Black Kale and Shrimp Pasta a la Insomnia

When I called my mother at 3am somehow she didn't seemed that surprised to hear from me.  She is familiar with my quarterly bouts with insomnia and for some reason, I had a feeling she would be lucid enough and wouldn't be that annoyed by my after-midnight ramblings.  I convince her to drop everything and help me get my house in order, in the practical and spiritual sense.  She is in the middle of planting anthuriums and peonies, weeding her herb garden and picking vegetable seeds, but she says that her plants can survive for five days without her close tending.  I tell that those plants will be just fine, and for a bit of drama, it is I who will wilt if she doesn't fly out to San Francisco. Is tonight too soon? I love that my mother appreciates impromptu plans. I tell her that I haven't had a proper start to the New Year.  What would set me on the right track would be her ruthless organizing principles and take no prisoners approach to uncluttering our apartment.  It will feel like the New Year, lunar or otherwise, as soon as she her plane lands tonight and we go straight to my kitchen to prepare a healthy meal.  Everything begins with food. She is bringing black kale from the Torrance Farmer's Market.  I will buy fresh shrimps, lemons and good pasta.

My husband has come out of the bedroom and is pleading with me to join him even for just a few hours. It is 5am and we get ready for work soon. I will force myself to wind down so that I can get through the rest of the day. 

Living "A Moveable Feast" in Paris

My husband and I arrived from Paris late last night. It is early afternoon in San Francisco and the fog bank has not lifted at all in the Inner Richmond. The sun barely penetrates the slate grey sky. A cold wind dances in the tree tops just outside my window. A perfect day to stay indoors listening to Billie Holiday, sipping ginger peach tea and writing. It is late evening in Paris and I wonder if it remains as sultry as it had the been the past few nights we had spent there roaming around the Left Bank and Montmartre.

Autumn started to creep in yesterday on our last morning. It was finally cool enough for a trench coat and scarf as we made our way to a patisserie in Saint Germain des Pres for freshly baked croissants, past the cafes that were just starting to open and little shops with beautiful merchandise displayed in the windows. Down by the Seine we found ourselves alone on that little ship shaped island jutting out from under the Pont Neuf. The leaves of the horse chestnut trees and elms by the river have started to turn. A few golden and orange leaves were on the path leading down to the water. We sat at the concrete prow under the lamp post and the still lush weeping willow tree, watching barges and passenger boats cruise by. Hemingway wrote about this part of the river as being a popular fishing spot in "A Moveable Feast". I picked up a copy at Shakespeare and Company and wanted to pay homage to Papa Hemingway by having breakfast in that very same spot before we catch a plane home to San Francisco, quietly watching the city wake up, very much feeling how he felt when he wrote "I've seen you, Beauty.. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil."

This trip to Paris to celebrate our one year wedding anniversary has not only brought me closer to my husband and cement our shared passion for Art, Beauty and of course, good food and wine, but also to myself as a writer. Reading Hemingway is instructive because he chronicles in particular his process, how he knows that past a certain point in writing he has captured that elusive thing and that he can stop, feel good about having done good work, confident that the next day he can continue again. The people he surrounds himself with and are shaped by, the meals and wines he consumes to fuel his writing, and the role of hunger as a way to see Art more clearly. I love how he writes about going to see a Cezanne painting after skipping a meal and how much more connected he felt to the work on an empty stomach. But when he writes about food later on, it is in the vein of one who really does enjoy the simple pleasures of mopping up olive oil in his potato dish with bread, loving the dish so much that he orders a second serving.

I cannot write about Paris without writing about what we ate. This really is the heart of my food blog. But I will not do this all at once. Like one who has harvested the fruits of autumn for a cold winter ahead, I will be frugal and hold out on writing about them. Like Hemingway I will remain just a little bit hungry to sharpen the memory of those meals and what they meant as an experience shared with my husband who has brought me to Paris a second time. This amazing man who proposed to me at Pont Neuf two years ago and this year went out his way to give us the gift of our favorite city to mark the passing of our one year as married couple. Paris belongs to us, and we belong to each other.

