Maturialism and Melty Kisses

IceCreamists photo from  trendwatching.com 

I subscribe to a site that looks out for global trends and Maturialism is one of the trends they listed. for 2010. These marketing seers predict that "rawer, more opinionated, more risqué, more in your face than ever before" cyber folk will come (pun not intended) to the forefront of  online content. Some sort of online sexual revolution.

IceCreamists, is one of the entrepreneurs they featured in the article. I've never tasted their  naughty,  creamy delights and I am adamant about food that is all about the concept. But the store looks intriguing and their saucy website is definitely entertaining on its own.

Food and sex have always been intertwined. Humans have visceral reactions to  any kind nourishment and  reproductive activities. Combined, food and sex can cause spontaneous combustion.  I guess I only have to say 9 1/2 Weeks and you'd get what I mean.

My biggest food turn on has always been chocolate and the first chocolate that ever brought out the Maturialist in me was Melty Kiss.  Bloggers have waxed romantic about it and recently I waxed (pun intended) erotic about it.

I am not a poet and this is my most recent try at writing something other than prose. So please forgive me if I disappoint and I hope you will be gentle in your reviews. After all, this is me popping my maturialist cherry.

ODE TO MELTY KISS

There you sit

In a pretty little box

Pouting

Waiting to be plucked

Here I stand

Reaching out for your

Bittersweet promise

Trembling fingers

Unwrap you

Thirsty

I bring you closer to my parched mouth

The heat of my breath

Melts you

My lips touch your velvet skin

A sigh.

Our kiss is nothing but a prelude

Between my fingers and my mouth

You lie naked

Willing me to take you

 

I part my lips

To let you in

Gliding, sliding

Your smoothness creating friction

Against the roughness of my tongue

 

You melt

Like my lover’s back

Aching

Wanting

My wet pink flesh on your skin

A river wells inside my mouth

Flooding my body with passion

Sweeping me to the shores of Paradise

I taste sweet

salt and sugar

Bitter brown

Sweet bitter salt

 

I moan your name

And press my tongue to my palate

Your nectar flows

Filing me with dreams

Of wine and fruits

Of leaves in meadows

A prayer escapes my lips

I bathe

In your goodness

I close my eyes

And take all of you in

One last time

Before you become

A memory.

Johnny Rockets New Eastwood Mall, Libis

Last night was a date night with A. We watched the brilliant  Joseph Gordon-Levitt  swap spit  with the wide-eyed Zoey Deschanel in 500 Days of Summer.

Then we strolled around and A.  let me  slobber over the window displays of the shoe stores within the mall. Before we called it a night, we decided  to snack at Johnny Rockets, a 50s-style  Diner.

The server, Jeng, was a darling-- attentive and all syrupy smiles. The place was well-lit and the music, powered by a jukebox in the center of the resto, appealed to my old soul. And if, like us, you got seated in a booth with a mini jukebox, you can key in your song request via the contraption. And it costs only a peso! The Johnny Rockets franchise has the nostalgic ambience blueprinted well. It reminded us of  similar food joints that were considered a novelty in our heydays...Sam's Diner  at Quezon Ave and Rosie's Diner in Malate.

The food, however, sent us tumbling down cafeteria memory lane. As it was a midnight snack we decided not to order any of the burgers which were the specialty of the house.

A. got the egg salad sandwich which he found bland.

I shared his side salad which I found boring.

The snack was getting depressing.

And the  melamine dishes on which they were served only reminded us how much the resto was overcharging us for food that was fit to be served in a hospital cafeteria.

It was truly a sad moment when my onion rings and fries combo was served. Jeng's seemingly sincere smile couldn't wipe away my disappointment with the six pieces of dry onion rings and one dozen sticks of fries she placed in front of me. It was a sorry, overpriced excuse of a snack. Tsk... tsk.. tsk... 

Maybe we should've just shared a burger. Maybe we should've just stuck to the fastfood joint across the street. Maybe there will be no next time for us at Johnny Rockets.

I am not one to usually complain. But  really, these international franchises should know better! Good ambience and service will not make up for lousy food (unless it's served on top of a naked Joseph Gordon-Levitt).

I'm not angry, just disappointed. I do hope their burgers taste better than the sucky stuff we got served because it would be doubly disappointing for Jeng to lose her job because the owners didn't do theirs.

Boys! Boys! or How to Make a Meal Out of Martian Brains

Halloween was never an occassion celebrated by my family as I was growing up.

