Pasta From Afar!

Tonight, I took some milk of the milk I picked up in Ormoc over to a friend's house here. He's an older German gentleman who says this milk is the best he's had in ten years. He says the milk makes him very happy.

That's great.  He's a very decent person with a lot of very interesting stories.

Anyway, as a thank you, he gave me this bag of pasta.  Maybe one kilo gram of centimeter-wide noodles.  According to him it's imported from Italy.  Hand made by a farmer there.  What an amazing bonus!

But ... but ... but ...

Holy Pressure Treatment, Batman!  (yes, I watched the Batman TV show as a child ... never missed an episode)  Hand made pasta imported from Italy?

I can't just slap some red sauce on that and call it good.  That would be like buying an SUV and putting little tiny tires on it.  That would be wrong.  In fact, I did just buy an SUV and told my friend who owns the garage ... "put the biggest, knobbiest tires that will fit".  The rainy season is upon us here and many roads are not exactly small tire friendly.  Given that the rain can sometimes be measured in IPM (inches per minute), I want to be ready.

Interestingly enough, the tires look perfect.  They look like they were made for the car.

So, now I must find a sauce that is perfect for this imported treasure.

Danke, mein Freund!

Ingredient Safety Tip

This weekend while I was making BBQ sauce, I noticed that one of the bags of tomato paste (tomato past and sauce comes in foil-like pouches here) smelled very odd ... very vinegary.  Fortunately, I caught this before putting it into the sauce.  I suspect Very Bad Things were growing in that paste.

What was surprising was the bag showed no signs of being puffy or expanded before I opened it.  I always check for that, just like one should always check cans for expansion.

Maybe I'm being a little paranoid here.   But, to be safe, be sure to smell your ingredients when you open them. 

Corn Syrup Showdown

Well, my hand is finally healing up.  It's still painful, but I'll be alright in the long run. Thank you very much to those who sent their kind wishes.

I was at the store this weekend doing a little shopping.  I want to get back to cooking this week.  In fact, I'm going to go on a Dim Sum kick.  I really love Dim Sum and decided that since there are no restaurants here that serve it, I'll have to make it myself.  Kind of like my whole Pizza Quest.

Anyway, back to the topic of this post: corn syrup.  I had to make some BBQ sauce this weekend.  So, I bought some corn syrup.  The stores were out of Karo brand, so I picked up a couple of brands I'd never tried.  One was bottled in Manila.  The other was actually the dreaded high-fructose corn syrup.

I bought them both because I was in a bind.  I need to find a suitable substitute because I don't want to get stuck buying HFCS again.

Out of curiosity, I taste tested them all.  Karo, Shamrock, and nameless HFCS.

Karo was the brand with which I was most familiar.  My mom used it since dinosaurs roamed the earth.  And, I suspect that her mother used it while the planets were forming out of the galactic chaos.  So, I'll compare the other brands to it.

Shamrock, bottled in Manila, had the same consistency as Karo but not as rich.  That seemed odd as both were labeled "corn syrup".  Being curious these days, I looked at the ingredients.  Karo has vanilla!  I didn't know that.  Oh, those cheaters!

The HFCS was thinner and sweet.  Probably three times as sweet as the other two.  Its flavor was very much like the Shamrock brand corn syrup.  Very neutral, just sweet.  Unless I'm left with no choice, I will not buy this again.  Wouldn't have purchased it this time had I not needed it.

Given that I don't really want vanilla automatically added with corn syrup, I'll probably buy the Shamrock in the future.

Soy Sauce Showdown!

A while back I made some Nor Mai Gai for a friend. He commented that his family found it a bit salty for their taste (my mom had said something along these lines, too ...). So, I looked at the ingredients and noticed that the only real place where I could reduce the salt was in the soy sauce.

So, I set out to find alternative soy sauces to use. I visited all the local stores and only found Kikkoman's, Kikkoman's Light, and Silver Swan.

Now, you may be looking at the picture with this post and saying "but kuya James, where is the Silver Swan soy sauce in that picture?" Let me explain. Silver Swan is a Filipino soy sauce. It's perfect for Filipino dishes. They taste wrong if not made with this sauce. It's also cheap. A gallon is about P100 (US$2.00 right now). Can't beat that price!

