Gallego

I'm at the airport right now, and should have been airborne at this time, but delays has left me stranded for a few hours. I'm on my way to a trip that spans two islands in the Visayas, both favorites since I first flew in an airplane out of Luzon more than two decades ago. 

May being the month that celebrates Mother's Day, I get wistful and remember my mom. She had never ridden an airplane - air travel wasn't so accessible during her time. Flying used to be so unreachable, so unreasonable, that it became everybody's ultimate dream. My mom had even vowed that she could die happy and in peace if she could only ride an airplane.

With many air carriers and with the development of the tourism industry, flying today is as commonplace as riding airconditioned buses. I've been regularly flying for various reasons since that Visayan summer in 1991, and my kids had started flying from birth. Two kids are with me now, and I imagine what if three generations were together at this airport today, my mom with us. 

She would probably have prepared baon for all of us, the way she did in all the trips we made around Luzon  following my dad, so that I developed an aversion to bus-stop food. I bring home-cooked meals to the office, but on trips I prefer sampling local food. But when flight schedules are off, or become erratic, or get late, there is no choice but to seek nourishment from terminal food kiosks.

My mom was not a notable cook, and I don't remember any special dish of hers, except for her crema de fruta, but her cooking was preferable to any of the food in any of the airport terminals in Metro Manila. It actually makes me cringe, seeing the choices and putting myself in the shoes of foreign tourists. Everything's worse than what's on offer at mall foodcourts, and the prices had me believing airport terminal space is the  most expensive real estate in the Philippines. 

I could go without a meal, forebearing my hunger until I arrive at my destination, salivating at the prospect of regional specialties. But much as I tell the kids it builds character, and probably EQ (remember that TV commercial?), they have started whining. My mother would not have approved, so I inspected the stalls. 

Unfortunately there was only one selling rice meals, and my boy has expressly stated he has to have rice, so I fell in line. When I neared the cashier I espied a container filled with something so orange it was almost blinding. I am most partial to tomato-based dishes, so I thought I'd have lunch myself, since we'd be arriving at our resort at merienda time, anyway.   

And this time I remember my aunt-in-law, who had taken care of my husband growing up and who continues to care for us every time we go home to Pangasinan. As opposed to my mom, my aunt-in-law is a tasty cook. She turns out wonderful provincial meals, and is so much accomplished when it comes to cooking kanen or kakanin that I am in awe of her.

She cooks a mean lauya, and considers gallego a special dish for special occasions, like Christmas and Easter and similar holidays. Her gallego, which I take to be rooted in the Spanish term for rooster, is much like afritada, which is an ordinary dish nowadays ubiquitously found in canteens and carinderias and turo-turos, although it still appears in fiestas, which incidentally are also being celebrated around the country this month.

But my aunt-in-law's gallego is special indeed, because she has to coop a native, free-range rooster (the hens give native eggs for her apos) two days before preparing the dish. The native chicken ensures the gallego is delicious beyond belief. A list of extra ingredients also help the dish become multi-dimensional.

But she is a senior citizen, and is not aware of the chemicals added to processed ingredients today. So when I am home I modify her gallego, and make it as all-natural as possible.

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Gallego

Ingredients:
1 whole free-range chicken, dressed and chopped
1 kilo organic tomatoes, washed
5 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
2 medium onions, sliced
2 red and green bell peppers, de-seeded and sliced
1/3 cup fresh peas
3 carrots, peeled and cubed
3 potatoes, peeled and cubed
a stalk of celery, washed and sliced

Procedure:

1. Bring a pot of water to a boil, and put in the tomatoes, whole. Cover for a few minutes. When the tomato skins have wrinkled, turn off heat and drain. When the tomatoes are cool enough to handle, peel by sliding out the skins.
2. Halve the tomatoes and take out the seeds, then chop the pulp.
3. Heat some oil, saute garlic and onions, and the chopped tomato pulp. Cover and let simmer for a few minutes, until the tomatoes have wilted.
4. Mix in the chopped chicken, pour hot water and cover, turning down the heat when boiling. Let simmer until the chicken is soft. 
5. Put in the remaining ingredients and bring back to a simmer until the vegetables are soft and the sauce is thick.
6. Season to taste with salt and ground black pepper, and serve hot with rice.

Serves 6.