My first and only Halloween Trick or Treat experience was around ten years back when my then ten-year old baby bro' Angelo and his friend Bernard decided they would try their hand at amassing sweet treats from Bernard's neighbors in a gated community in Marikina. 

   Angelo and Bernard then...

Bernard's dad, Chito, and myself played costume master and mistress, borrowing Roman soldier costumes ---complete with toga, helmets and sandals--- from another friend,. When the boys went out in their costumes, Chito and I realized that we had just dressed two boys in flimsy white skirts, something that they'd probably never forgive us for when the pictures resurface via Facebook.

A few hours later, the boys returned with a bagful of candies, plastic toys and unhappy faces. Apparently, they realized that the homes they visited towards the end of their Hallow's Eve jaunt were already having supper.  And when they were handed their treats, they were disappointed  because the tired and hungry boys wanted to be gifted with rice and adobo instead of sweets!

They are now both in the cusp of adulthood and are on the brink of facing the truths of life that turn boys into men. But Angelo and Bernard will probably always be those pre-pubescent boys in my eyes.

   ...Angelo and Bernard today.

Here's a Halloween recipe for the boys...

Martian Brain Noodles

Ingredients:

1.5 kg Malunggay pansit

1 cup pork,  sliced into thin 1 inch lengths

1 cup Pork or chicken liver, cut into ¼ inch cubes

1 cup Chinese sausage, cut into ¼ inch circles

1 cup Shrimp, shelled, deveined and halved

1 cup tenga ng daga, softened and cut into 1 inch long strips

1 ½  cups Squash, cut into 1 inch high triangles

250 grams tofu

500 grams wombok

4 ½  cups water

3 tbsps soy sauce

1 tbsp Kutchai, minced

1 tbsp garlic, finely minced

1 cup onion, finely minced

1/4 cup cooking oil

1 shrimp bouillon cube

Salt and pepper to taste

Place pork in ½ cup water and add a dash of salt. Allow water to boil and the pork to become tender. When about 1 tbsp of water is left, add the Chinese sausage. Turn fire to low. Allow the remaining water to cook the sausage and bring out the oil of the pork to brown the meats.  Add cooking oil, garlic and onion. Then add the liver and tofu. Sautee until brown.

Dissolve the shrimp bouillon cube in 4 cups of water and add to the mixture when the liver is almost cooked. Add in the tenga ng daga, and squash. When the squash is slightly tender, add the shrimp and soy sauce to taste.

When the shrimp changes color, add the malunggay noodles and mix gently. Add the rest of the ingredients. Mix gently for five minutes, making sure to evenly distribute the ingredients and keep the noodles moist.

To serve,put a helping of the noodles in a bowl and mold. turn over to a plate and garnish with vegetables.

ha

Wine and STD

I just discovered five minutes ago that doing research on sexually transmitted diseases  (STDs) is best done while imbibing something with alcohol in it.

The research is for work and the white wine, a Freixenet Cava, is for the sanity.

According to the CureResearch.com website there are an estimated 1.25 million Filipinos affected by Chalmydia, one of the more common sexually transmitted diseases in populations where men are circumcised. In the Philippines, this disease was popularized by Kris Aquino, when she decided to do  her bacterium-infested laundry in public during her controversial split with  ex-basketball player slash actor slash politician Joey Marquez in 2003. Though many of us do not appreciate her predisposition for the dramatics, she may  just have  single-handedly caused the  decline  of the disease's  incidence by half over a period of 5 years. Finally, something we may have to thank her for. Maybe.

Enough of the icky stuff.

I am no sommelier but I can appreciate the chilled white Spanish wine I have been drinking straight out of the bottle. The Australian Trade Commission's export market study for Australian wine-makers  gives an indication of my taste for wine- it is as common  as Chlamydia. I am like any average Filipino wine drinker: I like my Jesus juice white, chilled and fruity. 

The Cava, or the Spanish equivalent of champagne is made in the "méthode champenoise" or “Champagne method,” which is the same method that is used to make Champagne, France. In 1872, Josep Raventós Fatjó of the Codorníu estate had supposedly produced the first Cava in Cataluña, Spain. He liked what he made so much that he had a cava  or cellar dug up to store the wine. Thus, the name.

