My Adobo

I could eat this all day. Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. Every day. It gets better as it is reheated, again and again, the meat falling off the bones and absorbing the stewing liquid that is so good on hot steamed rice. The ultimate Filipino comfort food, whether there's a deluge or the day is close to broiling.

I wake up mornings happy if I cooked a big batch of adobo the day before. All that is needed for a joyous breakfast is a pot of rice, sliced tomatoes and salted duck eggs, and the reheated adobo. A cup of hot chocolate and it is bliss, though at this temperature I can forego that and settle instead for a tall glass of mango shake, or ice-cold milk tea.

There is something about vinegar that calls to the Filipino palate. Perhaps the appetizing sourness is an inherited collective memory. We stew, marinate, steep, dip - fish and meats - using vinegar, which comes in a wide range of acidity, flavor, source and color.

Who can say what is a pure Filipino dish? Adobo lovers point to it, but its passage along the Pacific on galleons from Latin America has been documented that the claim cannot be substantiated. I think what can be substantiated is the adobo existing on these shores before the Spanish came, which is adobo using solely vinegar. This form of adobo still exists in various regions around the country today, including Cavite.

But I question the purported Mexican adobado origins of the more common adobo with soy sauce. For isn't soy sauce but of Asian origin, probably Chinese? And we'd been dealing with sangleys after all since the 10th century.

Anyway, there are probably as many adobo recipes as there are islands in the Philippines, but this is how I like mine. Half a kilo of chicken thighs, bone-in; 1/4 kilo chicken liver; 2-3 whole heads of garlic, peeled; a handful of whole black peppercorns, three pieces dried laurel leaves, 1/4 cup vinegar, a splash of soy sauce, three pieces green siling haba/siling pang-sigang. I pad the bottom of a thick pot with the garlic, then layer the chicken, and top with the liver and the rest of the ingredients except the sili, which is put during the last five minutes of cooking. I pour in 2-3 cups of water, put on the lid and cook over gentle heat for 2-3 hours.

After cooking the pot is placed on the dining table to rest overnight. The pot then proceeds to waft a lustful aroma that calls to appetites, even after a full dinner, and endangers it to being violated that same night. But I send it a watchful eye, and command everybody to go to sleep.

I diverge from at least two edicts of adobo cooking with my adobo. One is to mix in the liver on the last five minutes of cooking so it is pink to the core when eaten. The other is not to add water.

I put in the liver from the start because I like it almost disinegrating, so it flavors the stewing sauce. I slice the livers to small pieces for this very purpose, so they are almost melted when I'm fininshed with my adobo. As for the addition of water, I like adobo sauce so much that I spoon it onto my plate, and I like to mix it with my mound of steaming rice. The water ensures that the long cooking doesn't dry up the dish, with enough sauce left so I won't have to fight over it with the kids.

The local salad of tomatoes and itlog maalat imbues the adobo with a different strata of sweet-salty-sour. It also ensures that I eat no more than what's decent amount of rice.

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Black Summer

"goma" sundae

The proliferation of Korean and Japanese restaurants and food outlets in metropolitan cities is affording us a glimpse into the food culture of our Asian neighbors. One that I couldn't fail to notice - much because it is not common in the Philippines - is the use of black sesame. 

I only know of one Filipino dish that uses linga, and that is palitaw, boiled sticky discs of ground glutinous rice flour eaten sprinkled with grated coconut meat, sugar and white or toasted sesame seeds.  But the use of linga is not an absolute - not all the palitaw I've eaten around the country boasts of sesame seed topping. 

In Pangasinan, for example, we don't use it, but there is a variant made by my in-laws that submerges the dough discs in a viscous sauce aromatic with toasted linga and does away with the dry toppings, called masikoy. But the sesame seeds used are white, toasted in a hot pan to bring out the nuttiness and for color. For a while I thought all sesame seeds were white, and the brown and black ones were only according to toasting preferences.

