Ensaladang Lato (Seaweed Salad)

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence…at least that is what everyone says. I must admit, I have been guilty of this too, more often than I am willing to say. You only have to peek into my Twitter feed* to see me trying to make deals with the Western world to “send me some snow” in exchange for the sunshine I am so blessed with, but which can also be unrelentingly scorching.

So I have decided to stop and appreciate what is naturally mine on this little group of islands: brilliant beaches, gorgeous sunny days, fabulous produce, the luxury of tank tops and flip-flops all year round. As if reading my good-intentioned thoughts, today arrived charmingly sunny yet breezy – all sun-kissed blue sky and the gentle caress of the wind. The weather dreams are made of.

To celebrate the advent of sunny days (chasing the clouds away) I am posting another local salad. I’ve mentioned before, I love my native Filipino salads and I hope to share some here. They are uncomplicated and fresh, with piquant personalities…and they go perfectly with our weather!

Ensaladang Lato (Seaweed Salad)

• 250 grams lato (seaweed)
• 2 native tomatoes, seeds removed and sliced into thin wedges
• 5 small/young native onions (like shallots), peeled and sliced thinly

- Clean your lato very gently so as not to pop the bulbs.
- Arrange on a plate with tomatoes and onions.
- Serve with dressing (see below) on the side.

A note on the dressing: The choices for dressing this salad are relatively simple. You can choose to have it with just some vinegar or soy sauce or a combination of both. Some Filipino cookbooks prescribe a vinaigrette of olive oil, vinegar, pepper, and salt. We like a mix of vinegar with just a smidgen of soy sauce and freshly cracked black pepper. Easy on the salt because the lato is already naturally salty. What’s important is to have the dressing on the side as the vinegar will make the lato mushy. You can either dress your salad right before you eat it, or even better, dip the lato directly into the dressing as you eat.

Lato is a bright green seaweed, consisting of little bulbs, that I was introduced to by C’s family in Zamboanga. According to his godmother, it cannot grow in water that is not clean, so you know that where lato grows, the sea is clean. When I visited, I ate it straight out of the sea! What makes it delicious is the combination of the feel of the bulbs popping in your mouth, and the salty liquid they release when they do.

This is another great example of a Filipino salad – simple elements combined with minimal fuss, letting the delicious flavors shine through. Not only is it fitting for this weather, it gets on famously with summer food like grilled fish.

So now I sit at my desk with the windows open, relishing the breeze and the good food that I plan to make with the coming summer’s bounty, happy in the belief that, at this moment at least, the grass in greener right here.

*Speaking of Twitter: I’ve been on it for some time now but I realize I haven’t formally shared this fact over here (although I do have my Twitter feed on my right sidebar…yup, right over there). Aside from whiny weather complaints (which I’m trying to balance now with being thankful I never have to freeze my tush off), I also share a lot of my meals, ingredients, and ideas there. Let’s face it, what makes it on the blog are, more often than not, dishes that already have some semblance of a recipe. This leaves a lot out – throw-together meals, experimental dishes, new ingredients I want to try out, market trips, random ideas. All that, and more, I try to capture in the charming immediacy that is Twitter. And it’s not just words (of 140 characters only please!). I use this nifty thing to share images from my everydays as well. Not that either the words or the images are ground-breaking exciting. But they’re there…just in case you want to take a peek :)

Refrigerator Pickles

It’s been another sweltering day in my city and I could barely crank up the energy to go to the little art exhibit in the park down the street, much as I wanted to. And although I’d really really like to cook something fabulous, that is proving to be a bit of a challenge in this heat.

I admit, this may not be the best time to make a slow-cooked bolognese from scratch (though I did try that last week because I sometimes fancy myself a rebel), but it is a good time to do any or all of the following:

• Reconnect with your organic farmer – the produce is looking lovely these days and if you have a chance to get them direct from the source I highly recommend it. I find that the flavor of organic vegetables is always so much more vibrant than their dull supermarket cousins. Of course, it goes without saying that avoiding icky chemicals in our food is my main motivation, especially for the little one. It’s better for our planet too. And I like supporting small farmers…they rock and I want them to stick around! This salad was made with my organic farmer's talbos kamote (sweet potato leaves), tomatoes, and young native onions.

