A Matter of Taste

Originally published in The Philippine Star

Why is balut so generally abhorred in the west? That it was used in the reality show Fear Factor is evidence of this aversion. And I remember an episode of Lonely Planet where one of the hosts purchased balut in Malate, then talked herself into taking a bite only to spit it out almost immediately and wretch over it. Yet this same host downed a glass of wine in Vietnam to which the raw gall bladder of a snake had been added. Not only did she manage to hold it down, she even made a complimentary remark about it.

I guess that one man’s comfort food can be another man’s reason for a bellyache. The food specialty of a specific culture or region will not always be appetizing to everyone and may even repel some. Especially if a basic ingredient is this side of unappealing or forbidden.

Take another Filipino favorite—Dinuguan. Eaten at face value, it usually passes most westerners’ epicurean standards. But tell those same people that pig’s blood is the base for this stew and chances are they’ll make a beeline for the nearest powder room. Unless they’re from Sweden or Poland. Svartsoppa or Black Soup is made from the blood drippings of the geese the Swedes roast for St. Martin’s Eve. And the Poles have Czernina, a sweet sour soup made from duck or pig’s blood, broth, sugar and vinegar.

Culture and habit have a lot to do with our biases particularly the hard to explain ones.

Some folks balk at eating Sashimi on the grounds that it is raw fish but won’t bat an eyelash at dining on carpaccio, oysters on the half-shell or sea urchin roe, which is seldom if ever cooked. The French and their Escargot may have given snails a better reputation but I’ve seen people screw up their faces at the seafood version of Kare Kare when snails are part of the mix. And it’s one thing to eat frog’s legs which resemble small chicken legs after all; quite another to eat it whole sans head but with limbs still intact and splayed, reminding you that you are about to pop a frog into your mouth. Stuffed relleno-style and deep-fried to a crisp turn, these tiny frogs are a popular dish in some parts of Pampanga.

And then there’s caviar. The ultimate luxury to some, to others it is just salty fish eggs, no more, no less, with only its cachet to recommend it. One of my uncles declared he would take bagoong over caviar any time however costly it is. Clearly even the yen for the world’s gourmet delicacies can be an acquired taste.

Beware prairie oysters, Montana tendergroins, cowboy caviar, swinging beef, Rocky Mountain oysters and calf-fries.These are deceptive euphemisms for bull testicles. There’s even a famous Testicle Festival in the western U.S. state of Montana where the favorite way to eat the stuff is battered and fried and served with ketchup or barbecue sauce.

But American wranglers are by no means the first or only folk to feast on these “nuts”. Ram testicles were a popular item on fashionable 18^th century French menus. And the ancient Romans dined on gonads to increase their sexual vigor. Ditto for the Chinese who have created a hearty bull testicle soup.

Come to think of it, animal testicles are not the oddest ingredients ever to make their way into a soup, stew or stir-fry.

How about whole boiled lizard in broth and soup starring sheep’s eyeballs? Deep-fried white rat that could pass for amber-hued Peking Duck? Or insects, grubs and worms for lunch or dinner? We have the local Camaro or crisply fried crickets. And those little critters are also staples in many South American locales where they are often the cheapest source of protein. They are sautéed, stewed, fried, roasted and wrapped in tortillas to make a very different kind of taco. They are even eaten raw. I will never look at another garden slug or earthworm the same way after watching one of the indigenous tribesmen on Discovery Channel happily take a bite of a big, fat white grub and show off the gooey, still twitching uneaten half before popping it into his mouth. For some, apparently fresh does not mean raw but alive.

Else why do Sashimi restaurants that specialize in cutting their fillets from live fish do such brisk business in Japan? Another version of Sashimi is a live shrimp that is quickly beheaded and shelled and handed over to the diner while still wriggling. The object is to swallow the poor thing in one bite so you can feel it “dance” in your throat as it goes down. The Koreans go one step further. Imagine fishing a small live octopus out of a bowl of water, dipping it in sauce then eating it whole while its tentacles frantically cling every which way to your lips, chin and cheeks.