I'm curious, though, because the children's folk song Bahay Kubo speaks of sesame plants flourishing all around a countryside backyard, and yet indigenous Filipino cuisine doesn't seem to have much use for it. Of course now sesame is in much use, the seeds as topping for burger buns, and as coating for buchi. I liberally use sesame seed oil as flavoring for noodles and vegetables. And in Asian restaurants we have battered fried meats and stews sprinkled with sesame seeds. But all these are rooted in cuisines outside our country.   

black sesame milk tea

This summer was explosive with black sesame seeds. The nuttiness was ground and made into a tar-like  paste to top the goma sundae at Pepper Lunch, while a sprinkling of white sesame seeds ensured that the flavor is unescapable. It is heavenly, akin to eating cold, melting palitaw that does not sink as a rock in the gut. 

I don't like Serenitea milk teas that much, but the selection is so varied that I go there intermittently to taste-test. The  black sesame milk tea caught my eye, and tongue. With a choice of roasted tea or assam as the base tea, it can be had hot or cold. I prefer the cold version, of course, in this heat. The black sesame is not even a flavored syrup, but real seeds that have been ground to a coarse powder so the drink comes out gritty. It is similar to the goma sundae, in melted form, and drinking it is like drinking a liquid palitaw.

Outlets of the Korean bakery Tous Le Jours sprouted like mushrooms all over the metropolis, enlightening Pinoys to French goodies with a Korean/Asian touch. It is like a trendier, and more expensive, version of pioneer Bread Talk, without the floss. 

Several pastries sport black sesame seeds atop, like a crown of sparse cropped hair, but remarkable is one of their bestsellers, sweet black rice bread with black sesame cream cheese. An immaculate bun gets an ebony spray, and cradles inside a generous filling of cream cheese pocked with the seeds that shatter with crunch and nuttiness with every bite. 

It's like palitaw and siopao and cheesecake all in one. 

At katsu Japanese specialty restaurant Yabu the condiment tray adorning every table invites diners to season  and spice the otherwise insipid battered fried meats and seafood. But served with the entrees is a small bowl with notched interiors for grinding the spoonful of keyboard-hued sesame seeds. Grind to preference, then ladle in the gooey, dark-brown dipping sauce that's reminiscent of worcestershire and teriyaki. 

The sesame salad dressing with black sesame seeds peeking out is slurpable, and is excellent both with the katsu and the unlimited shredded cabbage. I've found a similar salad dressing at the supermarket under the Kewpie brand, and it is just as good, and maybe even better, since I can have it at home to douse on whatever I fancy. 

Among all the sweets mentioned in this post, the Mochi Sweets' black sesame mochi is the closest in taste and texture to palitaw. For of course both are made with ground rice dough so they have the sticky, chewy feel. But least of all is the black sesame taste tasted here, for it seems the filling is extended with black beans or dyed sweet potato. Which is unfair, considering the price of this small treat.

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Bahay Kubo

Bahay kubo, kahit munti
Ang halaman doon ay sari-sari
Singkamas at talong, sigarillas at mani
Sitaw, bataw, patani

Kundol, patola, upo’t kalabasa
At saka meron pa, labanos, mustasa
Sibuyas, kamatis, bawang at luya
Sa paligid-ligid ay puno ng linga


Roughly translated as:

Bahay Kubo
(Filipino folk song)

Nipa hut, even though small
the plants surrounding it are varied and many
turnips and eggplants, winged beans and peanuts
yard-long beans, hyacinth beans, lima beans

wax gourd, sponge gourd, bottle gourd, squash
and there’s more, radish, mustard
onions, tomatoes, garlic and ginger
the surrounding spaces filled with sesame

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Atis

One afternoon my son called me using a cellphone and asked if my reception was clear. It was loud and clear, alright, and he explained that it should be because he was atop the atis tree in front of our house. I almost didn't believe him, since how could he be atop the atis tree when its stems - note stem, not trunk - were so puny. It isn't even a tree but a thin shrub.

And then my maternal instinct kicked in and told him to get off the atis immediately. An atis is good for eating, not climbing.

Right now our atis is laden with light green fruit. When small they were almost invisible, as they had the same color as the stems and leaves. So we were a bit surprised when suddenly large ones were hanging from the tips of twigs.