"What does it taste like, kuya?" Honestly, it tastes like most other soy sauces. Just a mild difference in strength. If Kikkoman's is Lea Salonga holding your hand, looking into your eyes, and smiling while singing love songs to you with her golden voice ... Silver Swan is like Manny Pacquiao showing you why one of his nicknames is Pambansang Kamao ("National Fist").

Not exactly the subtle soy sauce that I want for most of the recipes I cook. So, I'll skip it.

Fortunately, I was told about a Chinese store that had a brand I'd never used: White Horse. I went down to the mercado and managed to find the store. This isn't always so easy as not all stores well marked and street numbers seem to be a luxury still not enjoyed here.

First, a price comparison. Kikkoman's is P111 per liter. White Horse is P100 per liter. Kikkoman's Light is P275 per liter (wow!). Obviously, I want to avoid the Kikkoman's Light if possible.

Most importantly, the taste comparison. I used the Kikkoman's as the base. All my life I've seen Kikkoman's in Asian restaurants. It's flavor is so familiar. I'm pretty sure that my blood is part soy sauce ... most likely Kikkoman's.

I compared the Kikkoman's to the Kikkoman's Light. The Kikkoman's Light is definitely less salty than the regular Kikkoman's. But, the Light has this bitter aftertaste.

Then, I tried the White Horse and compared it to the Kikkoman's. Less salt taste but still smooth. No aftertaste.

Conclusion

White Horse is definitely the way to go. It's the least expensive, least amount of sodium, and still manages to have a smooth taste. Unless I'm making Filipino food, I'm going to use White Horse in the future (once I've used up my stash of Kikkoman's ... don't want to waste it).

I'm really glad that I did this test I should do this with other ingredients that I've simply taken for granted over the years.

Fresh Fish For Sale

Last week we went to the beach for Leyte Landing Day (October 20th).  The Leyteños celebrate General MacArthur's liberation of the Philippines in World War 2.  We did what seemingly everyone else on the island did ... went to the beach.

While we were there, a long boat pulled up.  Boxes were brought off and people surrounded the men on-shore.  I walked over to take a look.  Boxes crammed with smaller fish and ice.

Our driver pointed out to me some equipment on the boat.  He said it probably meant that they were dynamite fishing.  Grrr.  Not cool!

People didn't seem to mind.  P120 for very, very fresh fish is a good price.  We didn't buy any.

TWD - Pumpkin Puree

With my oven's thermometer on strike, we've had repairmen in the kitchen a few times in the past couple of days. So, cooking has become a bit of a juggling act. Need to keep the thing cool so that the guys can do their job.


That said, I don't want to completely give up on Tuesdays with Dorie while I'm waiting for a working oven. The most recent recipe, Pumpkin Muffins, gave me an opportunity to do something ... while not the complete recipe, as I'm hesitant to do baking while the oven stays on temperature the way a small child holds still in a candy shop when told that everything is free.

The recipe called for pumpkin puree. If I were still in the US, I'd just drive down to my local mega-store and grab a can off the shelves. I can still see in my head the can with the white paper wrapper that I've bought for years when making pumpkin pies and pumpkin bread.

Here? When I asked about pumpkin puree, the one store that knew anything asked if it was for my baby ... Gerber, I guess, makes pureed pumpkin for the little ones. The others stores just looked at me like I was asking for moon rocks.

So ... make it myself. I'm enjoying that more and more. First, a trip to the mercado to get the closest things to pumpkins they have here. I think they're some kind of squash. But, the taste is pretty close.

Ingredients

• 5 kilograms pumpkins

Procedure


I took my pumpkins and sliced them in half around the middle. I wanted to use our big lechon knife, but, it was a little large. So, just my big Wüstof chef's knife I've had forever.


I scooped out the guts and the seeds. The guts won't go to waste ... we fed them to the pigs. The seeds I put into a roasting pan and have currently drying. I'll post more about the roasted seeds when they're done and tested.


I covered the pumpkin halves with foil and put them into my possessed oven for two hours at something close to 350F (175C).


When the pumpkins came out, I scooped out the majority of the meat ... careful to stay away from the sides and the bitter portions. I want sweet puree, not bitter junk. Again, the pigs got the remains. They were happy. They're getting fatter, that makes me happy, too.


The pumpkin meat was still a bit stringy ... fibrous. So, I put it into my blender and pulverized the meat.


Finally, I put the puree into a strainer for a couple of hours to drain off extra water.


Into a container and into the freezer ... to wait until my oven will cooperate and let me bake properly again.

