Burnt Lumpia

Autumn Mix

Persimmons and pomegranates are rather persnickety specimens of fall fruit--the former needing nothing but time and patience for its flesh to go from hard and astringent to meltingly sweet and smooth, and the latter requiring a bit of excavation to find the juicy seeds inside.

There are a few different varieties of persimmon available. Some varieties, like the fuyu, are somewhat firm-fleshed and can be eaten like an apple. Other varieties, like the hachiya (gesundheit!), must be completely ripe and very soft before eating. I'd say the hachiya is my favorite type of persimmon.

If you happen to buy a hard unripe hachiya, just shove it in a brown paper bag with a banana, or a tomato, or both, and the persimmon should soften up in a few days. Once it's ripe and very mushy, you can cut a hachiya in half and then eat it out of the skin with a spoon. The flesh of a ripened hachiya is earthy-sweet, and almost jelly-like.

Gloopy, but tasty.

Pomegranates, on the other hand, require a little bit more work. You have to first lop off its crown, score its leathery skin with a sharp knife, and then pull it apart to find its sweet-tart ruby-red seeds.

 

Eureka!

Once the innards of the pomegranate are exposed, I usually place everything in a giant bowl o' water and gently pull the seeds away from the white pith. The seeds sink to the bottom and the pith and skin float to the top.

Clear water.

All of the juice is in the red seeds, so if you're gentle with the seeds, you won't waste any juice. But if you're a wee rough, then the water in your bowl will be bloodied with pomegranate plasma, you scoundrel! After gently separating seeds from pith, you can just skim the skin and pith away, then drain the seeds.

There are a number of things you can do with pomegranate seeds. You can sprinkle 'em on salads, on ice cream, or on your morning bowl o' Wheaties.

Or, together with the flesh of a hachiya persimmon and a few other goodies, you can use the pomegranate seeds in an autumn version of halo-halo.

Why, hello hello!

Halo-Halo is very much a summertime Filipino treat with layers of shaved ice, sweet beans, macapuno strings, ube, jack fruit, and any other number of sweet bits. And although pomegranates and persimmons are largely autumnal fruits, that doesn't mean they can't be used in halo-halo for a tasty dessert.

In a normal Halo-Halo, after the sweets are layered with shaved ice in a tall glass, some evaporated milk is poured in and allowed to seap into the ice. Then the whole shebang is topped with ice cream.

For my fall weather halo-halo, I used some of the Ube jam (it's still good!) that was given to me by Mila, some macapuno (coconut) strings, and some pomegranate and persimmon. Since I didn't have any canned evaporated milk, I just poured in some milk I had in my refrigerator. Lastly, I topped off my halo-halo with some ice cream--homemade Macapuno Ice Cream would be nice, but I opted for homemade Ube Ice Cream.

I do want to stress the importance of shaved ice in a halo-halo. I don't have an ice shaver, so I crushed some ice in my blender--this was not a suitable substitute! I had to crunch through larger pieces of ice as I ate my halo-halo, and crunching ice/breaking teeth is no fun. So if you do make some halo-halo, make sure you have a very powerful blender, or invest in some sort of ice shaving contraption--for the life of me I couldn't find the manual hand-cranked ice shavers I remember my mother using when I was a kid.

Also, I don't think a recipe is necessary here. Just layer sweet things with shaved ice in a tall glass, pour in some milk, then top with your favorite ice cream. For a more traditional halo-halo, Asian markets carry jars of sweet preserved beans, ube jam, macapuno, jack fruit, gelatin, etc. There are also jars labeled as "halo-halo mix" that have a combination of these items all in one jar.

And lastly, halo-halo is literally translated to mix-mix (so I'm told). So after I eat the ice cream, I mix-mix the rest of the contents with a spoon and make haste with the goodness!

The goodness!

I must say that the pomegranate seeds and the persimmon lend a very different twist, but also very welcome fall flavors, to an otherwise sweet and summery treat.

Mac On Some Cupcakes

I started Burnt Lumpia a year ago today. Strange, I know.

At the time, I really didn't know what I was doing (that's not to say I know what I'm doing now). But I knew I wanted to learn, I wanted to cook, and I wanted to write about what it was that I learned and cooked (and maybe poke fun at my family along the way).

I honestly had no long-term plans for this blog. I didn't think I'd have the time to experiment, research, cook, write and maintain a blog. After all, that would cut into my busy schedule of, uh, hmmmm. Well, it would at least cut into my beer drinking. But then I figured out that I could experiment, research, cook, write, and maintain a blog whilst enjoying liquid gold! Oh beer! A glorious beverage of convenience you are!