Most had bulging rind all around and looked ready to burst, like a collection of small round yeasted dough that had undergone proofing, a good indication that they're mature and almost ready to eat. We've harvested quite a few, with many more still plumping up hanging from the shrub's spare canopy.

The fruits are not kid-friendly, though, being riddled with hard, obsidian seeds. I like the tangy-custard flesh, like custard mixed with home-made yogurt, sweet enough to attract black ants to come in droves. A bit sandy in texture.

The English name - custard apple - is apt, but the more common names are sugar apple  or sweetsop (Annona squamosa).

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Unlimited Dim Sum at Jasmine

This is my kind of indulgence. I'm a veteran of buffets all over the country, but over the years my constantly expanding flesh has become weak in spite of my willing spirit's steadfastness. And after decades of buffet eating, there seems to be nothing more that can surprise, and allure. I now prefer this focused dining, more enjoyable and more relaxed than the frenetic, frenzied gorging that characterize buffets.  

This is not a buffet - for a fixed price, one can have unlimited servings of dim sum of your choice from the dedicated menu of New World Makati Hotel's Jasmine Restaurant. It is served table-side, so you get to sit down in full comfort and, with the restaurant's lavish Chinese art-deco interiors, style.   

The promo includes choice steamed dim sum, to be chosen from a roving cart like in many Cantonese restaurants, with baked and fried dim sum,  two choices of congee (fish fillet, pork with century egg), and desserts served upon order. A round of iced tea completes the meal, but we usually prefer the house tea served in a pot.

When I was there with my two older kids (children above two years old pay the same price) and friends on a Friday it was full-packed, with functions going on in the private dining rooms, so the servers were a bit harried. Some of the steamed dim sum listed on the menu were not available in the roving cart, so we ordered. They were never served, and there was some delay in the serving of the fried and baked dim sum, and some orders were doubled. But these incidents were more than made up for with profuse apologies from the servers even without our raising them up, and we were given several rounds of complimentary fresh fruit juices and bowls of ice cream for the kids as a way of making up for the shortcomings.

We would not have demanded any, and we would have come back, and we would, in spite of what happened and probably because of the way it has been handled. This is the kind of service that does not exist and cannot be expected from other a la carte restaurants, much less from buffets. 

But aside from the noteworthy service, the food is worth going back for. The har gao was what initially impressed me at Jasmine. I am happy it is included in this promo, for it may be the best dim sum  here. The translucent wrapper that is chewy and possesses bite offers a tantalizing peep into the fat, succulent shrimps it is burgeoned with.

no extenders

The same wrapper is used for the vegetable dumplings, which ensconce chopped kuchay (Chinese leeks) interspersing with the corpulent shrimps.

The shao mai and the minced beef meatballs are satisfactory, but compared with the shrimp dumplings, they descend into the ordinary.

When the orders were on the table the kids, Filipinos to the core that they are, asked when the rice would arrive. I said never, as rice is not included. They groaned, and I understood them, as for most of my life I had believed that a meal would be impossible to eat without rice.  

A friend has recently been invited to Gunagdong for a week, and he observed that in all the meals he was presented with (everything was pre-ordered), rice was nowhere to be found. We all know China is a rice-eating country, and we were lucky to have known fried rice from Chinese cuisine. But my friend's hosts explained that rice is usually considered a filler, or extender, and so for esteemed guests various kinds of dishes are offered, but not rice.

tender and well-seasoned chicken feet, wafting Chinese spices

complimentary appetizer - a bowl of sweet boiled peanuts

The barbecued pork pastry had the same filling that dyes the steamed pork bun (more popularly known as asado siopao, mini), but I found the flaky, crackly crust to be more attuned and a complementary receptacle  to the sweetish, spiced pork.

fried rolls filled with shrimps and oozing with a mild melted cheese

The wagyu beef and mango roll recalls Westernized Japanese maki, until that eggy wrapper explodes and crackles on the first bite, and then it transforms into the sentimental egg rolls of childhood, now grown up and filled with the surprising mix of tender meat rippling with fruity sweetness.

