Of Anthuriums & Fiddle Head Ferns

Posted on 24 September 2012 by sheg4184

In the extreme heat that hit Manila last May, we drove south from the city to Los Baños, to meet a group of provinicial businessmen and women who benefit from a local micro-financing program, partially supported by a social welfare group with which I am involved. It is a community-based development project created to alleviate poverty in the countryside. First established in 2002, it was designed to provide small loans to self-employed individuals  with which they could develop their businesses. Some of the recipients include vegetable and flower farmers, pig farmers, owners of sari sari stores and jeepney services.

We were joined by a team from the head office in Los Baños, and we drove in convoy up a long and winding road to Nagcarlan, a tiny community high on the side of the mountain. When we got out of the car, my first impression was how much cooler life could be at this altitude. A group of locals was waiting for us in a dry, dusty yard scattered with washing lines and wire baskets of roosters. Seated on plastic chairs, and held by the unblinking gaze of a clutch of toddlers, we listened to several villagers explain how the micro-financing support had changed their lives. It was moving ceremony that ended with the presentation of a giant thank you card. Signed by a dozen local business people, it bore this touching message:

Thank you for working hand-in-hand in helping us overcome extraordinary odds and initiating change in our lives.

Through your kindness and sponsorship, there was a significant improvement in us and our family and able to bring self-reliance to step confidently into the future.

After the speeches, some needing translation as very few of us were fluent in Tagalog, villagers accompanied us further up the hill to where a ‘vegetable bi-cable tramline’ (it looked like a glorified flying fox) is used to transport produce down from the higher reaches of the mountain. The view from the cable-car platform was spectacular, and the lush vegetation at eye level grows wild, but look like a tropical garden, full of variegated leaves and bright tropical flowers.

In a small garden just off the road we stood like brides with bunches of pink anthuriums, and admired the family’s livestock: a couple of flamboyantly feathered roosters; a caged owl, and a couple of surprisingly glossy and well-fed felines.

As we walked back to our cars, we passed ponies laden with woven panniers, and highly polished Jeepneys. These villagers may not own much, but they really look after the little they have. On the side of the road, flower farmers had placed blue buckets tightly packed with huge bunches of anthuriums, to be collected by dealers taking them into the city markets. Pink and red and waxy, with their boastful, phallic stamens, these glossy flowers really are a trick of nature in their ability disguise themselves as plastic.

Back in the village, young men were sorting crates of small green tomatoes. We bought several kilos between us for an embarrassingly small handful of coins. Our driver came back up the road, beaming, thrilled with a bag of fruit for which he had paid an equally tiny amount compared with city prices: the joy of dealing directly with the producer.

On the way back to Los Baños, we stopped at a roadside restaurant, for lunch. Kamayan sa Palaisdaan is a restaurant on a lagoon. A dozen or more bahay kubos (bamboo huts with thatched roofs and furnished with bamboo dining tables) were perched on the edge of the lagoon, seeming to float on the still water, teeming with tilapia and catfish. The path wove around the edge of the lagoon, through gardens bejewelled in topiary and life-sized concrete sculptures painted in garishly bright colours.

Tucked into our bahay kubo, we admired the intricate thatching and rehydrated on gallons of water, fresh buko and green mango juice. Then the banquet arrived. Baskets lined with banana leaves were filled with tantalizingly crispy, deep fried pork belly, grilled prawns and grilled squid. There was a light, local speciality, ensaladung pako (salad made with fiddlehead fern) which I have eaten before in Laguna. I love the unusual texture of the young ferns. Bowls of sinigang (traditional Filipino soup) appeared, along with all the little dishes of sawsawan – vinegar and soy sauce, bagoong (fish paste) and kalamansi (tiny local limes). Baked eggplant and steamed kangkong (water spinach) fought with the delicate Ginataang Tilapia (fish cooked in coconut milk) for space at the already crowded table. And of course there was rice. The tradition is to eat it with your fingers, and feed any scraps to the fish. I don’t think those fish got much lunch from us! I was only sorry there wasn’t time for a brief siesta under the trees, before we drove back to Manila, quietly contemplating a day well spent.

*Adapted from article submitted to ADBSA Newsflash, August 2012 issue.

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Sugarleaf: guilt-free indulgence

Posted on 21 September 2012 by sheg4184

Chefs and restaurateurs across Metro Manila are become noticeably more tuned in to healthy eating and are marketing their menus with trendy catch phrases like ‘organic’ and ‘pro-biotic’ (‘a  dietary supplement containing live bacteria, taken orally to restore beneficial bacteria to the body’), that can make a meal feel more like a science experiment.

Some, like Makati newcomer  Sugarleaf,   however, are managing to create an interesting blend of taste, health and education, and this one has the added bonus of being just around the corner. Strategically located above the MEDICARD Lifestyle Center, at the crossroads of Paseo de Roxas and Senator Gil Puyat Avenue (Buendia),  Sugarleaf also has an older sibling living at Greenhills, on the ground floor of the Health Cube building.

The Sugarleaf menu claims to address your nutritional and energy requirements as well as those grumbling tummies: the menu is full of light, healthy dishes, fresh and beautifully presented, if sometimes inclined to overdose on lettuce and skimp on flavour. It is certainly something different from the usual spread of high cholesterol local food with its heavy emphasis on the carnivorous.

As an entrée, I would recommend at least one solo visit to Sugarleaf, to give yourself  the opportunity to read the menu from cover to cover without interruption, as it not only provides food for the body, but food for the mind as well. There are paragraphs of information on super foods (nutrient rich food and medicine), organic foods, pro-biotics and low-glycemic dishes made without processing or refining, flavourings or preservatives, to control blood sugar levels. It’s like ‘A Dummy’s Guide to Nutrition’ that doesn’t sound that dumb.

Alternatively, you could read an introduction to it at home on their website and just drop in with friends to enjoy the food: http://www.sugarleafph.com

I dropped in last month, for a working lunch, and then again, just this week, with a friend.