It is also cheaper  (or more accessible, if you want to be polite about it) than the real French Champagne. What I am having now is the semi-seco grade which has about 33-50 grams of sugar per liter. It is sweet, fruity and pedestrian. In the wonderful world  of wine lovers,  it is not sosyal at all. But this bottle I have just topped off does not need to be sosyal  to be special. I had won it in a singalong contest at Taumbayan, a QC resto owned by friends. This bottle is a testament to both the  declining entertainment standards of my friends and the strength of our friendship, since they haven't denounced me after the unabashed display of my (non-existent) singing skills.

And before sobriety catches up with me,  on this night of alcohol and STDs, to my friends at Taumbayan, I raise my bottle of  Cava. Salud!

DREAMING OF OVENS

Our kitchen is very small. A writer had once described it as "only a few paces wide". I want to buy a better stove with a built in oven slash rotisserie. But before I do that I have to:

1. Save up for baking lessons
2. Take up baking lessons
3. Reconfigure the kitchen space
4. Earn enough money for the purchase of a dccent oven
5. Decide on which stove/oven to buy

When I do get the chance to get that piece of kitchen equipment, I will cuddle it and love it and use it and give it a pretty name. In the meantime, I will dream of ovens tonight.

ANG LASWA NI LOLA PACING AT NI LOLO GREG

The rainy season always brings back memories of my years growing up in my grandparents' house in Bignay St., Project 2, Quezon City.

Having been born in Davao and raised as a toddler in Iloilo,  I never had a taste of typhoons until the time I moved in with my Lola Pacing and Lolo Greg when I was in grade one.

Lolo Greg and Lola Pacing

(photo courtesy of my cousin, Lora Capule)

Lolo Greg is a WWII veteran, who for a time was countryless and now lives in the very same country that once denied him citizenship. He has always been quiet, dignified and  gentle.  My first memory  of him was when I was six, watching him cut the backyard grass with shears and a bolo.  My Cousin Jenny and I would play and stop only to listen to him tell stories about the Bataan Death March. Afterwards, he would share with us a packet of Growers peanuts and Pop Cola. If we pestered him for more stories, he would get rid of us by bribing us with a shiny Twenty-Five centavo coin to buy Chocnut or chocolate eggs wrapped in foil. My cousin and I would refuse his bribe and demand for a Ten Centavo coin for each of us, which he would oblige us with. We thought were outsmarting him because two coins were always worth more than one. 

Almost every weekend, he would take me and my cousins to Balara to swim.  Lolo Greg could do ten laps in the pool without much effort and almost always ended his swim with two laps of his signature butterfly stroke. After his swim, he would then herd around 8 of us to ride the JD bus home.  He is never one for corporal punishment. He never even needed  to raise his voice. He could scare us out of misbehaving with simple stories. Whenever one of us grandkids would spill rice from our plates or have leftovers, he would calmly reminisce  how he used to receive one belt whipping for every grain of rice that fell off his plate or did not finish. His veiled threat  never got put into action as we would always finish up everything on the plate. Lolo Greg, my only surviving grandparent, was the cool persona that was opposite to Lola Pacing's fiery one.

Lola Pacing passed away several years ago. Her wake was a big to-do, after all she was the matriarch of a family with 13 children and more than 50 grandchildren. She was also popular in the community having served as a Baranggay Quirino 2-C councilor for many years. Each night at her wake was a fiesta. Mayors sat beside tricycle drivers. Artists mingled with bankers.  People she had helped out once shared stories with relatives from Iloilo. The number of people who showed up at her wake was a testament to how truly beloved she was by those whose lives she touched.

She lived up to her name, Pacencia. Although she would call us out for misbehaving or getting the house dirty, she would rarely lose her temper. The only time she lost her patience with me was when I played in the rain even if I had a cold coming.  After hours of racing paper boats in the street canals, I went to the backyard fishpond and caught fish which I "cooked" using the clothes iron.  Lola Pacing was not very happy with my experimental cooking method. Drenched, shivering and high with fever, she gave me  the  only  corporal punishment in my entire life-- an ass whacking with walis tingting (a broom made with the spine of coconut leaves).

Lola Pacing did make it up to me at dinnertime, making Laswa, a hearty  Ilonggo  soup made of vegetables. Since then, the soup has been one of my favorite rainy day comfort food. I recently served it to friends when we had a post-Ondoy powwow. It is also one of the few vegetable dishes that I can get A.  to eat without any violent reactions.  

 Ang Laswa ni Lola Pacing using saluyot (jute) leaves

Laswa  is similar to the Ilocano Dinengdeng but is more soupy and less salty. The simplicity of the flavor never fails to bring me back to the time when life was so uncomplicated.

