Burnt Lumpia

A Fish Story

The following is loosely based on actual events...

INT.  LOCAL FILIPINO MARKET - NOON

Marvin zips through the automated market doors and makes a beeline toward the back of the store--past the colorful bottles of banana ketchup and fish sauce, and beyond the refrigerated aisles of fermented shrimp paste and calamansi-flavored sodas. He reaches the fish counter in a huff.

OLD FISHMONGER GUY

What you want?

MARVIN
(perusing the assortment of fresh fish on ice)

Uh, you don't have any snapper today, huh?

OLD FISHMONGER GUY
(saying something in Tagalog that Marvin can't understand)

Blah, blah, blah, isda, blah.

MARVIN

(sheepishly)

Uh, I don't speak Tagalog.

OLD FISHMONGER GUY

You are not Filipino?

MARVIN

I am. I just don't speak Tagalog.

OLD FISHMONGER GUY

You look Korean.

MARVIN
(thinking to himself)

If I look Korean, why the hell are you talking to me in Tagalog?

(to the Fishmonger)

I get that all the time, but I'm Filipino.

Green Mangoes and Bagoong

The mere mention of "Green Mangoes and Bagoong" will likely excite the salivary glands of almost any Filipino. It's true.

Green Mangoes and Bagoong.

Green Mangoes and Bagoong!

Green Mangoes and Bagoong!!!

The pairing of sour unripe mangoes dipped in salty fermented shrimp paste (Bagoong) may not sound too appealing to some, but it's a mouth-watering combination for most Filipinos. In fact, after reading the first few lines of this post, I'm sure that there are some gleek-covered computer screens out there due to the certain downpour of Pavlovian drool.

Up until recently though, my own Pavlovian response to green mangoes and bagoong did indeed entail salivation... except it was the sort of salivation associated with nausea. Yeah, vomit spit (ewww). You see, when I was a wee lad I would recoil in horror as I watched my mother snack on this sour/salty delicacy. Eating unripe fruit was strange enough to me as a child, but to then dip and smother the unripe fruit in stinky rotting shrimp was altogether... well, it was just plain gross.

For those who have never had the pleasure of eating bagoong, it is a very pungent and salty paste comprised of itty-bitty teeny-weeny fermenting shrimp. While Bagoong is salty in flavor, its funky aroma is kinda like if anchovies had feet, and wore dirty socks with an old pair of sneakers, and walked around town in the afternoon sun, in July--but in a good way.

As I've gotten older though, I have learned to enjoy Bagoong in tiny doses. Heck, I even made a salad with it. However, I've always avoided eating bagoong where it is one of the primary in-your-face ingredients--such as the condiment for green mangoes. But I must confess that I've finally discovered the virtues of this classic pairing.

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.

Sustainable Seafood

I sometimes find myself wondering if I'd be more "ecologically responsible" if Captain Planet had aired during the '80s with the rest of my favorite childhood cartoons (e.g. G.I. Joe, Transformers, and Voltron).

But because Cappy aired during my angry teenage years in the '90s, I always viewed that cartoon as somewhat corny and sissified (heck, I even watched Jem and She-ra during the '80s, and I still liked those better than Captain Planet). 

Despite the absence of this green-mulleted, blue-skinned, red underwear-wearing superhero during my formative years, I still try to live and eat as green as possible as an adult. That's not to say that I'm some kind of eco-freak (not that there's anything wrong with that), but I try to do what I can when it comes to how my food choices affect the planet: I eat as locally and organically as I can (though it's not always possible) and I go out of my way to not be wasteful of food.

More recently though, I've started to learn a bit about sustainable seafood and how overfishing certain species of fish can not only lead to the possible extinction of these fish, but can also cause terrible repercussions in the oceans and the rest of the world.

Since October is National Seafood Month, I thought I'd try to shed a little bit of light on this subject by participating in The Leather Disctrict Gourmet's sustainable seafood blog event: Teach a Man to Fish 2008.

Pandora

The wife and I keep a fairly organized pantry. Most everything is easy to find and within reach because the items on our shelves are clearly labeled, or are in clear canisters, or both.

But there are always three wildcards in the pantry for us. Three tins that previously contained things like candy, gingerbread mix, and cookies (they were all gifts) are now recycled and employed to house other flotsam and jetsam.

Problem is, I can never remember the booty currently contained in each tin because I don't label them, and my X-ray vision only works on rayon, silk, and maybe even denim (not that I'm complaining).

So every now and then I have to pop open each tin to figure out what the heck lay (or lie? I be not good at grammar) beneath their lids.