Conclusions

Easy, easy to make. Probably will make a great baby food for my new niece due here in a week or so. We'll make more for her.

202.0 Kilometers ... A Milk Odyssey

As my legions of devoted fans know, cow's milk (gatas ng baka) is not common here. I've been looking for a good source for months.

By accident, I finally found a source at an agricultural college. P50 a liter, but we had to pick it up. The college is in Baybay. That's quite a ways from Tacloban. It would be an all-day trip. Still, I was willing.

So, last week I called my contact. I was informed that she and her husband had split up. It was he who could buy the milk.

Oh the pain! The pain!

So, I sent a text (SMS) to a friend of mine here who I know has a lot of good connections. Within a few hours, I received a text from his son-in-law (turns out, he's a big cooking fan, too ... need to talk to him!) with the phone number of the marketing director for a milk co-op in Ormoc. That's only 101km away!

The prices were quite reasonable. P60 for a liter of milk, P65 for a liter of chocolate milk. So, I ordered 20 liters of plain and 4 liters of chocolate.

A few days later, and a little by surprise, I receive a text saying that that he has the milk, it's in his car, where should he drop it off? Oh no! We're in Tacloban. That's two hours away (yes, only 101km on that road takes two hours) ... I tell him that we're coming but it's going to take a little bit.

So, I drop everything, we head out. We meet him in downtown Ormoc and he leads us to his storage house. We were worried about getting enough ice to take the milk back ... as most of the sari sari stores were out of ice. But, the milk was frozen! What luck!

We exchanged money and various phone numbers (cell phones, land lines, etc.) and I headed back to Tacloban with my treasure.

I computed the price of the milk based on the use of gas. It was P110 per liter for the plain, P115 for the chocolate. Pretty expensive milk.

But, oh so good ...

Next time we'll buy a lot more to reduce the per-liter gas expense.

Ingredient Study - Oats

Last weekend, I made a bunch of cookies for my friends for the golf tournament. Three kinds, one of them being oatmeal raisin. I was pressed for time that weekend and didn't want to run around town looking for ingredients (that's quite normal here, there are three or four stores I try for most ingredients and one that I try for more obscure imported goods ... like sunflower seeds or large yellow lemons).

I wasn't very happy with the oats that I was using for the cookies. They were very small, over-processed, broken, powdery, etc. Just not very good quality. I'd made some oatmeal with the same oats a few months ago and was highly disappointed with the glop that resulted.

These oats are pictured to the left here. One can easily see that they are just hammered.

Since I've been looking for healthy snacks for my somewhat picky, but oh-so-gwapo son, I decided to look harder for better oats. I wanted a good mouth feel for the cookies so that he would actually eat more than just a bite. Once the little pasaway guy decides that he doesn't like something, the mouth stays closed. I get one chance.

In a way, I like this. His behavior forces me to produce better the first time around. Sometimes I get no chance. That's life with kids. But, when I get one chance, I want ensure that I score a big hit.

Luckily, I found some imported Quaker Oats. Standard, classic Quaker Oats in the 510 gram cardboard can. Just looking at these (to the right), you can see that they are of much, much higher quality.

I guess that's what you get when you pay twice as much for one as the other.

The mouth feel of the cookies I made with the higher quality oats was great. Taste was better. They made a huge difference.

(yes, I made oatmeal cookies again this week ... I need to post the modified recipe that I used along with pictures ... so behind right now!)

While the lower quality oats aren't industrial by any means, they are certainly not up-to-par. Unless I wanted to make glop, I wouldn't buy them again. My family and friends are worth the small added expense (about P50 per 80 cookies).

Ingredient Envy and Pizza Pride

We just got back from Cebu. We stayed there for a few days as a mini vacation. Our main source of amusement while there was to visit the three major malls: SM, Ayala, and Robinson's.

Normally, I'm not much on going shopping. I really don't like it. My tolerance is extremely low for the shoving, inconsiderate crowds that are found at malls all over the world. However, my willingness to suffer to see my wife and son have a good time is fairly high.

My wife got to shop for minor jewelry items. She had a good time doing that. Most of the time was spent with my son riding the rides (SM and Ayala have indoor rides) and playing the ticket-dispensing video games and automated carny games.

Did we get in a little fun for daddy? Yes. I insisted that we hit the grocery stores while there. I didn't walk away with much as I limited myself to only items that I cannot buy here. So, a 4 oz. container of basil leaves, a similarly sized container of Cream of Tartar (used to make playdoh for my son), and 3 kilos of Morton Kosher salt.

