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