This is a blog by Marianne Young Elaine Young and Marielle Ong. Sisters and Cousin who have the same obsession with discovering the world through food. Whether it is about the traditional adobo from their birthplace, or experiencing mushy peas, we share the sensations with you through this blog.
The topics will be random, based on mood or incident. But it will always be about the food, and the experience of savouring it, tasting it, and gobbling it all up! Have fun!
So I am lucky enough to be in one of the northernmost city in the world for a few days in the height of summer. Where the sun rises at 2am and does not set until after 11pm. There is no darkness for days/nights on end, and there would be a slight dimness to the sky, where in a few hours, the sun will rise again.
This is stockholm, sweden. I work for a Swedish company, and it does have its perks. The swedes are a cool, intelligent and good looking bunch of people. they love the sun (they don't have so much of it, 2/3 of the time, it's dark and wintry they say), and they love their boats...
On my first night, i was taken to a bar called två (read as t-voh) which means two. I have been here
before and we always enjoy the cocktails here... http://www.två.se/
The place is quite simple, elegant, but the bar is loaded! The people are well-dressed and prim without being too snobbish. I order, for my first drink on a bright and sunny evening - yes, you read it right - bright and sunny at 7pm... a drink called solero. On the menu, it says:
Absolut vanilj björnbär björnbärslikör citron 7up
and this is what i get:
crushed blackberries, in a tall glass filled with blackberry liquor, absolut vanilla vodka and topped with 7up. Complete with a cute orange twist for style. I loved the blackberries... it was the best part of the drink. Especially drinking it in the summer -- which is not sweltering, but just bright and warm enough that it's not freezing.
When I get the chance, tomorrow i will show you what a swedish zabaione is like...
There might be something wrong with my palate. Lately, I’ve noticed that I’ve taken a liking to sauce. Yes, sauce. I will gladly admit that the extra “X” lbs. that I have gained in the course of a year is due to something that I would consider a sauce addiction.
Of course, I’d primarily place the blame on myself. My obvious lack of self control when it comes to food intake is the main culprit for my falling off the “healthier” wagon. Making Hollandaise has its pitfalls, when you are the type to find amazement in its rich flavour way too much!
I have quite a few cringing witnesses who’ve informed me that French fries swimming in a bucket of ketchup --yes, it’s a condiment. I know.-- hardly constitutes a tasty, if not healthy meal.
But here’s the thing, I realize that there is a huge sauce culture out there. I learned in school, as well as in some culinary books that sauces are the shizz, for lack of a better term. Sauciers were held in high esteem, especially in the olden days, for their ability to make the ordinary extraordinary, in addition to masking the taste and smell of slightly past-its-prime food (due to the lack of preservation know-how). And it became a routine: When you requested for a dish, you expected a corresponding sauce.
This sort of mentality has endured so well in the modern world. It’s come to a point where the idea of eating a certain food item without a sauce (say, grilled chicken breast) starts to feel like it’s only meant for hard-core dieters. It’s as though the food is sure to be bland.
That is why all these fried chicken places, --especially the ones I see here in the Philippines, are so protective of their gravy recipes. Personally, I can’t imagine eating my *Jollibee Chicken Joy without its gravy. Neither can I fathom eating McDonald’s fries without a serious helping of ketchup. Also, I know a lot of people who like their viands in lots of sauce because they are able to flavour their rice with spoonfuls of yummy sauce. I’m even guilty of that.
I was quite relieved to hear about the rise of Nouvelle Cuisine in one of our culinary history lectures. The new top chefs are going for concepts like fresh, lean, healthy, organic, natural, simplistic,… etc. You get the picture.
The trend in sauces has shifted towards light dressings, vinaigrette, salsas, and olive-oil concoctions. And they are actually a formidable force in terms of flavor, texture, appearance, and nutrition.
Perhaps it’s a marketing tactic: Keep customers healthy, so they can patronize your establishment longer. Clever, isn’t it?
*Watch the Jollibee Chicken Joy ad here, and see how they’ve made gravy as much a part of the fried chicken as anything else.
While i am refreshing myself with a glass of freshly juiced starfruit and apple, I wondered what nutritional values this drink has. When I was growing up, the starfruit i knew were usually small, the size of a five year-old's fist, and always sour. It was fun to eat because you cringe and you get tingles all over... a sprinkling of salt helps to neutralize the sharp sourness of the fruit.
Coming to Singapore, I found bigger star fruits - they were as big as my hand now -- about 4-5 inches long and quite large, compared to the ones I know from the Philippines. They were crisp to the bite, but surprisingly lacking of any dominant flavors. It has a slight tartness in the end, but one would neither say it's sweet or sour... it's just slightly flavored water...
What a very pleasant surprise to find out that the starfruit is also very high in vitamin C, full of anti-oxidants and flavanoids too! Good for dieters, a website said...
Even when I've mixed the apple and starfuit juices together, the unique scent of the starfruit and its tartness came out rounding off the sweetness that the apples usually punches out to you. It becomes a wonderful, after gym drink... really really delicious!