glutinous rice dumpling with pork, right, steamed buns with chicken, left

Dessert is traditional Cantonese, but a notch more sophisticated and fused with trendy flavors. Here, dark chocolate is the molten core of glutinous rice balls rolled in powdered peanuts.

luxurious jelly squares flavored with dates

almond cream soup with glutinous dumpling, gritty with real almonds 

Unlimited Dim Sum available during lunch only

Mondays to Fridays approximately Php650 per person

Sundays Php950 with champagne

Ongoing until July 31, 2013

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Jasmine

New World Makati Hotel

Esperanza Street corner Makati Avenue

Makati City, Tel. No. (632) 811-6888
Website

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Home-made Buchi

Impangat

It has been very difficult waking up these unbearably hot days. I want to lie in bed to avoid the heat. But if I stay in bed the air I breathe gradually mimics the inside of my oven during baking season - not now, I can hardly mix batter, let alone fire up the range - as the sun climbs up the sky.

But one sure thing that gets me up and about is impangat - which is probably equivalent to the Tagalog paksiw, though I'm not really so sure. In Pangasinan we call fish stewed in vinegar and select seasonings and spices impangat. The scales of the fish are not scraped off, and there is ginger, garlic, whole peppercorns, bay leaves, siling haba, and optionally a drop of cooking oil.

To tame the sourness of the vinegar, particularly if using delicate fish, we add sliced tomatoes. And then, to incorporate a salty, umami component, agamang - salted krill commonly known as bagoong alamang - is also added. Sour, sweet, salty, garlicky, the smell induces salivary glands to go on overdrive.

I understand that for other people I may be talking about at least two dishes at once. For I know that in the Tagalog region fish stewed in vinegar is paksiw, while fish stewed in sour fruits - sampalok, kamias, tomatoes, green mangoes, batwan, kipil - is called pinangat, or pangat for short.

In Pangasinan it is baliktad. Fish stewed in vinegar, sometimes added with soy sauce (which I know is already adobo, it's endless!) is impangat, the im prefix serving the same purpose as the in in the Tagalog term. Also pangat for short. But anything soured with fruits is sinigang, and is never called pangat.

So my impangat ya bangus is hybrid, but it is impangat because the main souring ingredient is vinegar, the tomatoes serving only to temper the acidity and to provide a fruity, sweetish aspect.

But here's another conundrum - pangat, or paksiw - fish stewed in vinegar, just to be clear, is a means of preserving fish, invented here in the tropics during the days before the invention of the refrigerator. With the addition of tomatoes the dish' shelf life is shortened, as tomatoes spoil easily.

With all these issues my brain cells have heated up and I have rendered the reason I wanted to write about impangat, which is because it is refreshing that it gets me through the day, useless. Impangat is one of a few dishes I like at room temperature better rather than smoking hot, and somehow the sourness - even sometimes bracing, without the tomatoes - refreshes and cools.

I also prefer pangat cooked the day before, so it has come to embody the connotation of the word - pangat, short for pangatlong init, referring to a dish sold in eateries that is not freshly cooked but reheated several times already. But Filipinos know that anything cooked with a sour ingredient becomes better as it is reheated the next day. So we cook big batches of sinigang, and adobo, and paksiw, hoping there are leftovers to reheat the day after.

It has been observed that pangat, or paksiw, is popular Filipino breakfast fare. That is probably because the fresh fish bought the day before is stewed in vinegar, to be eaten the following day. But the family could not wait til lunch to eat the paksiw, so it is eaten first thing in the morning.

Me, I don't eat pangat before it has turned a day old. Because then the ingredients haven't had time to meld their flavors together and impart this delicious harmony to the fish. Particularly to a bangus, whose milky sweet flesh is the perfect receptacle for the garlicky sourness of the stewing liquid. With the thick black belly fat slowly disintegrating with every reheating and melting into the stewing broth,  pangat defines a little invincible piece of homey goodness. Spooned onto rice and sprinkled with a pinch of large-grained rock salt, breakfast becomes a comfort that makes a hot day endurable.