Notes:

• I use Bounty Fresh Pollo Primero, which is not as tasty as freshly slaughtered free-range chicken, but it's the next best thing. And I actually saute the chicken first with garlic, onions and a thumb of peeled ginger, then transfer everything to a pot of boiling water. When the chicken is par-boiled, I get the chicken with a slotted ladle, and that's when I mix it with the sauteed tomato pulp. This way we get to have soup, which I boil further with malunggay leaves or native pechay.
• A free-range chicken is bony and not so fleshy, so a whole chicken is not that big. If using the common (white-leghorn) chicken, a kilo is about right for this recipe.
• For a smoother sauce, the tomato pulp is blended or processed, but I prefer mine chunky so I don't bother.
• Sometimes, so that I don't have to cook a separate vegetable dish for the meal, I add native pechay and green beans (Baguio beans) to the gallego, but then it becomes an entirely new dish, called chicken pochero.

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Gallego is not practical to bring on trips, as any dish made with fresh tomatoes spoils easily, but I am looking forward to cooking this dish when I get home.

Kulinarya Cooking Club

Kulinarya Cooking Club was started by a group of Filipino foodies living in Sydney who are passionate about the Filipino culture and its colourful cuisine.

Each month the Club showcases a new dish along with family recipes. By sharing these recipes, it hopes that readers will find the same passion and love for Filipino food.

Sinigang na Bagaong sa Sampalok at Gabi

I was buying my week-long stash of vegetables and fruits at my suki at the back of the Cavite public market, when a middle-aged man came in asking for some gabi and sampalok. He explained to one of the sellers that he was going to make sinigang with the bagaong he just bought from the wet market.

I butted in, and asked how he cooked the sinigang. He promptly described the dish - peel and halve a few pieces of gabi, boil in a small pot of water, then mash half of the lot when soft, and return to the cooking pot; boil sampalok, mash and strain, then mix into the pot of gabi; heat to a simmer, then place in the fish that had been pan-fried for a minute on each side; cook for a few minutes, season with salt, then serve.

I thought it was clever, and bought some bagaong myself. I had been a fan of the fish for a while, enjoying it in a mouth-puckering paksiw with sukang paombong. Having it in a sinigang would be a good alterrnative.

And it was. People say sinigang is perfect for hot days, as the sourness refreshes and cools. But this sinigang is thick, and it’s like having velvety soup that’s more suited for cooler weather. We had been having freakish weather lately, very hot mornings then thunderstorms in the evenings, even heavy rains at night. As this thick sinigang is hybrid itself, refreshing as well as comforting, it was the dish to make.

It's a simple sinigang, with just three ingredients, but the viscous soup and the pudgy fish make for a one-dish meal, especially for dinner. I skipped the pan-frying part - and it didn't make a difference. It was so good it has become a part of my weekly menu.

Bagaong is apparently a common fish, not only in the Philippines but also in other countries in the Indo-Pacific area. Its scientific name is Terapon jarbua, with English names crescent perch, tiger-perch and combinations of these. It has also names in many African languages, as well as in Spanish and Swedish, so it must abound in those countries, as well.

Bagaong is the term for the fish in Southern Luzon down to the Visayas, but is called balauling in Pangasinan and banlaongan in Ilokano. I've never encountered those terms until I came to live in Cavite, and at first I snobbed the fish. The scales were so thick and rough, and I had been biased against fish with this quality - I thought they were bland.

How wrong I was! One Saturday I must have been so late waking up that there were only a few choices left in the public market when I arrived. Since I buy provisions for food only once a week, I had no choice but to buy what were available so I could fill up my weekly menu. I bought bagaong, thinking I'd finally try this perennially present fish.

With its thick skin I thought it would be good grilled. Again, how wrong I was. It came out dry, because it had to be grilled a little while longer due to its substantially chunky flesh. And the skin was just coarse, but not as firm and expansive.

I swore it off, until another Saturday, when it probably rained the day before so that a few fishermen were able to go out to sea. So I bought bagaong again. And the vendors said it is cooked in pesa, and sinigang. Poached and eaten in broth, which didn't sit well with me because I thought the fish was too bland for that. 

