A fruit I never knew existed

Growing up in the Bay Area where the farmers' markets and life in general is densely packed with new experiences, I was under the impression that I had tried nearly everything, be it pharmaceuticals, ethnic foods or fruit.

So imagine my surprise when a young man, just out of school, turned to me and said "Have you tried one of these before?" and handed me a fruit I had never seen.

The purple mangosteen is, in my estimation, awesome. I love fruit but I hate the hassle. When I'm traveling the chances that I'm going to carry around a knife to cut open a pineapple are slim. Even peeling an orange seems like unnecessary work. I went traveling to avoid work. But then fruits that don't need to be peeled come with their own issues--apples and pears always seem dirty. I'm supposed to take it back to my hotel and wash it? Meh.



But a mangosteen--how perfect, how wonderful! You put two thumbs in and crack the thing in half. Inside, you can suck the flesh or just grab the meat, which pops right out. It's sort of citrusy but not sour, sort of peachy but not too sweet. It's related to the lychee and the pomegranate and apparently can only grow in ultra-tropical locations, making them a rare find in North America.

The best part is the women who cruise by with hundreds of them on the backs of their motorcycles, or in enormous baskets balanced on their shoulders. A few minutes of good natured arguments later, and one can get 4-8 for one or two dollars. Less if you're good at bargaining.

So. This is what I quit my job to travel for. Delicious and previously unknown fruits with adorable names.

Late night snack: Pho

One of the many dreams I stole from my parents is have a career in street food. I think it's okay to copy other people's ambitions, especially when they are your parents and too lazy to ever seriously pursue a career in sidewalk cuisine. Anyway, Vietnam has brought the dream bubbling to the top of my consciousness in the form of the pho guy at the corner of my street in Saigon.



Because of the 34C/93°F heat I am forced to retire to my bed several times a day, giving me ample opportunity to watch the ebb and flow of the pho business in Pham Ngu Lao. I didn't take pictures because I was worried they would think I was a total d-bag, which I now regret.

In the mid-morning the women of the family would start washing all of the vegetables in giant bowls in the alley while the man prepared the meat and stock. Later in the afternoon they would set up the stall, as well as one across the alley that sold mango and pineapple shakes.

Once the sun went down is when business started to get busy and would stay that way until they ran out of soup. I crowded onto one of the tables with a few assorted randomers and wondered, again, why in god's name I had spent so much time in China. Even in the crowded tourist district of Saigon a bowl of noodle soup with pork, shrimp and a quail egg was only $1.35 or $1.08 without the shrimp and quail egg. Best of all, it came with a plate brimming with fresh vegetables (I hardly remember what they are like, at this point) to add to the mix. Heaven.

Chinoy cooking class

When I got back to Manila my first order of business was to find a Filipino cooking class. I saw that Heny Sison, a professional cooking school, was offering a one day mami and siopao course, so I jumped on it.

Mami (noodle soup) and siopao (steamed buns) are both Filipino variations of Chinese dishes, and in fact, our teacher, Katherine Sion, was a genuine Chinoy--she was born in the Philippines to Chinese parents and married a Filipino.

It was interesting taking a class for professionals--much more serious than others I have taken. I went with a friend and we were the only ones there who weren't Filipino and who weren't planning on making siopao for a living (although I'm considering the idea). Siopao are often sold on the street, and one of the career paths I am considering is running a roach coach.


Beef mami before


Beef mami after


Hands-on demonstrations


Katherine making sure that everyone understands how important good stock is


Filling for the special siopao--pork, chicken, salted egg, Chinese sausage


Siopao showing varying degrees of skill on the part of my classmates to wrestle them into shape


Siopao, post-steaming


I snuck into the cake decorating class upstairs

Deep-fried quail eggs

Growing up as I did in California, I've always had a great appreciation for the quail, our state bird. I especially appreciate them when they are prepared well. In Asia, however, the quail egg seems to be more popular than the quail itself, and you can find people selling hard-boiled quail eggs on the streets at night for you to peel and munch on when drunk.

But this isn't enough to satisfy the Filipino palate. Oh no, in order to appease the appetites of the Philippines (and my own), these quail eggs are deep fried.