The menu sounds mouthwatering. Organic-all-you-can-eat salads, vegetables, dips, dressings, sauces, and delicious health drinks full of anti-oxidants and fibre, free from pesticides, genetic modification and chemicals. There are also daily soups, quiches and assorted wraps and sandwiches.

While the blurb espouses lashings of fruit and vegetables, meat eaters are not neglected. There is a wide range of sandwich fillings: chicken with basil, green apple and sour cream; Spanish sardine; chorizo and alfalfa; crabstick and mango; smoked marlin and dill; free range egg mayo, and Turkey Waldorf all served with sugar-free banana crisps (always good to know in the Philippines where sugar is often liberally added to everything). There is also some tasty homemade fettucini with your choice of sauce.

It is wonderful to indulge in fresh, high quality salads, and the juices are delicious combinations of fruit and vegetables, boasting names like ‘Relax,’ ‘Detox’ and ‘Hangover Buster’. Unfortunately the practicalities behind this commendable product still  need ironing out a little. The staff definitely failed to cope comfortably with a party of nine, and we were served in a very erratic fashion. One woman received two courses and a drink almost at once, while the rest of us waited more than half an hour longer for our wraps, sandwiches and smoothies. It would have been nice if we could have eaten together!

However, when I returned with just one friend, the staff coped better. In true Filipino style, the dishes are likely to be served haphazardly. Everything either comes at once, or as today, our salad turned up in place of dessert – but I blame myself for forgetting to spell out how and when we want dishes brought out. Our juices were truly scrumptious, and the fillings for the sandwiches and wraps were tasty, although my crunchy baguette appeared to have morphed into a warm, slightly soggy (as in ‘defrosted’) focaccia.

I do not have a very sweet tooth, and rarely eat desserts, but Sugarleaf almost tempted me, and I loved the catch phrase on the dessert menu: ‘Desserts – guilt free indulgence!’ These included such healthy delights as cranberry and pistachio biscotti, cashew sans rival, macadamia pie, organic carrot cake, and kefir cheesecake.

And I can highly recommend the coffee. Admittedly, I was dubious about the tiny jug of hot soy milk, but it was in fact a perfect match: nutty and ever-so-slightly creamy, flavours that mingled smoothly with my cup of Arabica coffee.

On the first visit, our nine diners at Sugarleaf had a mixed, somewhat muted reaction, largely due to the slapdash service. The second time around, and with only two of us at the table, I felt much more enthusiastic about this newcomer to the Makati restaurant scene.

It’s definitely worth a try, as something different from the battalion of junk food franchises in Metro Manila. You certainly won’t go hungry, and you have the added joy of feeling virtuous about eating a truly nourishing lunch.

*Adapted from article for ADBSA Newsflash, August 2011 with photos borrowed from Sugarleaf website.

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Relocation Relocation

Posted on 17 September 2012 by sheg4184

The Road Not Taken

by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

I love this poem. I am no poet, but it describes my ever-diverging life perfectly, and so much more beautifully than I could put it.

I left South Australia in 1990 armed with a boyfriend, a backpack and a boarding pass, and since that day it feels like my feet have barely touched the ground. Now, over twenty two years later, we have added  a marriage certificate, three kids, seven countries (some of them twice)and a forty foot container to the mix – not to mention the twenty-something addresses scratched out in my mother’s phone book!

At each point of departure we are sent on our way by friends sadly exclaiming how difficult it must be to pack up all our belongings, uproot our family and move on again.  Arriving at a new destination we are greeted with more exclamations of despair at the difficulties we will encounter settling in: how we are bound to have problems with housing, staff, traffic, the food, the water, the traffic, the locals, the weather, the traffic….

After twenty one years of purging and packing up, unpacking and purging again, I feel it is finally time to stand up and be counted:  I want to own up to being one of those inexplicably odd souls who actually enjoys her nomadic lifestyle.

First and foremost I love travelling – but not in the sense of being a tourist. In this era of cheap travel, ‘tourist’ has become a dirty word, with its insinuations of second- rate hotels, mind-numbing coach trips and stale set menus. To be a tourist is like licking the icing off the top, but not getting the cake, a sweet but insubstantial mouthful of fairy floss that leaves you still hungry and slightly nauseous.

I prefer to pause for breath, be it for two weeks, two months or two years, and at least  pretend to be local. I want to get to know the back lanes and the nearest bakery, using my ‘otherness’ to ask all sorts of impertinent, obvious questions about the locals and their town.  I like the feeling of setting up a new home, however temporarily, and claiming some sense of ownership for our latest location. Armed with a map book and a list of housing options, I love the challenge involved in finding my way round a new city and into a new life, of wandering off the beaten track and finding my way home again.

I like the chance to give life a good stir now and again. Gathering moss is not my strongest suit. I get sluggish, unmotivated and unimaginative.  I find each new posting gives me a fresh and liberating perspective on life. We have tried settling once or twice over the years, but the siren call of new destinations continues to lure us ever onwards.

I have loved sharing the world with our children, and together we have collected birth certificates, passports and class photos from all over the globe. While those first weeks in a new school can be difficult at any age, I have observed that most kids prove amazingly adaptable, and generally immerse themselves in their new environment more quickly and easily than their parents, given the routine and structure of school life. And the life skills they learn are invaluable: making new friends quickly; saying goodbye to old ones; experiencing new cultures; meeting new challenges and availing themselves of new opportunities. Moving teaches them the benefits of bungee jumping into life, of learning to meet changes and challenges head on, with anticipation rather than dread.

Fifteen years ago I wrote an article in Kuala Lumpur about trans-cultural kids, based on an interview with a relocation expert. She took me through the process of moving a family overseas, the practicalities, the problems and the benefits. And she assured me then that professional studies generally paint a positive picture; that living abroad has more than enough benefits to balance the scale. Our Third Culture Kids will be independent and adaptable, possibly bi-lingual and generally more racially sensitive than stay-at-home kids. They also have an added awareness of their place on the global stage: the world citizen prototype for the 21st century.

