Was the name Pochero derived from a Spanish word? Does it sound like Cocido? I just do not know how to pronounce Cocido, but Pochero? Pochero by any other name, or pronounciation, taste just the same. Grand.
Pochero is very versatile with the possible different combination and ingredients one can think of and can still be called Pochero. It somehow remind me of Irish stew with or without tomato sauce. Its all in the boiling, so they say. The longer it boils, the more tasty and whole it becomes. I've tried cooking it a couple of times before arriving at perfection. Perfection, yes. Ive achieved perfection in cooking Pochero. Not like a perfection of reaching buddhahood but more of a satori experience perfection. A short glimpse of enlightenment whenever people say that the Pochero do taste good. it is so simple to prepare and meat can be pork or beef. What matters is the boiling time and the meticulous mixture of liquid and seasoning to arrive at what I call Pochero perfection. It is slow food cooking.
Some do and some dont saute. I do. I put a perfectly measured cooking oil then start with the onions, then garlic, Bananas, and tomatoes. I put some magic powder (ala Wok with Yan) then the meat. Then when I feel that it is enough (yes, to feel what one is cooking is important. It is called oneness), I put in water then boil it until the meat softens up with the potatoes and carrots. After that delicate process, I enter the most important part of balancing the taste. I add some fish sauce, more magic powder (if and when required), sugar, and tomato sauce. It is a balancing act as I mix the sweet and salty in portions to reach what philosophers call deliciousness. Then I put in the green leafy chinese cabbage. Then it is done. Pochero perfection.
Pochero Perfection
Ingredients
1 kilo Beef or Pork 2 heads Onion 1 whole Garlic 2 Tomatoes 2 plantaine Bananas (Saging na Saba) 5 cups water Potatoes (Kahit gaano kadami) 2 medium Carrots 2 ropes Chinese Cabbage (2 Tali ng Pechay) Fish sauce Sugar Magic Powder Tomato Sauce
My hangover from last Friday's killer spree spilling over to Tuesday, was it David Pewter singing "Bad Day" running in my head?
Waking up drowsily at 4:30 a.m with no recipe in mind, I thought of an easy preparation that will entice Andres to wake up and savor his breakfast. What could be easier than a Pork Steak Tagalog or Visaya or whatever regional bias one has, swimming in soy sauce and packed with onions. Its a less expensive version of Bistek (beefsteak) and can be prepared in a snap. There are however certain mixes needed to reach the desired taste. One should balance the chi between the soy sauce and calamansi to get that perfect pork steak sauce. Good thing we live near the market, so we rushed to get lean good fresh pork while preparing the ingredients. Cutting up the garlic, onions, and calamansi at 5:00 in the morning somehow uplifted my sagging spirit knowing that there is a delicious pork steak with steaming hot rice waiting at the end of the crying game. Just put everything in the pot, let it simmer, and everything will fall into place. Tenderizing the pork is fast and that pinch of sugar, some milk, and tons of onion will assure you that complete pork steak goodness.
A good pork steak Tagalog on a bad day is not bad.
Lucky for me to have the opportunity to have a freezer well stocked with Beef this week. I salivate just thinking of the beef possibilities in store in the over freezing refrigerator freezer. Thelma bought beef in Tagaytay City, a place fighting the claim as the beef capital of the Philippines. Then a beef sale in our community supermarket added a couple more beef meat in our freezer. Last Saturday, it was a simple Beef stew garnished with tomatoes that brought the house down. Slow cooking at its finest as the flavory smell floats through the living room. The tomatoes gave that natural sour taste balanced by a perfect dash of sugar. Then Sunday evening, we tried another traditional beef recipe, the Bistek Filipino, or beefsteak. Like Bistek = beefsteak, digs? Its beef swimming in a combination marinate of soy sauce, calamansi, a dash of sugar, and garlic. After a few minutes of marinating the beef, boil it in water until tender then put in fresh shallots to counter the salty taste coming from the soy sauce. Good for eating!
It was a hungry Friday and all road leads to neverwhere.
