Sarsiado and Utan

This is a dish that i first encountered when i was living with my tita in Manila during my college years.

I do not know if Sarsiado is how it should be called but somehow the name has stuck. My tita used to make this when the markets were awash with cheap, overripe tomatoes. This is now a dish that regularly appears in our Cebu home and we make it even when tomatoes are not cheap or overripe.

Sarsiado Recipe

1 kilo ham cut or pork belly, cut into cubes
(i prefer the pork belly because the fat becomes very mushy and goes well with the sour tomatoes)

1 kilo ripe tomatoes, cut into quarters

Place all the ingredients into a saucepan with enough water to cover. Simmer until pork is very tender. Season with salt. Serve with hot white rice.

Reportedly, a great accompaniment to this dish is the Utan Bisaya, a soup made of malunggay leaves, alugbati, squash, tomatoes, sikwa (i dont know what this is called in English, but it's a type of gourd and when dried, is made into loofah sponges), eggplant, and flavored with fried fish flakes.


Personally, i just hate this soup and would like to abolish it forever from our dining table but the rest of the family loves this. So we will just have to take their word that this goes well with Sarsiado and other fatty dishes like Humba, Grilled Pork Belly, and Braised Pork. They say it takes away the yucky, fatty, oily aftertaste of the pork belly.

Well, to each his own. I like my fat to taste fatty.

Afternoon at Bo's

I often find myself sitting at Bo's Coffee Club these days as this is where a good friend holds his "meetings".

Bo's Coffee Club is the pioneer of the coffee culture in Cebu. While Starbuck's was blooming in Manila, Cebuanos were still satisfied with their instant coffees, 3 in 1's and the occasional brewed that we can get in good restaurants and hotels.

When Bo's was opened in the Ayala Mall in the mid 90's, it immediately became the place to be, to meet, to be seen, inspite of the prices that everyone thought to be unbelievably unreasonable for just one cup of coffee. Their rate until now remains P55 for a cup of ordinary brewed.

Everyone thought:

a. Bo's would die when Starbuck's would hit Cebu;

b. Starbuck's would not flourish considering the Cebuano love for products made by Cebuanos, and the Cebuanos tight-fistedness;

c. Starbuck's will probably survive with one outlet in a posh location where the spending gadflies gravitate.

And how everyone was wrong. Bo's has flourished and so has Starbuck's. Cebuanos learned to embrace the coffee culture in a one easy step. In fact, Cebu became so enamored with Bo's that they could not wait for Starbuck's to step foot in the province. The word from the Manila frequenting crowd was that Bo's was so "Starbuck's kaayo!" (English: So Starbuck's!).

I am not a coffee drinker so i really cannot say whether the coffee in one place is better than the other. However, i am a tea drinker and i have to say that tea selections at the international chain is better. Hot chocolate from the international chain is also better, but maybe because i am not fond of sweet drinks that i prefer Starbuck's to Bo's.

Tea Selections at Bo's. Not very wide nor wild.

My Lemon Grass Tea

In terms of food items, bread and sandwiches from Starbuck's are way better than the Bo's array. Cakes and pastries are somewhat neck to neck as they are often sponge cakes disguised as other confections by clever tricks of shape, size and the application of ices and fillings.

A veritable flood of chocolate this and chocolate
that. I am not a chocolate cake fan obviously.
Although i would pay a LOT for a GOOD chocolate
croissant, if someone would kindly point me
towards the right direction.

The mandatory Mousse. Oh what would
a coffeshop be without the Mango Mousses
and Blueberry Cheesecakes?
Oh, give me something new please.

Oh what i would give for a REAL flaky croissant!
Aren't you tired of all these choco chip stuff: muffins,
bread, cookies, brownies, sigh, sigh, sigh

There was this one fantastic pastry though, that i would go back for again and again at Bo's, which was the Mocha Torte, but this item was discontinued sometime early this year for some strange reason. Maybe i was the only one who ordered it >:-p

As for the juices and flavored waters, none of them measure up. Too sweet i still say. Although the Esprit line from Starbuck's is ok because of the Passionfruit which i just love. I still keep on asking for the Lorina line (which is available in Starbuck's HK and Singapore, and which i bring home everytime i go) but no one at either stores seem to listen.

Laguna Garden Cafe Gets a Facelift

Dinner at the Laguna Garden Cafe last week was a tad uncomfortable. The place was getting retrofitted together with Ayala Center's expansion so diners were crowded in the ground floor dining area. Conversation was twice as difficult with the bad acoustics, loud music punctuated with the whine of drills working in the second floor.

