Burnt Lumpia: Filipino Food | Filipino Recipes | Culinary Hijinks

Gone Fishing

So a Filipino guy, a Japanese guy, and two Chinese guys walk onto a fishing boat...

The Japanese guy takes a deep breath of fresh sea air and says, "Looks like a good day for fishin'! Hopefully we can pull something up I can sashimi."

The Chinese guys nod, look out onto the horizon and say, "Or maybe we can steam our catch."

The Filipino guy snorts, looks around and asks, "This boat come with a deep fryer?" (Hey-ohhhhh! Insert rimshot, groans, and forced laughter here.)

And so it was this past weekend, when I joined my buddy Marc and some friends on a two-day fishing odyssey on Bodega Bay in Northern California (and no, I didn't really ask for a deep-fryer).

Prior to this outing, I had only gone fishing twice. The first time was back in college, when the afforementioned Marc and I hopped on a half-day vessel and fished out of Santa Barbara. Marc, a life-long fisherman, caught the majority of the fish that day. I, on the other hand, caught nothing but a case of the sea-shakes and puked my guts out overboard. Despite spending most of that trip lying on my back, or hunched over the side of the ship, I had a blast. Seriously.

Many years later in San Diego, I found myself on a fishing boat for the second time in my life. I actually reeled in quite a few fish that day, but it came after a late night of carousing and only 2 hours of sleep (it was for another buddy's bachelor party), so much of that excursion is a blur to me. Strangely though, I didn't get sea sick on that trip.

So when Marc recently invited me out on his personal boat for a couple of days fishing the Boogie-Down Bodega Bay, I knew I couldn't say no. And besides, I made sure that this time around I'd have plenty of rest, minimal cocktails, and prescription-strength dramamine to keep my wits about me and to keep my insides on the inside.

Filipino Chocolate and Wine Pairing

All photos courtesy of Pleasure Palate

This Sunday June 26 from 7-9pm, FilAm ARTS will be hosting an exclusive wine and fine chocolate tasting featuring Filipino-inspired chocolates paired with an exclusive selection of wines.

What's that now? Filipino-inspired chocolates? Well, yes. Tonet Tibay, of Marti Chocolatt,is a Filipina chocolatier who incorporates Filipino flavors into her chocolates. Tonet's chocolates for this tasting will include:

• Ube ~ purple yam in a white chocolate ganache
• Durian ~ durian in 33% milk chocolate
• Senorita ~ sweet ripe bananas with dark Jamaican rum in a milk chocolate ganache
• Jasmine Citron ~ queen of jasmine pearl tea with grapefruit zest
• Barako ~ Liberica coffee beans in a milk chocolate ganache
• Pina ~ pineapple caramel with Ilocano sea salt

While these chocolates sound fantastic on their own, they will be accompanied by wines selected by Filipino sommellier, Santos Uy, owner of Mignon Wine and Cheese Bar.

The event will be held at Kazuyo Sushi, a Filipino-owned Japanese restaurant (man, we Filipinos are everywhere, aren't we?).

General admission to this event includes the chocolate and wine pairing (six chocolates and four wines) for $35.

VIP admission includes the chocolate and wine pairing plus a box of chocolates and wine to take home for $75.

In addition to the chocolate and wine tasting, you can also choose to dine at Kazuyo Sushi before the event. Kazuyo also has a few Japanese dishes with Pinoy twists, courtesy of Filipino Chef-Owner, Joe Cubangbang. Kazuyo is offering a special 15% discount for all attendees who mention FilAm ARTS when they make their dinner reservations or when they walk into the restaurant.

All proceeds for this event will benefit FilAm ARTS.

For more information, and to purchase tickets click here: http://filamartschocolatewinepairing.eventbrite.com/

Beer-Steamed Blue Crabs

No matter the measure of success a person may have, there will inevitably be someone else that may try to negate or trivialize that success. Anything from winning a spelling bee ("Dude, you got lucky. Anyone can spell 'Borborygmus'") to cooking a decent plate of adobo ("Your adobo is OK, but my Lola's is much better"), someone will almost surely exhibit some sort of crab mentality to let you know just how mediocre they think you really are.

We all know the metaphor. The ol' Crabs in the Pot story where one crab tries to escape from the pot, only to be pulled back down into the pile by another crab. I imagine that as the one crab is about to claw his way out, all the other hater-crabs below are talking behind his back ("I worked way harder than he did to escape this wretched pot, so there's no way I'm letting him outta here without a nip at his leg!) and even telling lies and spreading rumors ("Hey, I heard that crab up there has got crabs! Gross!). The secret life of crabs. Who knew?

Anyways, the best way to counter such crab mentality is to stay above the fray and ignore the high school antics, gossip, and smack-talk of crabby people, and instead indulge in the sweet meat, rich "mustard", and delectable roe of the crabby crustaceans that dwell under water.

So when I recently spotted a bin of live Maryland Blue Crabs at my friendly neighborhood Filipino market, I knew I had to steam a pot of the tasty critters to offset the crabbiness going on in my own life these days.

Salted Butter Caramel Ice Cream (& Turon)

David Lebovitz's Perfect Scoop is perhaps one of the most dog-eared and ragged cookbooks on my magic shelf o' cookbooks. And just because this particular cookbook is dedicated to all things ice-cream, that doesn't necessarily mean its use is relegated to only the summer months--Perfect Scoop gets year-round play at the Burnt Lumpia Worldwide Headquarters.

In fact, our favorite recipes from the book range from David's Raspberry Swirl Ice Cream and Peach Ice Cream in the warmer months, to Orange-Szechwan Pepper Ice Cream, Cinnamon Ice Cream, and Eggnog Ice Cream during the colder months, and Coffee Ice Cream and regular ol' vanilla for whenever the hell we feel like it. Yup, my home-ice-cream-fu be pretty decent.

With all that said, my most favorite of David's ice cream recipes is actually Salted Butter Caramel Ice Cream. Ironically though, a recipe for Salted Butter Caramel Ice Cream doesn't even appear in Perfect Scoop, but the recipe does (thankfully) live on David's blog. Besides being my favorite ice cream recipe, Salted Butter Caramel Ice Cream is perhaps one of the best frozen treats I've ever tasted (probably a close second to Abominable Snowman blood. Mmmm, Yeti plasma).

Anyhoo, what makes this ice cream so good?

Well for one, its base components of butter (Butter in ice cream!!!), salt, cream, milk, sugar, and eggs all come together to form something simultaneously rich, sweet, salty, and ever-so-slightly burnt-sugar-smokey. It's crazy that something can taste as complex as this ice cream tastes. Secondly, it's also a nice reminder of me and the wife's trip to Europe some time ago where we inhaled various vats of gelato--including copious amounts of Caramel Buerre Salé (ohh lar lar). Which is why, around this time every year, our ice cream maker cranks out some Salted Butter Caramel Ice Cream--it's an oldie, but a goodie.

Caramel Buerre Salé w/ Ilocano Asin

And since I was recently on the subject of Philippine Sea Salt, I do want to mention that the delicate crystals of Ilocano Asin provide the wonderful (and necessary) salty hint that makes this ice cream really stand out.

And while homemade Caramel Buerre Salé is nearly perfect on its own, I do like to nestle a scoop of it between crisp homemade Filipino Turon (AKA saba banana egg rolls):