The selection of products available in Cebu was amazing. I was definitely envious of those who live there when it comes to shopping for ingredients.

Dad's other form of run was trying the different restaurants there. Of course, pizza was at the top of my list. We hit Pizza Hut and it was ... well, Pizza Hut. Average corporate pizza.

We hit another local place that is supposed to have the best pizza in Cebu. While they were better than Pizza Hut, I didn't think by all that much. Both put on nearly no sauce. That always rates badly in my book.

So, I asked my son ... which pizza did you like best?

"The one you made, daddy."

I think I'll keep him.

Deconstruction? Reduction?

I'm not sure what to call the concept, perhaps someone with a better culinary vocabulary can help me out. This is something I've been considering for a long time.

I want to get to the point where most things I make are made from the base ingredients. What I mean by this is that rather than adding ketchup, mustard, and Worcestershire sauce to ground beef for basic Sloppy Joes, I add their components: tomato paste, ground mustard, vinegar, spices, etc.

I'm fairly realistic about this, things like Worcestershire sauce are already in a basic enough form as is. As are hoisin sauce, oyster sauce, fish sauce, etc. I don't need to get into manufacturing those.

What I do want to do is get my recipes to the point where they are not reliant upon a single brand of a finished product to get the right taste. Ketchups are different, mustards are different. I want some degree of consistency and control. I also want to know what is going into the food that I serve my family and friends.

Yes, opening a can of Cream of Mushroom soup, pouring it over chicken and rice, and baking that for a bit is very easy. And, really quite tasty. However, its sodium content is through the roof. And, these days as I rail more and more against all foods industrial, the thought of just popping open a can of creamy goo and pouring it over our food becomes less and less appealing.

I understand that this is a fantastic time-saver. And, having had a busy life in the past I certainly understand. Right now, I have the time. I should take the time to prepare better for my loved ones.

Just need to learn how now.

Rotten Banana Trick

OK, more like overripe banana trick. That didn't sound as cool for a title.

This I learned from my mom: if you have bananas that are past the stage where you'll eat them, but before they go bad, freeze them. They'll keep for a long, long time and be in perfect condition for banana bread.

And, that's it. Pretty simple and exceedingly effective. I found out today that most of the banana bread I enjoyed as a kid was made with frozen overripe bananas. We'd have one or two bananas from a bunch that had ripened too much. So, she would freeze them and save them. When she had enough for bread, she'd make it.

Pretty clever of her. I must steal more of her cooking secrets.

By the way, as I type this, I have a batch of banana bread in the oven ...

Iced Potatoes

Last weekend, I'd planned to make some Shepherd's Pie. Very yummy stuff. We'd prepared and boiled the potatoes and then needed to take a family member to the hospital (everything is fine now).

So, I did what any normal person would do, put the potatoes into the fridge. You know, that really nifty fridge/freezer I just posted about. Well, we'd just plugged it in and I turned it to fridge mode. Hooray! The potatoes will be fine until I get to mash them into fluffy goodness.

Or, so I thought. Little did I know that a small black button that was depressed meant "quick freeze". See, the controls are in Spanish. I don't speak or read Spanish. And, it didn't occur to me that there would even be a quick freeze option.

I check the potatoes the following morning and find them to be frozen solid. Really solid. Harder than I'd ever seen anything frozen outside of a lab where we were playing with liquid nitrogen solid.

Oops.

This is when I discovered the button and took the fridge/freezer out of super freeze mode.

I left the cut and boiled potatoes in the fridge for another 24 hours. It took that long for them to get to the point where I could start to work with them. I could tell immediately that there was a problem.


See, like any critic of cryogenics will tell you, freezing does bad, bad things to cellular walls. They get a bit damaged. The potatoes were watery. Still, I didn't want to just toss 2.5kg of potatoes.

I went to work. First, the basics, I popped them into my stand mixer and let them have it with the blade attachment. My little stand mixer is a 20 quart Hobart. Takes at least two strong people to pick it up. Three is better. Once, for Christmas, I made twelve dozen chocolate chip cookies in a single batch. The mixer didn't even seem to notice. Oh, I love it.


Anyway, as usual, I digress. Needless to say, those potatoes got seriously beaten.

I was wrong about them being watery. They were very watery. These potatoes were begging me to feed them to our pigs. I wasn't about to give up so easily.

