When friends who are also cooks join forces to make a Filipino food festival, they end up sharing ideas that have been percolating in their minds or they have done in other festivals.
That’s what happened recently, with four chefs laying out plans for the menu to be served at Pico de Loro Beach and Country Club from April 1 to 3.
Their camaraderie was obvious during the tasting a week ago. They said guests could expect “culinary deconstruction”—they would take elements of a dish and present these in new ways. But please, they stressed, don’t call the process “fusion.”
True to form
Glenda Barretto of Via Mare was true to form as she showed such creativity in doing the most mundane dish—an eggplant salad she made with rounded layers of roasted corn, tomato, onions, green and red bell pepper and, of course, roasted eggplant seasoned with salt and pepper. Vinaigrette was sprinkled over everything, then coconut milk poured on top and garnished with fried dilis (anchovy) and a slice of salted egg on the side.
The dish improves on her recipe in the book “Kulinarya” (Asia Society and Anvil Publishing, 2013), the corn and the dilis adding that crunchy texture.
Barretto’s prawns in coconut cream were so attractive, the reddish shelled prawns arranged in radial pattern with green vegetables on one side and buko slices from a more mature coconut on another side. The cream was the color of beige because the prawn fat had mixed in.
It is this artistry she brings to our food that makes Barretto the caterer to go to for many international conventions and expositions.
Veteran
Like Barretto, Myrna Segismundo is a veteran of food festivals. These are opportunities for her to explore new ways to showcase our food. And she will always include food from her native Batangas, such as adobo and tinumis.
She explained how the adobo of the region uses not soy sauce, but achuete (annatto), for coloring. There’s also tinumis, banana heart sautéed with shrimps; a nontraditional way is to make it the filling of lumpia (spring roll).
She served both with two kinds of fruit buro (fermented santol and pajo), which give a sour-sweet touch to any dish.
She also served kinilaw, fish pickled in vinegar; she said she garnished each serving with pansit-pansitan, an herb that used to be regarded as a weed but is now used as food product and herbal medicine.
And just in case we were still hungry, Segismundo prepared a lechon boneless belly of pork arranged as a roll. The crunchy blistered skin was difficult to resist.
‘Langlang’
Sandy Daza has his restaurant Wooden Spoon, where he presents Filipino food done in a different way. Take that day’s bistek, for which he used oxtail instead of the traditional sliced sirloin. And he had enough of the soy-calamansi sauce to mix with the rice, as most Filipino diners are wont to do.
From his travels all over the country for his TV show “Food Prints,” Daza has learned to do many local dishes such as langlang, a pancit dish with three kinds of noodles—canton, sotanghon and mami. It has one more over the Cebu bam-i, which has only canton and sotanghon.
From Bicol comes the rich laing with meat filling and red chili, warning one and all that this could be hot.
Pinoy dessert
Dessert is synonymous with pastry chef Jill Sandique, although she has created other dishes for clients in her consultancy business.
Don’t expect a rolled brazo de mercedes; instead, she served toasted egg white balls on top of the creamy sweet filling, mixed with lemon curd and fruit slices.
Her mousse was made of Malagos tablea—chocolate tablets made in a Davao farm. And her pistachio sans rival—alternate layers of creamy icing and baked mix of egg whites and nuts—is a dessert she said is Filipino, notwithstanding its French name.
The four chefs will offer their food at the buffet for dinner on April 1, lunch and dinner on April 2 and lunch on April 3 at Lagoa Restaurant of Pico de Loro Country Club. For inquiries, contact 4647888.
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