Man Friday Repost

BECAUSE I WANT TO GET BACK into its groove after serious history stuff, I am reposting this piece from two years ago. Subway papercut art by Asian-American Bianca Levan. Have a great Pinoy Thanksgiving!

More Tropical Highs

TESS' SUMMER HARVEST deserves a shot, and the thermostat is a memory.

Bermuda!

FROZEN STEAKS, Spam, spicy Ligo, Lucky Me noodles, everything needed to cook inside the club is packed to avoid paying $20 each for a restaurant meal and limit buying Bermuda groceries. Temperature forecast averages 70F next week, not sure if it's warm enough to go in the water, but bringing the snorkeling gear anyway ($10 each on eBay). Ready to see some coconut trees again on Friday.

Lechon!

Earless pig head lechon (already power saw-split so you can partake of the brain) for $3 from Shun Wang, Elmhurst, with the tree, thermostat, hibiscus and Sara's piano and Spanish book in the background. Buen provecho!

Merry Christmas

BECAUSE NEW YORK must have its air cargo, I was drafted to do targeting in the early hours of Christmas Day, after the original guy protested with his seniority. Rats. At least they put my name in red. And my family vowed to save those giblets for me.

$9.99

Hangover buster: fish soup $2.50

Flounder, shrimp, scallops and chips $7.50

Clams and oysters are a buck each

THE BEST THING about living in the city is that you don't have to have a bundle of cash to find good grub and feel like you're eating like a local in some faraway place. One of my favored destinations on my weekend walks from Maspeth is a hole-in-the-wall in Jackson Heights that serves fresh seafood for almost nothing. On top of their menu, for me, is the fish soup (I'm guessing whiting with broth made from scraps of all the fish they sell) with rice, diced potatoes, carrots, onions and celery that's only $2.50 a cup and is a meal in itself. They don't have ceviche, but they have fresh oysters and clams for a dollar each, and wedges of refreshing lime gratis. The owner is Korean, the crew is Jackson Heights Hispanic (maybe Colombian or Ecuadorian), the clientele is migrant Latino, and the cable channel is Telemundo. In the rear yard, an FM radio blares with the rhythm of salsa while a playful crew scales and shucks, guts and cuts, sweeps and hoses blood, scales, guts and gills down a gutter. You grab a stool by the dining counter behind a glass wall facing Roosevelt Avenue and watch Hispanic Queens go by: a cellophane-gloved gordita pares pineapples for her fruit stand; a paisano pushes his stolen shopping cart with a portable charcoal grill on it; an arrogant cop slaps traffic tickets on overstaying cars parked by the curb. The room is heavy with the smell of frying fish, and as the hangover is killed by the scalding soup, you feel like you're in a market restaurant somewhere in Lima or Veracruz or Guayaquil, no tips required. Amazing to think that in a half-hour, you will be browsing around Best Buy for electronics that are on sale. Ta bien, amigos!

Jose Fish Market, 81-04 Roosevelt Avenue, Jackson Heights, NY 11372 (718) 478-0232



Grab a stool and imagine you're in Lima

Where To Find Pho In Morris County

WHEN I WAS NEW in Hopatcong and had a craving for pho, I used to drive forty miles to the only Vietnamese restaurant I knew this side of the Hudson: Pho Thanh Hoai in Jersey City.  But not anymore. As I became familiar with northwest Jersey and learned about its digs, I eventually discovered a bunch of Vietnamese restaurants right up my alley. Too bad the nearest one is vegetarian, but the next closest and best thing, TOPO, which stands for "the old post office," (what the building it occupies used to be) has a huge menu that is Pan Asian. And it is not even in Morris county. TOPO is in neighboring Warren county, in a little town called Hackettstown which is home to Centenary College and is the western terminus of the Montclair-Boonton and Morristown rail lines from Manhattan. This town has sure piqued my interest, and I am sure to explore it further in the days to come.