And lest you believe only uncommon foodstuffs lend themselves to the strange and exotic, well, think again.

The common egg becomes a specialty gourmet item when salted or aged. Hence, our local itlog maalat (especially delectable when teamed with chopped tomatoes, diced green mangoes and a dollop of bagoong) and the exaggeratedly named century eggs with their slightly ammoniac flavor and brownish whites and green yolks.

Or how about rich, dark chocolate? Traditionally a dessert ingredient or a sweet in its own right, it is a main ingredient in the spicy Mexican poblano mole. Dried chili peppers, ground nuts and spices and charred avocado leaves also go into this very popular savory sauce.

And then there’s coffee. The customary way of taking it is either black or with cream or milk. Sweetness depends on where you are in the world though diabetics would be advised to keep in mind that in some countries close to half a cup of sugar is not deemed too much of a good thing. For the more adventurous, the various coffee bars have come up with a plethora of concoctions to satisfy the near universal hankering for beverages based on this aromatic bean. But I very much doubt they will ever do as the Lapplanders do and dunk butter in their cups of steaming coffee for a fortifying hot drink.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder but our aesthetic proclivities are shaped by the various cultural forces at work on us at any given time and place. The same goes for food and our taste buds. Frankly, I think we are all discriminating diners, our ingrained loves and hates in the gustatory arena dictating what we consider simply to die for, not bad at all, just barely palatable or fit to toss into the garbage bin with nary a second thought or an experimental bite.

One Man’s Shake is Another Man’s Frappe

Whenever we go to Starbucks, Bryan, Niccolo and Jonathan order the frapuccinos. Invariably, I wish they hadn’t become so fond of these expensive concoctions that are little more than glorified milkshakes. Particularly when I can whip them up at home at less cost and with fresh ingredients.

Smoothie, frappe, velvet, frosted shake, malt, cabinet and batido are all one and the same—a milkshake going by another name depending on region or country and what goes into the recipe. But basically, a milkshake is a cold beverage made from milk, ice cream or other similar dairy products and flavorings ranging from fruit syrups to chocolate sauce. It’s generally meant to be drank but there are recipes where the shake is so thick a spoon is more useful than a straw. In the 1950s in the United States, such a shake was aptly called a concrete and was handed to the customer upside down to demonstrate its drip-proof consistency. So does that make the Dairy Queen Blizzard a concrete treat?

Interestingly enough, the milkshake originated in the U.S. as an alcoholic whiskey drink. The name first appeared in print in 1885 and was similar to eggnog. And just like its soda fountain compatriot Coca Cola, it was positioned as a health tonic. By 1900, however, the name referred to dairy-based drinks made with chocolate, strawberry or vanilla syrup. It was solely made with milk and shaken or whipped until foamy. Hence the term milkshake. (Talk about taking names literally.) Anyway, within a few years, people wanted ice cream in the new drink as well and the basic shake in its current incarnation appeared.

What differentiates a milkshake from a frappe or smoothie? Well, in the first place, even milkshakes are not born equal. While the most common version consists of milk, ice cream and a flavoring, in the New England states and some Commonwealth nations, they adhere a bit more to tradition and there is no ice cream in the shake, only iced milk.

By and large, the variations in name have to do with its region of origin or with the changes or additions in the basic recipe. For example, a frosted shake is a milkshake to which ice cream has been added. In the 1930s, the newspapers used the term ‘frosted’ for any beverage that had ice cream added to it. Even hot coffee with ice cream added to it was called a frosted coffee.

Now take away the ice cream and substitute yogurt, crushed ice and fresh fruit and you have the health buff’s favorite treat, the smoothie. Add malted milk to the basic shake and you’ll wind up with a classic malted milkshake or simply a malt. An extra thick milkshake came to be called a velvet or frappe (pronounced ‘frap’) in northern New England and Canada. The term frappe comes from French frapper, meaning ‘to ice’. In Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts, locals are fond of their coffee frappe shake. (When I read this, the frapuccino began to make sense.) By the way, once you add ice cream to a milkshake in this particular region it becomes peculiarly enough, a cabinet, probably named after the square wooden cabinet in which the mixer used to be encased.