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.

Sabel in San Francisco

I am still jet-lagged after flying in yesterday from the Philippines via Hong Kong. In the cubicle world once more I am planning tonight's dinner. Something for the weary traveller who goes straight to the office with no rest, something soothing and delicious without being too complicated. Something that a tired wife who must go home after a full's day of work can easily prepare for her husband who will be working late tonight. Something that feeds the soul set free, the heart that has broken wide open from three weeks of travel up and down the Philippine archipelago, a dish that celebrates Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao: wild as the fern salad with organic field greens from Ben Cab's Sabel Cafe in Benguet. Bitter as the seed of lanzones I accidentally bit into while riding the Victory Liner bus from Manila to Baguio, hands sticky from peeling my favorite fruit. Sweetish as the giant taclobo clams we saw while snorkeling in the Coral Gardens of Hundred islands. Salty as the same said ocean waters. Sour as the sinigang made with batuan served to us at a sea side restaurant in Iloilo. Savory as the pancit Molo made by our family's cook in La Paz. Sweet as marang from the night fruits stalls of Magsaysay in Davao City. Nuanced as durian, a truly indescribable taste, one that gets lost in translation.

I know that this is an impossible dish to make, a clash of flavors that cannot be swallowed in one sitting. It is the taste of homesickness for what I left behind in Inang Bayan. It is the tang of sadness from the passing of a national icon the day that I also leave Inang Bayan, my Dad and I silently crying together in the car on the way to airport while listening to the radio announcing the death of former Philippine President Cory Aquino. It is the reheated leftovers of What Could Have Been but Isn't. It is the just picked freshness of what is and will continue to Evolve and Become. It is not a dish best served cold; it is fragrant steaming hot and sticks to the bone, a bowlful of forgiveness and redemption.

But back to practical matters: I will go to Molly Stones after work for sushi-grade white tuna and make Davao-style kilawin, with lemons, Thai bird chilis, cucumbers and radish. I will fry up some of the dried squid from Iloilo that passed customs yesterday. And I will make pinakbet the way Mom makes it, Ilokano style with a lot of bitter ampalaya. And when we drink water after the meal it will taste sweet.

Pancit Molo Chicken Soup for the Balikbayan Soul

We arrived yesterday in Manila after almost twenty hours of travel. One of the first things I wanted to do as soon as I got over my jet lag is to shop for local produce and to make meals for my husband/travel companion and for Dad. At the kitchen in our home in San Mateo, Rizal I reacquaint myself with the cooking techniques of the Philippines. While preparing breakfast this morning I had my first lesson. Thinking the gas stove was like my own in San Francisco, I absentmindedly lit a match that sent a blanket of flame to briefly cover the entire stove top. My Dad grabbed the matches out of my hands and reprimanded me with a chuckle. “You have to light the match immediately after you turn on the gas. You cannot leave the stove on even for a few seconds longer than necessary.”
 

With a newfound respect for the kitchen ways I now prepare the broth for pancit molo soup, primarily to aid in restoring my husband’s health. He has been running a temperature since we landed in the Manila from Hong Kong, but I believe he has been fighting this fever even in San Francisco. I am relying on the old and proven powers of the chicken noodle soup to make it all better. I tell him that he has been running himself ragged with work and other obligations, and to not fight being sick anymore. Sometimes it is the body’s way to ask us to slow down. I tell him to not feel any guilt or worry that we are spending more time at home and not beginning our trek up north to Alaminos and Baguio as originally planned. . We will spend as much time at home for him to get better and acclimate himself to the weather and nuances of life in the Philippines.

I too need to acclimate and reorient myself to the sights, smells and sounds of Metro Manila and the neighboring rural town of Rizal. The kitchen itself is like a new baranggay to explore, with its own set of rules and nuances. Salt is coarse and due to the humidity, has a tendency to liquefy. Olive oil has a different flavor also because of the climate, less round and fruity but not altogether unpleasant. It is better to cook with the native virgin coconut oil or canola oil that holds up better in the tropical climate. The knives are thin, not as sharp as the ones I have back home in San Francisco. The pots are blackened from the butane gas stove flame that has a life of its own. The yellow flickering tongues lick the sides of the pot, curling around almost to the rim. I turn down the flames into a more subdued ring of blue, trembling beneath the soup broth but still very much alive. 
 