Loving Hut (Vegetarian)

538 State Route 10,

Ledgewood, NJ 07852

(862) 251-4611

TOPO (The Old Post Office)

218 Main Street

Hackettstown, NJ 07840

(908) 850-5888

Saigon Pho

744 U.S. 46

Parsippany, NJ 07054

(973) 794-4632

Pho Thanh Huong

73 New Road

Parsippany, NJ 07054

(973) 521-9900

Lemongrass

1729 Route 10 East
Morris Plains, NJ 07950
(973) 998-6303

Viet Ai
189 Ridgedale Avenue
Florham Park, NJ 07932
(973) 410-9400

Turo Turo In Little Manila

I WISH I HAD DONE IT MYSELF, but CulturalXplorer beat me into making the most comprehensive guide to Filipino restaurants in Jersey City.

Manila Avenue

Bun Bo Hue In Jersey City

BEFORE I DISCOVERED bun bo Hue, I thought pho was the best thing that happened to noodle soup. How wrong I was. One day, as my family sat down inside our favorite Vietnamese restaurant ready for something new, I spotted a piping hot bowl of noodles in a fragrant brick-red soup being enjoyed by a customer at the table next to ours. I asked the waiter what the dish was, and his response opened a whole new horizon of noodle soup experience for us. Because bun bo hue is anything but pho, no, sir, bun bo hue takes it a to a much higher level, with beef shank, pork knuckles, congealed pork blood (which has a tofu-like texture) and Vietnamese pork loaf swimming in reddish-brown broth that is seasoned with spicy annatto and chili oil, lemongrass, sugar and fermented fish and shrimp sauce, for a depth of flavors and aromas better than that of mami, La Paz batchoy, saimin, ramyun, udon, laksa and pho combined.  The noodles are also thicker, smoother and more cylindrical than the regular rice noodles used for pho. Not used to smooth noodles, I request the waiter to use the traditional rice noodles for my bun bo Hue when I order.  After a ten-hour workday that begins at four o'clock in the morning processing passengers at Newark Liberty International Airport, I consider it a piece of heaven in a bowl. Served with a salad side dish consisting of  mungbean sprouts, shredded lettuce or purple cabbage (in place of banana blossoms which are hard to find in New York City Asian food markets), fresh basil, culantro or mint and lime wedges, the dish is a complete meal that costs less than $10. Despite its street food ingredients, bun bo Hue might have been regal fare, originating from the former imperial city of Hue in central Vietnam which is associated with the cooking style of the royal court. For the recipe, follow Wandering Chopsticks' detailed step-by-step from scratch procedure.

There are two places in Jersey City where I can get my fix of bun bo Hue after work; both have free parking, but Pho Thanh Hoai's version has the more authentic home-cooked taste.

Thanh Huong Restaurant, 533 West Side Avenue,  Jersey City, New Jersey 07304, phone (201) 333-3030

Pho Thanh Hoai (formerly Nha Trang) Restaurant, 249 Newark Avenue, Jersey City, New Jersey 07302, phone (201) 239-1988

Blood, Hearts And Flowers

WALKING BY THE FRONT YARD of a former neighbor in Elmhurst a couple of years ago, I came across a flowering vine that struck me as a near clone of the Philippine coral vine, known back home as the romantic cadena de amor (chain of love), a plant that used to thrive on the drab concrete fence of my childhood home on the island of Mindoro. After making sure that no one was looking, I picked some mature pods from the vine straying on the sidewalk and soaked the seeds in water when I got home, thinking my wife would love a potted plant of this specimen beside her sampaguita on the kitchen counter. However, autumn came and went and the seeds never sprouted. (Maybe I soaked them too long or the seeds were not fertile, but I certainly do have a green thumb.) So, instead of going back to the street and being caught vandalizing a garden, I spent time the following weeks browsing pictures in a spring plant catalog, swearing that no matter what, I was going to find out what that vine was. And last year, I did. Its scientific name is Lathyrus latifolius (common name perennial sweet pea), a favorite specimen in English gardens that is believed to have been introduced to the United States during the colonial period. It also comes in shades of red, white, purple and blue. Impatient with seeds, I ordered a couple of potted seedlings online from Gurney's and they arrived via UPS wonderfully packed, just in time for last year's fall planting. (The best time to plant in temperate zones is late fall or early spring.) I planted them in a spot by our doorsteps to give their tendrils the iron rails to grab on when they grow. Lathyrus can also be quite prolific and invasive if unchecked, and the seeds inside the fruit pods are slightly poisonous, so everybody had to be warned. However, the best thing about it is that it doesn't have to be taken indoors and placed next to the thermostat in the winter, as it is a frost-hardy perennial plant that comes back year after year. I can't wait for spring to see this near twin of cadena de amor (I call it cadena de America) come to life and bloom in the summer.