Its a good thing Lita Urbina and family were still able to dish out the same good quality food that made up for the inconvenience that the renovations caused.

Fried Calamari with Sweet and Sour Sauce.
The squid is just fried right so its not rubbery. I
think i ate 1 order of this appetizer by myself.

They made a mistake with our Lechon Kawali order
and Lechon Paksiw arrived instead.
No problem.
We enjoyed this more :-)

There was more food on the table that night than these photos show: Crispy Pata, Rellenong Bangus, Chicharon Bulaklak, Tinolang Manok but they were decimated before there was any chance to take photos and I was only able to shoot dishes that were placed right in front of me.

I'm not exactly fond of Buko Pandan dessert.
I don't find green gelatin with milk and buko strips
particularly exciting. Would have preferred
something else actually, in fact, fresh fruits might
have been better. But hey, when someone else
is paying, why complain?

Lechon Manok, Baboy og Liempo

Cebuanos are inordinately fond of anything grilled- pork, chicken, various chicken innards, chorizo, seafoods, leg of calf, etc.

So it is no surprise that there is an almost entire length of a street in uptown Cebu City that is devoted to grill restaurants, ihaw ihaw or sugbahan and to tourists, local and imported alike.

But just a few meters off this street is a tiny, tiny kiosk that for me is one of the oldest and one of the best sources of barbecues and other grilled items.

This is Willer's Lechon, a few steps from the corner of Salinas Drive. It used to be located along Gorordo Avenue across JY but they moved a few meters to a small road across their old spot. They are now located at Sanjercasvil Road, behind the Sinangag Express.

Sign painted on the charcoal grill in front of

the tiny carenderia.

They also have a smaller branch (tinier than the tiny main branch) near the Lahug Elementary School.

Heart Stopping Chicken Skin Barbecue, Pork
Barbecue, and Gizzard and Liver Barbecue.

Your order getting the hot treatment at the
grill before serving.
(In the background), The super crunchy grilled
liempo or pork belly turning on the spit. Salt is
the only seasoning.

Close-up of the Barbecued Chicken Skin.
Slightly salty and sweet. The skin sort of melts and
becomes a chewy, gelatinous piece of heaven.

The perfect dip.
Local vinegar made from coconut. And flavored
with handfulls of chili, garlic, onions and ginger.
Sukang Pinakurat doesn't even come close to the
searing flavor of this one.

A Willer's Lechon specialty: Larang.
Various white fish simmered in a broth with
ginger, tomatoes and lemon grass.
I have not tasted this personally, but this is
a favorite among the taxi and jeepney drivers.

Lunch is often a thin crowd so the choices a bit lean. However, dinner is almost always packed so be prepared to bump greasy elbows with other patrons at the communal tables.

Is My Ipod a Personality Giveaway?

It's almost midnight and I have a 7 am surgery scheduled tomorrow yet the sandman has failed to drop by.

Spent the last few hours updating my Ipod- deleted songs hardly listened to and uploaded more from Limewire.

My playlist tonight is quite eclectic and am not sure if this means that my personality is also eclectic (read: weird/ strange/ disjointed like my musical choices) or merely a reflection of a wide exposure to a variety of music. Come to think of it, my musical education was by all means, pretty limited to the american top 40. So my taste for new wave is understandable but where in the world did i get this fondness for the Carpenters, Simon and Garfunkel, and the Supremes??

Mind you, 80% of the music in my Ipod are 80's classics, 10% from the Disco Fever of the 70's and the other 10% a smattering of Eraserheads, Christina Aguilera and Selena (wait! she's 80's too!).

Here's a sample of tonight's playlist:

Lady Marmalade- Christina Aguilera, Li'l Kim, Missy Elliot
Staying Alive (Ultimate Remix)- BeeGees
Friday I'm In Love- The Cure
Tomorrow- Annie
Our Love (Don't Throw It All Away)- BeeGees
Sahara Nights- Fr David
Sahara Nights- Fr David
Sahara Nights- Fr David
Como La Flor- Selena
Red and Black- Les Miserables
Your Smiling Face- James Taylor
Vogue- Madonna

The more I listen, the more sleep evades me. Methinks i'm missing my College Years.

Yaya's Turon

I love Turon...when my yaya makes it.

She layers banana slices with jackfruit and mascovado sugar and wraps them in China or Vietnam-made rice paper. (The imported rice paper remains crunchy even the next day, not like the local lumpia wrapper which becomes soggy).

These are deep-fried until golden brown.

Then drizzled with soft-ball stage syrup made from brown sugar. The result is crunchy and chewy at the same time.