• Make refrigerator pickles – I have posted about my love for pickling before. This isn't the type of pickling that requires cooking, boiling, sterilizing, or any method that involves heat. This isn't about staying in the kitchen for hours going through a mountain of raw materials...just as small (or medium-ish) a ration of veggies as you'd like. Make a mixture of vinegar, sugar, salt, pepper, and any sort of spice, herb, or aromatic (go with whatever strikes your fancy!) and place in a clean jar with your vegetables (make sure the veggies are all covered in your pickling liquid). Keep the jar in the fridge and you will always have something cool, crunchy, and tangy to have with your meals when the days turn sweltering. The one pictured here was made with cucumbers, green finger chilis, and native onions also from our organic farmer :)

• Don’t sweat the small stuff – When even the tiniest movements seem to make beads of sweat form, you don’t need any extra provocation. Heat saps your energy – now is not the time to be worrying about the fluctuation in your internet or your housekeeper leaving. Save that blog post on Word and cozy up with an amazing Sci-fi novel. Call out for pizza. Press pause and be thankful for the things that really count.

I never did make it to the art fair, but I did get to sit and laugh in my scruffies with a very good friend and a very special little girl :) Not a bad showing for an otherwise lazy day. Plus I’ve got some cucumber pickles chilling in the fridge…what more could a girl want? :)

Update: More about refrigerator pickles over at The Kitchen!

Ensaladang Talbos ng Kamote (Sweet Potato Leaves Salad)

No sooner had I been reveling in the cool chill of January (if that’s really what you can call the "none-heat" that we enjoy during the Christmas and New Year holidays) than February came in, putting an end to my blissful respite from the heat. Make no mistake, February is not summer…oh no. Summer will start its engines next month and grow steadily stronger and more merciless in April and May. What this is, well, I don’t really know what this is, save for the fact that the temperature is rising and unfailingly turning even the simplest tasks into ordeals of sweaty effort.

And I’ve just started my journey to a planet almost completely covered in sand with hardly any water…perfect timing right? I can simultaneously be literally, and literarily, engulfed in hot climate!

Thankfully, water here is not as costly as it is over there (although we do still have to buy it! If you are Finnish, my envy for the water that comes out from your taps for FREE knows no bounds). So I can enjoy my books with an icy glass of water and be grateful that it is a luxury I can well afford. Along with gorgeous produce...and the wonderful salads that they can become when I am just too seeped-dry to attempt anything else.

Although I am not one to stop cooking my much loved stews and braises “just because it’s hot out” (otherwise I would hardly ever have then), I am not immune to how crippling our heat can become. Many days, especially ones like these when the sun seems to come out with both guns blazing, I am more inclined to put together a salad.

Ensaladang Talbos ng Kamote (Sweet Potato Leaves Salad)

• 100 grams talbos ng kamote (sweet potato leaves), leaves picked
• 1 piece kamatis (native tomato) sliced into thin wedges
• 3 shallots (young native onions/sibuyas), peeled and sliced thinly
• 1/2-inch piece ginger, sliced thinly
• 2-3 teaspoons bagoong alamang (shrimp paste), to taste, depends on how salty/strong your bagoong is
• 1-2 teaspoons vinegar, to taste
• Freshly cracked black pepper

- Steam the talbos ng kamote (leaves and soft stems only) for 3 minutes. Immediately plunge into a bowl of ice water then set aside to drain in a colander.
- Top the drained leaves with the tomato, shallots, ginger, bagoong, vinegar, and pepper. Toss lightly to just combine. Taste and adjust seasoning (you can add more bagoong or vinegar if you’d like it more salty or sour).
- Serves 2 as a side dish.

This is a very simple salad widely made in lots of Filipino homes throughout the country. Talbos ng kamote or kamote tops are the leaves of our native sweet potato plant. You can use them in soups or stews (like munggo guisado), but I love them this way. Steamed lightly and tossed with bagoong alamang (shrimp paste), young native sibuyas (like shallots), kamatis (native tomatoes, not the huge salad ones you get at the supermarket), ginger, and a little drizzling of vinegar, it is a delicious reminder of why I love my native Filipino salads – salty, sour, a little tang from the tomatoes (which never become as sweet as their Western cousins), and the assertive pungency of raw onions. The combination of the steamed greens and the other, uncooked, vegetables results in something that is both crisp and yielding, a quality that a lot of our local salads have – more of which I hope to share with you as this blinding heat continues to descend.

This is heaven on a hot, not-yet-summer, day. It is excellent eaten alongside some fresh fish, which is just what we did. To my neighbors over here…stay cool folks! To those of you still in the midst of winter…please send some ice!

Self Frosting Nutella Banana Cupcakes

Belated Happy Nutella Day! I know I am a day late but I had to do my bit to spread a little Nutella love. Nutella is, after all, one of my very favorite things. I have been eating it since I was a child (in those one-serving packets…do they still have those?) and almost always have a jar (or more) in my pantry. I couldn’t tell you my favorite way of eating it because I just have too many, and really, it is fantastic any way you eat it. It serves you equally well if you are in need of some get-up-and-go on a dreary morning or if unexpected guests suddenly land on your doorstep (just dollop some over vanilla ice cream and you've got dessert). It is simple, delicious, available, accommodating, well-loved, sublime. It’s been embraced by everyone from the little girl that lives next door to Pierre Hermé.