One way to beat the cold this winter season is to eat a lot of spicy food, and speaking of spicy Filipino food, what else can be hotter than our Mindoreno version of kare kare, which is totally different from the popular oxtail-and-peanut sauce stew known to the rest of the country. Ours is actually a variation of pork blood stew (dinuguan), but the meat and internal organs are finely chopped (like bopiz), and it uses banana hearts and tons of red hot peppers, chopped as fine as the cabbage in coleslaw, and coconut milk. Also, the finished product is dry and oily and not soupy like dinuguan. In my childhood, the sound of a cleaver knife rapping on the butcher's block as my mother chopped away the meat, banana hearts and chili peppers into minute pieces was a happy noise that gave our house a festive atmosphere. But because of all the chopping the kare kare required, we usually bought ours instead from an old lady who came by a coconut wine cantina down our street every dusk, balancing an aluminum pot on a turban around her head to sell her spicy viand to local tipplers as pulutan (hors d'oeuvre or pupu).

In New York City, fresh banana hearts can be quite rare and expensive (canned ones are just too soggy), and we get ours from New York Supermarket in Elmhurst which has a great Oriental produce section, with tropical fruits and vegetables that I believe have been imported from Thailand or Mexico. (This is also where we get green papayas for our tinola, and mangoes.) Banana hearts are like artichokes; you must peel away and discard about 2/3 of the product you paid for as weight before you can get to the edible part. So, for this dish, you may spend around $10 on banana hearts alone because you will need at least three of them, considering the portion that will be thrown away. In the supermarket, you can also buy pork blood in a sealed plastic cup, chitterlings and other internal organs for the dish, but the Chinese butchers will give you a funny look if you ask them to grind the innards for you (they only do the flesh), so be prepared to do the job yourself. Unless you have your own meat grinder or food processor, you certainly don't want to do this manually with a cleaver knife and chopping board, especially if someone in your house is nursing a hangover or if your apartment is not sound-proofed for fussy neighbors.

To make kare kare Mindoro style: In a deep pan or pot, saute garlic until brown and onion until wilted in hot oil. Add the ground meat and internal organs, season with salt and pepper, and cover until it boils. Meanwhile, mash with your hands the finely chopped banana hearts with some salt in a colander, and squeeze the sap out. (Not doing so will give the kare kare a mapakla aftertaste from the juice of the tiny immature fruits.) Add the resulting banana heart pulp and a can of coconut milk to the pot and bring to a boil without the lid on. Then cover and simmer until everything is tender. (You may have to add water before you achieve this, because there is a lot of cellulose in the pulp.) Add the pork blood mixed with vinegar, stirring nonstop to prevent the blood from coagulating until the mixture boils again. Add the chopped hot peppers last (the amount depends on your tastebuds' stamina, but I like to put about one fourth of a cup) and reseason. Simmer until all the water evaporates and the deep brown dish glistens from the oil rendered by the meat and coconut milk, exuding a slightly acidic, coconutty aroma. Serve with freshly steamed rice or as an appetizer or pulutan, but always have a glass of water handy. A spoonful of it is guaranteed to wake up the most drunken toper. Cheers!

I wish to thank Big Berto for the image closest to that of Mindoro kare kare that I found in his blog and borrowed. Happy Valentine to all, especially to my better half and Sara.

