Rebel Noodles

In the basement of Lucky Plaza, at the heart of Singapore’s shopping district of Orchard Road, thrives what could be considered a Filipino hawker food center. Here you will find Jollibee, Lutong Pinoy 1, Lutong Pinoy 2,  Kamayan Pinoy, Tapa King and Lechon Pinoy. Six out of a total of sixteen food stalls (the rest are regional food that have some commonalities with Philippine cuisine as well) meld indigenous Austronesian ingredients and cooking methods with those of a revolving cast of traders, settlers, colonizers and dreamers. These are the foodways that make us who we are: our complex national and personal histories served up on a plate or a soup bowl.

One can happily spend the whole day going from stall to stall. First stop would have to be Jollibee, the Filipino’s answer to McDonald’s: fast, cheap and consistent. It looks like any other fast food joint:  fried chicken, burgers, French Fries. But then there’s this: sweet spaghetti with slivers of hotdog and melted cheddar cheese. It’s a hybrid that perhaps only a child could love, which is why this dish is a hit at Filipino kids’ birthday parties.

Any noodle dish can be traced back to China, though I’m sure the Italians will put up a fight for the pasta’s origins story and would probably scratch their heads at Jollibee’s interpretation of spaghetti. What you can be certain about is that when the Chinese, who had been trading with the Philippines since the 9th century, began to settle and intermarry with the native population, noodle dishes multiplied. Pancit is the catch-all name for Philippine noodles made from rice, buckwheat, wheat flour, or monggo bean starch. Stirfried with a variety of meats and vegetables, pancit is derived from the Hokkien word pain i sit which means “convenient food.” And pancit is indeed food for the masses. Pancit palabok, pancit Canton, pancit Miki, pancit bihon, pancit Miki Bihon, pancit luglug …  to name but a few.

Lutong Pinoy 2 makes a mean pancit palabok. Unlike the other variety that uses thick noodles to absorb the sauce, their version is made with thin rice noodles. The gravy sits atop like an insouciant orange shrug. Colored by crushed shrimp shells and achiote, the sauce makes pancit palabok the stuff of guilty and squeamish pleasure. The word palabok always makes me cringe: it brings up images of slime and other malapot, or sticky sludgy stuff. But the bright orange gravy has the right consistency and flavor, and they don’t skimp on the toppings either. When all combined, each forkful is a savory and creamy blend of slick noodles, crispy chicharon, savory pork, poached shrimp, hard-boiled egg, green onions with the citrus tang of kalamansi squeezed over to finish the dish.

(For more on my pancit palabok obsession, please check out

http://anilokanainparis.blogspot.sg/2009/09/alchemy-of-pancit-palabok.html )

Once broth is introduced, what was once pancit is transformed into something else: a noodle soup dish. Along with pancit palabok, Lutong Pinoy #2 serves batchoy (a noodle soup made with offal, lard and other bits of goodness) and chicken mami (springy yellow egg noodles in a flavourful golden broth, topped with sliced chicken and shredded napa cabbage). These are favored as late afternoon merienda fare.

There’s one pancit dish that isn’t served at Lucky Plaza and it’s a rule-breaker. There are no noodles in this dish, and yet it carries the pancit name. It’s also broth-based. Behold the pancit Molo: a glorious rendition of wonton soup. Molo is a town in Iloilo City and it lends its name to this special pancit. I’m Ilonggo on my father’s side, and this is a near sacred dish in our family, legendary among relatives and friends who were lucky enough to have a bowl (or several) of my Lola Mary’s famous pancit Molo.  My grandmother, who passed away five years ago last month, continues to be our family’s beloved matriarch.  Tributes have poured into my Aunt’s Facebook page honoring the anniversary of Lola Mary’s passing. Several comments revolved around not only how loving and wonderful she was, but also how much her pancit Molo is missed.

As October speeds into the holiday season, I look forward to being back home in California with my family to honor Lola Mary in our own way. Soon I will leave the humidity of Singapore and the numerous food stalls of Lucky Plaza. Instead, I’ll be shopping for ingredients at 99 Ranch in Gardena with my Mom, for the type of home cooking that I only get to experience once a year since becoming an expat in Asia. During the holidays we gather around the table: Mom, my siblings and our own families, cousins, aunties, nieces and nephews with a single task: hand-wrapping each wonton so that it looks like a bishop’s hat, the special way that Lola Mary had passed down to my Mom. Meanwhile the “mother broth,” a luxurious soup-base that takes three days to make properly, will be simmering on the stovetop. The wontons are boiled in the broth and whisked away as soon as they float to the top. Finished with fried garlic and sliced scallions, we will have our own bowlful of personal and national histories to warm us after Christmas Eve mass. This is the noche buena I look forward to more than anything else during the holidays.