Ang Laswa ni Lolo Greg using alugbati (Malabar spinach) leaves

❦

ANG LASWA NI LOLA PACING
Her ingredients are what one can usually find in the wet market. Because of the onion, this version has a homier taste to it.

Ingredients:

4 cups water

1 piece small onion, quartered

3 pieces medium-sized tomatoes, quartered

1/2 cup fresh shrimps, shelled and deveined (keep the head for the stock)

200 grams kilo squash (calabasa), cut into 2" squares

200 grams string beans (sitaw), cut into 2 1/2" lengths

200 grams okra, cut into 1" lengths

1 big piece eggplant (talong), cut into 1/2' inch thickness 

2 cups saluyot (jute) leaves

salt to taste

Boil  shrimp heads in water. When the shrimp heads turn pink, take them out of the water . using a strainer, squeeze excess juice from the heads with a spoon.  Add tomatoes and onion in the boiling water. Once the water boils again, add in the vegetables, starting with the squash. Once the squash turns slightly tender, add in the string beans, okra and eggplant. When the vegetables are cooked, add in the jute leaves and salt to taste. Mix and remove from fire when the saluyot turns a shade darker.

Serve hot with crispy danggit (dried Rabbit fish) on the side.

❦

ANG LASWA NI LOLO GREG

He grew alugbati in the vegetable garden behind the house. The use of alugbati and winged beans make the dish more hard-core Ilonggo for me. I don't know why. it just does. I find his process simpler, too.

Ingredients:

4 cups water

3 pieces medium-sized tomatoes, quartered

500 grams dried shrimp (hibi)

200 grams kilo squash (calabasa), cut into 2" squares

200 grams winged beans (sigarilyas), cut into 1 1/2" lengths

200 grams okra, cut into 1" lengths

1 big piece eggplant (talong), cut into 1/2' inch thickness 
2 cups alugbati  (Malabar spinach) leaves

salt to taste

Boil  tomatoes and dried shrimp in the water. Once the dried shrimp becomes tender, add in the vegetables, starting with the squash. Once the squash turns slightly tender, add in the winged beans, okra and eggplant. When the vegetables are cooked, add in the Malabar spinach leaves and salt to taste. Mix and remove from fire when the saluyot turns a shade darker.

Serve hot with crispy baby galunggong (Mackarel scad) or tawilis (fresh water sardinella) on top.

❦

This blog is dedicated to Lolo Greg and the love of his life,
Lola Pacing.

Thank you for taking care of me.

Kiss the Cook Cafe

It has almost been a month since my last post. The series of typhoons and all the incoming work had kept me too depressed to write about food and too tired to make anything in the kitchen.

Yes, A. and myself have been living mostly on fast food deliveries, canned goods and left overs these past few weeks. I thought I would never get out of this processed food rut.

And today, I got a lip-smacking experience that made me sit-up and write... Kiss the Cook Cafe.

This cozy cafe is situated at 59 Maginhawa St., UP Village, Diliman, QC, across Holy Family School. Friends have been raving about the place since its soft opening last 19 October. A. and I finally got the chance to dine there tonight.

For starters, A. picked the Crabstick Mango Spring Roll with Nouc Mam dip. Once dipped,  the mix of  the slice of sweet mango, fishy crabstick and the neutral rice paper wrapper is coated in the salty sour  goodness of the dip. The dip is the rock star in this wrap and roll experience.

I had the  Curried Shrimp salad with grilled pineapple and curried cabbage. I am not a big fan of curry but this unusual mix of familiar tastes was a new experience for my palate as far as salads go.

We asked for the best pork dishes. A. got the  Asian Braised Pork Belly and I had the Five-Spice Spareribs (a.k.a. ang pinakamasarap na piniritong baboy sa balat ng lupa). As I am a guiltless pork-lover, nothing makes me happier than soft fried fat melting on my tongue.  So, this dish is a declared winner in my book. Augie's braised pork sauce was, thankfully, not overwhelming as some Chinese restaurants tend to make.

We capped our dinner with a dark chocolate gelato and Bailey's dessert, Truffette.  If you get off on chocolate, dig deep into this dark dessert and you'll pop a cherry by the time you get your last spoonful.  This dessert got me all worked up and I forgot to take a photo. All I have for you is the spent, empty cup of the highlight of my first time at Kiss The Cook Cafe.