As parents, we can give them the wings to fly, although I have noticed over the years that so much depends on our attitude as parents. If our kids hear us bemoaning our fate, complaining about problems and anticipating difficulties, they too will whine and worry. It is up to us to take the lead and teach by example. Even for those of us who may prefer not to live as expats, it’s what we do, and we not only need to accept it, but to grab the nettle and get on with it to the best of our ability. If our kids see us putting on a brave face and attempting to face the challenges, they will learn from us to do the same.

Of course there will be a sense of loss, even grief when they must move on again, but that is life, however we choose to live it. Life has a tendency to change when we least expect it, whether we sit in one spot for fifty years or we move annually, and the sooner our children learn to deal with this inevitable part of life, the easier it will be for them as they grow. We have an amazing opportunity to educate our children, to fill them with enthusiasm, optimism and positivity that will prove invaluable when they turn to face their own adult challenges.  They may need time to  grieve for the loss of friends and familiar places, but we should try not to let them wallow and forever look backwards.

Our kids have one huge advantage over the ‘army brat’ kids of old. Today our children are blessed with so many ways of keeping in touch with old friends, ways that were unimaginable to us even twenty years ago. No ‘snail mail’ for them, but Facebook and Skype for an instant fix of their families and friends who are scattered all over the planet. And air travel has become so much easier and cheaper. It has, quite literally, made the world their oyster. For those of us given cosy, secure childhoods in one house, one town, one school, such rootlessness can be hard to fathom. Yet our kids will be truly global kids and understand that it is possible to make a home anywhere. They have tasted so many new environments that their horizons are broad beyond our imaginations – that is their reality.

A lesson we learned long ago was how to throw ourselves into the deep end. As expats, we must. None of us have our extended family living round the corner, so we must quickly create our own families from the strangers we have moved in with. We all get so close, so quickly – particularly in hardship postings – that we often fear moving away from the tight knit group we have created. And yet, somehow, there are always more friends to be made. We all discover that some friends are simply for that moment, some will last through a move or two, and a handful will be for life, those with whom we can pick up the loose threads anywhere, anytime, but every one of them has added a depth and colour to our lives.

Over the years I have found myself doing things I never imagined: travel experiences; unexpected job opportunities; new hobbies. In the expat world, there is always something to bring newcomers into the fold. For me, schools were once the obvious entry point, but as the kids became teenagers, having their mother hanging around in their space became too uncool to be tolerated. This time I have had to find my own path, and it has been an interesting change.

It isn’t always easy. Expat years can be tough on marriages and family, but it can also strengthen them. We have had to learn to rely on each other when extended family is not in the immediate vicinity to share the joys and the worries. As I remind the kids from time to time, their siblings are the only people in their lives who can share the memories of every move we have made and every new life we have created, so they should hold on tight. It has been a roller coaster ride of ups and downs, but it has been an unforgettable  adventure.

* Adapted from an article published this month in ‘Inklings’.

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Yering Station Comes to Makati

Posted on 13 September 2012 by sheg4184

Duck confit pavé

Last week Sala Fine Dining on Makati Avenue joined forces with The Wine Depot to host a dinner welcoming Australian Winemaker, Willy Lunn, to Manila.

Sala has been around for about fifteen years, first in Malate, now on Makati Avenue, and in that time has gained a reputation for its excellent modern European menu, with a large fan club of gourmands.  It is the baby of Scottish chef Colin McKay, who is also the owner of two of my current favourite Greenbelt restaurants:  Sala Bistro  and People’s Palace, which is indubitably the best Thai in town. While some people have suggested that The Mango Tree at the new end of Fort Bonifacio High Street is  giving it some serious competition, I’m yet to be convinced.

Winemaker Willy Lunn is South Australian, son of a large farming family from the small town Tumby Bay on the Spencer Gulf. He moved to Victoria’s Yarra Valley in 2008 to become Chief Winemaker for the family-owned winery Yering Station, just an hour’s drive north east of Melbourne

Vegetarian option

Yering Station was originally a cattle farm, owned by two Scottish brothers, who planted the first vines there in 1838.  Ten years later it had become Victoria’s first commercial vineyard. Sadly, it was hit hard by the devastating phylloxera epidemic that wiped out thousands of vines across the south eastern corner of Australia in the early twentieth century. It was not until the 1970s that wine making was re-introduced to the region, where it has thrived ever since.

Yering Station has been owned by the Rathbone family since 1996, who has been systematically adding to its stable of wineries for more than fifteen years: Mount Langi Ghiran in the Grampians; Parker Estate, in the Coonawarra, and, most recently, Xanadu Estate in the Margaret River region of Western Australia. Tonight’s wines, however, all came from the Yarra Valley.

As we gathered on the terrace, we were greeted with a glass of perfectly chilled Little Yering Chardonnay, 2010. Forever a loyal chardy girl, I must confess to a nostalgic yearning for the buttery, heavily oaked chardonnay of yore, but tonight I was perfectly content with this fresh, fruity, unoaked chardonnay, a lightly acidic wine with no residual sugar to balance the hot heavy air that promised an imminent thunderstorm. Several warning drops persuaded us it would be wiser to go inside, where we settled ourselves behind a battalion of wine glasses.

Goat’s cheese & squash flower

Topped up with the Chardonnay to accompany our entrées, we gazed adoringly on a beautiful arrangement of Davao goat’s cheese and crisp squash flowers splashed with candied orange & date molasses. It was a mouth-watering combination of textures and tastes: the soft cheese versus the crunch of the lightly fried squash flower, the sharply sweet tang of the orange and date molasses. Our only sadness was how quickly it vanished.

Willy Lunn is a confident, amusing speaker, who waxes charmingly lyrical about his wines. He kept claiming he didn’t want to bore us and yet I didn’t hear a solitary soul suggest he had. Everyone agreed he had been highly entertaining and we were all sorry he didn’t take the stage for longer.

As I all but licked the plate clean of molasses, waiters poured the first Pinot Noir before handing out the Membrillo glazed duck breast with roast vegetables and duck confit pavé.  Membrillo is a quince paste, and pavé, I discovered, is a French cooking term referring to a square or rectangular-shaped serving of food, and meaning, literally, cobblestone.