I toss the mashed watery potatoes into strainers for let them sit there for a couple of hours.

The potatoes didn't disappoint me. They gave up a lot of liquid. A lot.

Unfortunately, they still had a strange texture. An unacceptable texture. I had more work to do. So, I got a nice pot and dumped the miscreant potatoes into it. Their punishment for being watery wasn't over.


Twenty minutes of stirring, a lot of evaporation, a lot of butter and some seasoning later ... and I had mashed potatoes that were acceptable for use as a topping on Shepherd's Pie.

Please note: I did not say "good", "great", "fluffy", I said "acceptable".

Even so, I'd won. I'd managed to save the potatoes from being pig food.

Onion ... Meet The Garlic Press

My mom was craving a good salad dressing. I don't like to disappoint my mom, so I made an Asian vinaigrette for her.

I looked at the recipe and noticed that it called for a tablespoon of chopped onion. OK, I knew what that meant for this ... it meant seriously minced. And, to be honest, it was really hot out, I was tired, and I didn't feel like taking even the short amount of time to cleanly chopify the onion.

Since the recipe already called for some garlic, I had the garlic press out. So, I cut up the onion I needed and crammed it through the garlic press.

I was happily surprised with the results. First, the texture of the resulting onion mash was the same as the pressed garlic. So, the dressing didn't have various textures in it. Just the liquid and the garlic/onion mash. I like that because I want the dressing to interfere as little as possible (aside from taste) with the salad on which I'm pouring it.

Second, I was amazed at the amount of onion flavor present. I guess I shouldn't have been. The pressing process brought out a lot of onion juice and exposed a lot more surface area of the onion material.

Next time I make this dressing, I'll use half the onion listed. And, I'll post it ...

Barbecue Sauce Showdown

As promised, I made some barbecue sauce to test out the Stubb's liquid smoke products and compare them to Wright's liquid smoke. I made my normal big batch (recipe below) and divided it into three parts. I added the appropriate amount of liquid smoke to each batch and labeled it so only I knew which smoke was where.

To my taste, there's a clear winner among the three. However, I will not announce it here or to anyone else until I get input from my usual guinea pigs ... otherwise known as my friends and family.

I think you can see in the picture that mine is no artisan kitchen. No fancy special-purpose bottles. Just old, washed-out Coke Zero bottles with masking tape labels. I know, Coke Zero is definitely industrial food. I said I wasn't a zealot.

So, onto the recipe for the barbecue sauce. I've used this recipe for a while. However, it has undergone some modification since I got to the Philippines. Here in Tacloban they don't have what we (in the States) call brown sugar. So, I use what they call brown sugar ... which is what we would call turbinado sugar.


Here are the ingredients:

• 2 cups water
• 2 cups distilled white vinegar
• 1 cup molasses
• 3 cups light corn syrup
• 2 cups tomato paste
• 1/2 cup turbinado sugar
• 1/4 cup liquid smoke
• 2 tbs salt
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1 tbs black pepper
• 1 tbs sweet paprika
• 1 tsp garlic powder

Since I was going to use three different liquid smokes, I left that out at first. What I do is put the water, vinegar, sugar, salt, and spices into a large, wide pot and heat them up over a low flame, whisking them together well. If I weren't comparing the liquid smokes, I'd add that ingredient now, too.


Then, I add the molasses. Since the molasses likes to stick to the measuring cup, I dip the cup into the warm liquid to help it dissolve without having to get out a spoon or some kind of scraper. One less thing to clean. I do the same thing with the corn syrup.

Yes, corn syrup. I'm painfully aware that I've ranted about it. I keep meaning to do some tests to create a replacement for it using local cane sugars. I will. Really.


Finally, I turn up the heat a bit to medium and add the tomato paste. I wisk this in thoroughly.

Once everything is melded well, I turn up the flame to medium-high and wisk constantly to reduce the sauce. There's no right amount to reduce. It all depends on taste. I tend to like to reduce quite a ways to produce a thicker sauce. Although, by no means do I go so far as to get down to level of commercial sauces.


When you've reduced it to the thickness desired, take it off the heat. Continue to wisk for a minute or so to prevent burning. Remember, this sauce has a lot of sugars in it. If they burn, it's bad. Very bad.

Once cool, put it into a container and refrigerate. I find this sauce goes very well on beef, pork, chicken, and turkey. Yields about two quarts of sauce.