So I had them in a paksiw, boiled in vinegar, peeled and sliced ginger and garlic, whole peppercorns and onions, and siling haba. Eaten the day after, when the fish have steeped in and absorbed the spiced vinegar,   it was absolutely fantastic. The firm, flaky corpulent flesh was a perfect canvass for the trio of sour, garlicky, gingery, enhanced by the heat of black and green chile peppers and the shy sweetness of onions. 

I've never looked back. I'd spoon the vinegar onto newly cooked fried rice and sprinkle it with salt, and I wonder why I never liked paksiw when I was a child, why the husband doesn't until now, even the househelp. There's something about paksiw that brings out the inherent sweetness in fish that's otherwise impossible in other means of cooking.

Sometimes I put in tomatoes and a bit of agamang (bagoong alamang) into the paksiw. With tortang talong, or ginisang kangkong, it's a complete hearty breakfast that sustains me the whole-day long. Now I can alternate between the gabi sinigang and paksiw na bagaong.

The Gardens at Chateau Royale Tagaytay

In a fit of brain fever my husband bought the largest home backyard pool he could find in the mall. It has a diameter of 12 feet and is 3 feet deep. All in all it needed almost 1,500 gallons of water, and at least six hours, to fill it up.

Right from the start complications arose. With that amount of water we couldn't just replace it every time we wanted to, especially since Maynilad has just connected Cavite, and our water bill had shot up a thousand per cent.

We needed a filter, which cost more than the price of the pool. And because our residence is surrounded by trees that shed leaves like hairfall with the constant sea breeze, we needed to put a lid on it. Sadly, it's been a month and I have gone to all the malls within my radar, but all I could find is a pool cover that's 10 feet in diameter.

   

But what would life be if we kept our attention on shortcomings? Particularly if you have kids who called you at the office every hour offering to set up the pool themselves. There is a real, 25m swimming pool a stone's throw away from our house, but we forbade the kids to go there without me or the husband, as there's bound to be a lot of children for the lifeguard to watch over, and the nannies can't swim. 

So we set up the backyard pool, and started to reap happiness. If I got home early I joined the kids in the evenings immersing ourselves in the pool, whose water had by then become a steam bath after a day's boiling in the sun. Whenever I stood up I shivered, because the ambient air was several degrees cooler.  

It was fine for a while, and we were happily waterlogged. One evening I declared to the husband it was worth buying after all, even with the filter, because we didn't need to go out of town anymore for a vacation.

But then green cottony things started growing in there. And multiplied so fast we couldn't keep up with straining the water with nets. We had to use the water for the plants, and for cleaning the pavement, but it began to get thick that at last I had to have it released, the pool scrubbed.

I have not seen our latest water bill yet, but I'm not planning on getting myself shocked. Into the garage went the pool, empty of green slime, and into the van went the kids, packed for a vacation in a cooler clime with a cold swimming pool.

We ended up on the slopes of Mt. Batulao, by the border of Cavite and Batangas and thirty minutes out of Tagaytay proper, where the temperature approximates Baguio City. There's a 15-ha resort there with icy-cold twin pools, a fishing lake, picnic grounds, a lotus pond, children's playgrounds, as well as indoor steam baths and sauna if ever we missed our backyard pool.

But the main attraction for me was the countless greenhouses and gardens that stretched for kilometers along the property. It was where I first saw blooms of basil, white and ethereal, and the large unfurling petals of pink lotus flowers.

radish blooms

Tagaytay is known for plantations of pineapples, and here we were presented with fruits in various stages of development.

I didn't know pineapples started out in coral, pink and blue-violet hues.

kamote abloom in lilac

It was fun to slide open the door of a greenhouse and discover what plants were growing inside. There were several that served as nurseries, and the kids had a heyday identifying which vegetable the sprouts would become.

 

The kids didn't want to leave, and I had a hard time departing myself. I loved the place, and I promised we would all soon be back. The only thing I regret was that the in-house restaurant didn't make use of all those wonderful greens being grown. It served usual Filipino fare - meats and soups that were flavored with synthetic powder. It was so out of sync with its surroundings.

I can't decide, though, if we should be there every weekend, or we set up the pool again. I contacted a chemical supplier, and I was told that besides granulated chlorine, I needed to buy dry acid to mix it with, and a kit tester to ensure we put in the right amount. Or chlorine in tablet form, which needs to be in a specially designed floater, plus the test kit. Each serving a different purpose, but both sets setting me back thousands more. And which makes me think weekend vacations would cost less, after all.

a cow smirking at all of my trivial human travails

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Chateau Royale Sports & Country Club, Inc.
Km. 72 Batulao
Nasugbu, Batangas
Tel. Nos. (632) 696-4374 / 696-4376
Website

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Puto Seko

 This is part of an ongoing series, "Tinapay," about local breads and cookies found in street corner bakeries across the Philippines.