New York Supermarket, 82-66 Broadway, Elmhurst, Queens, New York 11373, phone (718) 803-1233

Noodle Soup Row In Flushing Mall

WE JUMPED INTO THE FREEZING Toyota Highlander after church last Sunday to see what's going on for Chinese New Year in Flushing Mall. (Many people call Flushing in Queens New York's real Chinatown, not the one in the Canal Street area of Manhattan.) The mall is old and dingy; my wife said it reminded her of Divisoria with its cheap garments and trinkets, but its basement has a food court that is occupied by thirteen-or-so noodle soup stalls that offer Sichuan, Korean, Taiwanese and many other variations of this cheap winter fare for $5.50 or less. One chef makes hand-drawn noodles right in front of the customers, who are mostly "just-off-the-boat" Chinese. Indeed, one gets the feeling that he is on a Shanghai or Taipei sidestreet. Some stalls do not even bother to translate their posted menus into English, befuddling even my wife who is half-Chinese and speaks a little Fookien. Thank goodness for the pictures. I settled for the familiar spicy stewed beef with sinewy tendons like Chow King's beef mami, with parboiled bok choy. My wife, the more adventurous one, had fish noodle soup Korean (or was it Japanese?) style, which turned out to be a discovery. (The fish strips are deep-fried in batter like tempura, and the thick spicy broth had the consistency of bird's nest soup with tinapa flavor. Add chopped cilantro leaves to that as garnish and you can imagine the taste.) From our table, we watched the celebration in the adjoining atrium, with amateur Chinese musicians, dancers, magicians and acrobats. The whole thing was a good bang for the buck; we spent about $15 (pickled ox tripe and tongue extra for some uric acid) and went home happy and warm, ready to face the day's challenges.

Here are pictures of the joint and Sara with the ox. Although she is one quarter Chinese, the pose struck us as oddly blasphemous because we just got out of a Catholic church, but we reminded ourselves that this was not Aaron's biblical golden calf. Gung Hay Fat Choy!

Flushing Mall Food Court, 133-31 39th Avenue, Flushing, Queens, New York 11354, (718) 762-9000

Husband-and-Wife Cuisine, Haute and Otherwise

PINOY FOOD IS A HARD SELL to American palates, so when Cendrillon, a Filipino restaurant opened in trendy SoHo and got rave reviews from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, I had to see, and taste, for myself. It may have been a timely decision; the restaurant is going to close in April and will reopen in Brooklyn as Purple Yam because, according to its owners, the new location will be closer to where they live. So, although I am no food (much less haute cuisine) critic, I boldly took the R train to Prince Street in Manhattan to see what's going on. Owned by husband-and-wife Romy and Amy Dorotan of Manila, the restaurant (Cendrillon is the title of a Massenet opera; their choice of name puzzles me) has been cited as one of the best Pan-Asian restaurants in New York City, and perhaps for a reason. Imagine, who else can sell kare-kare with pungent side dish bagoong alamang to Americans? It is a feat the Dorotans have achieved. The restaurant seems to attract a clientele of curious first-timers, and I wonder how many of them return to become regulars. Maybe a lot, at least in the beginning. Cendrillon has been in existence for thirteen years, but I suspect that the recent economic recession and SoHo's astronomical rent contributed to its owners' decision to move.