I'm An Idiot ... Or, Pay Attention To Your Ingredients

For years, I've made red sauces, spaghetti sauces, pizza sauces, chili sauces, etc., etc., etc. And, for years, I've generally used either tomato sauce or tomato puree. And, for years, I just didn't think about the difference.

I knew that if I used puree that I had to add a little more to the mixture to bring up the flavor. But, that I preferred tomato puree to tomato sauce and used it whenever I could.

Yes, yes, I know what you're thinking: for years, I've been an idiot. Just didn't even think about what I was using. Yes, there's a real difference between tomato sauce and tomato puree. Like, um, ingredients and stuff?

What brought about this miraculous revelation? I was getting read to do my promised comparison between the various liquid smokes when making a barbecue sauce. Since I'm trying to move away from as many processed foods as possible, I thought that I'd use tomato sauce rather than tomato paste in the recipe, adjusting the added water, of course.

So, I'm looking at the calorie contents of the two, because the only difference is that tomato paste has less water, right? Oh, look, tomato sauce has ingredients. (insert long dramatic pause) Oops.

Fortunately, I prefer to do my research before starting. So, no food was ruined. My ego was the only casualty here.

Yes, tomato sauce makes a terrible replacement for the combination of tomato paste and water. Why? Because of those pesky ingredients in tomato sauce like vinegar, sugar, salt, and other things which just aren't in "100% tomatoes", as is the ingredient list of tomato paste.

I really need to learn to read.

HFCS ... Scourge!

Yes, this is coming right on the heels of my last post. After reading the ingredient list on the bottle of "liquid smoke" and seeing high fructose corn syrup, I just had to write something.

Warning: rant mode on.

HFCS, or high fructose corn syrup, is used as a sweetener in all kinds of industrial food. It's cheaper than sugar (from either sugar beets or sugar cane), it lasts longer, and it's easier to handle.

In my not-so-humble opinion ... so what?!? It doesn't taste as good, there's some controversies about the its health effects vs. normal sugars, and ... well, it's industrial food!

Here's a nice example: I'm a big can of Coca Cola. Love the stuff. Actually, I love it too much and I'm trying to quit (emphasis on the "trying"). Back in the States, Coke is made with HFCS.

When I moved to the Philippines, I noticed that the Coke tasted better. How could that be? They're the same, right? Wrong! Philippine Coke is made with cane sugar. Yes, good, old fashioned cane sugar.

Oh, it is so much better. And, it's P21 per liter (as of this writing, that's about US$0.48). So, it's cheaper, too. Ha!

OK, OK, I know it'd be more expensive to use cane sugar in the US because it's not quite as tropical as the Philippines. Still, the difference is in the taste. That's the point.

Sugar tastes better than HFCS. Sugar is also not seriously highly processed goo.

There's a reason that Kosher Coke (Coca Cola made for Passover) is so popular. It's made with cane sugar. There's a reason that Dr. Pepper connoisseurs love the "Dublin Dr. Pepper" (Dr. Pepper made in a plant in Dublin, TX) ... cane sugar, not HFCS.

I'm going to try my best to avoid this junk. And, I hope that more corporations stop using it. Stop being cheap and taking shortcuts.

OK, I feel better now.

More on Ingredients ...

Yes, I'm obsessed about ingredients, aren't I? I didn't used to be. Didn't used to care much. Now, since a lot aren't easily available to me, I am.

I definitely plan to post recipes that I make and pictures of the results ... good or bad. But, I also plan to post my trials and tribulations with getting or making basic ingredients.

Today, I'm sick. Very sick. Probably-should-be-on-antibiotics sick. So, I spent the day perusing other food blogs. Really great things are getting posted out there.

One thing that was immediately apparent to me: my recipes are going to end up looking far more complex than many. See, I don't have Cream of Chicken soup available to me anytime of the day or night. Sometimes, if I'm lucky, one of the more interesting local stores will bring in things from Manila. I can't count on that.

So, I'm going to work on, test, and develop recipes that do many things from ... gasp ... scratch. And, in the case of many herbs, I'll have to grow them myself.

Yes, yes, I know that this is what fine restaurants do. One minor point: I'm not a professional culinarian. I don't even play one on TV.

There's a lot to figure out. I'm actually looking forward to it. I hope I don't punish my taste buds too much.

