The HEAT is on at EDSA Shangri-la

Last December 22 the EDSA Shangri-la Hotel in Ortigas Center formally launched its new coffeeshop, HEAT. At the helm of the marketing and opening festivities for the new restaurant was EDSA Shangri-la's new director of communications, Neil Rumbaoa, the guy who launches Shangri-la's thousand ships - restaurants, resort facilities and what else - with aplomb, redefining the way things are done in the industry.

The Shangri-la hotels are known for understated opulence - lavish and luxurious, yet not brazenly so, and certainly not garish. HEAT is so Shangri-la, but goes beyond lavishness, almost to the point of sumptous excessiveness. And more.

What else can you say about a coffeeshop with eleven stations all in all? There were fives, and sixes, and just recently there was a seven. But eleven?

I for one was floored, overwhelmed beyond words. Speechless. And immobilized. My mind could not keep up with all that I could see - food that stretched on beyond sight. For a moment there I thought I was just going to give up and leave without tasting a single morsel, while my companions rushed on to attack.

But no, I just needed several minutes to process the seemingly insurmountable task. Took a single step. And lived to tell the tale.

Heat stands for Healthy Eating, Amazing Tastes, as well as extending to its cooking properties and ability for creation, as when gold is extracted from ore, or when the universe came into being with heat or fission. Going on, heat is also passion, for food, and other exciting things in life.

One surely needs to be passionate about food when eating at HEAT.

The buffet is in one single, seamless line which turns several corners in zigzag fashion, starting with the Chinese roasts and dimsum station, the Asian station, continuing on to the pasta and pizza station, then going on to the Filipino station, the carving station, the Indian station, the Mediterranean station, and the noodle station.

On a U-bar are the Japanese station and the appetizer and cold salads station, while another bar contains the desserts - fresh fruits, a creperie, dark chocolate and white chocolate fountains with skewered fresh fruits and all other sweet things, an ice cream scooping station with all the toppings you could wish for, a halo-halo bar with gargantuan glasses, and more sweet confections in glasses as well as tarts, cakes and other pastries.

My college orgmates turned lifelong friends and I caught the last leg of the restaurant's dry-run on a blazing night. It was decadent. We requested a four-cheese pizza, and were told there is a five-cheese pizza. Yet it was surprisingly homey, the tastes evoking home-cooked goodness and comfort. The pizza was crunchy and thin, with nary a drop of oil, and it recalled for us our countryside tramping days in Italy. Same with the fabulous risotto, which could put any famous local Italian restaurant to shame.

And oh boy, the sinigang na baboy. It was the unanimous favorite of the night, even for the seven-year-old lad eating with us. With just the right sourness that spoke of painstaking work with real tamarind and no shortcuts. The adobo was very Filipino, as well. What other hotel coffeeshop could be more Pinoy (if there is a permanent Filipino station at all) than this?

As it was a cold night, I started with the noodle station, wanting some hot soup. Just in that station there were numerous choices, with three kinds of soup (including laksa), noodle choices, fresh seafood and meats, greens, and an endless array of condiments and garnishing to suit any taste.

The beef in red curry and garlic chicken in plum sauce were both excellent, as was the salmon and porcini salad. And the smoked salmon with capers that I love. I couldn't resist the bright offers of ice cream from the scooperie. Good thing I gave in, because the vanilla and strawberry flavors are to die for. More gelato than ice cream. And the cheesecake, well, both Makati Shangri-la and EDSA Shangri-la are now my two favorite cheesecake outlets. They make the same crumbly yet moist and only subtly sweet cheesecake that is light as air but richly rewarding.

As for the rest of the food, I could only eat so much. We got into a discussion about how such debauchery and self-indulgence should be outlawed. But isn't eating, along with loving, the one thing that should be done with reckless abandon, or it isn't such at all? I think such an overflow of choices is meant to satisfy the most number of people who have widely varying tastes and preferences. Who do not necessarily eat to excessiveness, but would be grateful for finding a home away from home, albeit a very luxurious one.

Which is what Shangri-la is known for. And what would keep the hotel chain at the top of its class.