A few years ago I told my grandmother that if I was told I had six months to live, I'd buy a deep fryer and deep fry everything I ate. Cupcakes, sandwiches, ice cream...the possibilities were endless. And in a moment of uncharacteristic understanding she said, "Why wait? Life's too short."

I didn't get the deep fryer but am always interested in the possibilities that they hold. The quail egg was rubbery, but not unpleasantly so. This is probably because it had been sitting out for at least an hour before I bought it. I'd be interested to try one fresh from the fryer and see if it fulfills the potential of my deep frying dream.

What's for breakfast in Manila?

A heart attack on a plate, that's what is. But if you're going to die over breakfast, might as well do it with pork that's been cured in pineapple juice and a fried egg.

Tocino is just one of the many meat products served for breakfast in the Philippines. It's most often served with rice and a fried egg, thus earning its place in the silog cannon.

Silog is a combination of the word sinangag (meaning fried rice) and itlog (egg) and is used to refer to any of the myriad of breakfasts that are served with rice and egg. The rices vary--sometimes they are garlic or pineapple fried rice and other times they are plain, served with a bottle of banana ketchup or sweet hot sauce.



So the meal pictured up top with tocino is technically called "tocino, sinangag at itlog" but is lazily shortened to "tocilog." Other commonly-served silogs include: chixsilog, hotdogsilog, burgersilog, nuggetsilog, bangsilog and baconsilog.

I have to admit that I've ordered tocilog more than a few times over the last few weeks. It's a delicious, if artery-clogging, alternative to wheat germ and probiotic yogurt--not that you'd be seeing any of that schlop in the Philippines.

It's lump, it's lump, it's lumpia

Lumpia is one of the most cherished of all Filipino foods. It's not hard to see why, it's delicious, drenched in oil and comes with a sweet sauce to provide all of the necessary flavor components. Lumpia is one of the few Filipino foods I had tried before visiting the Philippines--that's how popular it is in the western world.

These deep-fried spring rolls are an example of a "Chinoy," or Chinese Pinoy snack. (Pinoy is a slang term used to describe people of Filipino descent.) Much of Filipino food reflects the influence of the Philippines largest--and oldest--ethnic minority, the Chinese, on the local cuisine. Many dishes here are Chinese in origin, but distinctly Filipino in flavor.

The offal that was awful, and the one that wasn't

Okay, so it didn't taste awful, but these innards reacted poorly with my innards. However, this is probably my own fault, as I decided to eat pork sisig at a food court at the mall (the Mall of Asia to be specific).

Pork sisig is sometimes served as a breakfast food or as an accompaniment to serious boozing. They are often served on a sizzling platter with a fried egg. Sisig is a term that is used to describe foods that are sour or have been marinated in vinegar or lemon juice.

Traditionally, pork sisig is made from pork head. Like, all of it. Pig ears, brains, snout, tongue and cheeks. Non-face offal can include hearts, livers and lungs. I have not received confirmation that trotters are used in this dish, but I can't see any reason why the Filipino people would draw the line there. Basically any part of the pig that a western person wouldn't normally put in their mouth is fodder for pork sisig.



After we finished the kilawing sisig above (which did not make me sick), I asked the waitress what part of the pig it was. "It was delicious," I said with a large, toothy smile plastered across my sweaty face.

The waitress looked nervously at us, as if we might upend the table when we found out the truth, which was that we had just eaten a plate of pig's ears.

The table remained intact--I'm not keeping kosher here. And these pig's ears, drenched in vinegar, were unbelievable.

Banana ketchup (and spaghetti)

Many travelers to the Philippines are astounded at how westernized the country is. And although in many ways that is true--everyone here speaks English and smiles a lot--there is a distinct Filipino twist to even the most western of foods. Jollibee's, the Filipino answer to McDonald's, serves fast food suited to the Filipino palate, which prefers as much sugar as one can possibly get in traditionally savory meals. The burgers are sweet here, the spaghetti is sweet here, and both are covered with banana ketchup.

Banana ketchup resembles regular tomato ketchup in color and presentation (it's dyed red) but is made from bananas, sugar, vinegar and spices. When presented with the stuff, it's easy to think you're just eating a sweeter, spicier tomato ketchup, but do not be fooled! There is a distinctly banana flavor to it. Some brands are not dissimilar to Thai sweet chili sauce.



