Blog reborn: Restarting with a fine meal

I am finally reviving this blog after 6 years! So many things have changed EXCEPT my undying love for food. Through this blog, I wish to share extra tidbits of knowledge we can no longer discuss in the lecture because of time constraints. I’m restarting this blog with a meal we had two weeks ago at La Cocina de Tita Moning (http://www.lacocinadetitamoning.com). Not a lot of people seem to know about it as it is tucked away in the San Miguel District, quite far from the usual bus routes of Elbi students. If you haven’t heard of this area before, it’s the millionaire’s row of yesteryears. It is neighbor to the Malacañang Palace. La Cocina de Tita Moning claims it is the first private dining restaurant in the country. Chef Suzette Montinola runs the place. She is the apo (granddaughter) of the original occupants of the house: Dr. Alejandro Legarda Sr. and Doña Moning Legarda. The much anticipated feast started before the meal, soon as I entered the gate, as I am easily enthralled with old houses. Quite reluctant to settle down for the main business (that is, the food) because I was distracted by an heirloom recipe of Tita Moning featured in an old newspaper displayed in one of the mansion's rooms, I joined our group in the comedor (dining area). Set before us were fancy table appointments from the mansion’s antique collection.

Our six-course meal commenced with Ensaladang Filipino. I thought this is a quick fix for those challenged in achieving diet diversity (like me). It had squash flowers, lato (grape-like seaweed), salted eggs, green mangoes and more served with a alamang-based (shrimp fry) sauce which tasted like sampalok (tamarind) and calamansi (Philippine citrus).

Our British friends started with the cocido. Clueless? Think puchero. In Spanish lingo, puchero is actually a kind of cocido. We share this boiled dish of meats, vegetables with the Spanish and Latin Americans. It got its name from the cooking pot that is used to cook it just like the paella which was named after the cooking pan paella. The old-fashioned, Philippine version of puchero is accompanied by tomato sauce and an eggplant sauce. Like other cocidos, it is traditionally served tres vuelcos style. The clear soup is served as first course, followed by the vegetables and then by the meats— quite different from the one-dish meal we are more familiar with. La Cocina de Tita Moning serves the cocido’s soup, tomato sauce and solids separately, albeit in one course.

The second course was Pinais na Alimasag, the dish I’m raving about. This one combines crabmeat with coconut strips, coconut milk and caviar. This is one of the fancier versions of pinais. Simpler versions would just have fish flavored with salt, wrapped in banana leaves and steamed.

From this dish on I got disarmed, that is, the camera was unconsciously put aside. So I only have this dessert sampler to show...oh and the menu too, so you can try to imagine the rest of the meal.

We punctuated the meal with pandan (screwpine leaf) and tablea-flavored (local chocolate tablets) homemade ice cream, bread pudding (lower right item with the pili praline) and canonigo (upper left). Bread pudding is by the way one of their bestsellers. I was surprised I liked the canonigo because normally I don’t enjoy eating meringue which is what the canonigo basically is. The canonigo's chewiness changed my mind. We sure had a hearty meal but this was not the only memory I took home from this fine dining experience. It was hard to miss the how the establishment took pride of its faithful staff. I thought this was the power source of our sincere and happy servers. ‘Wish to see more of this in other foodservice.

Kakanin 101: Tamales

It is commonly known that the Filipino Tamales is a relative or even a derivative of the Mexican Tamal (pl. Tamales). Tamal has as main ingredient the Mexican’s staple corn while Filipino tamales has as base our staple rice. Theirs are wrapped in corn husk, ours are wrapped in banana leaves. Both have been taken as baon (portable food) in the past. Those who have enjoyed these delicacies outside the home included the Aztecs, Mayans and Incans; and Filipino revolutionaries during the Spanish regime, respectively. Given these and several other comparisons, seemingly, the Philippine Tamales makes a good subject for discussions on indigenization (please refer to Culture Ingested: On the Indigenization of Philippine Food for a nice explanation by no less than Doreen G. Fernandez).

Our version of tamales in Pampanga is on the soft and savory yet mild side. And they say, for it to be surely a good one, the tamales must come from the town of Cabalantian. (Note: Since the Mt. Pinatubo eruption, most Cabalantian folks resettled in Bulaon, San Fernando). Tamales from Cabalantian has a chlorophyll tainted, off-white gelatinous square tapong (wet milled rice) base. Melded to its top are annatto-laced tapong, hard cooked eggs and boiled chicken strips.

Levinia Fajardo Gonzales, Darang Lebing (Aunt Lebing) to me, has a slightly different recipe she earlier gleaned from her meticulous mother-in-law, Marcosa Aguilar Roque. I’m glad she agreed to prepare it for us so we can document it.

Like several old and unwritten recipes, Darang Lebing’s recipe is not standardized. But old folks do have their provisions to make sure they’ll end up with their desired product. For instance, notice the use of the nth extraction of coconut milk as back-up for thinning tamales batter.

Darang Lebing used the following ingredients (with their approximate amounts):

5 kilos grated mature coconut (niyog)
1/2c annatto seeds (atchuete)
1c water 500ml cooking oil
3 bulbs of garlic, crushed
1-/2 to 3/4c fish sauce (patis)
1 kilo non-glutinous rice (soaked overnight then milled into medium thick
consistency)
Salt and pepper to taste
½ kilo chicken breast, boiled and cut into strips
1 cup of peanuts fried with garlic 1/2 kilo of honey cured ham

The pictures below will give you a rough idea on how it was done. It's always best to watch and participate in its preparation. (Click the pictures for larger view)


1. Simmering cooking oil and atchuete extract. The same cooking oil was earlier used for browning garlic for flavoring crushed peanut toppings.
2. Blending in the tapong, coconut milk, patis, salt and pepper.
3. to 4. Stirring the mixture continuously until it thickened. Sides had to be scraped to prevent scorching.

5. Adding some more coconut milk (fourth extraction). This step was done as the initial mixture got too heavy.
6. Final mixing of the batter prior to assembly and wrapping.
7. to 8. Scooping tamales batter onto prepared banana leaves, topping them with crushed peanuts, boiled chicken strips and ham; and then wrapping them.
9. Steaming the tamales using a kawa lined with layers of banana leaves. The leaves were submerged in water. This was covered with a bilao.
10. The tamales unwrapped.