Minimalism: the anti-thesis to Heat.
[Caesar Salad and Steamed Asparagus].

Luxury, but with a friendly price. Breakfast is for Php880++, lunch Php980++, and dinner Php1,080++. Same with other five-star hotel coffeeshops, but with more value for money. It's certainly worth going back to again and again. If only to be able to taste everything.

HEAT Restaurant
EDSA Shangri-la Hotel
1 Garden Way, Ortigas Center
Mandaluyong City, Philippines
Tel : (63 2) 633 8888
Fax : (63 2) 631-1067
Email : esl@shangri-la.com

Read about my second visit to HEAT here.

Party Menu, Part II

The spaghetti al tonno I served at our office Christmas party was accompanied by, besides the pizza pockets, a light and refreshing salad of mesclun greens, ponkan (Mandarin oranges) segments and crumbled feta tossed with a few drops of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. A small bowl on the side contained Chippy corn chips for those who like an additional crisp factor in their salad, in lieu of pecans or walnuts to make it more "local," providing the Asian touch.
Dessert was a party-sized version of my mini Cream-O Cheesecake, decorated as usual with cappuccino, cream and chocolate Stikkos on top. Plus mango float - double layers of crumbled chocolate cookies, sweetened cream, scoops of ripe mangoes, more cream, and topped with chocolate sprinkles.

Other cheesecake variants:
Black Forest Cheesecake
Langka Cheesecake
Mini Cream-O Cheesecake

Blog Party #5: Vegas, Baby! - Indulgence

The last blog party theme for the year is indulgence, Las Vegas style, cooked up by charming Stephanie at Dispensing Happiness. Today appropriately calls for a party in the Philippines, because the nine-day misa de gallo (dawn Catholic masses, literally translated from the Spanish "mass of the roosters") has started, which brings on the official (frantic) countdown to Christmas.

Might I say, thank you, Stephanie, for giving us this once-a-year opportunity to live it up and indulge in our favorite things. Us who are tasked with the unending job of feeding others, of hosting parties and not being able to partake of the fabulous food because of sheer fatigue at preparing and cooking.

Girls, we deserve it. So here's my indulgence.

I am so enamored of creamy desserts, not necessarily sweet, but richly, artery-clogging creamy. For this party I prepared two creamy desserts - refrigerated cakes to ease up on the preparation. First one is my version of the Oreo Cheesecake, made with Cream-Os, the local version of Oreos, which I prefer because they're crispier. So it's apt to call it Cream-O Cheesecake. Oreo cheesecakes cost an arm and a leg in cafes and specialty bakeshops, which makes me glad I can make my own, at less than half the price of a store-bought one. It's easy to make, just requiring a good food processor. In the past I used to buy the sandwich cookies in foils, remove the filling, and crumble the cookies with a spoon. Good thing I discovered that baking stores sell crumbled Cream-Os, so now I just pour them.

For the blog party I made individual, mini Cream-O Cheesecakes in ramekins, adorned with a Stikko. When the mini cheesecakes have been out on the table for a time and have turned soft, the Stikkos can be dipped into the velvety cream cheese filling in lieu of a spoon.

Next I have a mango parfait, or mango float, because it is now mango season in the Philipppines. Mangoes are my all-time favorite Philippine fruit. Although I can be very happy with just their simple yet delectably heavenly selves on the table, I try to incorporate them as much as possible in dessert concoctions, even inventing ones in their honor.
I learned to do this because every mango season (summer and end of year), we are swamped with kaings and kaings of mangoes which ripen all at the same time, filling the entire house with their sweet, heavy scent. And even though we have mango shakes and mango slices with every meal and in-between meals, and we give kilos and kilos to the neighbors, the entire family and extended relatives still cannot keep up with the the ripening mangoes before they rot and blacken. It's not even possible to sell them because by that time mangoes have flooded every nook and cranny of the province, at give-away prices.

This parfait uses the left-over Cream-Os, layered with sweetened cream, scoops of ripe mangoes, more cream and crumbled cookies, and topped with chocolate sprinkles. Chocolates and mangoes is a marriage made in heaven.