I write this in the newly built lanai where my husband rests on thin slats of the bamboo bed. The late afternoon sun smudges amber against the walls, lighting the capiz shell squares of the window/door that separates the lanai from the study, and they glow like pearls lit from within. I am keeping strong and in high spirits for my husband who cannot help but feel a little upset about slowing down our itinerary. I want to reach into him and pull out whatever it is that is making him sick. Early morning still jet lagged I woke up at 4am and gave him a healing massage, the kind that Mom has learned from her baglan research. I knead and pull with intention, and end the massage by sweeping my hands across his body to grab any toxic energy and casting these out, literally making movements to throw away the sickness, then clapping and snapping over him to clear the energy. Afterwards I sang Joey Ayala songs and rocked him back to sleep. Then I got up at around six am and did yoga in the front yard underneath the rambutan tree.
 

This evening I hope to cure him from the inside with soup that originates from Iloilo, where my father’s family and his Mom is originally from. La Paz where Lola lives and where we will go as soon as he gets better is adjacent to the town of Molo. The ubiquitous pancit Molo is derivative of the wonton noodle soup of the early Chinese traders who settled in the port town. It has been indigenized with the addition of fish sauce, crushed shrimp heads that lend a pink hue to the soup and other Filipino tweaks to the original recipes. My Mom has added her own flavors by the beginning with a very good French style broth from a whole chicken and root vegetables, the pot left uncovered and the broth not allowed to boil beyond a soft rolling simmer, the muck skimmed every so often then the entire soup strained. Then soft vegetables are mashed for its essence then discarded, producing a clean, golden hued pure broth. To this I will add the pancit molo from the town of Molo that Dad has in his freezer. Usually I make the molo from scratch, but in this case I will experiment with an already made product. Then I will also fry up some garlic for garnish. In the same pan I will sauté small diced carrots, celery and onions. The whole chicken I will shred before adding it back to the soup along with the sautéed vegetables. To serve I will garnish individual bowls with fried garlic and chopped scallions.

Nachos and Fava for Father's Day

My father is a professor/actor in the Philippines. Yesterday for Father's Day brunch at my in-laws I made a Moroccan inspired dish. It was one of those days where I really missed Dad and wished he could have been with us, sharing this dish with my father-in-law, his new fellow Visayan kumpadre. If my Dad were at lunch with us, I may have also prepared nachos from simple store bought ingredients thrown together and microwaved. In 2002 when I visited Dad it had been sixteen years since I had last been to the Philippines and an entire decade had passed since we had seen each other. For some reason he absolutely loved the nachos I made for him on Father's Day in our home in San Mateo, a semi-rural town just outside of Manila, perhaps because it is something he doesn't often eat in the Philippines or because he never thought it could be prepared so easily at home. Or maybe it was because he was happy to see his daughter and anything I prepared for him, even a reheated can of pork & beans, would have made him happy.

My Dad loves to eat and the maid had made a joke while he was gorging on the junk food nachos that "hobby ni Sir ang kumain, Ate." I think this Moroccan inspired dish, more wholesome than microwaved tortilla chips, American cheddar and canned jalapeno slices, would be to his liking as well.

Fresh, locally raised organic vegetables inspire me. I love this time of year because of what turns up at my favorite stores. I wanted to use the fresh fava beans I bought at the Ferry Building and one perfect baby cauliflower from Real Food Daily on Filbert Street. I wasn't sure what would best showcase these finds then I remembered a friend who married a Moroccan man and how she cooked with fava beans in some type of vegetable and lamb stew. I decided to recreate those flavors from memory, to cook from feel and sense without the aid of a recipe. I tend to cook without measuring and eyeball the portions. The measurements are approximations at best and should be used more as guideline than hard fact. Taste often and adjust accordingly.