Any way you look at it…Nutella rocks.

So here is my small part in the worldwide homage that is Nutella day...Self Frosting Nutella Banana Cupcakes. Not to be confused with the Nutella Banana Muffins which I have made before. For these, I used Elise's Banana Bread recipe (which I also have made before) and baked them as cupcakes instead of a single loaf. Before baking, I topped each cupcake with a splodge of Nutella, then used a toothpick to fold and swirl a bit of batter over it as I did once upon a time when these cupcakes were all the rage. You can use your own favorite banana bread recipe if you'd like instead. The marriage of Nutella and banana is meant to be, inevitable, written in the stars really, and these cupcakes are proof positive of that. I think I prefer when Nutella is not totally mixed into baked goods, but left like these cupcakes' solid streaks, as the flavor is more pronounced.

I honor of Nutella Day I decided to do a mini round up of my Nutella posts...just in case you need another reason to stock this treasure in your pantry:

Nutella Self Frosting Cupcakes

Nutella Cake

Nutella Mousse

Nutella Banana Muffins

Nutella Croissant French Toast

It's going to be a busy week so I'll be counting on these cupcakes as part of my provisions to keep me trucking along. Happy new week everyone...and once again lots of warm Nutella wishes! :)

***Nutella Day is brought to you by Ms. Adventures in Italy and Bleeding Espresso.

Food for the Gods

I have a confession to make. I have a huge bag of dates hidden in my refrigerator. And my refrigerator is far from huge. It is taking up a lot of premium real estate in there, although, since I have shoved them to the back, C hasn’t noticed yet. It all started with a trip to a baking supplies store that lies off the beaten path. The type you have to make a special trip to visit. As you wander the small aisles, cramped with all manners of confectionary ingredients and tools, you realize you must buy something, more than something, because if not, wouldn’t your trip be a waste? After all, you made this trip especially for this store…were you going to leave empty-handed?

Of course not. So in your basket goes a bag of confectioners’ sugar, an oversized wire whisk, bottles of vanilla, cupcake papers, and a big bag of soft, dark, and very promising looking dates. I love baked goods that have dates in them. Actually, I also love savory dishes that include dates. I am no proof for their sticky sweetness, whether it be in a cookie or cake, or a dish of braised duck. So yes, buying this big bag is indeed totally and unequivocally justified. And besides, I already knew exactly what I wanted to make first.

Food for the Gods
(from Aileen Anastacio’s column, Yummy Magazine November 2008 issue, with my observations and comments)

• 1 cup butter, cubed
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 cup dates, chopped
• 1 cup walnuts, chopped
• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

- Pre-heat the oven to 350F. Grease and flour an 8”x12” pan.
- Melt the butter in a heavy bottomed saucepan on medium heat. Add the sugars and mix until combined. Remove from heat.
- Stir the butter-sugar mixture a few time to bring the temperature down slightly, just so that it won’t scramble the eggs (it will still be hot). Add the eggs one at a time, stirring after each addition with a wire whisk to make sure each egg is incorporated before adding the next.
- Add the dates and walnuts and mix with a wooden spoon (all the pieces will just gunk up the whisk so it’s best to switch).
- In a separate bowl combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Mix well with a whisk (I always like to do this to get rid of lumps and make sure my dry ingredients are fully combined). Add this to the date-nut mixture and mix until just incorporated. Do not over-beat.
- Scrape the batter into your prepared pan and bake for 35-40 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean but not dry.
- Cool completely in the pan before slicing. If you’d like to be traditional, wrap individual slices in foil and cellophane. Not only does this make them present-perfect but it keeps them moist for a good while!

This was, without a doubt, an excellent vessel for my dates. This can be compared to, I suppose, a Blondie or a butterscotch bar…chewy and caramel-y in flavor. Take that, and then stuff it with dates and walnuts, and you’ve got (quite literally in my book) Food for the Gods. It is moist, dense, chewy, sticky, molasses-y goodness…shot through with musky bits of dates and crunchy nuts. These make for lovely gifts…or you can simply cozy up with a plate of them and a hot cup of coffee (and maybe even a real live date!).

The bag of dates still claims its spot in the refrigerator. I have used them in these luscious bars, as well as in a sultry dish of lamb shank adobo (recipe still being tweaked!), but there hardly seems to be a dent. I am definitely open to making both this and the lamb adobo again, but I’m likely to still have dates leftover. Any suggestions for my dates? :)