In the supermarket, the ketchup shelf is 90% banana ketchup with a few bottles of Hunt's making a weak showing. And perhaps most shockingly, it's the main ingredient in Filipino spaghetti, which is not something you'd easily associate with the Italian variety you're probably familar with. It's sweet, it's served with a burger on the side and generally a Royal (orange soda) and it's in every fast food joint in town.

Banana ketchup became popular during World War Two when food shortages resulted in a severe lack of tomato ketchup (horror). An abundance of Filipino bananas led to the invention of banana ketchup which is still the favored Filipino condiment today. It's no wonder that McDonald's has such terrible market share--they can't adapt to the banana ketchup scene.

(Watch the history of banana ketchup)

Filipino Favorite ramen

In case you were worried, our friends in the Philippines have not been left out of the Cup Noodle revolution. Although not boasting the wide array of flavors found at Nissan's Instant Ramen Museum, they still make a pretty good showing in the Philippines. The stand out was Bulalo flavor, which is listed as a 'Filipino Favorite.' Bulalo is a Filipino stew made from marrow bones and beef shanks.

I've seen a few confusing commercials on TV for instant ramen as well. One shows a woman with an evil-looking hairdo patting her son's fat belly and cheeks--if that isn't truth in advertising I don't know what is. (You do know that instant ramen noodles are deep fried, don't you?) They are marketed as Japanese, which is interesting because most of the ramen in Japan is marketed as Chinese noodles.

Whether there are other flavors in Nissan's Filipino Favorite line will require further investigation. Watch this space.

Single-serving Oreos

In the Philippines, people love small packages of stuff. They sell shampoo, condition and laundry soap in tiny, one-use packets. I was particularly pleased to see the single serving packages of cookies and biscuits. Now, I know this is bad for the universe. I really do. But backpacking as I am, I can't buy economy-sized packages of everything, and I like to have a snack in my bag in case of emergency.

The emergency tends to be an overwhelming frustration with the culture of the country I happen to be in, and I've learned that Oreos are a good remedy. In China I found myself eating an entire package of Oreos every two to three days just to deal with China, which may be why the one pair of jeans I brought on my trip have split open. So imagine my delight when I found that in the Philippines I could buy just three Oreos at a time. Luckily I have had few frustrations with the Filipino culture and have not yet sampled one of these delightful little packets, but I'm sure when my purse finally gets stolen I'll be happy to have a couple of Oreos in my back pocket.

I'm going to qualify this post by pointing out that I have not lived in the US for three years, and even when I did, I didn't buy Oreos. So if this is old news in America, I have an excuse. I know that they have those "100 calorie bags" of cookies, but you have to buy ten at a time! These little guys are sold individually.

Sago't gulaman

Yo homes, how do you eat your tapioca? I've decided that my preferred method of ingestion is in beverage form. That mango stuff was great, but the Philippines is not going to be outdone by some Hong Kong chain. Or more likely, the Philippines doesn't give a flip about what's going on in Hong Kong, they just want to have a good time.

And goddamn if they aren't, because they are all drinking Sago't gulaman, also sometimes called samalamig. Sago't gulaman ingeniously combines giant tapioca pearls, ice, carmalized sugar water (sometimes flavored with pandan leaves) and red gulaman, or agar jelly (think Asia's answer to Jello) and on occasion, a dollop of banana extract. The recipes are flexible, and every glass of the stuff is slightly different.

Although a beverage, the agar agar and sago give the imbiber a mouthful of chewy goodness. This is a great street food afternoon snack. There's the fancy 70 peso version served in a tall, icy glass, but there are 10 peso versions you can get on the street that come in a plastic bag with a straw. Both are equally, chewily, gratifying although taking a picture of one as opposed to the other is a less risky proposition. I'll leave you to guess which is the one above and ponder why I have so few pictures of Manila street food.

Kare-kare, or peanut butter for dinner

If you've ever wondered how to get more peanut butter into your system, look no further than the Philippines. Kare-kare is a traditional Filipino stew that's usually made from oxtail and tripe (and sometimes goat) with what is often called "peanut sauce." After a short investigation, involving both oral interviews and Internet searches, I ascertained that the primary ingredient is actually peanut butter.