The accompanying Pinot was surprisingly light, perhaps a little too light for the rich duck, but a second glass was filled with a Village Pinot Noir 2010 that, for me, worked much better. Both are 2010 Pinots, mid valley/ valley floor both 100% pinot, but while the first tasted young and sharply fruity, the second was softer, generously flavoured with black cherry, succulent and savoury, with greater depth and flavour.  Winemaker Lunn described pinot noir as sensitive: it needs gentle hands and east facing slopes to get the early morning sun, but protected from strong sun. He says it can be a ‘rewarding variety’.

Roast Lamb

The grand finale is a Little Yering Cabernet Shiraz 2010 from the valley floor, a good match for Chef’s full-flavoured anchovy and rosemary roast lamb rump, with roast carrots and a ballsy purée of beetroot, horseradish and mustard. Willy described it as old Aussie claret: an uncomplicated, medium-bodied  ‘spaghetti red’. He used lovely descriptors: ’tomato bush herbaciousness’ with traces of anise. It’s not as meaty as a Barossa Shiraz, he explains, but softer drinking, with a lighter mineral component and structured tannin.

Later, he talked to us about growing up on a farm primarily focused on wheat and cattle, and expressed his delight to be part of an industry where he gets to follow the product all the way to the table.

At our table, the glasses are almost empty, stained with red wine and lipstick, but Chef Colin has not quite finished mixing his own brand of magic in the kitchen. The Tarte tatin with stem ginger ice cream was melt-in-the-mouth delicious, especially for anyone, like me, with a particular fondness for the combination of ginger and apple. Light and flaky pastry crumbled delicately against the teeth, melting into the heavy, rich, caramel-sweet cooked apple.

With a final flourish, the waiters shared out a tray of delectable Earl Grey macaroons with coffee, and we were replete with fabulous food, wonderful wines and cultured conversation!

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A Living Goddess

Posted on 9 September 2012 by sheg4184

During a Nepalese cooking demonstration earlier this year,  we were welcomed with a fascinating video about an aspect of Nepalese culture of which many had never heard. I thought it was worth sharing here.

Nepal is full of deities. One is Kumari, the living Goddess, and incarnation of the Goddess Taleju, who has been worshipped by both Hindi and Buddhists since the seventeenth century.

Eligible girls are chosen from the Shakaya clan of the Newari community, in a process similar to that used in Tibet to choose the Dalai Lama. The word Kumari derived from Sanskrit Kaumarya meaning virgin. Virgin worship has been popular for over two thousand years on the Indian subcontinent, bound up in many different legends and traditions.

In Nepal, Kumari candidates are aged between two and four years old. They must be healthy and without blemish. Girls who fulfill the eligibility requirements are examined for  the thirty-two perfections of a goddess, known as the battis lakshanas. These include having a neck like a conch shell, a body like a banyan tree, eyelashes like a cow… and a voice as soft and clear as a duck’s.

A Kumari candidate must also be serene and fearless. Apparently one of the final tests involves spending a night alone with the heads of the sacrificial goats and buffalos without showing fear. When the perfect little girl is finally chosen she is ritually cleansed and purified, so that Taleju may enter her and she can be reborn as the Living Goddess. She will remain a Kumari until her first menstruation.

Her natural father becomes the guardian of Kumari and he takes charge of all rituals. The first ritual is to prepare her for being presented to the people. After the cleansing, the new goddess is dressed in red, and draped in jewelry believed to have Divine Powers. The agni chakchuu or “fire eye” is painted on her forehead, a symbol of her special powers of perception.  From now on she must behave at all times as befits a goddess.

Leaving the Taleju temple, the young Kumari crosses the square on a white cloth to Kumari Ghar,  her home for the duration of her divinity. This is the last time her feet touch the ground, and she only leaves the palace now for ceremonial occasions, carried by her mother or transported in her golden palanquin. Kumari confers her blessings with marigold petals, as worshippers kneel to touch her feet.  Even a glimpse of her is believed to bring good fortune.

These days there is some controversy about the Kumari. Some claim that the lives these girls are forced to live is a form of child abuse, and there have been accusations that many Kumari are emotionally damaged when they finally emerge from the temple.We saw an older woman, once Kumari, who still believes herself to be holy and spends her days in the same way she did while she was the Living Goddess.

Officially possessed by the Goddess, Kumari is not allowed to talk to anyone, and, confined to the Temple, she seldom appears in public. This isolates her, not only from the outside world but from her family. In the past Kumari received no education as she was widely considered to be omniscient. Today she is tutored, but even then she must be treated as a deity. Everyone who comes into contact with her, even her parents, must be deferential and her every request must be granted.

When she finally returns to her family in adolescence, it can be hard for her to adapt to normal life: to walk again, and even to talk to her family. After years of being idolized, she is often neglected and ostracized. Popular superstition even suggests that a man who marries a Kumari is doomed to die within six months.

Yet despite the critics, Kumari is still respected and venerated as the Living Goddess by those Nepalese striving to maintain the old beliefs. During the Indra Jatra festival, held in Kathamandu each September, Kumari is robed and decorated and carried in her palanquin through the city streets, where thousands come to catch a glimpse of the Living Goddess and seek her blessings.

 

*as published in ADBSA Newsflash, September 2011, and with thanks to Google images for the pictures.

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Una Notte in Italia

Posted on 4 September 2012 by sheg4184

School went back in August, which means we are back to horrendously early starts, long afternoons of soccer practices and weekends chock-a-block with rugby. If there is a spare moment, the boys are out in the back room madly killing things on the PS3.

So what can I do with my teenage sons that doesn’t involve shooting anything? No, don’t laugh, it’s really not funny. It’s actually a tough question in Manila. I tried paint-balling with them last weekend, but it totally freaked me out. My mask misted up in seconds and I had no idea where all those lethally-armed teenagers were hiding. I also discovered why I should work on my lunges, when my thigh muscles almost collapsed from fifteen minutes of squatting behind trees. It was all absolutely ghastly.

