Here, fishy fishy

After poring over his latest cookbook acquisitions, namely Under Pressure, the Thomas Keller cookbook about sous vide, and On the Line about Eric Ripert's Le Bernardin, Clinton got inspired to not only cook an actual meal, but one that had fish! The last thing he wants to do is cook fish at home, or do anything remotely close to what he does at work, and understandably so. It's not like I want to (a) talk on the phone after work, (b) read the Chronicle if I'm not doing tearsheets or (c) go anywhere near a computer. (But if you ask me to bitch and whine/wine about work, then I'm game.) So when I got the phone call that he wanted to cook d-dinner, I was stoked.

Pan-fried striped bass, roasted romato, tamarind jus, corn puree, sea beans, tamari glazed spring onions, shaved fennel, roasted nut dust, and curry oil. Also, roasted Japanese sweet potatoes, smoked pimento-fried egg emulsion.

Fried egg in the pan, and in our blender. Yummm, fried eggggggs.



Roasted Romas and an onion. (He didn't use the onion for the dinner but I ate some of it...now that's an awesome blossom.)



Sea beans, which I've never had before but they're surprisingly salty and crunchy. Because of their appearance, I thought they would have felt/tasted like asparagus, but the texture was reminiscent of celery because it was crunchy, and the beans were salty like the ocean. I guess that makes sense since they apparently grow in salt water.



And only since I like watching him cook fish, the progression: cutting, pressing, feeling, buttering!





Roasted Japanese sweet potatoes and the egg emulsion. The sweet potatoes were really starchy and sweet; I might have to start incorporating them into my normal grocery list.



The plate before much was plated. The piles that look like sand are the roasted nut dust that he ground up in the coffee grinder. Orange/red sauce is the tamarind jus and the yellow sauce is corn puree.



Final dishes. That's the coffee maker in the background. Yum, coffee. I mean, yum, fish.

Going home

Did you expect me to not opine about Anthony Bourdain's most recent adventure on No Reservations? It's almost requisite that Filipino bloggers blog about that much anticipated episode. The short of it is that I was pleased. I sympathize with Augusto's identity crisis, but c'mon dude, I went through that phase in middle school. He didn't experience it 'til college? Lost fodder for research papers, if you ask me.

With the parental units going to the P.I. in just a few short days, I got to thinking of my only trip to the Philippines back in the late nineties. I remember going to the "disco" and listening to a terrible coverband singing "Build Me Up Buttercup" while I drank a warm piña colada. One of my cousins' friends kept refilling his beer out of a sweaty pitcher, and he'd pour half beer, half water to keep the alcoholic content down. (Can't really keep it down if you drink that many pitchers, though!) I remember eating the best barbeque street food ever, and walking down the street to buy fresh pan de sal. We joke now about how long it took to get home from the Philippines, since we flew non-revenue and kept getting bumped off planes in Japan, in Hong Kong, in Seattle. I remember sitting in the Hong Kong airport, praying that maybe, just maybe, they dimmed the fluorescent lights at two in the morning, wondering if we would ever make it home.

At that point in my life, I could not associate the concept of a "homeland" with the Philippines. I was proud of my heritage and of my parents' motherland, but my homebase was America. It's a process that I'm still undergoing, but I have finally come to terms with the marginalized status that many Filipinos face, whether it's being a Filipino-American in white America, or whether it's being the not-really-Asian-so-I-guess-we're-Pacific-Islanders of Southeast Asia. On that brief trip to the Philippines, I spent two weeks going home: home to America and home to the Philippines. Ten years later, I know I've made it home.

In honor of No Reservations, I made one of my fave F'lipino dishes, kare kare. I toasted some rice and pulverized it in the coffee grinder until it made a really light flour. This was supposed to be the thickening agent for the broth, and it worked nicely except Clinton said I probably didn't need to make it so much a flour. Next time I'll grind it so it has some texture instead of just thickening qualities. I finally got to use the mortar and pestle that Elizabeth got me for Christmas and made a peanut butter paste. I wish I ground it into more of a fine paste because when I added it to the broth, it was a little too chunky for my liking. It needed to be smooth (like peanut butter!) but I just didn't go far enough. Last time I made kare kare I used peanut butter and oxtails which ended up too rich. I ended up scooping some peanut butter into this at the end because it just wasn't rich enough this time around.






Kare kare in the pot. Used lamb shanks to make the broth and then thinly cut some beef round for the filling.



Served it with some unripened mango.



And not really a traditional pairing, but I sauteed up some plaintains alongside to offer a little starchy sweetness.