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Binuburan

Binuburan is fermented rice sold on weekend - and market day -  mornings at the public market of my hometown in Pangasinan. The fermented rice is pressed on a banana leaf-lined bigao, or bilao, then again covered with banana leaves. A serving is a cupful, along which goes a plastic bag of water and sugar syrup.

It is meant to be taken and eaten home, where it is put in a bowl and mixed with the water - preferably cold - and sugar syrup.

Binuburan is different from the other fermented, odoriferous rice - buro - in that the latter is very savory, an appetizing side, while the former is sweet, and can be had as a meal, like some kind of porridge. Binuburan is called binubudan in the Ilocano language.

Binuburan is actually the first stage in the process of making tapuy, the Northern Luzon wine made from rice. It is in the phase when the rice has just been inoculated with the fermenting culture and has yet to turn alcoholic. But it has been allowed to ferment for a few days, up to a week, so it tastes slightly caustic, like an over-ripe pineapple or grapes.  

It is also the culture introduced to sugarcane juice when making basi, the wine of the Ilocos and Central Luzon regions that is based on sugarcane.

The culture comes in the form of hardened rice dough flattened into discs, looking a bit like free-form puto seko, but more like play-doh piso. These are called, unsurprisingly, bubur, and are available most days at the section of the market where local rice delicacies are sold. The bubur is crumbled and sprinkled on cooled boiled rice for it to start the fermentation process. Thus the name bubur, a permutation of bubud or budbud, describing the way it is used.

The bubur is made by mixing ground rice and pounded ginger with a small amount of a pre-made culture - the previous bubur - then fermented, molded, then dried under the sun.

Binuburan was actually exotic to me. That is saying a lot, because my life growing up in Pangasinan was full of what many citified folks would consider verging on the fear factor - consider snails, or frogs, or wild dwarf crabs. Fear factors extreme, actually.

But it was as exotic as coffee, which was forbidden to us children. So it was an exotic adult fare. Though it wasn't exactly forbidden - I never saw it in our house, and I never saw it eaten by any family member.

The first time I came across it was when I came upon a parish priest having it for breakfast. I thought then it must be holy. Over time I thought it was a male thing, like alcohol, or cigarettes. But when I got married I learned that binuburan is occasionally made at my husband's house, and eaten by the elders, who are all females.

So I got the courage to buy some at the market. When I lugged home my purchase I was scolded for taking the water, as it must have been fetched from the public CR. I didn't know it was just piped water, for diluting the binuburan. So I got cold, distilled and mineralized water and mixed it into the binuburan, along with some brown sugar for a caramel finish.

Binuburan takes some getting used to, and is an acquired taste, but so does buro. It has the same tangy sourness, but not as pronounced. It was refreshing, though, and perfect for the weather. But my cup was fininshed by my husband, who grew up eating the stuff, albeit home-made. The elders pronounced the market kind to be okay, but said next time we'll make some ourselves, and instructed me to buy bubur instead.

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Som's

catfish salad

The Songkran Festival  in Thailand ended the other weekend, and it made me recall the year I, along with a group of friends, unwittingly participated in it. The first time I went to Bangkok the internet was still a figment of science fiction, so I and my friends had no way of knowing that everybody would be on holiday and everything would be closed. 

And of course the travel agency where we had booked our promotional tour package neglected to inform us that we would be drenched, as in soaked to our  underwears, with exploding water bags and pails of icy water for much of our stay in our Southeast Asian neighbor. On hindsight maybe that's why we got the trip so cheap!

Good thing we were a group of well-traveled buddies, so unlike the rest of our tour group, we gamely let locals pour water on us and smear our faces with moistened white talc that rendered us as fragrant as the interior of their numerous golden Buddhist temples. 

I remember we passed by a wet market where a group of good-looking males were lined up along the sidewalk holding pails of water and ice. I was screaming "water only! water only!" and they were laughing while the cutest one grabbed my arm and declared, in a deep, sonorous voice that still reverberates in my ears, "Nooo, ICE onleeeee!"

red curry

I haven't been back to Bangkok since, and if I did I'd probably skip the whole month of April going there. But looking back now I'm glad we were clueless then, as I wouldn't have that experience to recall and to  relate to my children, and to reminisce with my friends, now if we had been the wiser. 