So what makes Cendrillon tick? Well, aside from what the reviews say on the website, the trick seems to be the American twists the couple have ingeniously put on Filipino staples, and the Filipino twists on Western ones. For example, they use feta and Gouda cheese instead of quesong puti for rice cakes (bibingka), a combination that is pure heaven, at least according to one critic, Peter Kaminsky of New York Magazine, who called it "an egg McMuffin in the mind of God." The couple also substitute trout for bony milkfish daing. The messy-to-eat dish ginataang alimasag at kalabasa has been refined into crab dumplings with squash puree and coconut milk soup, while still retaining its island flavors. For Pinoy ingredients, they use taro root and purple yam (camote) for mashed potatoes, and pirurutong, a native Philippine rice variety for black paella. (By the way, the dish derives its color from the pirurutong, not from the squid ink as done in Mediterranean cooking.) Another rice cultivar endemic to the islands they so cleverly use is diket, a purple variety of glutinous rice cultivated by upland farmers who inherit the heirloom seeds from their ancestors in the Mountain Province. It is supposed to be organically grown, the perfect ingredient for suman with an intriguing color. For dessert, how about coffee ice cream using Batangas kapeng barako, or lemon meringue pie using calamansi? The list of "fusion" dishes goes on. Being a noodle soup guy, I ordered udon in broth with roasted duck and leeks, a dish neither Filipino nor American, for a price that could buy me two bowls of pho in nearby Chinatown. I did not get disappointed, but did not get wowed either. I spent most of the time perusing the menu, more to satisfy my curiosity than my stomach. Overall rating? Four out of five, mainly for effort.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town in the hospital area of Gramercy, another Pinoy cuisine was stirring a different kind of talk, and controversy, in the neighborhood, according to articles in The New York Daily News and The New York Post forwarded to me by friend Afel Inlong (Click on the newspaper). The Cabrini nuns of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus have filed a lawsuit against Michael and Gloria Lim, a Filipino couple who live in their building, for frying and/or smoking dried herring (tuyo) and infesting the pristine air of their enclave with an unholy aroma that, I imagine, ruined their vestments to an extent that no amount of Downy or Snuggle could restore to their former fragrance. These nuns may have been trained for missions in stinky third world backwaters, but hey, this is Manhattan. The air you breathe is different from mine. (Ironically, St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, the religious order's founder whose supposedly incorrupt body is enshrined in Washington Heights uptown, is the patron saint of immigrants. I wonder what her nuns would hear from her if she were alive.) The damages the sisters seek? $75,000. Maybe it's time for the Lims to take little trips to Queens and buy their tuyo from Phil-Am Food Mart already fried instead?

Photos: Black rice paella and Cendrillon sign above; tomatoes and tuyo, and making diket suman below.

Cendrillon, 45 Mercer Street (between Broome and Grand Streets), New York, New York 10013, Phone (212) 343-9012

In April: Purple Yam, 1314 Cortelyou Road, Brooklyn, New York 11226, phone pending

Here Comes Jollibee!

PARDON THE PICTURES, but I just drove by Roosevelt Avenue early this morning and took these shots with my bad camera. Yes, Jollibee, that popular Filipino fast food chain, is opening its first branch on the East Coast, right in the heart of Manilatown in Woodside by the 7 train. As you can see, the place is still boarded up (the place used to be a Mexican restaurant), but the ads are already there. Though I am not a big fan of fast food, I know a lot of other Queens Pinoys are rejoicing. One thing is sure: it will bring much-needed jobs to kabayans. Mabuhay!

UPDATE (02/14/2009): According to the owner of the Jollibee franchise in New York, the fastfood joint is going to open Saturday, February 14 from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. Seating capacity is 70 people, but according their Facebook events page, about 1,200 are already attending. Thanks, Buj, for the information! Although I am working on Valentine's Day, Sara and Mom will go and try to get in. Below are the latest pictures, thanks to New York Magazine and Serious Eats New York.



UPDATE (02/20/2009): Almost a week after the grand opening, people still have to wait in long lines to be served. Still no telephone number. I guess they will give it out when all the novelty and mania subside. Hey, at least for the moment, they already have enough people to worry about!

UPDATE (02/27/2009): Lines not as bad. Winter schedule: Lines open 8 am to 8 pm on weekdays, and 7 am to 8 pm on weekends. And finally, here's their menu and phone number!

Jollibee, 62-29 Roosevelt Avenue, Woodside, Queens, New York 11377, phone (718) 426-4445

Pho On Grand Avenue

I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN A SUCKER for pho, that great Vietnamese hangover buster. So it was a welcome idea when Little Saigon opened on Grand Avenue. The owners used to operate (under the same name) in a hole-in-the-wall with five tables on 9th Avenue and 46th Street in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen, but closed down after the rent went up to $14,000 a month. Hey, welcome to Queens!