One thought was to search out some good cooking classes, but that has proved difficult too. I can’t find anyone who wants to teach me Filipino cooking, and I have no inclination to bake. Any other options have proved limited and expensive.

So imagine my delight to find that Dante Alighieri Manila was joining forces with Il Piccino’s and offering a regional Italian cooking class. By pure fluke I discovered an email address on Tuesday and by Saturday we were wending our way with four friends, through Greenhills and San Juan, on a treasure hunt for a well-hidden restaurant.

The whole week had proved to be quite an obstacle course of dodging sports matches, climbing mountains to persuade reluctant teenagers to spend time with their mothers, and clambering through traffic in Makati to provide the funds for the ingredients, at the very last minute. And then we lost the restaurant! Don’t worry, we finally it tracked down only fifteen minutes late: not a glass fronted restaurant on the main road, but an old Spanish hacienda, hidden behind a high wall and huge iron gates, disguised even from its neighbours. In fact, Il Piccino’s is a beautiful private home converted into a restaurant and cooking school, where our chef was going to cook a four course Italian dinner with us. I bet you have never spent ‘an evening in Italy’ in a Spanish hacienda in deepest, darkest Manila!

Our hostess and chef is Nathalia Moran, a Filipina Italophile, was waiting in the kitchen of her ancestral home, with a team of sous-chefs and food historian Valerio Zecchini.

While Chef Nathalia organized her troops in the kitchen, Signor Zecchini gathered sixteen pasta enthusiasts around him for a crash course in the history of Italian cuisine. He described how wealthy Italians in the Middle Ages would provide extravagant, elaborate feasts cooked with rare, imported ingredients, for the sole purpose of showing off to their neighbours.

This changed during the Renaissance, when dishes became simpler, and people began to understand the relationship between health and diet. Table manners and cutlery were introduced, and Caterina de Medici took her Tuscan cooks to the French Court when she went to marry the King of France, and introduced this sophisticated city to spaghetti.

It seems that Italian food travels faster out of Italy than through it. Italians remain highly conservative and parochial in their eating habits (we struggled to find anything other than Italian restaurants in Firenze) and while pizza, Spaghetti Bolognese and gelato are now international staples, there were pizzerias in New York before they reached Milano!

And yet, there is a current oxymoron running through Italian cooking: orthodox tradition on the one hand and wild creativity on the other. Ingredients like polenta and chestnuts, staples of the poor for centuries, have been refined and glamorized for chic modern restaurants.

On that note, we donned our aprons and moved from cool historical theory to the heat of the kitchen. Chef Nathalia showed us how to make polenta, and from that, a bruschetta base of toasted polenta topped with fresh, sautéed mushrooms. Any mushrooms would do, she said, as long as they were fresh, as she introduced us to a bowl of shiitake, oyster and chicken mushrooms.

Polenta in the pot while it is cooking looks like creamy Clag glue – that sticky, messy white paste we used in kindergarten with the aid of a sticky, messy toothbrush-like thingy. Yet once it was cooked, cut and toasted, our antipasto appeared at the table looking firm and crispy and tasting fabulous with those mushrooms.

Then it was time to approach the secondo, or main course: slow-cooked Peposo, or braised beef with peppercorns and Chianti. Pepper, Zecchini informed us, was a spice commonly used by the poor to disguise cheap cuts of meat. Chef Nathalia suggested using loin, shank or short ribs. It was tasty, but quite fatty, and I am going home to try making the same dish with lean, top-of-the-shelf steak and compare them.

Tonight’s dolce (dessert) would be profiteroles, which do not sound Italian, but Zecchini suggested that the recipe probably arrived in France with Caterina de Medici’s chefs from northern Italy. Chef Nathalia had a huge plate of some she had prepared earlier, but took us through the process in case we felt like braving it at home. Apparently choux pastry has the sensitivity of a soufflé, so I am a little nervous about taking it on by myself, but the pastry cream and chocolate sauce seemed straightforward enough, there’s just an awful lot of stirring.

The biggest task of the afternoon was to prepare the primo or pasta course. Today this would be Tortelloni in Brodo. No, I haven’t misspelled it: tortelloni is simply tortellini’s bigger brother! Homemade pasta, unless you have had a lot of practice, is a lengthy, labour-intensive process, but fun with a friend. We messily mixed flour and egg together and took it in turns to pound and knead until we had created a small, glossy ball of dough. This was wrapped in cling film and ignored for a while, before taking it out and feeding it through the pasta machine. Last time I made fresh pasta, we used only a rolling pin, which is excellent for preventing tuck shop arms, but otherwise incredibly wearisome. This time it was a much more efficient process, although a few more machines might have been handy to speed it up a bit more, as ten couples queued for two machines!

Filling and twisting the tortelloni is quite an art form – one we will need to practice – but our offerings didn’t look too bad in the end, and most of them made it to the table in one piece, which we felt was quite an achievement!

Dinner was served on the balcony, amongst the pot plants and tropical flowers, and we were too delighted with the results, and far too hungry to spare a thought for the camera, so you will just have to imagine how good it all looked.

Buon Appetito!

*PS with thanks to Rebecca for her lovely photo of Chef Nathalia

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Basking in Fresh Air at Lago de Oro

Posted on 31 August 2012 by sheg4184

Satiate your thirst for a thrilling getaway… we bring you nonstop excitement from morning to night… every corner of Lago de Oro Beach Club spells fun and adventure. You’ll never run out of breathtaking moments to savor.

It was quite a promise, this advertisement for Lago de Oro! Sadly,  I have become a little skeptical after two years in the Philippines. Managing expectations is a concept that seems to escape the Filipinos. Too often, the advertising is crammed with unfulfilled promises of five star luxury that in reality becomes five star prices for two star mediocrity. Has anyone seen ‘The Best Marigold Hotel’? Exactly! I have found a number of ‘Best Marigolds’ in the Philippines.