(More on pancit Molo here http://anilokanainparis.blogspot.sg/2009/07/pancit-molo-in.html )

References:

Doreen Fernandez Tikim: Essays on Philippine Food and Culture

https://www.amazon.com/Tikim-Essays-Philippine-food-culture/dp/9712703835

Jason Tastes Asia, Episode 7: Philippines Panciteria and Panaderia

http://www.asianfoodchannel.com/shows/jason-tastes-asia/episodes

Pancit Palabok from Lutong Pinoy 2

Preparing wontons for Pancit Molo

Homecooked Pancit Molo

The Alchemy of Pancit Palabok

I made my first attempt at creating pancit palabok yesterday. Yes, “create”, not merely “cook”, is the correct way to describe how to prepare this alchemy of tubular rice noodles under a blanket of ground pork in a velvety sauce of achuete water and corn starch, topped with fried tofu, crushed chicharon, scallions, tinapa flakes, sliced boiled eggs, and poached shrimp. Served on the side are halved kalamansi limes to temper the richness with refreshing acidity and patis to play up the salt factor.

Pancit palabok can either be sublime when done right or be close to inedible due to incorrect preparation or if left to congeal on the plate by an inattentive diner. The right type of noodle is critical, as well as the addition of flaked tinapa which I found is the true heart of this dish. Reconstituted dried shrimp will do in a pinch, but seek out tinapa flakes or smoked trout it you can. And for a truly elevated experience, next time I will not only make my own sauce from scratch instead of using the packaged kind, but will also swap out saffron for the achuete seeds. Perhaps also play with the different thickening agents. Cornstarch is suitable, but what about ground rice flour made from toasting then hand grinding uncooked rice? Or maybe starting the sauce with a blonde roux instead? The same techniques that my Mom uses to make her kare kare sauce can be employed, but with much less butter and sans peanuts.

Truth be told this was an infuriating dish to make. I literally screamed at one point during the cooking process due to the ruined batch of noodles. Then there was the disappointment of finding out how slimy the reconstitutued salted croaker fish had become, a completely unsuitable substitute for the tinapa flakes. I had all four gas burners on at the same time, and a kitchen sink full of utensils, bowls and pots as the aftermath. This dish is no joke. It suffers no fools and will not wait. Five minutes after it is served it turns sullen, the otherwise wonderful sauce would have congealed, the rice noodles stick together, and the first bite will be savory paste and not that amazing silken experience of noodle, sauce and garnish married as one.

This is a dish that is best served to one who anticipates it, stomach growling, as my husband did yesterday afternoon when we spent our last day of the long weekend relaxing at home instead of venturing out to BBQs and Labor Day sales. In our sunny kitchen while he booked our flight to Paris for our upcoming one year wedding anniversary, I spent two hours dreamily re-reading the recipe from “Memories of Philippine Kitchen”, with visions of myself at Cendrillon in NYC getting coached by the authors of the cookbook. Reality set in as soon as I put my third pot on the stove: this was not a simple matter of whipping up a tried and true dish. I was in unknown territory: preparing, cooking, soaking dried croacker fish only to discard it, soaking dried shrimp as a Plan B, cursing at the ruined noodles, making a new batch, frying up squares of tofu and garlic, chopping scallions, grinding chicharon with mortar and pestle, and finally, hours later, assembling then serving the pancit palabok as our late lunch/merienda (Lurienda? Is this the next wave of in between meals, where instead of meeting for brunch one can issue a more provocative invitation for Lurienda?)

Was it worth the effort? An entire afternoon for what is essentially considered snack food, slurped down during long bus trips from Baguio to Manila, in a motel/restaurant in Pampanga famous for its pancit palabok, or in Carson at a Filipino buffet place with terrible food save for that one specialty? This highly caloric ode to salt, carb and fat, with more ingredients than can be counted with both hands? To a true enthusiast it is worth it. Was I happy with the final result yesterday? Not really. My husband who loves everything I make loved it, but I ate the pancit palabok with little joy, already dreaming up ways to improve the dish. But later on as I swiped an errant tofu along the bottom of the pot, I though, ok, not bad for a first try. No recipe to share this time because it still eludes me, the flavors and textures have not truly come together on that first attempt. Like an expensive purse just slightly out of my price range I consider pancit palabok aspirational cuisine, one that I will research, recreate and tweak until it becomes my own.