If you want to make your own pho, the best recipe I have found so far is Andrea Nguyen's of San Jose Mercury News. She has tips only a Vietnamese would know, like charring the onions and ginger and using yellow rock sugar.

Little Saigon, 85-32 Grand Ave, Elmhurst, Queens, New York 11373, (718) 205-4279, cash only, Vietnamese cable TV

Baby Food And Other Stinkers

ALTHOUGH THERE ARE SCORES of Asian grocery stores in Queens, one has entrenched itself more deeply in the hearts, and stomachs, of Filipinos in New York. Phil-Am Food Mart, in the heart of Little Manila in Woodside (on the 69th Street station of the 7 train), is owned by hard-working Batanguenos who may well be millionaires now, with the kind of customer traffic they get especially on holidays and weekends. The contents of the store in themselves are not that rare or special: the usual food products like Pampanga's Best tocinos and Mama Sita's flavor mixes, mass-produced for the homesick tongues of Filipino expatriates. But it has a small fresh produce section that carries ingredients for pinakbet, and a cooked food section that offers fried milkfish, dried squid, goby (biya), herring (tunsoy) and other apartment stinkers packed in little aluminum foil boxes. Fastidious Pinoys buy these salty treats even though they are overpriced to satisfy a craving without stinking up one's living space or offending their next door neighbor in the building when they fry these stinkers. Another important aspect of the store is the makeshift bulletin board by its entrance, where enterprising Filipino subletters advertise cheap rooms for rent (usually carved out of apartment spaces using portable dividers, a la Sampaloc, Manila) to jobless newly arrived kabayans, who know nothing of New York city codes and are unlikely to report building violations to 311. This is one of the reasons why some people come here, then shop later. We got the tenant of our attic room through its posting board.

Other than that, the store is special to our family because it is the only place in Queens where we can find frozen baby mackerel tuna (tulingan), not those huge mercury-laden behemoths that sushi chefs hunt at Top Line or Fulton Fish Market, for our Mindoro soul food tinigang. These babies are tender and sweet-tasting; they probably went to the same school (pardon the pun) as the ones they sell in Pinamalayan wet market. One could imagine the tropical sun coming back to life in their eyes after they have been defrosted. Even the sinking of passenger ferry Princess of the Stars did not dampen our appetite for tinigang like it did to our relatives in the Philippines, because we thought these babies were safely asleep in a freezer somewhere in a New Jersey port when the tragedy happened.

Anyway, tinigang is one of the easiest and earliest dishes I learned to cook; I got the technique (or the lack of it) from my grandfather. I use a sharp knife to cut a lengthwise slit on both sides of each fish, press them with the palm of my hand on a chopping board until they are as flat (and nearly round) as a tortilla with a bony smile, sprinkle them with salt and pepper, and stack them in lattice pattern in a wide-bottomed pot. (We bought a cast iron paella pot made in Colombia for this purpose.) I throw in a piece of bacon and a handful of crushed garlic, add water and vinegar (Heinz will do, but Datu Puti is better) and bring it to a boil. Once it simmers, I am instantly transported to the tropics, but my wife cries "Foul!" and scurries all over the house to shut bedroom doors and protect our wardrobe from the clinging, acidic fish smell. Perfect tinigang takes at least an hour to cook; the water has to evaporate almost completely ("tigang" means "dry" in Tagalog), the bones have to be edibly soft, and the fat of the bacon has to incorporate with the sauce for the best patis, so she has to endure the atmosphere for a while. (I usually cook tinigang, fry tunsoy or saute shrimp paste over a hot plate in the garage, but it has become quite a challenge to stay outside because the temperature has dropped to winter levels even though it is still autumn officially.) Once dinner is served, however, usually with some vegetable cooked in coconut milk and freshly steamed Thai jasmine rice, everybody is happy and all stink is forgiven.

Phil-Am Food Mart, 40-03 70th Street, Woodside, Queens, New York 11377, (718) 899-1797, no parking