So I was feeling nervous about booking a few days in Luzon. My daughter was flying up to the Philippines for the Easter and I wanted to take  the kids out of Manila, but preferably not via the airport. I wanted a peaceful haven for me, but I also needed entertainment for teenagers. And I needed to be able to do it on an understated budget that didn’t mean camping in a dump for the weekend.

Someone suggested Lago de Oro and to my surprise my fourteen year old son ratified the decision. He had been there once a school trip to go wake boarding. ‘Yes please! It’s great fun there!’ So I booked it. On-line. For March. And then we turned up. In April. Next time I’ll call, or put on my glasses. Luckily they had a room for us even at the very last minute (I am standing at reception wailing ‘No! We’ve driven all this way! I’m sure I booked for Easter!”)

Lago de Oro is actually only a two hour drive from Manila, if you don’t unexpectedly take the scenic route via several small, grid-locked coastal towns by mistake, when it’s more like four hours, with a few ounces of stress thrown in for good measure.

The advertising blurb is perhaps a little poetic, but we love this secluded little hideaway. Once a prawn fishing farm, this simple but very comfortable family resort is hidden away in rural Batangas. It’s a lovely drive round the ridge road above Lake Taal and down through lush green farmland to the edge of the much contested South China Sea.

Here is the first cable wake-boarding lake in Luzon, with a smaller pool for beginners to practice in. Teenagers can enjoy the challenge of trying to reach the end of the lake and turning the corner without coming off the board and nose-diving into a school of nervous fish. Smaller kids will love the pool and the paddocks full of goats and sheep, caribou and frogs. My favourite thing is the walking track around the lake, and o! the joy of strolling through unpolluted air, free from the threat of manic jeepney drivers, Polly Pocket dogs and ankle-turning footpaths.

The rooms are simple, clean and spacious: there is comfortably space for a family of four with a view either of the sea or the lake. There was also the perfect spot on the edge of the volleyball lawn to drag my deck chair, and enjoy a mug of tea as the sun rose, while the children from the barangay next door play in the water amongst the bancas.

There is a family pool with spa and sauna, and a perfectly nice restaurant with a large shaded patio where Hannah and I set up the Scrabble board for hours on end, while the boys flexed their muscles (and drowned their injured dignity) on the lake.For beginners, it can sometimes be a long wait between turns, but once you graduate to the big lake, things move faster.

The restaurant is a bit pricey – there is a strong sense of being a captive market – but the menu has a wide variety of local and international dishes that should keep everyone happy over a long weekend. Breakfast is an extended period of shovelling down huge pancakes, fresh fruit and vast mugs of coffee. There is a real wood pizza oven and excellent Pad Thai. There’s a lot of local fish on the menu, and you should share (note: share) the seafood platter at least once. The oysters are picked daily from their own lake. The lamb, too, is their own, and comes in a rack, a roast a curry, or barbecued Mongolian-style. If you are new to Manila and want to experiment with local cuisine, it’s also a good place to try out some popular Filipino dishes.  And the staff here are really sweet and friendly – they even remembered us when we went back, which is always heart-warming.

A foot beyond the perimeter fence is the sea. I will never cease to be amazed at the lagoon-like appearance of these tropical oceans. Five hundred metres of knee-deep sandbank means there is barely the glimmer of a wave. Children and fishermen wade out to the drop-off through crystal clear seas. Three or four rafts with thatched roofs floated just off-shore. These are balsas: like nipa huts on a bamboo raft, complete with bamboo picnic tables and seats. We asked if we were allowed to go out on one with our Gin and Tonics, and were sent off with a smile, G&Ts in hand. We should have taken the bottle! Our captain advanced to the steps pulling the raft behind him. Once we were seated, he set off towards the horizon, eventually up to his chest in water, to anchor us at the edge of the drop-off just in time for the sunset…

We have yet to test out all the facilities at Lago de Oro – we were too busy unwinding by the pool to avail ourselves of the options to water ski, snorkel, or fish. For the energetically inclined, however, there are all these options and more: a basketball hoop and volleyball net, boat rentals, a nearby golf course, billiards, darts and table tennis – the last three particularly useful if you find yourself in the midst of a tropical storm in July, and you forgot the Scrabble!

Recently we took on one such storm, and watched it battering at the coast all afternoon and on through the night. Despite the broad sandbank, waves pounded against the sea wall and leapt the fence. I watched the palm trees touch their toes and feared we would find ourselves in Vietnam for breakfast, but my husband rolled over and growled something about the resort withstanding several wet seasons already, he supposed it could endure one more. By merienda it was a great story to post on Facebook: ‘Surviving our First Typhoon.’ Well, they had promised us breath-taking moments and non-stop excitement from morning to night… and they delivered! Unfortunately, the storm also delivered a lot of debris onto the beach, so it didn’t look as attractive as it had earlier in the year.

Beyond the resort – if you have the energy – are some local tourist sights I have researched but am yet to visit, such as the Submarine Garden, a reef of living coral at Lobo, so don’t forget your snorkel and flippers. Mount Maculot is an anthill of tunnels built by the Japanese, their last bastion in the region, and literally off the beaten track, ten kilometres from San Juan, are the Mainit Hot Springs. The region also abounds in waterfalls: Lingga Falls have a thirty foot drop and a swimming pool beneath; Ilijan Falls resemble the flight of steps at the front of the Peninsula Hotel on Makati Avenue, carved into the mountainside by the water flowing from a spring at the top, and there are apparently some smaller Bulalacoa Falls near Lipa City.

But I will have to tell you about them next time, as I have an appointment with a Gin and Tonic on a banca half way to China…

* Apologies for the photos, which I have borrowed from the website, but I forgot to take my camera!

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Reviewing the Situation

Posted on 27 August 2012 by sheg4184

Back in Manila after a summer abroad, I was recently thumbing through a guide book on moving to the Philippines – new arrivals needed some information I didn’t have the answer to – and as I wandered through the pages I quickly got distracted from the original query (a common occurrence to anyone who knows me), and found myself, instead, assessing the content for things I already knew or had grown accustomed to, after two years in the Philippines, and those things that I realized with surprise I had never known.