The concept of milkshakes also migrated south of the border. Add fruit to a milkshake and you have the batido, which is very popular in Latin America and among Miami’s extensive Cuban expatriate community. Nicaraguans even coined their own name—they call their milkshake leche malteada.

In the 1940s and 50s, soda fountains were favorite hangouts in the U.S. and milkshakes often formed the base of their ice cream menus. Soda fountain staff, or jerks as they were called, had their own jargon for these milky concoctions, some nicely descriptive, others quite bizzare and incomprehensible. A “White Cow” was a vanilla milkshake while a “Burn One All the Way” was a chocolate malted with chocolate ice cream. The whimsically named “Shake One in the Hay” was a simple strawberry shake. But the “Twist It, Choke It and Make It Cackle” needs a bit of circular reasoning to connect it to what the shake was: a chocolate malted with an egg.

In the Philippines, milkshakes are often bought as a dessert or a cold treat to sip while strolling around on a warm day. But in North America, it was discovered that nearly half of all milkshakes are bought in the early morning and are usually the only items purchased per customer. The reason? It makes an ideal breakfast product for the commute from home to work or school because it can be consumed with just one hand and there is little risk of spillage on clothes or soiling the hands, as is the case with sandwiches or pastries.

Nowadays, the plethora of milkshake variations can be bewildering. Everything from the basic milk and ice cream version to fruit- or candy-studded, spiked and gourmet concoctions are on hand. Anything from M&Ms, peanut butter and jelly, Hostess Twinkies, melted caramels and crushed Oreos to crème de menthe and Kahlúa liqueur, whiskey and vodka to macerated strawberries, Valrhona chocolate, saffron-rose water and taro root have found their way into today’s shakes. Going by this, I suppose even the once ubiquitous pearl drinks can pass as milkshakes.

I once used leftover ice cream to make milkshakes for my three sons. I followed the most popular recipe—cold milk, ice cream and a flavoring, chocolate syrup in this case. I got the thumbs up from all three with Bryan claiming there’s nothing like homemade, Jonathan stating that it was the best milkshake he’d ever tasted and Niccolo simply and enthusiastically saying “Delicious!” and asking for a second serving.

Hmmm, maybe if I do this often enough, their clamor for costly commercial shakes will go the way of the dodo. Well, I can dream, can’t I?

It's Not the Scenery, It's the Attitude by Monette

The shrimps were as sweet and succulent as only fresh shrimp can be. The grilled squid was unbelievably tender and the labahita? Heaven on a plate—firm, juicy and still tasting of the sea. Someone mentioned its texture reminded him of crab meat, at which point the real crabs were remembered, brought out and demolished as happily and rapidly as everything that came before. Even the simple cucumber salad was scrumptious and the perfect foil to all that seafood. Only thing is we noticed that the dipping sauces were increasing rather than diminishing. That's when we realized the thatched roof of our hut was open right down its middle—narrow enough to keep the sun out but wide enough to let the rain in and onto us and our feast. So did we stop eating, pack up and look for another hut? Nope.

PV and I flew to Palawan two weeks ago to attend a meeting for the BCBP (that's our Catholic renewal community, the Brotherhood of Christian Businessmen and Professionals) Chapter Heads of our region. It was my first trip to Palawan and, to my surprise, PV's as well. I'd thought he'd already visited every nook and cranny of the country (with exception of Batanes for obvious reasons) during his days with McCann-Erickson and the Coca-Cola account. So since we were both first-timers, we tried to experience as much of Palawan as was possible in the span of our three-day stay. That meant island-hopping around Honda Bay and taking a pre-dawn drive to Sabang Beach on the way to the much raved about Underground River. That also entailed travelling by boat more often than I was comfortable with. But, hey, such adventures may not come one's way again (or at least in the foreseeable future) so I steeled myself, made certain I'd properly secured my life vest and breathed a prayer whenever the boatman slowed the boat in order to smoothly ride out large waves.