For example, I just (re)discovered that the green tin stashes away my heroin brown sugar (keeps it moist):

 

The gingerbread tin hides my weed oregano (keeps the whole cupboard from stinking of oregano [I buy in bulk, so a small little jar is not sufficient]):

 

And so that leaves the round cookie tin. For the life of me, I can never remember what I hide in that one (my memory must be shot from all the oregano I consume)...

Stuffed to the Gills

Whenever my dad gets a little hot under the collar and has to work off some steam, my mother usually hangs a whole Bangus (milkfish) from a meathook in her kitchen. Then, she goes to her mint-condition 1980s-era Sony boombox and blasts "Eye of the Tiger" from its speakers.  Then, as if on cue, my dad bounds into the kitchen and proceeds to go to town on the poor hanging Bangus--Rocky Balboa style--working his jab-jab-cross combinations to rightly tenderize the flesh of the fish. After absorbing enough furious blows from my father's menacing knuckles, the fish meat relents and finally yields as it falls through the fish's mouth and gills and into a bowl waiting on the floor. Left hanging from the meathook is only a limp, empty sock of fish skin, and on the kitchen floor lay a bowl full of tender fish meat. And thus begins the recipe for Rellenong Bangus--Stuffed Milkfish.

Aside from the preceding paragraph being unnecessarily laden with adjectives, it's also not entirely true. One, my mom wouldn't know how to work a boombox; and two, my dad only punches live animals (it's been a while since I've zinged my old man in this space: ZING!). So aside from poking fun at my parents for my own personal pleasure, I did want to paint a picture of how difficult it is to prepare Rellenong Bangus (stuffed milkfish).

All joking aside, Rellenong Bangus is perhaps one of the most time and labor-intensive Filipino recipes to attempt--its preparation involves the tenderizing and removing of the fish flesh through only a small opening in the fish's skin using only a spoon and a lot of scraping and squeezing. For Stuffed Bangus, the whole idea is to remove the meat from the fish while still keeping its skin intact--this is done by inserting the spoon through the gills of the fish, although my mom sometimes cheats by cutting the fish open, scraping the meat out, and then sewing the skin back together.

After the meat is removed from the fish, it is seasoned and cooked, flaked, picked over for bones, and then mixed with chopped veggies. Meanwhile, the empty fish skin is marinated in a mixture of soy and kalamansi. The fish meat and veggies are then stuffed back into the fish's body until the deflated balloon of fish skin resembles a whole fish again (It's kinda like squeezing all the toothpaste out of a tube, and then stuffing the paste back into the tube again--only much tastier). After the fish is stuffed, the whole shebang is grilled or baked or fried or what have you. 

The entire ordeal (and it is an ordeal) of removing and deboning the meat from a whole Bangus is easier said than done--which is why Stuffed Bangus is only made every once in a while for parties and special occasions (or on occasions when my father has to punch something--actually, that's not true, otherwise we'd have stuffed bangus every day).

Hill o' Beans

As was probably evident from my last post, I sometimes like to take shortcuts in the kitchen. But mandolines can only get you so far. There are certain culinary tasks that are unavoidably time-consuming and unabashedly boring. And unless you have a small army of prep cooks, monkeys, robots, or children at your disposal, there's no getting around such chores.

Take for instance, the labor-intensive act of shucking fava beans.



Ah, yes, fava beans--the beans so nice, you need to shell 'em twice. Their big green pods are picture-perfect underneath the shade of a farmer's market stall--an emerald harbinger welcoming the start of warm, sunny weather. But as soon as you bring home your pile of favas and dump the green pods out onto your kitchen counter, your once-cheery mood dips a bit when you realize you have to shell all those mother-effing beans.

Although they look like string beans on horse 'roids, there's more to shelling fava beans than just zipping open their giant pods and plucking out each bean. After liberating beans from pod, you then have to go back and rip off each bean's face and mohawk to finally expose the inner core of the legendary legume.

What?

Yeah, faces and mohawks. You didn't know fava beans had faces and mohawks? See for yourself...

Squid 'n Play

As I've mentioned before in this blog, Adobo is the Filipino method for cooking anything in a mixture of vinegar, salt (and/or soy), garlic, black peppercorns, and bay leaf. Any good Filipino adobo should have that perfect balance of tang and saltiness. Now mind you, this "balance" of vinegar and salt is purely subjective of course. But having prepared a few different adobos for this blog, I've been able to refine my palate bit by bit and have begun to develop my own preference for what a good adobo should taste like.

As such, I can now crank out a delicious pot of chicken adobo at the drop of a hat with nary a glance at any printed recipe. Preparing chicken adobo has become second nature to me. The problem with this though, is that I was becoming a one-trick pony.

