In Which an Antipodean Treat Helps One to Chill Out – Quite Literally…

Tim Tams… FROZEN Tim Tams…

The summer heat has finally gotten to a number of people.  One friend literally wilted in the heat while waiting for the bus, the victim of dehydration.  Another friend has been suffering from serious nosebleeds and has taken to strapping an ice pack to the back of her head when she goes to work.  A colleague’s blood pressure soared to astronomical heights and had to be taken to a hospital ASAP.  Eep.

Me, I ended up with a bad case of dizziness that literally floored me Thursday last week and ended up feeling poorly a few days ago when the trains broke down and everyone spilled onto the streets to grab buses home.  It has, as far as I know, been the worst summer ever.  (Thank goodness, though, that the rains began to pour last night…)

Lucky for me, I decided to beat the heat and the blues with a two-edged sword - Tim Tams; more specifically frozen Tim Tams.

Arnott’s recently put out an Asia-specific version of these popular Aussie biscuits which are best served chilled in the fridge prior to consumption.  They are, unfortunately, not as good as the proper shipped-from-Down-Under kind as the chocolate is compound and rather waxy.  But, in a pinch as obvious as this, they’ll do - just.

In my personal opinion, these are better frozen rather than just refrigerated.  They taste better that way, the cold minimizes the waxiness of the compound choc, and the biscuits are slightly crunchier.  The Antipodean, who is currently spending a week or so home in NSW, is of the opinion that I should try freezing real Tim Tams next time; it’s what he does in the summer – and, yes: it is substantially better.

He also noted through the screen that I was munching the Tim Tams along with an iced coffee (again, alas, instant; but what the hell…).

“When you get your hands on a packet of real Tim Tams, babe,” he said, “I’ll teach you the Tim Tam Slam.”

“Promise?” I asked as I munched through the third cookie in the tub.

“Promise.”

“Well, kid, you got yourself a deal…”

(But, no: there is no way in hell that you’ll get either of us to try those vile cheese-flavored Tim Tams that are currently the rage in Indonesia.  We have our standards, you know!)

In Which the Blogger Enters the House of Katsu…

Come to the House of Katsu…

The original plan for the lead-up to Labor Day was to head on to Ace Water Spa for some much longed-for and seriously much hankered after therapy.  Unfortunately, a bit of ill-health and the usual stresses all came into play and my date with the spa will have to be moved to yet another day.  On Labor Day itself (today), I decided to give myself a break and hauled both my brother and sister off for some serious eats – and oh, what eats!

“Have you been to Yabu?” my brother asked a few days before.

“The tonkatsu joint?” I replied.  ”Nope, but I hear it’s been getting really good press - and I saw your pictures on Facebook.”

That Yabu House of Katsu has been getting good press is an understatement: do a Google search for Yabu House of Katsu and you get over twenty pages of hits, mostly restaurant reviews and blog posts from happy, satisfied customers.  So, with all that glowing praise in mind, we trotted off to Yabu’s newest branch in our neck of southern suburbia (SM Southmall in Las Pinas, just a couple jeepney rides away) for a spot of lunch.

Les accoutrements

Once you’ve been seated at your table, notice that there is a nice selection of condiments: three tall bottles of salad dressing – beige sesame (goma), pale green wasabi, and a soy (shoyu) vinaigrette, bottles of chili oil, shichimi togarashi [seven-spice powder], and shiso (pepper mixed with delicately floral shiso leaf), a salt pig, and a jug of house-blended tonkatsu sauce.

The dressings are there for the unlimited helpings of shredded cabbage that come with most of the items on the Yabu menu, pretty much allowing you to make your own coleslaw.  They’re pretty ace dressings, too: the sesame is deliciously sweet and nutty, the soy vinaigrette pleasantly tangy, and the wasabi is creamy with just enough nose-tingling kick to make it interesting.

And then, this is brought to your table:

Grind to your desired coarseness or fineness…

You get a mortar of toasted black and white sesame seeds with a shiso-wood pestle that you’re supposed to hand-grind (not pound, hence the grooves in the bowl) till the intense, nutty aroma comes out.  Afterwards, you add about a couple wee ladlefuls of the house-blend sauce, plus a sprinkle of salt from the piggy, and your choice of sparkers.  (I opted for the shiso powder; it lent a delicately floral tang and a subtle heat to my sauce.)