For example, after years in Asia, off and on, I am well aware that drinking tap water is a risky business, if you don’t want to spend your life in the bathroom. I also know that ‘bathroom’, ‘toilet’ or ‘loo’ will often draw blank expressions in the Philippines, and I must remember to ask for the CR or Comfort Room. (By the way, a tip for when you find yourself in a CR with a broken lock: kick off your sandal so it pokes out from under the door. It’s a good way to avoid someone barging in on you!)

I know, now,  to laugh (wryly) when shop assistants suggest, despite my hard won weight loss, that they do have an XXXL in the back that should fit me, but it’s often better to avoid the aggravation by waiting until I am back in Australia to buy clothes, where I am merely a medium sized 12 instead of extra-enormous!

I am aware about the threat of Dengue, TB, typhoons, earthquakes and carpet burn from the Astroturf, but I still forget to keep an umbrella, a bottle of sanitizer and ‘Wet Ones’ in my bag.

I discovered when I first arrived that the roads around Ayala Triangle, the triangular park at the heart of Makati, were originally the three runways of the Manila airport, and my favourite little library there is in the basement of the original control tower. But I only recently found out that all the land that is now Makati CBD belonged to one family, as large swathes of London belong to the Duke of Westminster. And I am just realizing that Manila is a monopoly board, divided up between several wealthy-beyond-belief families that also lay claim to the city’s water works, the sewage system and the electricity company.

I have learned that Filipinos are flexible about time and the traffic is always a valid excuse, especially on pay days, rainy days, Fridays and rush hours! It can be frustrating if you are waiting outside in the heat, but it’s also something I am fairly familiar with after 25 years of Mediterranean in-laws. To add to the delays, I have only recently realized that my confusion over the location of several roads in Makati is due to the fact that sometimes they are renamed, but are often known by the old one as well! Thus, like a married American woman, you have streets with two names, the old and the new.

And it doesn’t take anyone long to notice that Filipinos are love to eat, work and to travel in packs, but I didn’t know that there is even a word for it: pakikisama. In practical terms this can mean a daily game of dodgems in the shopping mall, as my western habit of strutting briskly by myself is curbed by the Filipino habit of wandering at a snails pace, usually side-by-side-by-side!

I know the Filipinos love to smile and laugh aloud, and may even laugh at inappropriate moments to diffuse an awkward situation – but haven’t we all done that at some stage? I have grasped – slowly – the way Asians feel about losing face and the correct way to criticize without embarrassing anyone. The softly softly approach is actually far kinder than our own western directness. I have also noted the national respect for seniority of age, profession or social status – the use of titles, or at least a ‘Miss Alex’ or ‘po’, and I have had explained  to me the ‘mano po’ when a youth, with head lowered,  will take an adult’s hand and press it to his or her forehead.

I have checked out many of the tourist sites in Manila over the past two years, but I have only just discovered the American Cemetery that sits on 152 acres of a high plateau above Fort Bonifacio, with one of the most beautiful views Manila has to offer. In the process, I also just learned that It contains the largest number of Allied military graves of World War II, a total of 17,201, most of which commemorate soldiers who lost their lives in battles in New Guinea and the Philippines. The Tablets of the Missing, arranged in marble cloisters, contain a further 36,285 names. Sadly, these beautifully kept grounds are reserved for the dead and a handful of daily visitors. It is forbidden to ride bikes, play ball, walk dogs or jog, which seems a shame to me. I can’t help feeling that all those lost souls might appreciate the company.

I am also belatedly the importance of not just extra cash, but food to staff – as a daily food allowance, in a Christmas hamper, as a birthday gift, a returning-from-holidays present.. really, as a means of saying thank you, well done or congratulations for almost anything!

I have learned how to define a Travelling Spouse, a Trailing Spouse and a Third Culture Kid. And I have just ascertained that there are still a few markets left to explore…

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A Splash of Heaven

Posted on 23 August 2012 by sheg4184

When we left Florence this summer, I had secreted a bottle of twelve year old balsamic vinegar I had bought in the Mercato Centrale. Wrapped tightly in a pair of jeans and tucked into the bottom of my suitcase, it made it safely back to Manila – although I will not confess here what I paid for it, for fear my husband will read this and blanch, but I was advised it would be worth every euro!

Apparently a form of balsamic vinegar was documented in 1000AD, but the first official balsamic vinegar originated in the Middle Ages in Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy, as a health tonic or digestivo at the end of a heavy meal. Today its production is strictly regulated by EU law. These days you probably all have a bottle of balsamic vinegar in your pantry, but although it has been popular in Italy for centuries, it was little known to the rest of the world until the 1970s. Like wine, it can range from the sublime to the ridiculously ghastly.

Here are a few more facts about balsamic vinegar you might not know. There are two main types of balsamic vinegar:

1. Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena

The authentic balsamic vinegar must be aged in wooden barrels for at least twelve years, the key to its flavour being the annual decanting into ever-decreasing barrels. The barrels are made from woods such as chestnut, acacia, cherry, oak, mulberry and ash, each adding a distinctive flavour to the resulting vinegar. The final syrup is highly concentrated, sweet, rich and viscous, and deep reddy-brown in colour If it is aged for over twenty five years, it is known as extravecchio or stravecchio.

2. Aceto Balsamico di Modena

This is an inexpensive commercial imitation of the traditional product.  It is widely available and much better known, used in salad dressings, marinades and sauces. Such commercial products ape the traditional product by blending wine vinegar with caramel and thickeners. No aging process is involved, and hundreds of thousands of litres can be produced every day.

Balsamic vinegar is made from either the pressings of white Trebbiano and Sauvignon grapes or Lambrusco grapes. The ‘must’ is boiled down to syrupy reduction, then fermented and aged in wooden barrels. The aging thickens the vinegar and concentrates the flavour. Every year the vinegar is decanted into a smaller cask. In the end, 2.5 – 5 litres of balsamic vinegar are created from every 100kg grapes.