We also had no clue then where to eat, so we struck out where we could. An open air restaurant in the middle of the city, the stalls behind a golden temple. Walking along Bangkok streets  in the evening we'd find a pad thai cart in an unlit corner that produced an unforgettable and unrivaled noodle dish right there amid the clamor and smoke of the tuk tuks. Nonetheless, the food we ate was better than anything churned out by any fancy Thai restaurant here.

green curry

But subsequently I discovered a place I could eat some Thai food that was close to that Bangkok experience. The ingredients aren't that authentic, as the dishes offered were adapted to what's available in the country. But it was fresh, home-cooked food, and had the charm of being served by friends you are visiting at home.

I witnessed how Som's started out, a few tables set out on the sidewalk opposite the apartment where a transplanted Thai, his Filipino wife, and their family, lived. I used to pass by the stretch of road connecting Kalayaan Avenue to Estrella in Makati every evening, and I would be curious about a seemingly daily inuman along Alguer Street, inside the perimeter fence that demarcated Rockwell property. In time there were more people, and I'd notice pricey cars parked streetside. I dismissed it then as probably the tambayan of drivers waiting for their bosses having a good time along Kalayaan or Burgos.

som tam

Until a dinner companion alerted me to her ongoing fascination, which was Som's. So I had to try, and I've been  hooked since then. It was a simple family affair - the cousins took the order, delivered it and cleaned up afterwards. The matriarch of the house cooked what the lola and apos sliced and chopped in a single burner stove, so I always went early, prepared for a long wait. The CR is the family's toilet inside their living quarters.

A few months after the eatery's reputation burgeoned and captured the imagination of foodies metro-wide. But it didn't quite get the same reception. In fact, I know no other eatery that attracted such extremely polarized opinions than Som's. It was touted as one of the best restaurants in Manila, while others slammed it as pretentious or totally unauthentic.

stir-fried vegetables

But it got the attention and the business. It soon expanded to the adjacent apartment, operating a branch somewhere else in Makati for a while. Now it has moved out of the proprietor's house into a large, high-ceilinged building with several official parking slots in front, and waitresses take the orders. A buffet is offered once or twice a week. But the matriarch is still there, and so is the lola. And the food remains the same, with the same home-cooked goodness and its notorious inauthenticity. And the bill, just like old times, will not put a dent in your pocket like a supposedly authentic Thai restaurant in the city will.

mixed noodles

Back when it was still operated out of the owners' home, I arrived to find a cousin squeezing a banyera of kalamansi. I understand this is one of the contentions for the use - or non-use - of authentic ingredients, as kalamansi is not the citrus of choice in Thai cooking. But I don't mind, for who says what is really authentic?  Even in Filipino cuisine who can officially say what authentic adobo is? For each region, and even each family has its own standard of what adobo is and should be.

stir-fried chicken with basil

Another time, a group who obviously had heard much about Som's arrived and disbelievingly perused and discussed the menu. One guy said if it's really good then they should order the pad thai, as pad thai should be the Thai dish by which Thai restaurants should be judged.

That group probably never went back, as Som's pad thai is atrocious, the noodles slick with banana catsup. But I regret that they missed out on the other good things at Som's. Like the curries, thickly creamy and rough with grated gingers, or the catfish salad, bracing in its kalamansi dressing and the thinly sliced native green mangoes. The mixed noodles is as good as Bangkok streetside fare, aromatic with fried minced garlic and chopped wansuy.

Thai tea

And there's the Thai tea, which I'll never replace with any faddish milk tea, freshly brewed every day in the premises. A lot of other new dishes have been introduced over the years, but these are what I stick to, for which I get rewarded consistently every time. 

So until I get the courage to have my kids experience Songkran, we'll be at Som's.

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Som's Noodle House
5921 Alger Street
Poblacion, Makati City

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