It was during the Honda Bay outing that we—eight couples, two kids and one BCBP mission director turned tourist guide—experienced the joys and hilarity of eating in the rain. It's rainy down yonder these days so both the sky and the sea were varying shades of gray when we set out for Snake Island and our seaside picnic. We weren't at all surprised when it started to rain in the middle of lunch. It was that nice long hole in the roof that caught us flat-footed. Yet all that water seeping down on everything didn't deter us from finishing our lunch. In fact, we were more concerned about the food getting wet than ourselves. 

We actually held our umbrellas over the dishes while we got thoroughly soaked without yet having taken a dip in the sea. But it was fun and funny if a little surreal. No one cared about our bedraggled appearances or the fact that we were devouring everything in sight with as much gusto as lumberjacks after a long day's work. And there was one unexpected benefit. We didn't have to wash the plates and utensils; we just let the rain dripping in from above do the job for us! And we still wound up with satisfied palates and pleasantly full stomachs, which was more than can be said for a large family of Badjaos that wandered into our vicinity. 

 It was quite heartbreaking when the family patriarch came to us and begged for our leftover rice. Their obvious hunger made us wish we had more than cold rice, the remnants of the cucumber salad and a few bananas to give them. As we left Snake Island and headed off to Pandan Island, we saw them eating what we'd managed to spare them with an urgency born of deprivation. It made us realize all the more how blessed we all are, a rained on picnic lunch notwithstanding.

The trip to the Underground River the following day had its own unique charm. We left our bed-and-breakfast at a-dark-as-night 5:30 in the morning accompanied by a very pregnant and very loquacious tour guide. With four of us, PV and myself included, scheduled to fly back to Manila in the early afternoon, we decided to play it safe and try to be the first in line for the river tour so that we could get back in time to shower and head for the airport. During peak season, people have to line up for hours at a time for a boat and a boatman cum guide. We'd also been tipped off that the second half of a several hundreds strong contingent from Luzon was scheduled to take the tour the same day. We only hoped that it wouldn't rain that morning because a heavy downpour raises the water level of the river and makes the entrance impassable. Luck was with us however and I have to confess that was one of the most memorable tours I've ever taken. 

We all came out of it more humbled than ever by the power and creativity of God. I say creativity because the natural limestone "sculptures" we saw within have to be seen to be believed. They are simply incredible. Add to that the fact that it takes hundreds of years for stalactites and stalagmites to finally meet and join in the middle to become towering limestone pillars and millennia for the biggest and most intricate forms to grow—well, if that doesn't make one feel like a very small speck in the vastness of time and space I don't know what will. 

By the way, did I mention the bats and swallows? They were everywhere. The swallows dove and swerved and glided every which way while the slumbering bats clung to the walls in such numbers it was sometimes hard to see the cave walls for the bats. By the way, the Underground River swallows are of the same species whose saliva is the glue that holds their nests together and is the primary ingredient in "Bird's Nest Soup". For those of you who didn't know you were ingesting gelled bird spit when you dined on this famous Chinese soup, go ahead and gag. It kind of gives new meaning to the old saw "What you don't know won't hurt you", doesn't it? Anyway, I was relieved to learn that the bird nests inside the cave can't be harvested for culinary purposes, commercial or otherwise. I rather like the idea of those swallows and bats living relatively unbothered by humans in their subterranean haven. 

The river tours end in late afternoon leaving the cave denizens in peace for a good part of the day. We returned to Sabang Beach and had a really early lunch at 10:30. Some of the men including my hubby decided to try out tamilok, a supposed delicacy a girl was hawking nearby. She said it was a kind of marine worm. It looked like a glutinous mound of clumped together grayish squid tentacles to me! Dipped in spicy vinegar and eaten raw, the vendor claimed it tastes better than oysters on the half shell. The guys enthusiastically concurred but I decided to take their word for it. I'm fairly adventurous when it comes to food but I have my limits and doing an Extreme Cuisine demonstration with something that unappetizing in name and appearance is way beyond those limits. 

