KITCHEN BOOBOOS
After several weeks of eating out, Ivy and I decided to start cooking our meals. Medjo lang no... kadiri na yung araw araw ko naaamoy ang local food dito.
On one late morning (late, because we woke up about 10am), we traced the location of the market by following the oldies carrying their baskets with veggies. Yep, they're done with their market routine and we're just going. Finally the market! A big wet market, literally wet with containers for the live seafood creatures, and without a single fly. Dunno if they have some kinda new technology to keep the flies out.
We got shrimps at about 77php per half kilo. Half kilo is their standard unit of weighing. It feels weird to carry a bag of jumping live shirmps, as if we're the evil giants who took the innocent shrimps as captives. When we got home, we put them into a basket to drain of their water and wash them. Some of them started jumping out. Eeeeek! Kadiri lang talaga when you see their feet na gumagalaw ng sabay sabay. At times, medjo mapagpanggap sila... they will all act like dead, tapos tatalon sila when we uncover the container. But we managed to cook them anyway.
The leftover shrimps were used for the palabok for dinner. Great, wala ditong kalamansi, chicharon and tinapa. We had a bright idea! We got chicken flavored potato chips from the convenience store on the ground floor of our apartment building. That's what we used as the substitute for the chicharon. For the other two, it's hopeless. Pero panalo talaga yung potato chips! It tastes like the fun shots of KFC!
Our special palabok
The previous story has nothing to do with the title of this blog entry. Read the next one.
Recently, I discovered that the long noodle-like thingy in a typical chinese appetizer is not really seaweed. It's jellyfish. Anyway, we wanna have some jellyfish and century egg for lunch today. We went to the grocery yesterday to pick up the stuff that we need. This morning, I was about to remove the egg shell when Ivy made a comment... "Oks yan, wala na yung makapal na coating na asa century egg." I told Ivy... "Baka mas-hi-tech na sila in terms of producing century egg. Di na kelangan ng extra cover sa shell." Later on, I realized that I was actually holding a salted duck egg! Ivy got the eggs from the rack of century eggs and chose that particular brand coz it's the only one in packs of 4. The rest are 8 to 10 per pack. Gee... that's what we get from not reading the package. But that's not yet the worst booboo for the day...
Since we have salted egg, I told Ivy that it would be best to buy tomatoes to go with it. I went down to look for the nearest place to get the tomatoes. There's a fruit store behind our apartment building. I took my chance, hoping that they sell tomatoes too. There they are, outside the store, in large quantities! So many tomatoes, much larger than those in Manila! While picking, I wondered why they are softer than the usual. I got one anyway.
Ivy was surprised that I was able to get the tomato that quick. I told her that I got it from behind the building. She was excited! She got the tomato from me and sliced it. She told me there's something wrong. It's not a tomato! It's some kind of a fruit... which, until now, we cannot identify. We ate it anyway, but of course, not with the salted duck egg. But it really looks like a tomato... a red one, with the leaves on top!
We ate out again after that.
On one late morning (late, because we woke up about 10am), we traced the location of the market by following the oldies carrying their baskets with veggies. Yep, they're done with their market routine and we're just going. Finally the market! A big wet market, literally wet with containers for the live seafood creatures, and without a single fly. Dunno if they have some kinda new technology to keep the flies out.
We got shrimps at about 77php per half kilo. Half kilo is their standard unit of weighing. It feels weird to carry a bag of jumping live shirmps, as if we're the evil giants who took the innocent shrimps as captives. When we got home, we put them into a basket to drain of their water and wash them. Some of them started jumping out. Eeeeek! Kadiri lang talaga when you see their feet na gumagalaw ng sabay sabay. At times, medjo mapagpanggap sila... they will all act like dead, tapos tatalon sila when we uncover the container. But we managed to cook them anyway.
The leftover shrimps were used for the palabok for dinner. Great, wala ditong kalamansi, chicharon and tinapa. We had a bright idea! We got chicken flavored potato chips from the convenience store on the ground floor of our apartment building. That's what we used as the substitute for the chicharon. For the other two, it's hopeless. Pero panalo talaga yung potato chips! It tastes like the fun shots of KFC!
Our special palabok
The previous story has nothing to do with the title of this blog entry. Read the next one.
Recently, I discovered that the long noodle-like thingy in a typical chinese appetizer is not really seaweed. It's jellyfish. Anyway, we wanna have some jellyfish and century egg for lunch today. We went to the grocery yesterday to pick up the stuff that we need. This morning, I was about to remove the egg shell when Ivy made a comment... "Oks yan, wala na yung makapal na coating na asa century egg." I told Ivy... "Baka mas-hi-tech na sila in terms of producing century egg. Di na kelangan ng extra cover sa shell." Later on, I realized that I was actually holding a salted duck egg! Ivy got the eggs from the rack of century eggs and chose that particular brand coz it's the only one in packs of 4. The rest are 8 to 10 per pack. Gee... that's what we get from not reading the package. But that's not yet the worst booboo for the day...
Since we have salted egg, I told Ivy that it would be best to buy tomatoes to go with it. I went down to look for the nearest place to get the tomatoes. There's a fruit store behind our apartment building. I took my chance, hoping that they sell tomatoes too. There they are, outside the store, in large quantities! So many tomatoes, much larger than those in Manila! While picking, I wondered why they are softer than the usual. I got one anyway.
Ivy was surprised that I was able to get the tomato that quick. I told her that I got it from behind the building. She was excited! She got the tomato from me and sliced it. She told me there's something wrong. It's not a tomato! It's some kind of a fruit... which, until now, we cannot identify. We ate it anyway, but of course, not with the salted duck egg. But it really looks like a tomato... a red one, with the leaves on top!
We ate out again after that.
posted by joyce at
6:06 AM
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3 comments