I've been bringing my son on my weekly forays in the market, principally so he can watch over what I've bought gathered in a corner while I purchase other things. But there are related benefits to it, I tell him, which includes developing his arm muscles if he carries the fruits and fish. And he gets to meet what he eats in their original state.

But of course as a child he knows about the power of his index finger. It's instinctive, I think, from birth. He doesn't brag about it at home, thankfully, but he understands that I am wont to buy him anything he asks for carrying a pail of fish.

I am just glad that he asks only for little things, that most times I buy him more, and more to bring home to his sisters. And I am gladder that he is getting to discover local treats and goods, as can only be found in a provincial public market. 

Puto seko is his own market discovery, which, fortunately, is a re-discovery for me. And it became the current craze in our household.  

I hated puto seko as a child. It crumbled. It coated my hands and mouth and lap with a fine powder. But the most loathsome thing was that it was achingly, parchingly dry.  When I put it in my mouth it instantly coated my tongue and throat like a fine, dry dust. I needed at least two glasses of water to help me swallow a single piece of puto seko. It was like eating my public elementary school teachers' chalk, and recalled for me the times when I was tasked to write lessons on three panels of blackboard for my classmates to copy.

So understandably I never introduced the cookie to my kids. I never knew what attracted my son to puto seko, perhaps somebody - a relative, or someone in school - gave him some to try, but it was what he asked for one market day while perusing a stall bursting to the seams with treats like a child's dreamland. He didn't know the name,  but he pointed to it with the confident conviction that it was what he wanted.

My first impulse is always to discourage, thinking nobody would miss anything, it's not healthy, anyway, it's surely unsanitary, blah, blah, blah. But I always backtrack, and buy for the sake of experience. And mainly to expose my kids to as much of their cultural heritage, as a Filipino with an amalgamation of countless cultural groups, as possible.

This kind of puto seko (also spelled puto seco) spotted in the Cavite public market came from Nagcarlan, Laguna. I also see packets of the same dozen, small but thick discs from Binan and Calamba, also in Laguna. My son also bought similar packets at our homewtown public market in Pangasinan, but at double the price.

I mentioned it was a re-discovery for me. The puto seko of my childhood were free-formed into little fat flatish balls, or cut into squares and rectangles. My children's puto seko look like they had been shaped into thin logs and refrigerated prior to being sliced thickly.

The big difference, though, is the ease with which these present-day puto seko could be swallowed. They don't parch. They still have the characteristic dry, unyielding feel, but they are not as chalky. And they are a bit sweeter. And more solid - harder, actually. Still crumbly, but not to a fine powder.

At Php5.00 for a dozen immaculate white cookies, it beats any other snack. Of course the cookies are tiny and a kid can finish an entire pack in a single gulp. But it's artisanal, local, and a solid representation of provincial culture. Nothing can beat that.

Recipes I have come across list down cornstarch, eggs, butter and sugar as main ingredients, with some having flour taking a portion of the cornstarch. I'm not sure if these are right recipes, because most puto sekos I've tried have a distinct coconut taste. In fact, I always get a minute bit of stray grated coconut meat in the crumb.

I can't confirm the recipe for now, because I am giving my oven a wide berth  in this hot weather. In the meantime, I let my kids have their fill of market puto seko, and anticipate new discoveries.

The Tinapay Series

• Ensaymada
• Dealo Apas, Broas and Other Southern Tagalog Biscuits
  (Lucban, Quezon)
• Charito's Delights (Catbalogan, Samar)
• Half-Moon Cookie (Puerto Princesa, Palawan)
• Baker's Hill (Puerto Princesa, Palawan)
• Crema de Fruta 
• Pedrito's/Jech (Dagupan City, Pangasinan)
• Napoleones (Bacolod City, Negros Occidental)
• Panaderia de Molo (Iloilo City)
• Pastel (Camiguin)
• Inipit (Bulacan)
• Cinnamon Swirl Loaf (Baguio City)
• Kabukiran