Industrial Food

In my previous post, I used the phrase "industrial food". I've used this phrase for years to describe highly-processed foods or foods with ingredients one can only find in a factor. Yes, I take credit for it ... ha!

For me, on one end of the food scale is industrial food. At the other end is pure, raw, organic food.

I'm not a big fan of industrial food. Industrial food leads to lesser quality final product. Yes, it's easy in a factory. But, do we really want to live our lives consuming that which is easy to make in vast quantities? Or, do we want to spend a little more time and a little more money on food that tastes and satisfies far, far more? I pick the latter.

Food, however, is not entirely science. This isn't black-and-white. Is industrial food always bad? No, but it usually is. Is organic food always good? No, raw free range chicken is probably not the best for you.

Somewhere between the two is probably the best compromise. Although, I've found the more I stay away from industrial foods, the better I feel.

That said, I'm no zealot. Sometimes I want a McDonald's Quarter Pounder and fries and nothing else will do.

Ingredient Differences

I believe I may have left the wrong impression about ingredients here ... that the differences are all bad. They're not. Not by a long shot.

Sure, the availability of many things is low to non-existent. Want liquid smoke? Unless you know Manila very, very well, it's easier and cheaper to just have it shipped from the States.

That said, many of the local ingredients are of much higher quality and far, far fresher than their American brethren.

Take the tomato. In the stores in the States, tomatoes are gorgeous. Perfect round, large, red orbs. Their Philippine counterparts are like small, green Romas ... just not the most appetizing by looks alone.

Don't judge a tomato by its color!

Now, before I say anything here, let me just make it clear that there are exceptions to what I'm about to write. BC Hothouse makes exceptional tomatoes of high quality and taste. And, they're not involved in the current salmonella problem. I'm sure there are many other examples of fine, quality ingredients available.

The average American tomato in our megamarts are designed to be trucked hundreds or thousands of miles to market. It's been bred to take that treatment and still arrive looking good for the consumer. Industrial quality! Industrial taste. If you like industrial cardboard.

The average Philippine tomato, once you let it sit and ripen, tastes great. It's not some special strain.

The meats here, fresh. I go to a local butcher. The owner seems to be fanatical about cleanliness and sanitation. I cannot express how much I appreciate that. Not to mention the meat is very fresh. Very fresh. I've heard rumors that in some cases the time from slaughter to the butcher's display case is under 24 hours ... well under.

Fish? Nearly still flopping if you hit the mercado (market) when the fishermen come in at the end of the day. Incredible quality.

Fruits, vegetables, garlic, ginger ... all trucked in nearly daily to the mercado. Very fresh and not some industrial crop strain that's taken all the flavor out of the food.

Mangos ... here's a nice example. Before I moved to the Philippines, I hated mangos. The ones we could get in the Seattle area were garbage. Sure, sometimes you got lucky and bought a halfway adequate mango. Usually, they were a bit fibrous and not all that sweet.

Here? Good Googly Moogly! They're like candy! Sweet, golden, juicy. Simply amazing.

So, ingredients here are different. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, sometimes, just not available at all. I guess that's all part of the fun.

Yet Another Food Blog (YAFB)

Why? Why another food blog?

Why not?

I find myself in a position that seems a bit foreign. Well, more than a bit. I'm living in a foreign country.

Many of the ingredients here are different. Food availability here is completely different. Back in the States, if I wanted some saffron at 3:25am, I just hopped in the car and bought some at my local 24-hour megamart. Now, if I want saffron, I have to call a friend in another city (Cebu or Manila) and have them ship it to me.

Used to be, when I wanted lotus leaves to make Nor Mai Gai, I'd just drive about ten miles to my local Ranch 99 Market and buy them, cheap! Of course, I didn't mind this because I'd also buy very, very freshly made char siu pork. When I want lotus leaves now, I had them mailed from the States. The leaves cost US$15 (US$3 per package of ten), the postage was US$60. Still worth it! next time, though, we'll ship them the slow way via balikbayan box.

Dairy products? We have a few cheeses and cheese products in small supply: Cheddar, Swiss, Mozzarella, cream cheese, and bad, flavorless imitations of American cheese. We also get milk and cream. However! Said milk and cream is pasteurized using the UHT method. What does that mean? It has little flavor and doesn't behave like my beloved milk from home.

Yogurt? Sometimes. Cottage cheese? No. Sour cream? No chance.

Let me repeat that: no sour cream.

So, I've done what any sane person would do ... try to recreate many of these things myself.