I don't recall if Barbera was indeed the first Italian wine I've ever tasted, but it doesn't matter. I found it easy to drink and pleasant for asia's harsh warm weather. Only lately did i find out that this is a wine that does not have a great reputation among those who pride themselves of knowing wine, or make a living out of it, or find that it's a redeeming quality in supposedly being an expert in drinking wine. More on that later... but now I want to talk about this badly misplaced wine.
Barbera is an italian red, of which most recommend to drink while young. the bouquet explodes with floral scents, and the taste is refreshing with a hint of over ripe cherries. I love this particular bottle (pictured above) -- there's no earthliness to this wine, no heavy, thick tar, or spice or wood in it... which makes this a lovely red for me. This glass has a beautiful deep red violet tint to match its gentle flavors.
One website says:
"While Barbera has been sneered at, spat upon and spurned, bottles of it are commonly found as the table wine in Italian restaurants. What do they know that the snooty critics don't? Barbera may be underrated, but it's the everyday underrated drinking wine."
It gets me thinking... what makes wine a good wine? Does it have to do with price? with the color? with its characteristics???? Eventually, after all the hustle and bustle, it boils down to one's preference. Whether you prefer a lighter, fruitier red than a punchy pinot noir, is not to be criticized upon. It's all a matter of appreciation and respect for the wine, the vine and the winemaker.
more on Barbera here: http://www.winecountrygetaways.com/barbera.html
Pumpkin - simmered in butter and sugar, on slow fire - with some spices (yes, cinammon and a dash of nutmeg)... Yummy...
Inspired from the local street food kamote-q (sweet potato bar-b-que)... I just had a sampling of mine and i'm a convert -- i'm now a kalabasa-que fan...
Never underestimate what a little ingenuity can do to a bag of lettuce, chicken breast, celery, carrots and some left over tomatoes!
My lunch consists of stir fried chicken cut into small pieces (seasoned a bit with salt and pepper). I chopped the tomatoes up and poured a generous amount of olive oil - found out along the way, that chopped tomatoes, low fire and a full teaspoon or two of olive oil, get the tomatoes really saucy. A splash of balsamic vinegar, and chili powder --
viola - lunch in 10 minutes! Eating it now, and the vinegar was the star. I think i put too much chili in the sauce, but the chicken, tender, sweet and moist. Really delicious!
So yesterday, my skinny jeans told me I'm not skinny anymore. It finally got back to me, because about a year ago, I took it to a seamstress and had some inches cut off (a little less than 2 or thereabouts). Last year, I was eating really well, and was pretty active with lots of exercise and sports activities. There was nothing to worry about... no dieting, no extra weight appearing from nowhere...
But yesterday... what I took for granted eventually sprang back and showed its ugly head. If i don't pay attention to eating, if I don't get enough exercise, I'm gaining weight. And then it's a downhill roll. So I need to get back into it.
Everyone squirms when the word diet comes up. Either they feel sorry for the person in question or think they eat dry wheat for breakfast lunch and dinner and think that life's not meant to be enjoyed that way. Contrarily, I was excited and went shopping for what is going to be my diet food for the next week.
These were the items that went into the bag:
a pack of celery (from the USA)
a quarter slice of squash (from australia)
frozen berries (strawberries from finland, and currants from siberia, i think)
a pack of bananas (from the philippines)
non-fat yoghurt
and a pack of carrots
oh, and boneless chicken breasts as well as a small rounded lettuce to go with it.
what I do or how i eat them, I had no idea. I thought that those foods were low fat, healthy and full of natural sugars - fructose, as opposed to glucose that's good for energy.
I settled and started with snapping some celeries into short sticks and peeling carrots. Yep, carrot and celery sticks for dinner. But the deal breaker here is the yoghurt - mixed in with some left over blue cheese i had in the fridge... and boy, was I munching away.
Celery did take a bit of getting used to, especially if compared with the sweetness of the carrots. But its antiseptic and grassy taste was just what i needed to bring out the smooth flavors of the blue cheese and yoghurt dip.
Well, this morning I woke up and had a banana. I still have a small bowl of grapes waiting to be consumed. But after heading to the gym, now it's time for lunch. Wonder what that squash could be good for? I remember an great aunt making some sort of sweet dessert out of it... and I still have some muscovado in the pantry...
Tonight i am splurging on a cup of haagen daz belgian chocolate. Tell me, who doesn't have a weakness for chocolate? And although I can make my own chocolate ice cream, haagen daz has one of the most exceptional version for a chocolate ice cream. smothered with specs of chocolate fudge, rich with the aroma of artisan chocolate, bitter and slightly sweet, rich and creamy, fragrant... hmmm... my only wish is that it doesn't melt in this summer heat.
Chocolate is not a laughing matter. It's an exact science. I'm no expert at this but I definitely appreciate the complexity and the art form of achieving the perfect chocolate.
I guess i just wanted to write this down... and recall how much chocolate makes me feel much better... a good piece of chocolate truffle fixes anything.