Harry Potter Reigns

This is EXTREMELY off topic but i just have to share my experience during the Harry Potter mania when the last book came out last July 21.

Crowd at 10:03 am at National Bookstore. Open
for 3 minutes and its a stampede. And i thought
I was early!

My copy.

Cooking For Guests

As i mentioned in a previous blog, I had a chance to prepare an entire dinner for some out-of-town guests.

It started off with a delightful (never mind that my blood pressure did spike a little bit) afternoon shopping at the newly opened Rustan's Fresh.

My menu was not fancy- our Sunday fare actually, although a bit time consuming to prepare. I chose a Spanish theme as our guests were from the US of A and Switzerland. We were sure that they would have had their fill of Pinoy or Cebuano food like Sinugba and Kinilaw already as they had been in Cebu for a couple of weeks.

My menu is as follows:

Meal started with a fresh green salad: romaine
lettuce, red lettuce and iceberg; tomatoes, cucumbers,
shrimps, feta cheese, whole black olives, sweet pea shoots
in a dressing made with the oil from the feta cheese, white
wine vinegar and garlic.

The Lengua that I made a couple of weeks back.
I love cooking huge batches then freezing them
in tupperwares, to be thawed and reheated when
needed.

Pancit Palabok as a filler as a couple more people
arrived. I topped mine with squid, shrimps, eggs,
fried tofu, tiny bits of pork, crushed pork cracklings,
and smoked fish. Rich!

I used the thick rice noodles that really soak
up the sauce making each chewy mouthfull
burst with flavor.

Baked Chicken stuffed with Potatoes and flavored
with sage. The drippings make a wonderful gravy.
My nephew can eat one whole chicken so I always
cook 2 large fowls (1.4 kgs each) or 3 if they weigh
only 1 kg or so.

Callos.
I have a newly discovered secret that makes this
dish thick and sticky.
There were many speculations at the table that
night- tomato paste, cornstarch. But no, no.
I did not use any of that :-) hehehe

The looong, hearty meal ended on a high note
with leche flan. This i think, i might safely call
a family recipe as this i how i always remembered
our leche flan made.
It does not have any condensed milk so its not
too sweet.
The strawberry syrup provides a contrasting
tang to the flan.

I just wish for a better camera for better pictures. The one used for these pictures really does not transmit the true vivacity of their colors or flavors.

Malling

I found myself at SM Mall this lunch hour. I was there to pick up my new set of business cards only to be told that they were behind schedule and my cards were not yet ready.

In a blue funk, I walked off to the Exit Doors in a huff.

On the way out, I passed by the Butterbean Cookie Factory. I had never tried their cookies and brownies but today I thought, "What the heck, the oatmeal cookies should bring me out of my cranky mood." So i bought a couple of cookies and brownies to take home.

Just a few steps before the exits, I chanced by Brownies Unlimited and thought further, "Oh what the heck. I already bought Butterbean Cookies, might as well buy a few more from these guys."

So a sampler box with 6 varieties of brownies and a sambo and a sylvana were thrown in with my other purchases.

But when I got home, to my immense dismay, I found the cookies from Butterbean to be just way too sweet. Into the trash they went. Sorry Lord for wasting food.

By nature I am not fond of sweet stuff but can swallow tolerably sweet items. But those were just too much for me. Is this really how other people prefer their sweet levels? Maybe, i'm just out of touch :-(

The Brownies Unlimited experience was only a step better. Still way too sweet for my taste, the brownies were stale too but at least the sambo and the sylvana were not bad and were tolerably sweet.

Sylvanas are meringue sandwiched and coated with buttercream and rolled in cake crumbs. Sambos are the chocolate version.

In a refreshing departure from the usual, Brownies Unlimited made theirs with Italian Meringue making the balls soft and chewy.

A little difficult to eat while held with the warm fingers because Italian Meringue tends to melt and collapse on itself. But they were not bad when attacked with fork and knife.

Each was larger than a tennis ball and one serving is more than enough for one person.

Chinese Lauriat, Anyone?

One of the more popular and affordable Chinese restaurants in Cebu is Grand Majestic. This is one of many eateries of the famous triumverate of food: Earl Kokseng, Efraim Pelaez and Winglip Chang.


The chef of Grand Majestic at the landmark Grand Convention Center has always been the venerable Chef Romeo Aragon, master of the Peking Duck.

Their lunch buffet at 499 (or thereabouts, i can't exactly remember) is one of the best in town, especially with the endless supply of Peking Duck and all its varieties- soup, rice, etc and 30 something courses in their back-to-back buffet table that does not hold a repeat of dishes.