Starters

Once you’re all set, whet your appetite with some appetizers.  For P 195.00, you get a choice of two off the menu.  I’d say go for the wakame salad which is absolutely refreshing and tastes deliciously fresh with a mix of wakame seaweed, sesame seeds, a hint of salt, and tobiko (cod roe).  Edamame (green soybean pods) are also nice, but we seriously prefer the chive-sprinkled spin on potato salad.

You know you want it!

As this is the House of Katsu, you should definitely order the tonkatsu.  (I question the culinary integrity of anyone who even thinks about ordering the bloody vegetarian platter!  There’s one on the menu, but really…)  The house specialty is kurobuta - the creamy-colored, beautifully marbled, exquisitely tender pork from the fabled Japanese black pigs.  Yabu pitches this premium meat as the “wagyu of pork”, an appellation that does it little justice because it is a far sweeter, more tender, utterly moreish sort of meat that shouldn’t be compared to any other.

As the kurobuta cuts are a touch on the pricey side, first-timers would do well to opt for the regular tonkatsu just to take measure of Yabu’s capabilities.  You are given the choice between rosu (a slightly fatty loin cut) and hire (trimmed pork tenderloin).  I’d say go for the former: the fat gives a savory edge to the sweet, tender meat which is covered by a thin, crispy, golden panko crust.  Having been drained properly after frying, the cutlet isn’t greasy at all and the crunchy outside gives way to the delectable softness within.  Definitely the gold standard for tonkatsu in my book…

The menchi katsu set

If you’re more of a burger-and-fries sort, my sister’s menchi katsu set is definitely for you.  Menchi katsu is a thickish patty of ground pork and beef, rolled in breadcrumbs, and deep-fried.  In most versions of the dish, mashed potatoes are added as an extender; in this case, however, the mixed mince is wrapped around a core of cheese that melts and oozes unctuously.  The patty itself is nicely seasoned and the texture tender without being mushy.

Curry Cutlet for one

My brother went for the chicken katsu curry which features a tender chicken cutlet drenched in a mildly hot Japanese curry.  As with all the rest of our orders, the curry came with miso soup, Japanese pickles (takuan [sweet pickled radish] and cucumber), refillable bowls of rice (the wait-staff will come ’round to your table with a clay pot of it), the previously mentioned unlimited shredded cabbage, and bowls of fruit for dessert.  (Incidentally, both the pineapple and watermelon slices we got with our meals were beautifully sweet and perfectly ripe.)

Normally, I don’t believe much of the hype that revolves around most new restaurants, but Yabu definitely deserves all the praise it has received and I sincerely hope the quality remains great and consistent.

 

 

 

In Which One Finds a Missing Link Between Roast Pork and Bacon…

Some of the best fire-roasted pork belly I’ve had in ages…

Bagnet, the northern spin on the dish known here in the lowlands as lechong kawali (a whole slab of pork belly poached with salt, bay leaf, and black peppercorns before being deep-fried till exquisitely crunchy), is seen as “evil incarnate” by the veggie community but is seen in an almost angelic, even sacred light by all the rest of us.  What’s not to like about it: while you obviously can’t have it every day because of both caloric and cholesterol-related concerns, I’ve yet to see anyone who hasn’t enjoyed the tender, flavorful meat and the gorgeously crunchy, slightly salty crackling that tops it all.

I am of the opinion that bagnet ranks smack in the middle between sticky roasted pork belly made magnificent with honey and hoisin sauce and the fatty, smoky, saline glory that is belly bacon.  I was pretty much thinking that I was probably wrong about that until I encountered the bagnet from a new stall over at the Galleon Food Avenue: Firebrick.

Firebrick is a wee stall that specializes in the good stuff: proper, porky bagnet with the perfect ratio of meat, fat, and crackling.  But the kicker here is that it isn’t deep fried.  As the name suggests, it’s actually roasted till the rind crisps up, the fat melts, and the meat steams to a wonted tenderness.  As a result, the flavor is more smoky than salty with the sort of resonance you get from artisanal bacon as opposed to the over-salted rashers you sometimes get from your neighborhood supermarket.  This is 21st Century bagnet: it has all the crisp-tenderness of the Ilocano original, but the flavors and aroma are swankier, more bespoke, grown-up.

It’s also quite reasonably priced: P 80.00 gets you a bag of chopped-up pork you can share with a friend, while P 85.00 gets you the lunchbox shown above with a generous portion of bagnet, rice, classic sweet liver sauce, and tangy achara (pickled green papaya, carrots, and ginger) to offset the richness of the pork.