Today Reggio Emilia designates the different ages of their balsamic vinegar (Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Reggio Emilia) by the colour of the label. A red label means the vinegar has been aged for twelve years, a silver label says the vinegar has aged for a minimum of 18 years and a gold label indicates over twenty five years of aging. In Emilia-Romagna, balsamic vinegar is most often served in drops on top of chunks of Parmigiano Reggiano and mortadella as an antipasto. It is also used lightly to enhance steaks, eggs or grilled fish, simple pastas or risotto, on fresh fruit such as strawberries and figs, peaches and pears, or to enliven a crema gelato.

Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena uses a different system. A cream-coloured cap means the vinegar has been aged for at least twelve years, while a magenta cap bearing the designation extravecchio (extra old) indicates the vinegar has been aged for at least twenty five years. Three popular desserts in Modena improve with a splash of balsamic vinegar: zabaglione, latte alla portoghese ( or crème caramel), and panna cotta.

Last night I opened my test tube sized bottle of ancient balsamic vinegar and, while I did feel the bottle should be covered in cobwebs and dust at the very least, the product was heavenly. Dripping a raindrop of vinegar onto the end of my finger, it looks and tastes distinctly different from the commercial brand. It is aromatic, thick and syrupy and pours o-so-slowly out of the narrow-necked bottle. The anticipation is worth it – this aged vinegar is so much more complex than the cheaper brand. But when drizzled over the salad (what’s the opposite of copiously?), well, to to be honest, it might just as well have been a commercial brand. I feel very grown up owning such a highly prized bottle of balsamic vinegar, but I am obviously no connoisseur yet!

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Gelato: a truly Italian invention

Posted on 20 August 2012 by sheg4184

“Filipinos are not settling anymore for the commercialized, not-so-yummy, imported brands [of ice cream]” according to Filipino blogger Anton Diaz in his popular blog ‘Our Awesome Planet’. And indeed I have watched with fascination as local entrepreneurs create their own artisan ice creams: Pinkerton’s, Merry Moo’s, Carmen’s Best and Sebastian’s to name just a few. While ice cream has become the addiction of choice in Metro Manila, its invention goes much further back than a recent Filipino food fad, and half way round the world to Renaissance Italy.

Gelato is Italian for ice cream, and American travel writer Rick Steve describes gelato as ‘an edible art form’ and ‘one souvenir that can’t break and won’t clutter your luggage.’

Gelato became a daily craving as we wandered through Italy, especially in Florence where it is touted as the best in all Italy. Pistachio, bacci, mandarle, limone, the variety seemed endless. Every gelateria displayed mountainous troughs of rainbow-coloured ice creams, usually topped with its fruit or flavouring in case you didn’t understand the Italian labels.

And it tasted so much better than the ice cream we buy at the supermarket. Was it thanks the added atmosphere of strolling down cobbled lanes bathed in centuries of history? Or was it due the joy and childish light-heartedness of being on holiday?

Apparently there are several scientific reasons why gelato tastes better, not just due to the location (though I am convinced that helps) but to the quality of production.

Firstly, gelato is lighter than factory made ice cream due to a lower butterfat content and a greater proportion of whole milk to cream.

Secondly, it is denser, heavier on the tongue, because it is churned at a slower speed than ice cream, and less air is whipped into the mixture.

Thirdly, while ice cream is frozen at a much lower temperature, gelato is softer, typically stored and served at a slightly warmer temperature, which allows for greater intensity of flavour on the tongue.

Finally, a good quality gelato is flavoured with fresh ingredients not syrups.

The history of gelato has become legend. Some say it dates back to ancient Rome and Egypt when frozen desserts were made from snow and ice harvested from the mountaintops and preserved in underground caves or brick icehouses. Other rumours claim that Marco Polo found both the secrets of gelato and spaghetti in China. Even Elizabeth David, in the first edition of ‘Italian Food’ told an apocryphal tale of a gelatiere accompanying Catherine de Medici to the French Court and producing a spectacular dessert of frozen fruit for the Royal Wedding.

In fact, artificial freezing was not developed until the early seventeenth century. Metal boxes were placed in wooden buckets filled with ice mixed with salt and saltpetre (potassium or sodium nitrate) to extend the life of the ice and lower the temperature for keeping produce cold as long as possible.

 Despite the lack of proof, as to the genesis of gelato, there seems to be no argument against it being of Italian origin. Nor is anyone arguing that the Italians generously spread the art of ice cream making across Europe.

By the late seventeenth century, sorbette or “sugar and snow” as it was described by the Spanish Prime Minister’s steward, was a popular street food in Naples and in 1775 Filippo Baldini had produced a book on creating frozen desserts: citrus or milky sorbette. Favourite flavours included strawberry, bitter cherry, lemon, pine nuts, candied fruit, cinnamon and a frozen chocolate mousse.

Three centuries ago, northern and southern Italy created two separate and distinct gelato recipes. In the north, the people of Dolomite made gelato with fresh milk, cream and sugar. In Sicily, the southern Italians used a predominantly water-based ice cream, or sorbet with fresh fruit.

Gelato is made with egg yolks and sugar mixed together until thick. Milk and cream are added, and the flavourings come later, after the mixture has frozen. Until the invention of an electric churn in the 1980s, (not surprisingly invented in Italy!) ice cream was always a labour intensive, time consuming task. The churn not only sped the process up, but ensured a creamier, smoother consistency, no longer full of ice particles or grainy patches.

Experts advise that we shouldn’t be distracted by brightly coloured gelati: the connoisseurs prefer natural colours, and those back street gelaterias with only a handful of flavours, but the process of testing every available flavour you see in the main thoroughfares of Firenze could fuel a life-long addiction!

Returning to the Philippines, there is a parallel universe of ice cream flavours, where the innovative imaginations of the Filipino chef has created some unexpected flavours. You are kindly invited to test your taste buds on some of the following: sapin sapin ice cream (a layered glutinous rice and coconut dessert); brown bread ice cream; salted caramel; mango sans rival (another Filipino dessert in ice cream form); bananutella; tibok tibok a kapampangan recipe made with carabau milk; queso de bola (Edam Cheese); Earl Grey Tea, and candied bacon!

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