To me, knowing how to cook only chicken adobo is like knowing only one kind of dance. Sure, the Running Man may make you the life of the party for maybe the first couple of songs, but after awhile, the once-awed crowd will realize that the Running Man is pretty basic and they'll surely stop yelling your name and telling you it's your birthday.

What's that you say? Nobody does the Running Man anymore? Really? OK, how about the Cabbage Patch? No, again? Crap.

Alright, so maybe I'm horribly out of touch with the moves of today's house party goers, but you get the point right? There are many other types of adobo besides that of the chicken variety. Yes, I've made a pork ribs adobo before, but the procedure for that recipe is essentially the same for any chicken adobo recipe.  I wanted to try something else. And since chicken and pork were done, the next logical adobo for me to try was squid adobo, or Adobong Pusit as it's known in the Philippines. And, depending on where you are in the Philippines, squid adobo may actually be more popular than chicken or pork.

If chicken adobo is akin to the Running Man, then Squid adobo is like the Kid 'n Play--awesome when done right, but downright grotesque otherwise.  As such, learning to cook squid adobo is like learning to do the Kid 'n Play--dedicate enough time to either activity and you are bound to impress all the ladies (well, at least the ones that enjoy adobo and/or cutting a rug).

Don't believe me? Here's proof...

The Oyster. Considered.

My dad has this saying that if you don’t get mad, it won’t get fixed.

This maxim usually applies to certain circumstances in which my old man is trying to repair something around the house or in his garage.  The scenarios usually start off very innocently, like screwing a shelf into a wall, unclogging some backed-up pipes, or genetically engineering his clone.  But as soon as something goes wrong—like a missing shelf bracket, a futile and useless plunger, or a volatile and unstable strain of DNA—my dad goes berserk and starts cursing up a storm.

He usually starts off with a few innocuous “Goddammits!”  Then he moves on to  spewing out some “Sons of bitches!” that serve as a warning to those within earshot that he’s about to blow his top.  But once he starts dropping F-bombs and MotherF-bombs, it’s time for my brothers and I to scurry away and hide, lest we be commanded to find my dad his “Pillips head screwdriber”.  On such occasions of unbridled fury, I always want to tell my dad that Jesus was a carpenter. But I don’t think he’d get it, and then he would surely stab me with said screwdriver.

My dad’s rage doesn’t last forever.  Once he’s done fixin' whatever he was fixin', he calms down, shrugs his shoulders, then walks over to my mom and mutters his mantra: “If you don’t get mad, it won’t get fixed.”

Now, I’m not much of a handy guy.  I own zero powertools and most of my handiwork consists of erecting crappy Ikea furniture.  So in terms of being a man about the house, I haven’t witnessed any of my father’s fury passed on down to me.  However, it’s a completely different story when I’m in the kitchen.  My inherited wrath was no more evident than when I tried shucking oysters for the first time.

A Trio of Sinigang

What little knowledge I have about Filipino American history dwarfs what I know about the history  of the Philippines.  Being born and raised in Southern California, and spending my entire scholastic career in the public schooling system doesn't exactly lend itself to learning about the historical accounts of a foreign nation--even if that foreign nation is where my ancestors are from.  I barely even know anything about American history.  I mean, the state of California is like, being ruled by the Terminator right now.  I'm serious, I just Googled it.

Anyhoo, because of this blatant and embarrassing lack of knowledge, I was especially pleased when I found out the theme for the latest go-around for Lasang Pinoy: Cooking for Heroes. For this latest installment of Lasang Pinoy, we were to choose a Philippine National Hero and then answer the age-old question that if this historical figure were invited over for dinner, what would you serve them?

For this Lasang Pinoy event, I decided I would choose a Filipino historical figure that I knew very little about.  Actually, I chose three historical figures: Fathers Mariano Gomez, Jose Apolonio Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora.  These three Filipino priests are better known under the acronym of GOMBURZA (Gomez, Burgos, Zamora) and fought for reform against the Spanish government.

GOMBURZA spearheaded a secularization movement to entrust Filipino parishes to the local Filipino clergy rather than being ruled by the corrupt Spanish friars.  Of course, the three priests were seen as hostile to the Spanish government and were eventually implicated in the Cavite Mutiny and were all executed on February 17, 1872.  The martyred priests became one of the calls to action among Filipinos to resist the Spanish and fight for Filipino independence.

For Fathers Gomez, Burgos, and Zamora, I decided to cook Sinigang--a Filipino sour soup somewhat similar to the Thai Tom Yum Soup or the Chinese Hot and Sour Soup. Except instead of using lemongrass and lime (tom yum) or vinegar (hot and sour soup) as the souring agent, Sinigang utilizes tamarind for its source of sour.  And since there were three priests, I decided to make three versions of Sinigang using three different sources of tamarind.