In Which Soft-boiled Eggs are Part of a Lovely Breakfast…

The incredible, edible egg

Soft-boiled eggs served with soy sauce and ground black pepper have been staple fare in the kopi tiams (coffee stalls) and hawker centers of Malaysia and Singapore for a very long time.  There is just something delectable about them: they are moreish with the right hit of umami – just the thing you need to go with hot buttered toast, maybe a schmear of kaya, and a large mug of kopi c (milky coffee) or teh tarik (pulled milk tea) for a good Peninsular breakfast.

Considering the fact that the culinary traditions of the Philippines echo those of its Indo-Malayan neighbors, most Filipinos have never eaten soft-boiled eggs.  In this part of the world, eggs are usually fried sunny-side up, over easy, or scrambled.  If eggs are ever boiled, they’re boiled till hard and mixed with mayonnaise and pickle relish for a sandwich filling - if they aren’t sliced up for a garnish or left whole and stuffed into meat loaves or roasting fowl.

That said, my take on this kopi tiam staple has an egg that isn’t quite soft boiled.  The appropriate culinary term for the egg shown above is Mollet egg.  This French technique involves starting the eggs in boiling water (never cold, though some brave cooks actually do so) and cooking them for around 6 – 8 minutes.  The end result is an egg with a firm-ish white and a semi-solid yolk that is utterly unctuous and satiny on the tongue.  It is similar to poaching, though you don’t have to crack the eggs into the water; indeed, Mollet eggs can be used in the place of poached eggs for such dishes as eggs Benedict or eggs Florentine.

Mollet Eggs – Singapore-style

Best way to eat them, in my personal opinion, is to drizzle on about half a tablespoon of soy sauce and a generous sprinkle of ground black pepper.  It is, to be quite honest at this point, like a cross between a kopi tiam egg and Japan’s hot-spring poached in the shell onsen tamago which is served in a similar fashion: cracked and stirred into some soy sauce and a bit of dashi stock.  Hot buttered toast and coffee are a definite must.

So, going back to the

In Which a Flurry of Green Tea Treats Lands on the Blogger’s Desk…

Green tea is a gorgeous flavor

Some colleagues recently flew over to Japan, ostensibly to enjoy the fleeting, ephemeral beauty of sakura [cherry blossom] viewing season.  (Lucky ducks!)  As a result, I found myself accepting bits and bobs of omiyage (homecoming presents/souvenirs) from their trip to the Land of the Rising Sun – and all of them featured matcha (powdered green tea) as the main flavoring.

By now, you’re all aware that matcha is the finely pulverized green tea used for making green tea lattes and green milk tea drinks; it’s also used to flavor a number of sweet treats from mochi and daifuku (stuffed mochi) to castella (Portuguese-style sponge cake) to French macarons.  Its rather bittersweet and nutty, almost almond-like flavor has made it popular even among those who would rather have something much sweeter as its flavor profile is close enough to that of either coffee or dark chocolate.

The Japanese have gone the extra mile and have added it to everything from traditional sweets to KitKat bars – and, in KitKats, they shine: the bitter-almond flavor keeps the white chocolate coating from tasting too sweet and balances the vanilla tones in the crunchy wafer.

Oreo cakesters, soft-batch cookies, AND a blossomy version of green-tea KitKats…

It’s one of my favorite flavors, so you can just imagine how happy I was to see the following items on my desk:

• Oreo Soft Cookie (sold as Oreo Cakesters in the West) in Matcha Milk - This was very much like a miniature dark chocolate whoopie pie filled with a nutty, creamy matcha latte creme that threw the dusky flavor of the chocolate into high profile.  It’s wonderful for people like myself who love good, strong, flavors that are more bitter than sweet.  However, this Oreo variant isn’t for everyone, I think: a junior colleague took one bite, turned greener than the matcha filling, and tossed it into the trash without bothering to offer the leftover cake to any of the rest of us; we stared at this act of wanton wastefulness and ingratitude in sheer horror, the wasteful little gastronomical Philistine!
• American Soft matcha chocolate-chunk cookie with macadamia nuts - While the cookie itself was a wonted green from the matcha in the dough, the flavor of the tea was overpowered by the chocolate and vanilla.
• Limited Edition [Spring Only] Sakura Matcha KitKat - Now this was lovely: the matcha was balanced out by the cherry-vanilla notes of the sakura extract used to flavor the wafer, so the resulting bittersweetness also had an appealing bit of fruit and blossom to it.  Definitely something to savor slowly together with an iced matcha latte.

It was, to be perfectly honest, like having a little bit of Japan in the heart of the tropics.  :)