I liked it, and I don't usually consider myself a peanut butter person. However, I categorically dislike anyone with a peanut allergy on principle and I like peanut candy. So I guess you could call me a peanut person as opposed to a non-peanut person.

In addition to oxtails, the dish is served with eggplant, green beans and some sort of choy-vegetable. On the side it comes with bagoong alamang, or salted shrimp paste. I think the function of the bagoong alamang is to balance out what is a sort of cloying peanutty sweetness of the kare kare. Much to my embarrassment, though, I can't stand salted shrimp paste straight. In a curry is another matter, of course. So I skipped the bagoong alamang and just stuck to the peanut butter. I would say, though, that I think this dish would be a lot better as part of a larger meal than an entire meal. This amount of Jiffy can be a little much.

This wondrous meal came from Max's Restaurant, a traditional Filipino chain that is older than the country itself (ie. it opened before the colonizing Americans bastards formally left, and was originally a place for American Troops to get their fried chicken on). Max's motto is "The House that Fried Chicken Built" so I guess I know what I will be ordering next time.

Manila buko juice

I started my trip to Manila by joining 3 million Filipinos on the streets of Quiapo waiting for the Black Nazarene pass by. By the time I had spent five hours in the 83 degree heat and been interviewed on TV about my feelings on the black jesus, I was pretty thirsty.

And what better to quench the thirst of a newly-anointed celebrity pundit than coconut juice? Buko juice isn't really juice, it's the water that is found inside young coconuts. In the Philippines it is believed that buko juice has medicinal properties, including replacing lost electrolytes on hot days. In some places it's even used as an intervenous hydration fluid.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find anyone to inject the stuff directly into my veins, but during the procession buko men dotted the streets with pushcarts filled with young coconuts. You could drink the buko juice directly out of the coconut or out of the giant vat of pre-mixed buko juice. I opted for this choice because it also included strips of coconut mixed in the drink to munch on. One glass goes for 5 pesos, or about us $0.11. The perfect drink to keep 3 million devoted Nazarene lovers hydrated.

Hong Kong: Food Paradise

Oh Hong Kong, you were wonderful. You truly are a food paradise. But since I've been in the Philippines for the last few days, I'm going to start posting about that.

I haven't met a bowl of congee that I didn't like

A bowl of pork, liver and fish slice congee with a side of bbq pork cheung fun. (Before and after mixing in the peanuts and green onions)



The congee joint on Mong Kok Road, where a bowl of congee can go for under US $2.

Xiao Long Bao

You know how China is always like, "Oh, we totally invented everything.
Paper? You'd still be writing in the sand if it wasn't for us. Pandas? We did it. Gunpowder? Boom! Pizza? Us too."

And you're always just like, "What?"

And then China is like, "We invented everything, dummy."

And then you're like, "Uh China, nobody likes a show-off and anyway I don't believe you."

But I really hadn't been giving China its fair due--they invented xiao long bao which are some of the most savage dumplings I've come across. They have, get this, soup inside them. Like, we've all seen dumplings in soup but xiao long bao turns that idea right on its head and gets the soup inside the dumpling.



Eating Xiao Long Bao:
The first step is getting the dumpling into your bowl. This is not easy because one false move with a chopstick can break the skin and drain the soup. I have gotten quite good at getting these into my mouth on my own, but when confronted with the pressure of four sets of Hong Kong eyes watching me, I caved and broke the dumpling.

Even once you've gotten it onto your spoon, getting one of these into your mouth can be a delicate operation, dependent on both the size of the dumpling and the size of your mouth. The most ideal method of eating one of these is to insert the entire dumpling into your face and then biting down to release the soupy goodness. This is not possible in many cases as the dumplings are too big.

Biting the top off was suggested to me and isn't a bad method. Really the goal is to eat the soup and the dumpling at the same time, without losing too much of the soup into your bowl or down your chin. Not an easy feat. The other possibility is to eat a whole order of them alone and with your fingers, wondering why a food that is from Shanghai is so good in Hong Kong.

Chinese-style egg custard

I love egg custard. This is genetic, I think. At least I am fairly certain that my mother feels the same way and I have fond memories of eating the stuff as a kiddie. So I was interested to hear how Chinese-style egg custard compared to my childhood memories. As it turns out, it's exactly the same! Or at least, I couldn't remember my childhood well enough to come up with any differences. I'm probably blocking out some sort of traumatic memories and managed to erase those as well as the egg custard.