Due to power failure and shits that pervade in the country, and no thanks to the bureaucrat capitalist scumbags, we were allowed to go home real early. So, I went to my parent’ house to check on Ponso and Paco (Andres is in school, as always). Ponso was ecstatic learning that he’d go sports climbing with my sister Hana in the afternoon that made me change plans of bringing the boys to the park when Andres comes home.
So Paco and I waited for Thelma to check out food places while whiling the time away before picking up the two boys at the climbing gym. We were hungry and can just eat anything anywhere.
On the way to the Power-Up! climbing gym, we passed by Maginhawa St., a relatively broad street compared to the normal Manila narrow alleys, near the University of the Philippines. It used to be a quiet residential street in the 1970s until the influx of business converted some parts of it into small shops and restaurants that sell anything from food, books, catering to the intellectual and middle class requirements of the area.
Alfakhr’s
Thelma craved for some Kebabs and kebabs it will be for supper. With Paco peacefully sleeping in his stroller, we were able to partake of a simple kebab dinner at Alfakhr’s, a kebab joint beside a restaurant cum bookstore. I liked the logo of the store and the name sounded naughty enough but I really did not expect much from the kebab. It was thick and full beef alright without the usual extenders and the P110 + for the two pieces with tomato is, I think, reasonable. It was a bit on the bland side though but Thelma liked it because it is, bland. Like you can escape the MSG menace by eating bland food. The yoghourt and hot sauce mixed is a welcome treat over buttered rice but it came out short of that full flavor that top notch kebab restaurants prepare. But a kebab is a kebab is a kebab to hungry stomachs, so, the dinner was consummated, peacefully, amidst the roaring tricycles hitting on the humps and the bumps of Maginhawa Street.
(photo courtesy of www.outonadate.blogspot.com)
Van Gogh is Bipolar
And I thought Van Gogh is a painter but turned out that he is a bipolar instead. Is it a job description or a state of mind? But there is a quaint restaurant that is so hard to find along Maginhawa St. called Van Gogh is Bipolar. We searched for it for like fucking 30 minutes coming from the Kebab joint and if not only for Thelma’s persistency, I would have settled in any sari-sari store to get my cold beer. However, if it was any consolation, people inside the store are in their cell phones patiently instructing their lost friends how to get to the hole. Many are lost, and few are chosen. It is hidden and requires the purity of intention to really find the place for that artsy gustatory experience.
It is homey in spite of the art particles floating inside the restaurant. Everything is almost a conversation piece reminding me of an artist’s apartment in the film “Sid and Nancy” with the Union Jack draped over some art object. Home art ideas explode inside the place giving me that sincere urge to redecorate our house to maximize its full aesthetic potential.
(picture downloaded from http://img258.imageshack.us/img258/6602/radar2hires.jpg)
Ordering at first is quite complicated. There is no waiter and you just have to really chill and ask the procedure from the kitchen counter. We just ordered a concoction called Courtney Love or something that is really refreshing. It’s got strawberry, some cute leaves, plenty of ice, some unknown liquid, and a taste that I cannot describe but, refreshing. Positive vibe traveling inside my esophagus going to my stomach and metacarpal hematological pancreatic system that actually made me smile, even if Paco is starting to do his wrecking ways inside the joint with a cute girl acting as a big sister.
I never thought Courtney Love is bipolar. I thought she is just plain sex and hotness (with her ‘Malibu’ days). But with so much craziness in this world, we all have our bipolar experiences, in one way of another.
Van Gogh is Bipolar food was formulated by the owner who is bipolar to pacify, at first, the monsters inside his head. But he eventually shared his secrets to others who are also struggling with it (believe me it is not easy, I was diagnosed 20 years ago with the same shit and it sure is freaky.) Rather than take prescription drugs, natural foods can balance soothe the restless minds, and hearts, or whichever comes first.
We were able to chat with the owner and his friend and enjoyed laughs and thoughts of being in a bipolar’s world when my parents urgently texted me because Ponso is puking at the climbing gym due to unknown reasons and that we have to pick him up right away.
So much for the intellectual chats and fancy art food. But Van Gogh is Bipolar is a treat. And I will try the lamb fare next time.
