Posted by Wan Yan Ling, April 7, 2008 at 10:30 AM
The Grocery Ninja leaves no aisle unexplored, no jar unopened, no produce untasted. Creep along with her below, and read her past market missions here.
I know it’s only April, but this may be my food find of the year. Tiny, freshwater crabs—each barely two inches across—are soused with water, sprinkled with Kosher salt, and stuck live in the fridge. Hours later, they’re skillfully pressed and prodded to extract a grainy, coral paste that Pinoys like to mix with freshly steamed white rice, its richness cut through with a generous squirt of calamansi juice—a poor (or busy) man’s paella, if you will.
The thing is, I’m not positive what the gorgeously creamy, salty, slightly tangy stuff is. My bottle says it's "crab fat," and the Tagalog label of "taba ng talangka" concurs—"taba" is "fat" and "talangka" is what those little crabs are called. Yet, I’ve found roughly the same number of sources that claim it as either "crab roe" or "crab fat," and some fence-straddlers that call it "fatty crab roe." Seizing on that, the researcher beau helpfully suggested that since crab roe can be fatty, but crab fat isn’t necessarily roe, the yummy (calorific, cholesterol-laden, highway-to-a-heart-attack) stuff we’ve been sneaking spoonfuls of all weekend must be the eggs.
Continue reading »
Posted by Adam Kuban, October 10, 2007 at 3:30 PM
October is Filipino American History Month, and on that note, Filipino food blogger Marvin over at Burnt Lumpia (tagline: "Finding identity through food") posits a theory that his peeps may have had a hand in helping create gumbo:
So what’s all this have to do with Gumbo you ask? Well, given these facts, one can conclude that like the French Acadians (roux), Africans (okra), and Choctaw Indians (File powder), perhaps Filipinos (shrimp) can be included in the melting pot that is Gumbo. I won’t go so far as to say that Filipinos are responsible for shrimp being an ingredient in some Gumbos, but I will venture to say that Filipinos at least contributed to this fact. We were, after all, alongside the Cajuns from the very start in Louisiana.
The full blog post makes a convincing argument. Have a gander.
Photograph from Burnt Lumpia
Posted by Robyn Lee, July 5, 2007 at 5:30 PM
I don't know much about Filipino food, but after seeing Grace's radiant photo of roast pork from NYC's Krystal's Cafe, I suddenly crave crispy skin-encased chunks of lechon along with any other Filipino specialty with a 1:1 ratio of meat to fat .
Posted by Lia Bulaong, February 1, 2007 at 10:26 AM
Manila’s Tsokolate Shop: Great post from dessert comes first on Tsoko.Nut, a Starbucks-inspired cafe chain in the Philippines focused on tsokolate, "true Filipino chocolate made from 100% cacao. Grown, roasted, and ground locally, it’s unlike any other hot chocolate drink in the world: caressed by the sun, kissed by the earth, and tasting of smoke, chocolate, and nuts." Tsokolate is delicious enough on its own, but oh, the desserts that go with it!