I attended a party at Grand Con last week and I got another chance to revel in their food, monosodium glutamate notwithstanding.

Nice cake, nice decor, gorgeous girl :-)

These are just a sample of the dishes served.

Sweet and Sour Fish Fillet.
Crisp coating on the tender white fish inside.
Sauce is mild with a light acidic tang.

Yang Chow Fried Rice.
Fluffy, not greasy and with small chunks of chorizo.

Steamed Pork in Lotus Leaf.
Pork is very tender and slightly salty with
black beans.

The specialty of the house: Noodles.
Special noodles slightly thicker than angel hair
and slightly thinner than miki.
The sweet-salty sauce is redolent with slices of squid,
pork, chicken and vegetables.

Aside from the buffet, ala carte menu may be had. Frog legs available for the adventurous.

Best Baby Back Ribs in Cebu

Casa Verde (Eng. "Green House") is an old spanish-style house located at "old-rich" area, V. Ranudo Street in Cebu City.

It serves the best tasting, fork tender Baby Back Ribs that i or anybody else has ever tasted. And at a most pocket friendly price too- P 90 for an entire rack plus rice and vegies a couple of years ago, then up to P 120 last year, then up again to P 128 this year. Despite the constant price hike, it is still plenty affordable and the taste remains the same.

Fork tender Baby Back Ribs with a flavor that
penetrates deep through the meat and
down to the bone.

Extra sauce can be requested for no extra charge. Flavor is just right, not catsupy or too sweet or salty. Just the correct balance for a lip-smacking experience.

View of part of the dining area. Air-conditioned
rooms also available.

Casa Verde has a beautiful and romantic garden and outdoor dining area. Only recently, this portion of the restaurant has become exclusive to the owners and the guests. Sadly, the photos in this blog does not do justice to the garden as they were taken with a phone camera.

View from the dining area and into the garden.

Part of the garden.

The place is packed with diners for lunch and dinner, 7 days a week. So if you want to be seated in choice areas, arrive early- before 11:30 for lunch and before 7 pm for dinner; or arrive late- after 1:30 for lunch or after 8:30 pm for dinner.

Nectarines at FRESH

Finally found my second favorite fruit Nectarines (next to Mangoes and ahead of Peaches), at the newly opened Rustan's Fresh supermarket at the Ayala Mall.

The other Fresh branch at Paseo San Ramon in Banawa is kind of small and does not stock much. And do i need to say anything about the strange "old freezer" aroma that hovers over the shoppers. Sign of a poorly ventilated building or poorly maintained freezers methinks.


The crowd was something short of a stampede when the Ayala branch opened last July 10. Lots of kibitzers milling around, sampling the numerous freebies and generally pushing carts that contained noodles- just checking out the wares and not really shopping.

That REALLY frustrated serious shoppers like moi and my sistah who were there to pick up some things for a dinner party we were hosting the next day. I had to snap at some people so i could finally get my ox tail. That showed them! They were elbowing for a quarter a kilo of this or that, but I hacked off with a WHOLE tail plus some.

I went back this lunch hour and had a leisurely stroll through the aisles and checked out the delicacies.

Chiller with Nectarines, Plums, Dragon Fruit,
Cherries and Blueberries.

Beautifully fresh fruit- oranges, apples, pears,
avocados, coconuts, limes, lemons, watermelons.

A whole refrigerated gondola of pre-packaged
meat: ox tail, goat or chevron, pork belly, tripe,
beef cubes, and more!
No need to line up at the meat counter.

A view of the very cute grains and beans counter:
several varieties of white rice, brown rice, kidney
beans, white beans, mung beans, etc.

The pasta gondola. Penne, Fussili, Spaghetti,
Linguini, Macaroni, Semolina, Whole Wheat,
including Organic! Mind boggling!

Gourmet coffee for all the java fans.

Smoky, spicy Chorizo Oreado Barbacoa at the
Deli Counter.

Norwegian Smoked Salmon kissing up to the
Bacalao. Good Prices :-)

Cheeses galore!

Fresh Mozzarela! I could scream :-)

I also took a stroll through the Bakeshop. What i saw were some appetizing although not very imaginative breads and pastries. There was a good variety of whole wheat breads but the garlic bread and the baguettes could have used some more crunch.

The cakes looked rich enough but at the same time, pretty artificial with the strawberry toppings looking more gelatinous than fruity.

Ham sandwiches, wafer tuilles, butter cookies,
ensaymada, banana loaves.

The requisite Chocolate Chip Buns, Adobo Buns,
and Cheese Rolls.

Some of the cakes.