But don't they say that replacing old memories with new memories is the way forward? The custard in Hong Kong was yummy.



But then at Lei Garden, a Michelin starred dim sum place, the custard turned sublime. Custard dim sum.



I love you, Hong Kong.

Sago, mango, coconut juice--what's not to love?

The best part about Hong Kong food is how much healthier it is than Chinese food. Case in point, Hui Lau Shan: Healthy Dessert, of which there are at least three in Mongkok.



Best health food ever--a giant glass of mango juice, chunks of mango and tapioca (sago) with a floater of pure coconut cream. You can also get mango jelly added, if you're feel adventurous. 1500 calories minimum, I'd wager, but worth every damn one of 'em.

Not Pocky, but close

Hong Kong carries a brand of flavored breadsticks that I hadn't previously seen, Kabaya. It may or may not be a Japanese brand, but it certainly is a creative brand.



After that last round with four boxes of Pocky I had sworn off the stuff. (It appears that I lasted a month.) Anyway, the flavors I tried were apple pie and sweet potato. Although both good--and better than the highly disgusting mango Pockys--the sweet potato was the clear winner due to its abundance of cinnamon. Unlike Pocky, these ones weren't coated with anything, they were just carby delicious.

Walking with Hong Kong street food

I only have two complaints about Hong Kong so far. One, is that they only sell family-sized pump bottles of shampoo. The other is that people walk erratically. Fast, slow, stopping for no reason despite the crowd density--it's a strange phenomenon and decidedly un-city-like behavior.

But I noticed that a large percentage of the erratic walkers in front of me often have a good excuse: they've got fish ball curry dripping down their chins.



Hong Kong is crawling with vendors eager to make all of your street food dreams a reality. Lots of different dumplings and fish balls on sticks, but one of the popular favorites are fish balls in curry sauce. On a stick is definitely the messier and more enjoyable method, but you can also get them in a bowl with a dollop of hot sauce. Now if only Hong Kongers could learn to eat and walk at the same time, they'd be almost perfect.

Drink this: hot Coke with ginger

Apparently it's a remedy for the common cold, but it's uncommonly (and surprisingly) tasty.

Welcome to Hong Kong

As you may have started to sense, I was started to get a little burnt out on mainland China. I realized very quickly that traveling on a budget in China is very different than traveling on an expense account. When you're loaded, everyone speaks English and there's no MSG in your dinner. When you're trying to get dinner for under $2 every day the waitresses laugh at you for not speaking Mandarin and take pictures of you while you're eating because you're the first white person they've seen come in to their restaurant.

When I finally arrived in Hong Kong this week I crawled off the bus and nearly wept. Finally, civilization. The first thing I did was go to 7-11, checked out their snack food selection and shed a few more tears. What a wonderful place Hong Kong is.





First thing the next day my friend Asta's aunt and cousin took me out to a restaurant, Aqua, that brought back fond memories of what it was like to live in the real world. In other words, this is not the sort of place that backpackers generally hang out.

I had some sort of chirashi-type dish (sashimi over seasoned rice) with fish flown in daily from Tokyo's famous Tsukji fish market. I followed it up with what is probably the first Western dessert--save for Oreos--that I've had since embarking on this adventure, a soft-centered chocolate cake with hazelnut ice cream.



This is the sort of meal that I once would have taken for granted in London or New York, but after the last few weeks I have a new appreciation for a meal that is not dripping in oil or has an aftertaste of melamine. It bode well for the next week, a large portion of which would be spent eating with Asta's Hong Kong family.

Hong Kong, I love you.

Chinese menu translations

And so I bid farewell to China. We've had some good times together, me and China. We've also had some meals together. We've had our difficulties, too. Communication ones, mainly.

Below are some menus and signs seen during my travels in China:


Clear cooks the bull penis, Pingyao


Red-faced ambiguous, Pingyao


France bread, Dali


Dry speeding potato wire, Lijiang


The elements fries the cat ear, Pingyao boils the lump, Pingyao


Pingyao smokes the egg, Cold food in sauce bull's penis, Pingyao


Moon Restaurant Drunk, Lijiang


The Fat Sister's Yak Meat, Lijiang


Octopus Pill, Lijiang