Moroccan Flavored Vegetable Stew with Spiced baby Meatballs


Vegetable stew
1 whole large onion, sliced fine
1 lb roughly chopped mushrooms
1/2 lb new red potatoes
1 cup chilled pinot grigio
1/2 cup tomato paste
4 tsp butter
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 tsp fresh ground cumin
1/4 tsp fresh ground coriander
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp ground white pepper
1 bunch dinosour kale or any hardy greens

In a heavy bottomed pot (I love using my Dutch oven Le Creuset for these types of dishes), melt 2 tsp butter along with 1/4 cup of olive oil. Add onions and begin to caramelize over medium heat for about 4 minutes. Add mushrooms and continue to cook for another 8 minutes, then add the halved new red potatoes for another two minutes. Add the tomato paste and immediately deglaze with the pinot grigio and bring back to a boil. Add all the spices and fleur de sel to taste. Add the chopped dinosour kale. Simmer uncovered while you prepare the meatballs.

Spiced meatballs
3/4 lb grass-fed ground beef
1/4 cup dried bread crumbs
1/4 tsp fresh ground cumin
1/4 tsp fresh groun coriander
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp ground white pepper
1 whole egg
1 tbsp fleur de sel
canola and olive oil (1/4 cup)

Combine all ingredients but do not overwork to keep the meat light and fluffy. Shape into mini meatballs (about 1 tsp full) and fry in oil until nicely browned (about 2 minutes each side). Drop meatballs into the vegetable stew to continue the cooking process and to mingle the flavors. (One of my sister-in-laws thought that the meatballs were made of lamb, but it is the combination of spices and the cooking technique that elevated the simple ground beef.)

Simmer stew and meatballs for another 10 minutes, add more pinot and some water if it gets to dry. The ideal amount of liquid is enough to make a nice sauce to ladle over brown rice, but not too much that it becomes a soup.

In a separate pot, boil water with a few fresh lemon rounds. Add the prepared fava beans (leave the skins in tact but take seeds out of the pods). Do not overcook! Test for doneness after about five minutes then set aside in a bowl to cool. In the same water, add the cauliflower and cook covered for about 3 minutes, then begin to test for doneness. Again, do not overcook the vegetable. Let cauliflower cool while you take the grey skins off the cooked fava beans, exposing the beautiful apple green color of the fava.

Assembly
Drizzle the remaining olive oil and add the juice of half a lemon before transfering the vegetable stew with spiced meatballs into a nice decorative serving platter. Nestle the baby cauliflower in the middle, then sprinkle the fava beans as a garnish. Add chopped Italian flat leaf parsley and drizzle a few drops of fruity exra virgin olive oil.

Most folks ate this dish with rice at the luncheon, both brown and steamed white rice, but I would imagine this would also go well with a crusty baguette, pita bread or with a creamy polenta.

My own Burger Bar

A few ideas to expand on Hubert Keller's Burger Bar book:

1. Loco moco
Incorporate diced Maui onions into the ground beef, and fry up the hamburger patties. Use the pan drippings for a roux, adding chicken bouillon dissolved in half a cup of hot water, Maggi liquid seasoning, soy sauce and black pepper. Add sauteed shitake mushrooms to the gravy. Mound steamed rice on a plate, top with sunny side up fried eggs, place hamburger patties along side and cover in gravy.

2. Ultra lux adobo burger
Make chicken adobo the usual way, with the addition of chicken liver about five minutes before the dish is cooked. Refrigerate so that the sauce reaches a jellied form. Cut adobo jelly into cubes. Meanwhile, take the chicken liver and mash into a paste, mix into ground Kobe beef, truffles and roasted garlic paste. Form patties and insert adobo jelly cubes in a few spots. Create an indentation in the middle of the patty, then fry with indentation side up in a hot pan with oil skimmed from the adobo sauce along with additional canola oil. Use jumbo size pan de sal bread, spread with a thin layer of roasted garlic paste, adobo sauce. Place hamburger patties inside and top with caramelized onions, green zebra tomatoes and red leaf butter lettuce.