For drinks, I would like to introduce the Philippines' patron saint, St. Michael, a.k.a. San Miguel. San Miguel Corporation is actually a gargantuan food, beverage and packaging company with manufacturing facilities in other South-East Asian countries, China and Australia. But it started as a brewery in the Philippines in 1890, producing a dark, strong pilsen that has survived over a hundred years and is still the beer of choice for most Filipinos, even those who have been abroad for a long time.
This beer bears the company's name, and even though SMC diversified into ice cream, deli meats, canned goods, dairy products - most of which are also market leaders in their own segments of the industry - when you say San Miguel what will come to mind for most Filipinos is San Miguel Pale Pilsen.
For me, no other beer compares to San Miguel. It is full-bodied, the bitterest of all beers I've tasted, yet leaves the sweetest, caramely aftertaste halfway though the bottle that is so much anticipated, yet not wholly acquired. A tease. Because the sweetness - it's just there, at the back of the throat. I can taste it, but cannot bring it forth.
But I have over-indulged myself. I do not drink anymore, that was more of a reminscing of my carefree past. For now I just made faux beer (dyed water or gel candles) with wax candles as beer foam on top, in real beer mugs. They make a great party decor when lighted, and can double as give-aways when the merry-making is over.
* I actually made these for my significant other's birthday party, the number of beer candles representing his age, lighting them and making him blow all beer candles like a birthday cake.

Other cheesecake variants:
Black Forest Cheesecake
Langka Cheesecake
Cream-O Cheesecakes

Spaghetti Al Tonno

I've served this during two parties for different sets of people, the first set included my long-time friends with whom I have been to Italy numerous times, partaking of the local cuisines throughout the length and breadth of the country. I had to mention this because spaghetti al tonno is described as "the classic Italian combination of pasta and tuna," in this dish enhanced by a parsley sauce. It debuted with lukewarm reception by the said friends.

I certainly do not recall us eating this kind of pasta in situ in Italy, whether in the countryside or in cosmopolitan Milano or Roma. What I particularly remember is a pasta with a sauce of olive oil and anchovies - more for the fact that it tasted like spaghetti drenched in my indispensable Pangasinan bagoong (salted, fermented fish sauce) than for its spectacular taste.

But I liked spaghetti al tonno, never mind that it was not appreciated by my core of foodie friends. So I threw caution to the winds and served it again at another party. As it was, it was more like throwing caution to an ipo-ipo, a twister, because this very party was my first attempt at catering.

Of course, the truth is, I actually volunteered myself. It was supposed to be our office department's monthly get-together for birthday celebrants. Previously, my officemates and I were getting wary of the rising costs of catered food. Since it has become the tradition that the honorees will not contribute to the food costs, their share to be distributed to the rest, we have been taking notice of the considerable dents these regular parties are causing to our bankbooks. Especially since we get exempted from the contributions only once a year. So, bold that I am, I took it upon myself to provide the food and table settings sans mark-up, just charging actual costs.

To be honest, I'm not really that brave and it actually took me a year just to gather enough courage to say, very softly and very matter-of-factly, that I'll cook for this month's party. From then on, though, things got out of hand. When the head saw my menu, she decided it was worthy enough for our department Christmas party, albeit an early one, as well. For weeks I was stressed out planning, surveying available ingredients, comparing prices, ditching dishes and frantically searching the net for new inspiration. All these was aggravated by the abovementioned friends rolling their eyes and saying, how could I volunteer and bring so much stress upon myself?

But life is kind and full of surprises. And generous sometimes. Because everybody, as in everybody, in the office liked it. Actually liked it. And have been begging for the recipe.

So now I see my officemates with different, enlightened eyes, and have resolved to be kind to them for the whole of 2006. And because it's rating time, with Christmas bonuses dependent on the rating scores, I have also resolved to rate them perfectly.

Of course, I'm only joking. I'm generally kind and friendly, though more shy than anything else, for the most part of the year.