Looking back, I realize it wasn't merely the new sights and sounds that made our visit to Palawan so enjoyable. It was the company we kept and the positive attitude of that company that ensured our trip would be a happy and memorable one. It's something to always keep in mind when embarking on something new whether it's a place, a venture of some kind or an experiment in one's life—better to see one's glass as half full rather than half empty. And it won't hurt to imagine champagne in that glass either—or an extra thick double chocolate milk shake—whatever floats your boat. If you consistently look for the silver lining, you may not even notice the accompanying cloud.

Of Armchair Cooks and Clueless Chefs by Monette

Faced with fixing a cup of instant coffee, my husband PV will ask someone else to do it for him for fear of using the wrong proportions of hot water, coffee, cream and sugar. Small wonder he loves brewed coffee. He takes it black.

When asked to help assemble Sunday dinner’s salad, my sister asked how large did I want the lettuce pieces. To which I replied “Bite-sized.” A silent minute later, she followed up with a genuinely puzzled “How big is bite-sized?”

Then there’s a good friend of mine who’s idea of preparing a meal was to heat up canned sausage, corned beef or sardines. Fortunately, she’s learned how to whip up a few dishes that don’t require a can opener. But she struggles to repeat her successes and will balk at any recipe that requires more than five ingredients or two cooking steps: cutting up everything and throwing them into the pan.

As for my eldest son Bryan—he often comes home with stories of cooking disasters. An aspiring chef, he’s taking the culinary track of his hotel and restaurant management course and spends many hours in his school’s training kitchen. He is regularly dismayed by classmates who can’t tell a wok from a skillet, think folding is applicable only to fabric and paper and, if a recipe does not clearly describe the procedure, would separate eggs according to color and size.

Bryan still cringes at the memory of the classmate who dumped all the ingredients of the cake they were making into the mixing bowl in spite of step-by-step instructions to add them one at a time. The result was so heavy, he claims he could have used it in his weight-training program.

Welcome to the world of the culinarily challenged where the kitchen is a landmine-strewn battlefield, scorched pans and burnt toast are the rule and setting a kettle of water to boil can reduce a grown man to tears.

It seems cooking is an instinct that not all humans are born with. How else to explain the smiles on certain faces and the scowls on others when confronted with one of the most basic activities of daily life? I’ve known people to whom making a simple sandwich is a conundrum at best and torture at worst. And whipping up iced tea or lemonade from a mix should be a cinch yet I’ve watched a number of poor souls botch it even when they follow directions to the letter.

Maybe that’s the problem. Successful cooking does not always entail exact measurements. Hence the phrase “season to taste”. PV complains that when he follows the directions for mixing instant beverages, they seldom ever come out right. Yet when I do the exact same things, they almost never go wrong.

It’s all about balance, I guess; something that’s done on a case-to-case basis. And not everyone has the knack for it or even the capacity to learn how to achieve it. But if people did or could, there wouldn’t be a need for specialists in any profession, now would there?

Incredibly, we’ve employed supposed specialists who should never have been allowed into the kitchen, let alone near a frying pan. I recall one culinary wannabe who tried to whiten her broths not by using the water in which the rice had been washed but by adding evaporated milk. That was the first time I’d ever seen curdled sinigang.

This same “cook” served crispy pata with bottled sandwich spread, consistently ignored the directions on the back of the pancake mix box in favor of haphazardly throwing ingredients together and grilled an entire slab of tuna until it was as moist and tender as a plank of charred wood.

