The 41st International Bazaar in Food Pictures

[Turkish Delights: various pastries, helvas, a crunchy apple pie with the nicest crust]

My stomach and my pantry were literally stuffed with food from around the world, from the 41st International Bazaar 2007 sponsored by the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) and the International Bazaar Foundation, Inc., in cooperation with the Diplomatic and Consular Corps, held yesterday at the PICC Fora.

Nothing too exotic this year, my favorites were missing, but there were many things new that occupied my day, and sure to occupy my cooking for months to come. Which added to the list of so many things to look forward to next year.

My stash from the spread of Turkish delicacies. Clockwise from top right, bags of crescent moon-shaped shortbread cookies and cheese buns, two slices of Turkish lemon yoghurt cake that somehow more than made up for the no-show of gulab jamun at the Indian Embassy booth.

In foil are a meat pie, a delicious pastry stuffed with feta and herbs, and an olive croissant. In the plastic container are baklava slices, and then a box of cocoa-hazelnut cream.

Last, top left, are packets of helva, a very old Turkish sweet served during special occasions and holy days. I was once presented with a big jar of helva by a friend who spent a few days in Turkey several years ago, and that was my first and last taste of the delicacy. What I got now are called tahin helva, made with sesame seeds, one stunned with pistachios and the other chocolate-flavored.

My Persian treasures - green raisins, which I buy annually and which I used in the arroz tres leches that was inspired by a Panamian dessert from the same bazaar a couple of years back (there was a similar dessert at the Turkish table this year).

New this year are gold raisins and a tub of rose jam. Searching for something to mix/cook them into.

Kjeldsen's butter cookies from Denmark (also available at the duty-free shop), my absolute favorite next to the Royal Dansk brand, an old brand itself and known all over the world.

From Switzerland, organic honey and fruit jams, and chocolate bars (Frigor lait - milk chocolate with creamy almond and hazelnut filling, milk chocolate with whole hazelnuts, Frigor noir - fine dark chocolate with creamy almond and hazelnut filling, and Cremánt Intensé - extrafine 64% dark chocolate).

Chocolate Santa lollipops and homebaked Christmas shortbread cookies for the kids, from Germany. English teas for me. My tea cabinet is sadly empty this year. These are the only new teas I was able to source. The South African booth closed early, so I wasn't able to get hold of my whole year's supply of rooibos. No Ceylon and Indian teas, either. I must have bypassed the booths. There was an unprecendented number of stalls selling bead- and glass-works this year, and I must have been sidetracked by them, having been dazzled by the brilliance of the masterpieces. Sigh.

Late lunch, a comforting bowl of Vietnamese shrimp pho soup. I always anticipate having a hot bowl of pho soup every year, and every year the Vietnamese embassy run out of pho before I get to their booth.

This year there wasn't any, but a Vietnamese restaurant operating in Las Pinas (sorry I forgot to take down the name) spread a table, and I swear, their pho is the best in town. Way better than that of the Vietnamese restaurant chain that I featured in a magazine. Their fresh spring roll with large, plump shrimps and a thin slice of beef was super, too. Incomparable, actually.

The good food is to the restaurant's credit, because if food were judged by appalling service I believe nobody would have bought from the stall. As it was, people lined at a minimum 30 minutes for something Vietnamese despite the horrendous attitude of the lady manning the food.

Egg rolls with chicken and chili, and rice rolls with chicken and beef floss fillings wrapped in banana leaves (savory stuffed suman). Great snacks. Indonesia.

Prawn crackers from Brunei. Pandan-monggo pudding from Vietnam. Savory filled suman from Indonesia.

Masikoy

Here is yet another variation of palitaw, that ubiquitous kakanin that is so versatile because it is just rice flour mixed with water - it is so bland that it lends well to any and any other topping. Or sauce, as what I seem to be used to. I wrote about unda-unday previously, which is how palitaw is eaten in my family - with a thick sauce of dissolved sugar and coconut strips.

The most common palitaw is the dry version topped with a combination of grated coconut meat, toasted sesame seeds and white sugar. As for masikoy - I never knew about it, that is, until I married and became immersed in my in-laws' food traditions.

As it turns out, masikoy is a perennial feature in handaans (parties) hosted by the many families in my husband's clan. It is an indispensable handa in any padasal - a novena prayer session held usually for the souls of the beloved departed, in remembrance of their birthdays or death anniversaries, and led commonly by the eldest in the community. My husband's family also cook masikoy during All Saints' Day/All Souls' Day, because they also hold padasal during this time and because it is harvest time - a premium time to eat new ansak-ket (malagkit, glutinous rice).

