seem to be that it wouldn't make any sense to have a sautéed bitter melon dish without bitter melons, would it now?

Also, the eggs are key. They act as counterpoint.

The eggs were lightly scrambled because that's the way the CC rolls.

You may want to roll differently, or not.

A Summer Filipino Meal

The classic signature dish of Filipino cooking is the adobo.

In the great spirit of free-wheeling language that the Philippines subscribes to, and the fact that English loves verbalizing nouns, you can "adobo" anything!

Traditionally, it's been used for meats and seafoods but it extends to vegetables and all and sundry. It's one of the great meta-recipes of all time!

As with all classic dishes, if you query three people, you'd probably get thirty recipes so to invoke a broad generalization, you are looking at a cooked sauce of soy sauce, vinegar, bay leaves and black peppercorns reduced to various degrees depending on the dish.

Filipinos from the Bicol region even add coconut milk but this is considered "strange". A friend's father once stage whispered to the CC, "'Some' people even add coconut milk!"

Some people indeed do! Some strange people indeed!

As the Japanese say, 十人十色 (ten people, ten colors — different strokes for different folks!)

The salt (from the soy sauce) and vinegar betray the tropical origins of the dish. An acidic dish like that can be stored without any refrigeration because bacteria cannot grow in that environment.

You might think that the vinegar would give it a really sharp taste but cooking the vinegar gives it this smooth rounded mellow taste that's hard to describe but entirely brilliant. It sets your taste buds alive without that mouth-puckering taste that a tart vinaigrette might invoke.

For this summer meal, since the CC has access to really fresh seafood, a squid adobo was made. The sauce is finished off with the ink which gives it an iodine-y edge of the sea. (All of this is extraordinarily traditional.)

The side salad is another classic accompaniment - radishes, tomatoes and roasted dried anchovies in a slightly spicy sour sauce.

They definitely do love their souring agents!



Radish Salad with Anchovies (Dilis)

Ingredients

4 red radishes (or 1 small daikon)
2 tomatoes
4-6 tbsp vinegar (to taste)
2 tbsp patis (Filipino fish sauce)
4 green chillies (minced)
2 tbsp minced ginger
black pepper

1/2 cup dried anchovies

Recipe

Cut the radishes really fine. A mandoline helps here. Chop the tomatoes.

Mix together everything but the anchovies. This stuff can be prepared ahead of time. Be warned that the mixture will leach water as time goes by. (Yes, this is desirable.)

(The CC keeps the above mixture in the fridge for ready access. He loves this dish beyond reason. It makes the perfect "no-cook" nutritionally-complete dish for summer with umami out the wazoo.)

Roast the dried anchovies on a skillet. They will burn really quickly since they are really really flat and small so you need to be careful. Set aside.

Right before serving, mix the dried anchovies with the mixture above including the liquid. Serve right away.

Adobong Pusit (Squid Adobo)

(Source: Burnt Lumpia.)

Ingredients

1 lb squid (squid ink separated)
1 large red onion, sliced
6 cloves garlic
2 green chillies
1 tbsp minced ginger

1 tbsp vegetable oil
2 bay leaves
1/2 cup cane vinegar
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/3 cup water
8-12 black peppercorns

squid ink

Recipe

Clean the squid and separate the ink from the ink-sac. This is a messy process so proceed carefully. Cut the squid into rings and set aside.

(In a chicken adobo which doesn't have the blackness of the squid ink, the black peppercorns are kept whole but for a dish like this, you're better off grinding the peppercorns.)

In a pan, heat the oil. Fry the onions, garlic, and green chillies for a bit. Add the soy sauce, vinegar, water, black peppercorns and bay leaves. Let reduce for a bit.

(Your nose will tell you when the vinegar no longer has that sharp vinegary taste. There is a very very characteristic "adobo smell", and only experience can teach you this one at least until the CC invents Smell-O-Vision™!)

Bring to a boil. Take off the heat.

Toss in the squid, and squid ink. The heat will cook the squid just enough to be ready.

Bilimbi

They are called bilimbi in India or kamias in the Philippines. In fact, they are almost unheard of outside the tropical countries. They are used as a souring agent because of their tart taste.

They are just awesome either cooked or eaten raw with salt and spice. (Link.)

Bibingka

Rice cake made with fermented rice flour and coconut milk. It's very slightly sweet with a smoky flavor. It's baked in a banana leaf, and is best experienced literally out of the charcoal oven.

Pili Nuts

The CC had never heard of them before he went to the Philippines.

They have a very high fat content, and are completely unique in taste. The best way to describe it would be like the bastard love child of hazelnuts and brazil nuts.

They are a delicacy because they have an incredibly short shelf-life (that's because of the high fat content which would cause them to go rancid quickly in the hot climate of the Philippines.)



They are frequently blanched and turned into sugary desserts but they could equally well work in a savory dish like any other nut.

Needless to say, they are quite impossible to find outside the Philippines.

Radish Salad with Dried Anchovies (Dilis)

This is an entirely inspired dish that you are unlikely to find in any Filipino cookbook. That's because it's a simple side-dish that is unlikely to make it into cookbooks which tend to feature fancier stuff.

It follows the most primitive principles of food. Use fresh ingredients, and touch them up minimally.

The ingredients are simplicity themselves - white radish (daikon), tomatoes, ginger, patis (fish sauce) and vinegar, along with dried anchovies (dilis.)

Served with warm rice, it's the perfect comfort food, and yet texturally complex and nutritionally complete.


Ingredients

4 tomatoes
1/2 radish
4-6 tbsp vinegar (to taste)
2 tbsp patis
4 green chillies (minced)
2 tbsp minced ginger

1/2 cup dried anchovies
salt to taste

Recipe

Cut the radish into paper-thin slices. A mandoline will help here.

Dice the tomatoes roughly.

Mix all the ingredients together except the anchovies.

Mix in the anchovies right before serving (so that they remain crisp and don't turn soggy.)