Another so-called cook cost us quite a bundle in erroneously prepared foodstuffs and mishandled appliances. For instance, she routinely overcrowded the frying pan in a bid to speed up the process and wound up boiling food in oil instead. Her pork chops were barely edible as a result. Her fried chicken was virtually unrecognizable. And my mother almost had a fit when the woman used the three kilos of rack of lamb she had bought for my dad’s birthday dinner for a regular lunchtime nilaga.

Our microwave oven did not survive her brief stint with us nor did our coffee maker or our turbo broiler. The last straw was when she set the kitchen on fire because she negligently left the gas on while chatting on the phone with a complete stranger who randomly dialled our number in his search for a phone pal.

Because we’ve always had cooks, my mother seldom prepared family meals. But she knew enough to come up with delicious dishes. My father was the expert in the kitchen, however, even if he didn’t spend that much time there. His skill had a little to do with hanging around his mother who’d been a wonderful cook but the greater reason was a discerning palate that was part inborn and part developed through exposure to good cooking. He could tell when there was too much or too little of anything or when everything was just right. And he was a stickler for true flavor whether a dish was in its pure form or fusion fare.

Not so a certain relative who goes by the popularity of a foreign cuisine restaurant among Filipinos to award it a badge of excellence while completely ignoring establishments that are heavily patronized by their respective nationals just because they aren’t as well known. Not surprisingly, her culinary know-how is rudimentary at most and a commendable meal at her home is usually a catered one.

Except when she’s been lucky enough to find a cook worth her salt. Then and only then can she make the claim of serving good homemade dishes. Whether she can recognize their authenticity however is a story for another time.

Raison d’être by Monette

I love food. To eat and to cook. It seems my eldest son Bryan took after me. He’s studying to be a chef. Jonathan, my youngest, told me a few months ago he’d also like to be one. He’s 12-years-old and the best fruit shake maker in the house. My middle son Niccolo has autism but he’s no laggard in the shake-making department, loves pasta and sinigang (talk about polar opposites) and knows a good French fry when he meets one. And my husband? PV loves food, too. Even if he can’t tell a tureen from a crock.

He’s the outdoorsy, try-just-about-any-sport type. Yang to my stay-indoors, bookworm yin. Bryan straddles the divide between our interests. He’ll wax philosophical at the oddest moments then take off with his friends for a spell at the gym or a cup of coffee or a late night at whatever passes for a party in that crowd. He’s certainly different from Jonathan who signed up for the Chess Club at school this year. And Niccolo? He recently learned how to surf the Internet. I don’t know if I’m proud or alarmed or a little of both. Yet despite these differences in our personalities and interests, we enjoy each other’s company. Especially if we keep company out of town. Or better yet, in another country. We just make sure that the bathrooms are clean.

Commonality. That’s what keeps the family together. We can have different likes and dislikes but somehow we always manage to find something in common that makes us happy to be with each other. It isn’t always easy. Sometimes we have to stretch quite a bit to find that commonality. The tie that binds. But find it we manage to do for the most part. And the rewards are well worth the extra effort.

Two years and three months ago, we gained a commonality of, shall we say, infatuation. We adopted a little girl and she’s been the apple of everyone’s eyes ever since. There are times I think the boys, my husband included, go overboard in their show of adoration for her. I admit I sometimes do so myself but, apparently, the male of the species can be reduced to a goo-goo eyed, puddle of mush when he goes into “cuddle and coddle the baby” overload. Not that I can blame any of them. Our girl is just too adorable for words.  Especially when she blinks her innocent, button eyes, nuzzles us affectionately when we cradle her and sassily swishes her pert tail when she’s in the mood for love. Oh, did I mention she’s a Shih Tzu? No? Well then, allow me to introduce PV’s and my dogter Chibi. Our dogter, mind you, not our pet dog. Chibi is considered a part of the family and woe to anyone who suggests otherwise!

And now here’s another point in common for us. This will be our family’s shared blog. A journal of sorts chronicling our different thoughts on, well, anything. Vignettes. Slices of life. Food for thought (and also the edible kind). Something like that. And, oh yes, hello out there!