Anyway, I have been analyzing things, and maybe the difference in the reception of this pasta had something to do with presentation and menu planning. The first party was more of a potluck held at my house, and there was no consideration whatsoever about how the food complemented one another. There was another pasta dish, besides. On the second party I had complete control of everything, from conception to menu planning and down to actual cooking. The pasta was more or less the star of the buffet table. I get some bravado every once in a while.

This dish calls for processing together olive oil, fresh flat-leaved parsley, crème fraîche, tuna and anchovies. I substituted half the parsley with fresh basil and then some, and since I cannot find crème fraîche I used cream cheese instead. I also used flaked tuyo tonsoy (the local dried salted fish) that have been fried previously in lieu of anchovies to give the pasta a local touch. This is tossed on spaghetti, with black olives or capers as garnishing.

In the first party I processed everything together, but the next time around I left out the tuna, to top the pasta as well as served in a small bowl at the side for those who love the fish. A good alternative to tuna is sardines in oil (Spanish/Portuguese style).

This is usually served with warm crusty bread, but I served it with toasted, store-bought pita. I filled the pita with tomato sauce mixed with Italian herbs and topped with crumbled kesong puti, our local mozzarella made from carabao's milk, to approximate a pizza. I used pita because it was convenient - I could toast the pizzas at home then carry them stacked to the office without any mess - and because it provided an excellent thin crust that is very close to a real Italian pizza, without my having to bake them.

My officemates sliced the pita into halves, but everybody had seconds anyway, so we ran out of it 10 minutes into the party.

Lasang Pinoy 4.5: Chico Lassi

I grew up amongst chico trees in my paternal grandparents' expansive orchard. During chico harvest time, which is around the rainy season extending to the end of the year, truckloads of the mature but still unripe fruits are picked, scrubbed to get rid of the sticky white sap that oozes out of the freshly picked fruit, then sold, ready to ripen.

Of course, my grandparents leave more than a few for the family's consumption, leaving them lying down on the cool kitchen floor to turn sugary sweet in about a week. They are ripe and ready to eat when they are soft enough to halve open by pressing the fruit with your fingers without force, revealing several black seeds. The flesh should be the color of golden chocolate, almost bronze.

But as with all fruits, they are best eaten when ripened on the tree, halving them right under the chico leaves and delving in the sweet, grainy flesh in the shadow of the tree which bore it. In situ. No need to wash, as you scrape the soft flesh with your teeth to the skin, then throwing it down to the soil to fatten it up for the next flowering season.

The chico trees are harvested of fruit before full ripeness, though, to prevent a rainfall of ripe chicos on the orchard floor, and to get to them first before the birds and the bats, which, instead of choosing just one fruit and finishing it off, take bites out of each and every fruit on sight. When ripe enough to eat, they are washed under running water, and we eat the entire fruit, skin on, spitting out the seeds as we go along.

Chicos (Manilkara zapotilla, Sapotaceae) are known elsewhere as Sapodilla, Chico Zapote, Zapote Chico, Zapotillo, Chicle, Sapodilla Plum, Naseberry, Chiku. According to a research, chicos originated in the Central and South Americas, specifically the Yucatan Peninsula, where it is considered a favorite. But being a tropical fruit, it has been propagated and can now be found in almost any tropical area, particularly South-East Asia, India and Florida in the United States.

The abundant white sap, called chicle, is a natural component for chewing gum (now I know where the name Chicklet came from), although synthetic gums are now in widespread use, and in the tropics the chico trees are grown mainly for fruit.

I eat chicos only by themselves, never having come across any dish with chicos in the Philippines. So imagine my surprise, and delight, when Boo of Masak Masak, blogging from Malaysia, wrote about making a chico lassi, inspired by a chico smoothie she drank. I was floored - two new ways to enjoy chico!

I promptly asked her for the recipe, and asked permission to use her photo of the concoction, which she blogged about in this post. Both were very kindly given, and so I have her photo here. Top photo is the one I took of the chico lassi I made following Boo's recipe.