I am still sleepy after a marathon seminar, partying, drinking, chatting from Saturday until 7 am Sunday in Antipolo City. Sunday afternoon after the link of events brought me back to my house all wasted and at a loss walking like a zombie, fucking affected with even the tiniest hint of brewing noise or distraction, just looking for the bed and the time to recover.
A good early afternoon snack at the Banapple Pies and Cheesecakes along Katipunan Avenue, Quezon City where I was picked up never lifted my sagging physical body. Try as I may to lift my spirits with a juicy looking hamburger, it still did not affect my tired disposition. Hamburger was juicy and thick all right but its only the presentation that got me attracted. I was not impressed with the taste.
But I did taste their lasagna and that might be the reason why people pack the small cramped but cutely chummily decorated hole beside my friend's house. The lasagna is "i'll dance the pogo like a shaker in trance" ecstasy. I eat lasagna, I might not know a great deal about what constitute a good lasagna like that fat cartoon cat, but Banapple's lasagna is just hell on earth for satanists who dreams of meeting satan horn to horn. Its so hot! It has a taste that is bitingly twisted. You put it inside your mouth, let it stand there as your taste buds study its taste contours and there you can taste that twisted taste. The spice combination is just perfect.
Even their tapa was pleasingly tapastic! Their rice can stand alone. It looked more than steamed. It has a greenish shade topped with some leaf garnishing.
Banapple is known for their cakes. We did order two slices of cakes. One has strawberry and white as coupon bond icing and the other was brown with some pecan as filling. The cakes were sweet. I bet it has sugar.
Imitating my three year old son Ponso’s sentence structure of adding ‘ever’ to impress the immensity of whatever he is describing, the entry of RISTRAS in the mex/tex-mex/cal-mex/cal-tex/petron/shell genre changed the Philippine restaurant landscape scene, EVER!
The BURRITO…the burrito is so freaking wasak BIG it can feed five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred people. No shit! It is so big and tightly packed with everything that is required to meet the requirement of becoming a burrito. One is given the privilege to choose beef or chicken (beef is the bestseller, survey says) to jump into the Mexican lumpia. But make no mistake about it esse, it might look like a Filipino fresh lumpia but it is not lumpia. It is a jumbo burrito! Dips for the giant burrito include jalapeno (green and very űber hot), salsa, and garlic sauce. I close my eyes as I bite the burrito savoring the exploding mix of tastes. It was very, well, Mexican for my lack of gourmet terms to describe the food.
I got excited seeing rows of foreign looking beer in RISTRAS’ Frigidaire, as we call it in the Philippines, or refrigerator, or chiller but freaked out when told its 200-450 pesos a pop depending on the bottle size. Anak ng pu talaga! Nahilo ako talaga sa kaartehan ng presyo ng beer. Magiging ginto ba ihi ko at maisasanla pag iyon ang ininom ko? I know that San Miguel Beer is the best beer in the world. My grandfather said so, my father said so and it is my filial duty as a dutiful Asian son to believe and respect their decision with reverence (as I happily sour grape thinking what is in store inside those dark lager bottles).
Longganisa, or native or local or pork sausage, whatever, is a fascinating food as it transforms its looks, composition, and taste depending on its point of origin in the Philippines. Nueva Ecija's Cabanatuan Longganisa, Quezon's Longganisa Lucban, Vigan Longganisa, Tuguegarao Longganisa, and the Longganisa list just goes on and on.
Its a miss and hit trick in finding the best longganisa for each one. We have our taste preferences and it takes a lot of patience, trial and error, and lots of trust built and trust reneged (for sellers claiming to have the best longganisa).
I am for the garlicky longganisa with ground pork stuffed with lots of garlic and maybe, other mysterious ingredients health buffs are known to barf about. I like the Nueva Ecija Cabanatuan longganisa with its tighter than a nun's ass garlic packed sausage.
Longganisa with garlic rice and sunny side up eggs, with vinegar dip and the not so healthy orange juice mixed from a sachet powder, makes a good breakfast morning.
chicken is an attempt to tell stories about food, cooking, eating, drinking. Or show pictures of food, cooking, eating, drinking. Whatever is available. Its an attempt, anyway. No one can do anything about it. Its my shit. So be it.
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