Metro Manilla

"Pork" we said. 

"Pork and rice... and juice?"

In a humid 30 degree, city heat, jet lagged and hungry, I liked the look of every single food stall at the market.  Cane sugar drink, barbecued or kebab meat, exotic fruit of every shape and size! The decision making was bewildering but Mel's cousin and his wife saved us, bringing: roast pork belly, fish stuffed with tomatoes and other vegetables, rice, semi- dried beef strips and fresh juice.

Pork for breakfast is easily the most triumphant start to the day.

Coffee adventures were less successful, but we did source a macchiato from Coffee Bean, and find that a Breve was "like a latte but more creamy". 

Jollibee was an immediate hit. Burgers were familiar, 'one piece and rice' (fried chicken) is a combination that should be served everywhere and the proper cutlery would almost convert my Mother to fast food! Sarsi, beloved by Mel as a fizzy drink of her youth, tasted like cola mixed with TCP. Strangely medicinal.

New (to me) fruit: custard apple, their armadillo armour pulled away to eat the snowy flesh inside; mangosteen, with their deep plum case and soft segments within; small, green citrus fruits, like baby limes with orange inside (calamansi) make delicious juice; sweet, clear lanzones with thin skins to peel away. And the sweetest, ripest baby mangos I have ever met!

Holidays with Mel are always delicious.

The flamingo has landed

This year has been the busiest ever, but sadly also my least productive in the kitchen.

Work is bursting at the seams and then I managed to finally completed on the little pink palace! Nicknamed The Flamingo by Herb, the joke is that I don't much like pink and used to avoid it: now I am turning into a librarian Barbara Cartland by some irresistible quirk of fate. 

So be it. It is my new home, even if it does look like Barbie visited.  After gaining possession, Jimmy and I sat at this table in my favourite cafe, Arloe & Moe.  What amazing salt and pepper pots!

Between the unglamourous state of the new kitchen, and the flat I was renting being turned into a building site for the last few weeks I was living there, I have not cooked properly, or regularly, for months.  Disproportionate joy, then, at this first stove-top supper in the Flamingo.

It will be some months before I have a fully functioning kitchen so for now I will be learning to cook camping-style. I hope my real cooking muscles don't atrophy!

chorizo cheer

Tonight's speedy, batchelor girl meal was brought to you by necessity, by way of fun: I needed to eat very soon after getting home, having been enjoying myself at choir.

Ever hungry, I get ever so anxious if I eat late; crotchety too, as my sisters will attest! I get home about 9.30 pm on choir nights and this is one of the zippiest get togethers of ingredients, thought up on the spot.

Chorizo sliced (using scissors to save washing up a chopping board), fried in a little pan for 4 mins; cold, leftover new boiled potatoes added and flash-sautéed in the same pan, and all dashed in a bowl with peas. The peas I put, frozen, in a cup and pour over boiling water from the kettle. 

All I needed was a Campari-soda to keep me sharp and some radio 4. 

Happy days!

Saturday brekker

Herb has raised the weekend breakfast to an institution. Not for her a mindless re-fuel before getting the papers, and she makes sure to spread the word. I think of her as the breakfast evangelist.  She often texts or emails a report of her weekend morning fodder, always with a question about what I am eating.

By contrast I can be found having left over curry, pork pie or kaya toast to tide me over while I decide what to eat on my leisurely mornings. The luxury of rising later and eating without time constraint definitely changes the menu options! Last weekend I had my first asparagus of the season,  with fennel lemon salad and sobrasada on toast. I sat in the sun, listening to bird song in the May-blooming garden.

This weekend there is a half-term break from yoga, so I headed to the market (more sweet, lithe English asparagus), then on to late breakfast and coffee at Arloe and Moe's. My favourite dish there is the savoury avocado and feta 'sexy toast' but today I was swayed by a nostalgia for the very Australian dish of French toast with berries, yoghurt and maple syrup. 

I wasn't wrong, it was perfect!

Today is Bert's birthday so I raised my flattie to toast her health, wealth and coming year.

simples

And then there are those soothing moments when, with the minimal effort that comes with habit, I knocked up a cauliflower yogurt soup and a couple of loaves of soda bread without even thinking.

Inspired by the gigantic, cream cauli's in the market, I bought one every week and made this. The coriander seeds give a fresh, lemon taste and the soup is somehow simultaneously hearty and light.  Bread, still slightly warm, is the only way I want to eat this.

17 April

spring

I just love the month of May. The garden is burdened with lilac scent and bridal May tree, and saturated with birdsong.  And then there are the Bank holiday weekends which creep up, unexpected. After a hectic year this long weekend has been such an oasis that I re-learnt the art of relaxing, thanks too to Jimmy.

Friday night saw a tired, hungry girl supper of bacon and cabbage stir fry with noodles. Speedy, filling and very Friday-night-slob this kind of dish is the very reason that sesame oil and soy sauce are in my essential staples.

After Saturday yoga - a welcome return to un-cranking my back and neck - I had an undeserved treat, of a trip to Arloe & Moe for coffee and avocado toast. My favourite dish at my favourite place. There followed two superb breakfasts involving eggs, spinach, toast, and occasional bacon; and two afternoons at a steamy, sauna-ey, swimey place, courtesy of Jimmy, which melted my brain and re-set it to factory settings.  Well, maybe not quite that slow, but very nearly. 

After steams, swims, coffees, lie-ins and lovely food, my limbs feel like liquid and not a headache on the horizon!

Tonight you can see that spring has permeated my pantry.  Roast lemon chicken wtih salad and rice, and a Campari and soda. Welcome, Spring! You are a tasty sight.

and this little piggy...

More speedy suppers. 

One

Roast pork belly with rice and veggies, hot. I ate all the crackling in one go, standing in the kitchen, gnawing on the non-crispy stub until my teeth begged for mercy.

As I tidied & washed up I took out an oven dish and put the rest of a the leftover rice as a bed, with slices of cold pork on top.  Foil over, in the fridge.

Two

Day two, home late, I put the oven on to 200 degrees and bunged in the porky-rice dish, still foil covered. I wandered back after 25 mins or so and cooked some frozen peas to throw over.  The pork had softened up and its fat lubricated the rice.  Gorge-pants.

Three

The last 4 or 5 slices of cold pork went into the oven for 25 mins, on high.  As before, it released its tasty fat and also crisped up the edges.  I cooked noodles (you need more than one sheet, one is never quite enough) with chunky-sliced leeks; drained them, then tipped the noodles & leek into the hot pork dish. A modest glug of toasted sesame oil and a less modest slick of soy sauce perfected it all.  A quick stir then down the hatch.

Disclaimer: if you have a hot lime pickle problem, you will already know that this condiment goes well with all these dishes.  Because lime pickle goes with almost anything if you have a pash on it.