Food in My Mind
Today is Halo-Halo Saturday in our household. We all pitched in P100 to buy ingredients to make homemade halo-halo: red mongo beans, garbanzos, ube halaya, nata de coco, kaong, red gulaman, sweetened sago, sweetened bananas and langka. It’s been a hot summer day so the nice, cool feeling of traditional halo-halo went gradually straight to my head like a slow brain freeze.
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My father and I both like to grill things. New Year tradition has always been us out in the garage next to the grill, booze and some veggies and a carb of some kind (spaghetti? pancit? plain rice?) and have lined up for the "ihaw" the following: huge ass tuna, stuffed squid, korean barbequed chicken breast fillet, liempo and some hotdogs for Cojie. Then I make a simple green salad with basic vinaigrette (one part sesame oil, one part cane vinegar, one part patis, one garlic clove crushed and some dried basil) and mushroom soup.
Then I run like hell the next day to burn it all off.
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My mother, on the other hand, shares my liking for Pinoy-style vegetables like pinakbet, ginataang langka, ginataang puso ng saging, pinatalbog na himbabao (yes! there’s a vegetable called "himbabao"! look it up!) and chopsuey. Well, chop suey isn’t Pinoy, but my mom loves the way I cook it.
The best vegetable ensemble in chopsuey consists of the following: green peas (the ones still in the pods), cauliflower/broccoli, petchay baguio, carrots, young corn, red bell peppers, button/shitake mushrooms and occasionally, sayote as an extender. The key is in getting the sauce just right — not too thin like clear soup or too thick like gravy. Just the right consistency to not overcook the vegetables.
And as my office seatmate, Tukayoguev, would say, chopsuey isn’t right without fried chicken.
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Notice how i started with dessert and am ending with appetizers?
My favorite appetizer in any restaurant I go to is garlic mushrooms. I can just eat that and skip the whole meal and go straight to the beer. And it’s so simple to do. It’s just a can of button mushrooms, lots of minced garlic, butter and some vegetable oil. Brown the garlic in the butter/oil combination and then drop the mushrooms. That’s it.
Although I once went to an office thing in Tagaytay where the appetizers were assorted sushi and sashimi and it was heaven. My priest friend Diego introduced me to Unagi Sushi about ten years ago— its main meat is salty fresh water eel. And I order it every chance I get.
Let’s talk about cocktails next time.
