Burnt Lumpia: Filipino Food | Filipino Recipes | Culinary Hijinks

Out on Parol

Every year around Christmas time, the wife and I like to drive around various neighborhoods looking at all the different Christmas lights people have hung on their homes. Although the wife likes to ooh and ahh at all that is bright and blinky, I just like seeing how many Filipino households I can spot during these night-time drive-bys.

How is it that I can pick out a single Filipino household from the hundreds of other twinkling homes? My Filipino readers may already know the answer to this, but I'll clue everyone else in too. In addition to the normal strings of Christmas lights stapled/nailed/duct taped to the eaves of houses, Filipinos may sometimes display a large star-shaped lantern, called a Parol, in their windows or on the outside of the home.

For instance, here's a look at my parents' home with a Christmas Parol in their window:

And here's a look at me and the wife's place with our Parol in one of our upper windows:

I know, the single string of lights at our place is totally weaksauce, but me and ladders are mortal enemies.

Thin-Skinned

I received another windfall of kalamansi limes from my mother recently, whose tree was bursting with bright orange orbs of the Filipino citrus. The longer a kalamansi sits on the tree, or the older it gets, it will change colors from green to orange. I'm guessing that because kalamansi are grown so abundantly and used so frequently in the Philippines, you will rarely find an older, orange-hued one there. Such is not the case for my mother, who is lucky enough to have a tree that produces more fruit than she can use. Hmph.

The bag of fruit that my mom unloaded on me contained about a jillion orange kalamansi, and only a few green ones. So I decided to conduct a very unscientific and inconclusive experiment in which I compared the traits of green and orange kalamansi limes. Prepare to be awed.

Kalamansi are smaller than lemons. Mind blowing.

Firstly, I noticed that both the green and orange kalamansi were smaller than a lemon! Mother-effing crazy, right? Wait, hold your applause, there's more!

After cutting open the green ones and a couple of orange kalamansi, I found that both are thin-skinned and orange-fleshed. The juice yielded from both was also orange. I then squeezed some of the juice into separate teaspoons and gave the samples a taste. The juice from both samples tasted sour with a hint of orange fruit--I couldn't find any discernible differences between the green and orange kalamansi. All of this info is earth-shattering, I know. I'm already crafting my speech for the Nobel Prize in Awesome.

So, in conclusion, the skin color of kalamansi doesn't matter. Green or orange, it's still Filipino on the inside (and that, boys and girls, concludes today's After School Special).

Although I was riding a natural high from my ground-breaking findings, I still had a bagful of kalamansi with which I had no idea what to do. Since they were already so "ripe", on the verge of decomposing, I figured I'd at least squeeze 'em and freeze the juice for a later use.

Leftover Lechon

Some of you may remember my Lechon story from last year in which I explained that the wife and I alternate between our families each Thanksgiving. Since we spent last Thanksgiving eating Lechon (Filipino roasted pig) and other goodies with my family, we spent this past Thanksgiving eating turkey and other goodies with my wife's family.

As usual, I had a wonderful time with the in-laws this year, and as usual I couldn't help but have fatty pork on the brain. Knowing that I'd be needing to satisfy a serious lechon fix, I called my grandmother with specific instructions to send a heapful of leftovers back with my parents since I'd be seeing them the next day. Usually requests like this are futile--any goodies meant for me are almost always intercepted by rogue vultures (i.e. my brothers) long before they are within my grasp. This time however, the pork gods smiled upon me as the foil-wrapped piggy package arrived safely, unscathed and uneaten.

What to do with leftover roasted pig? Make Paksiw na Lechon: number 3 with a bullet on the Five Point Pork Exploding Heart Technique.

The Five Point Pork Exploding Heart Technique:

• Dish #1: Spicy Sizzling Sisig
• Dish #2: Pork Belly Adobo
  
• Dish #3: Paksiw na Lechon
• Dish #4: Lechon Kawali/Bagnet/Chicharon
• Dish #5: Longanisa

Quiche Me, I'm Filipino

Speaking of magazines, I also wanted to mention that the December issue of Yummy Magazine in the Philippines features a new recipe by yours truly (and for great comedic effect, there's an accompanying picture of me as well--so I'm told).

The recipe I contributed to Yummy is a Bitter Melon and Bacon Quiche, which is pretty much my take on the classic Pinoy dish of Eggs and Ampalaya, combined with the more western Quiche Lorraine (ooh lar lar).

Mmmm. Bitter melon and bacon, together at last.

This all came to be when, a couple months back, one of the kind folks at Yummy emailed and asked me if I had any ideas for a holiday side dish. So I sent them back a long, drawn-out recipe that is now (understandably, and thankfully) a whittled down and more streamlined version of what I sent them. I gather that the editors at Yummy must frown upon unnecessary parenthetical statements and vague references to cartoons and little-known rap lyrics (I kid, I submitted only a very straight-forward recipe).

A December To Savor

As a Filipino born and raised in Southern California, I've often viewed Christmastime in the Philippines with much wonderment and awe. Now, I've never witnessed the holidays firsthand in the Philippines, but my mother often regales my brothers and I with stories of month-long celebrations, huge feasts with family and friends, and Christmas caroling "back home."

Even though Christmas caroling is a practice long extinct here in the U.S. (I probably wouldn't answer my door if I knew carolers were outside), I'm admittedly quite jealous of all the merriment and eating that goes on in the Philippines leading up to, and moving right on through Christmas. For instance, my cousins in the Philippines usually all gather together for Noche Buena and dine on an array of dishes that include lumpia, noodles, stuffed chicken, ham and/or lechon, sweet rice cakes, and a whole bunch of other things of which I'm jealous. And that's just for one night on Christmas Eve! Even weeks before Christmas there's a whole lot more going on that I can't even wrap my head around.

Luckily for us here in the U.S., the spirit of Christmas in the Philippines is captured in the pages of the December issue of Saveur Magazine (thanks to MarketMan for the heads up). Although I've found some mention of Filipino food in magazines like Sunset, this month's Saveur perhaps provides the most coverage given to Filipino food in a mainstream "foodie" publication. And it's about time.