Anyhoo, I initially thought that after a couple of silly posts I'd slowly fade away. "Eh, I'll give it a couple months," I thought. But then, something funny happened.

The more I learned and cooked, the more I wanted to write and share. And vice versa. It was a vicious cycle. But I was enjoying myself. And, inexplicably, people started to respond to me.

So, I wanted to send a big thanks to all of you who check into this here blog on the regular. Thanks for sending me tips in emails and in the comments section--I learn quite a lot from my readers. And thanks to all you lurkers out there too (I see you! I've got a magic romper room mirror!).

As a sign of gratitude, I made something. I wish I could tell you that I felled a bull with a swift kick to his groin, quartered him with a machete, then pan seared some of his muscle mass for a bloody steak. But instead, I baked cupcakes.

Cupcakes.

I know. Not as cool sounding as killing a bull. But that's what I get for starting this thing on Valentine's Day. Egads!

Purple Yam Gnocchi

Pablo Picasso had his Blue Period, and I guess for me, the last couple of weeks have been my Purple Period. Luckily however, my monochromatic muse was not inspired by someone's suicide or large quantities of absinthe.

Unlike Ol' Pablo, my inspiration came on much happier terms. Using the purple Ube yam of the Philippines, I have made Purple Ube Pancakes, Ube Ice Cream, and now, Purple Yam Gnocchi.

(On second thought, maybe absinthe did play a role in these seemingly odd creations of mine.)

Anyhoo, whether I was lucid or not is besides the point people! I have come to the conclusion that Ube is a very versatile ingredient--lending its mildly sweet flavors to desserts and savory dishes alike.  That’s right. Savory! (Egads man, he has lost his mind!)

For my latest (I’ve purposefully delayed posting this so as not to oversaturate your eyeballs with violet visions) and probably last (I'm all purpled out) Ube recipe, I used a couple of purple yams that I found at my Asian grocery store.

blUBErry Ice Cream (Ube Ice Cream Swirled with Blueberry Sauce)

In spite of what my spellchecker says, you can't spell blUBErry without Ube.

It's true.

And ever since my Purple Ube Pancakes post, I've been wanting to pair Ube and blueberries in an ice cream (blueberry pancakes + Ube pancakes = blUBErry ice cream, my mind works in strange ways).  I knew the tart sweetness of blueberries would pair well with sweet purple yam, I just didn't know how I was going to pull it off.  I had never made Ube ice cream, a favorite among Filipinos, so I knew I had to start there and worry about the blueberries later.

But, as I would discover, churning out a batch of Ube ice cream would be more difficult than just dumping a cup of frozen Ube into a vanilla base (under no circumstances should you try that, you will curse the heavens and everything around you. Damn you frozen purple yam! Damn you straight to hell!!!).

Ahem.  Uh, after two hacks at creating terribly icy and gritty ice creams, I think I hit one out of the park on my third try.  A couple pounds of Ube, a few quarts of cream, and a couple hundred curse words later, I was able to figure out three tricks for churning rich and smooth Ube Ice Cream.  And lucky you, dear reader, I'm going to share them with you here.

Purple Ube Pancakes

To most Filipinos, Ube is the Prince of Tubers—a mildly sweet yam that is used in a variety of Filipino desserts such as ice cream, cakes, hopia, and halo-halo.  Why is this yam just a prince and not a king?  Well, besides its mildly sweet and earthy flavor, Ube is known for its strange hue that is mostly associated with “The Artist Formerly (Currently) Known As”...

...PRINCE!

(Of course that's Prince.  Don't argue with me! I know "The Artist" when I sees him!)

Yes, folks. Whenever I think of Ube, I think of Prince.  Or whenever I think of Prince, I think of Ube.  Do with that information as you wish, but I think it’s a natural thought progression (as I’ve stated in this space before: I AM NOT CRAZY!).

The picture above is of grated Ube I bought from the Asian market (Ube comes frozen, so you have to thaw it out first).  And no, I didn’t Photoshop or mess with the color in any way.  Ube is naturally uber purple.  It’s not as sweet as a sweet potato or yam, but Ube are definitely sweeter than a regular boiling or baking potato.  As such, it is the yam of choice for both Pinoys (positively) and The Purple One (perhaps).

For those that do not know very much about Prince (heathens!), let me explain a few tidbits about The Artist: