FLAVOURS OF ILOILO

I love puso ng saging, be it kinilaw or adobo but my ultimate favorite is when it is made of part of sinigang na bangus.  I was leaning to having some leftover pork tocino for lunch but when I opened the kaldero and saw the milky sabaw of this bangus sinigang - all the tocino thoughts disappeared. It's a really simple dish - just cook like the way you make sinigang and instead of radish, okra and other sinigang veggies, just use puso ng saging plus the "undeveloped" bananas.  The preparation of the puso ng saging is where the tedious work begins, as you have to be experienced in doing so. There's the peeling of the outer layers until the white one appears and the washing to get those bitter taste off.  And it has to be cooked right away to get the milky color of the broth. I haven't really seen and tried a non bangus sinigang with puso ng saging though I think it would work also as good. Maybe shrimps next time, for the play of ...

Mention baye-baye and those familiar with this native Ilonggo delicacy would imagine rolls of pounded pinipig (roasted newly harvested rice) mixed with freshly grated coconut with hints of subtle sweetness. One of the most popular native snacks, baye-baye is a staple in local markets as well as pasalubong shops and native delicacies stalls in the malls. While most baye-baye are just plain, there's an innovation to this local delicacy that Ilonggos are starting to embrace. It's baye-baye roll filled with a mix yema and peanuts. It was in 2011 that I made a gastronomic contact with this baye-baye innovation when I judged in a competition featuring baye-baye innovation in the town of Pavia, Iloilo during a sidelight event of their annual Tigkaralag Festival . Entries came with sesame seeds, cheese, pandan and yema-peanuts which became the eventual winner. It  came with an innovation that captured our taste aside from the originality and the cre...

Always in the center of a typical Filipino Noche Buena is the "hamon". No matter which brand or what kind ham it maybe, the Christmas Eve midnight gastronomic gathering would seem incomplete without it. One ham that seems to be just within the taste and price range of the Ilonggos is the house brand of Iloilo Supermart - Right Choice . For around PhP 600+ per kilo, the Right Choice Ham is not like those typical hams which were made months earlier in preparation for Christmas. Instead, it can be termed as a freshly made ham yet still almost have the same taste and texture of the typical ham. So with this ham, I made my own healthy "double down" with kangkong mixed with three cheeses (Parmesan, Queso de Bola and Cheesewhiz) and chili garlic. It was a refreshing take as the ham complemented the taste of the vegetable concoction I experimented on. And my other experiment was "kangkongetti" - a typical tomato sauce, ham and cheese mix but with kangkong...