I like attending padasals, because these days it is one of the only two occasions when I can get to hear novena prayers in the Pangasinan language sung in keening fashion, called cantores, which also refers to the singers. The other occasion is during Three Kings, when cantores go from house to house singing about the birth of Jesus Christ during the wee hours of the morning, when I am usually so deep in REM that I can never get the motivation to wake up.

So a padasal is the most accessible, and the more common, event to get to hear cantores singing. A padasal is also always accompanied by a handa to refresh, and as a grateful gesture to, those who led the prayers and the others who joined the prayer session. As the ritual goes deep into our Filipino Catholic religious heritage, the food also represents deep cultural roots.

The handa will always have a kanen (kakanin, sweet treats made from rice). As the padasal remembers the dead, the handa features that which sustains the living.

It is almost sacrilege to serve any unknown dish (i.e., foreign-inspired, fusion, et.al.) during this occasion. There may be pancit, yes, but pancit has been so indigenized, and has featured in our cuisine for so long that it is considered a local dish. The drinks would invariably be softdrinks, because it is the most common, although if the host family is a bit up the economic stratum tsokolate is preferred.

Masikoy, or palitaw, is the embodiment of rural cuisine. Made from rice - the staple food - and adorned with coconuts, sesame seeds, sugar - all can be sourced from the backyard garden - it is absolutely home-made, the making usually a community effort, and cooked using ingredients that abound in the locale.

Masikoy tastes like regular (dry) palitaw, because the two variants basically have the same ingredients. The only difference is that eating masikoy is like eating ginataang bilo-bilo, with only the flat bilo-bilo as ingredient and with the flavors of dry palitaw, though the taste of toasted sesame is more pronounced.

Masikoy

Ingredients
1 kg glutinous rice
1/2 kg washed sugar (more or less, according to taste)
1/2 cup sesame seeds
meat strips from 2 buco
gata from 2 mature coconuts*
a full pinch of anise seeds, pounded coarsely
pandan leaves, washed
a pan of water

Procedure

1. Soak the glutinous rice overnight. Ground into dry flour the following day.**

2. Grease your hands with a little coconut oil. Get a pinch of the rice dough and form into flat discs, about 2 inches in diameter. Alternatively, get a fistful of rice dough and roll into a long cylinder. Cut into 1-inch strips and flatten these into discs. Reserve about half a fistful and set aside. Lay the rice discs one by one on a large, flat plate, never stacking one on top of another.
3. Dry toast the sesame seeds in a pan until brown.
4. Heat a pan of water, dropping the rice discs when the water is boiling.
5. Mix in the toasted sesame seeds, buco strips, sugar and anise. Stir well.
6. Dissolve the reserved rice dough in about a cup of water and mix into the cooking masikoy, stirring occasionally.
7. When the rice discs are starting to rise to the surface put in the pandan leaves.
8. When all the rice discs have floated to the surface turn off fire and remove from heat. Let cool.
9. Transfer to a serving container and pour in the gata (1st and 2nd gata). Serve cool, with a container of kakang gata to suit individual tastes.

*To Make Gata
machine-ground meat from 2 mature coconuts
4 cups water heated to boiling point

• Put the coconut meat in a big pan or basin. Pour 2 cups boiling water and mix thoroughly with a ladle. Let stand for about 5 minutes, or until the mixture is cool enough to the touch.
• Express the gata by getting fistfuls of the coconut meat and squeezing them thoroughly. Repeat until all the meat has been pressed.
• Separate the expressed gata from the meat by straining carefully through a fine sieve. The strained liquid is the kakang gata or 1st gata.
• Put back the coconut meat into the basin and pour the remaining boiled water, preferably reheated to boiling point. When the mixture has cooled, repeat steps 2-3. The 2nd strained liquid is the 2nd gata.

**Alternatively, commercially available powdered rice flour can be used. Make sure you use glutinous rice flour and not ordinary rice flour. Mix in a little water to make rice dough, and proceed to step 2.


Related Posts
Unda-Unday
Quezon Tikoy
Bibingkoy in Cavite
Mochi of Pampanga
Baked Buchi
Home-Made Buchi
Kulambo
Home-Made Tikoy