[Photo courtesy of Boo, as published in Masak Masak]

Very refreshing, and a really tropical smoothie. The sourness and creaminess of the yoghurt complements the grainy sweetness of the chico. I've tried a smoothie using evaporated and condensed milk and it was nice, though the evaporated milk somehow overpowered the chico taste. Non-fat milk will probably make it better.

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This post is part of the plagiarism awareness campaign, Lasang Pinoy 4.5, No To Plagiarism, launched by the Filipino food blogging community and hosted by Stef at Beyond Adobo to promote proper publishing etiquette on the web.

If you want to use written and photographed materials published on the net, please ask permission from the publisher and attribute proper credit. Claiming them as your own is plagiarism, which carries sanctions, and is tantamount to stealing the properties of others.

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BBM3: Butterballs and Tootsie Rolls

I've got tootsie rolls!

Care packages have an uncanny knack for containing unexpected surprises. Just a few days before the arrival of my package from Napa Valley, California, USA, for the Blogging by Mail 3 swap, hosted by Cathy of My Little Kitchen, my friends and I were reminiscing about childhood sweets - tootsie rolls in particular, since they played a great part in childhood parties, always being included as an exchange gift (besides chocolate-coated pretzels). The reminiscing was bitter-sweet because tootsie rolls are not available locally anymore.

So I was pleasantly taken aback when Celeste, my swap buddy and Asian food researcher/film critic at Chopstick Cinema, as well as a freelance writer and graphic artist, included several pieces of tootsie rolls in the food parcel she sent me. Celeste sent them for my son, and I was glad to initiate him to this childhood chocolate roll. I also had a grand time eating them with him.

Tootsie rolls are a class in themselves - unlike food you miss and remember to be super in the taste department, yet don't taste quite as sweet and flavorful with your adulterated, adult taste buds, the tootsie rolls Celeste sent taste even better than I remember. First made in 1896 in New York City by Austrian immigrant Leo Hirschfield, Tootsie Roll Industries claims the tootsie roll recipe remains the same and rolled in the same wrapper, preserving its looks and chocolatey, chewy taste for more than a hundred years.

But the highlight of the package are the homemade butterballs Celeste baked herself - divine, vanilla-frosted cookie balls with pecans. They came in a golden box with Celeste's creative rendition of a label on the lid, keeping very well on their trans-Pacific travel, and still taste super up to now. I've been keeping them in the refrigerator, apportioning them daily, since even though Celeste sent a boxful, in two tiers, I know they will, as they must, eventually run out. Celeste so kindly included the recipe, and I'm hoping to recreate her specialty by baking a fresh batch of butterballs for the holidays.

Celeste also seemed to know my weakness for specialty teas, as she included bags of Tazo teas - Zen(green tea and herbal infusion), Calm (chamomile blossoms), and Joy (blended black, green and oolong teas) - plus an oolong, Essensia peppermint tea and wild raspberry herbal tea. Half of my tea stash are thankfully caffeine free. To drink these teas in Celeste sent a Napa Valley ceramic mug, as well as leaves from the famous Napa Valley grape vines.

There's also a Ghirardelli dark chocolate square with white mint filling. Ghirardelli chocolates seem to represent the American chocolate scene, as I've received Ghirardelli chocolates from both the American West Coast and the East.

And this exchange being the home for the holidays edition, in the package are print-outs of Celeste's blogs about her kitchen, a review of Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine, collecting recipes and family holiday cooking. Also flyers from the grocery stores where Celeste shops, the food section of the Napa Register, and the Christmas edition of NurseTalk, a newsletter which Celeste designs and layouts, and in which she wrote about the best Christmases she has had, including holidays in her childhood home in Mobile, Alabama.

And oh, three pairs of chopsticks, including a pair made from ironwood, a priceless addition to my collection. Celeste is the real collector, though, and she might open a chopstick museum someday. If you happen to own chopsticks with unusual design, please email her a photo, and help build the future chopstick museum. Visit her blog for details, where you'll also read reviews of Asian films and menu preparation based on the film feature of the month. She has, for one, already done a piece about the Filipino film American Adobo.

Thank you, Celeste.

DFA International Bazaar: Lunch

The second of the two tiangges I go to once a year is the annual DFA International Bazaar, held for one day only every 3rd Sunday of November. It is usually held at the World Trade Center along Roxas Boulevard, although last year it was held at the cramped Le Pavilion. It went back to the WTC this year, thankfully, where it is more spacious, so the aisles in between booths were wider, affording one more legroom to maneuver, which is specially important if you are carrying a heavy backpack of goodies plus two huge plastic bags on each hand.

I was initiated into this bazaar by a dear friend who works at the DFA. He just called me one day to say he got me an entrance ticket to a bazaar sponosored by his office. Am I glad he did, for I've been hooked ever since, making it a yearly ritual, nay a pilgrimage, missing it only the year I gave birth to my son, which had been the week before the bazaar. Last year I toured the constricted passageways in between booths at Le Pavilion while I was eight months pregnant, without the hubby's knowledge, but of course with my friend, who always secures my entrance ticket, and while two others waited outside with a car.

My main interest in this one, unlike in the first tiangge that I go to, is mainly food, international food, as may be gleaned from the bazaar's name. The DFA ladies organize this bazaar yearly as a fund-raising event to augment the ladies' foundation's scholarship funds. Most embassies in the country participate, sending their staff to man the booths themselves, and bringing in food and other merchandise from their respective countries to sell in the bazaar. The things one could buy in this bazaar are mostly unavailable locally, despite trade liberalization.

Aside from the regular booths, additional booths are set up at the back of the hall for freshly cooked dishes turned up by embassy staffers, so you could go on with your shopping the whole day without having to go out of the hall scouting for lunch along the breadth and width of Roxas Boulevard.

This is one of the highlights of the bazaar for me. I always make sure I scout these food booths first before I inspect the regular booths so I could plan ahead what to eat for lunch, and what to munch on before and after it. Of course, as with other bazaars, there are free-flowing samples of the food on sale, so buying one for chichiria is generally unnecessary. But I have a bottomless stomach, trained early on by the belt when it comes to finishing the food on my plate, which translated to anything that is available.

I look forward every year to the Vietnamese eatery, always with offerings of rice noodle soup, fresh spring rolls, fried meat rolls and sticky Saigons. This year my friend and I stuffed ourselves so much with the cake samples that we remembered lunch already late in the day, and by that time the phō had ran out. But we were able to secure fresh spring rolls with cold prawn. And paella negra from the Spanish booth, which had ran out of it on us last year.

Last year we loved the beef pulut panggang from Brunei, spicy beef floss inside a roll of sticky rice cooked with coconut cream and wrapped in banana leaves, like a savory suman, so this time around I tried the prawn and spicy anchovies version. Very nice, and hot, though I would have liked to try the beef version again.

We bought chicken hainanese not knowing we had more than enough, so I took it home for dinner, but it was just your ordinary steamed chicken, nothing spectacular. Our dessert consisted of a pandan mousse on sticky rice, again from Brunei, which is the green/white square at the lefthand foreground in the photo, and my beloved gulab jamun from the Indian booth.

I also bought arroz tres leches from the Panama booth, which also sold paella and some pink and white coconut candy balls. We were expecting something fancy with the arroz tres leches (pictured above, center), or rice with three kinds of milk, thinking some kind of special milk was in there, but upon inquiry we were told the rice was mixed with fresh milk, condensed milk and evaporated milk, and I almost couldn't help myself laughing. But it was delicious, and kept so well in the refrigerator. It had some nutmeg, which nicely accentuated the milk and the raisins on top.

One thing we noticed is the prevalence of rice in all the dishes. The fare was mostly Asian, anyway, with a smattering of Spanish and Spanish-influenced cuisines. Which was just as well, for it gave us energy to discover some real great finds, still food related, and kept our hunger in check as we trudged the aisles. It prevented us, too, from being too disappointed with the expensive but over-rated ice cream from Theobroma, which we happily did not have to finish, as we were still sated with our lunch.

Thank you, Edwin. For the lunch and for introducing me to this. Let's have an adventure again next year.

Food finds at the 2007 Bazaar