Took out the canned jackfruit(langka) an hour ago. It would be nice to cook KBL, an Ilonggo dish of Kadyos(a type of bean), Baboy(pork), and langka (jackfruit). But here I go again….procastinating on the computer.

I don’t feel too confident about cooking this dish, I guess. Months ago, fueled by a picture on a food blog, I went out to buy some black beans (substitute for kadyos), bulalo beef cuts(substitute for pork), and canned jackfruit. I began to lose interest in my work while it was boiling away on the stove. I couldn’t understand where my dish was headed. Was it supposed to taste like bulalo or linaga?Because I was sure as hell it didn’t taste like KBL.

My husband, who (much to my irritation) always asks about the name of a dish (as if dishes were books with titles), gave me his usual “What’s that called?” question. I apologetically said “I can’t really understand what it’s supposed to be. Basta. May sabor. It’s edible.”  He smiled and answered that he’s used to my cooking by now, that nothing really surprises him anymore.

Sigh. To a lesser degree, I think I’m like my mother. And maybe this latest realization about myself is my punishment for all the times I teased her when she’d put a queer-looking dish on the table. She has the tendancy to experiment. She turns a recipe upside down by putting ingredients that are not supposed to be there. Just last weekend she served miswa for dinner. It had cabbage and ginger in it! That’s culinary innovation at its best. I kept my mouth shut this time, but in the past I would usually say, in my best announcer voice, “Welcome to the  Cooking Adventures of Dax”. She’d just laugh and counter that  cooking doesn’t always have to follow a cookbook.

If I were to grade my KBL attempt, I would give myself an NI for Needs Improvement. The meat and the beans were not tender enough. The jackfruit had somehow disintegrated. My only consolation was that  my husband ate a lot. He disappeared after the meal. When I saw him again he informed me, with a smug smile on his face, that his BM was as effortless as flowing water. Coming from him, that’s really something. Best compliment of all was when my 3 yr. old told me that she liked it and finished the contents of the bowl I gave her.

That’s not too bad for a dish I had quietly named: Identity Crisis Beef.

Just as Gaisano Department Store is the “place to be” for Ilonggo shoppers on a budget, the Golden Dragon in LA Chinatown is the “place to be”  for the Baylon family when they want to eat out without spending too much. As long as my husband is not working, Saturdays mean lunch at the Golden Dragon. “Can we go somewhere else?”, I plead. “I don’t like chicken feet anymore,” grumbled my son. It used to be his favorite – those yummy, yellow, gelatinous, and edematous feet, which remind me of diabetic patients in nursing homes.

Wubbzy, my daughter’s favorite cartoon character, sang “Too much of a good thing is not a good thing, it’s never fun.”  We’ve been there so many times that my three-year-old has developed a sort of affinity for the jovial Buddha statue that greets customers at the entry to the main dining hall. I pointed at it once and asked, “Athena,who’s that?” Without batting an eyelash, she declared that it was her daddy.  Amused that she had right away seen the similarities between the deity and her two-hundred-pounder father, I laughed out loud. Her dad gave her a bland smile and muttered, “I need to lose weight.”  I repeated the question to my little girl. Sensing that her previous statement elicited a strong reaction, she gave a different answer this time. “He’s my Lolo”, she corrected herself. Her grandfather, who’s always with us on these lunches, is bald like Buddha.

My Chinese friend, Carmelita Lim, introduced me to this place years ago. I introduced my husband to it and we’ve been coming back ever since. The food is good but it’s a bit greasy. They have a wide selection on the menu. What we like the most are the many dimsum carts that go around the room with bowls and small plates filled with pretty-looking food.  There’s siomai, turnip cakes, steamed vegetables, steamed buns, baked buns, salads, noodles, bread, multi-colored jell-o, custard cakes, maja-blanca-like dessert, wonton soup, and so much more.

My cholesterol-rich father-in-law sticks to the steamed chinese broccoli and seaweed salad.  Athena only eats steamed meatballs and chicken siopao. My son’s new favorite is the braised beef and the curried chicken baked in puff pastry. My husband, who has vowed to be a vegan, struggles with his self control. And I eat whatever I want. Selecting food from those carts is always fun for me and my family, just as much as keeping the food steady in between two chopsticks. Now I understand why the Chinese drink tea during meals. It washes the grease off your palate, taking away the aftertaste of food. Then you’re ready to chow down some more. It allows you to eat like a pig without feeling like a pig.

In addition to the gustatory adventure, you also get to experience a linguistic adventure. Sometimes when a waiter offers you something from her cart, you have to stop and think hard, carefully process what she’s telling you. When they ask if you want something that sounds like chicken nana (meaning puss in Filipino) or nono (meaning dwarf in Filipino), they’re asking if you want chicken noodles. Once I was handed a small plate filled with three pieces of  bread. The bread had a shiny yellow center. The waiter said,”Try it. It’s seaweed.”  I’ve never tasted yellow seaweed baked in a bread so I took it. After one bite, I was confused.  The yellow seaweed tasted like custard. Wait…it was custard! Seaweed, I realized, meant “sweet”. When we left the restaurant I had a richer “Chinese-English” vocabulary.

And don’t get me started on the restaurant’s sanitation rating… For years, I’ve never seen the Golden Dragon display an “A” on its doors.  It’s always been “B”. This year they slipped down a notch, but still prouder than ever. Even with a “C” rating from the sanitation department, the customers keep coming. They keep eating with gusto.  My husband, like the others, is unfazed by the big red “C”. I am a little apprehensive. When they put the food on the table I turn to him and say, “I wonder how their kitchen looks like.” As he inspects the tempting dishes on the cart, I warn, “Don’t get anything that has milk in it. It might contain melamine.” My mother-in-law (who is convinced that the Chinese have an evil plot to rule the world by  slowly poisoning people with lead, formalin, and melamine) nods her head vigorously.

Hubby pays no heed. He tells me that all my comments are just scare tactics so we can go somewhere more upscale, like Louise’s Trattoria in Los Feliz. Why not? Golden Dragon has the ambiance of a Sulpicio Lines ship cafeteria.  The dining room is crowded and filled with the din of silverware and people talking. Not relaxing at all.  Sometimes, while you’re sucking the flesh off the phalanges of your chicken feet, you’ll see a small and consumptive-looking man pushing a large trash bin from the kitchen to an exit across the dining hall. How delightful!

I reminded my husband, “That man with the trash bin in the middle of the room looks like your friend, Oplok.”  He squinted his eyes in an effort to recall the name and the face. “Oplok, the guy at the Dumangas-Balabag jeepney terminal . It was his job to call for passengers. He had TB, remember?”, I told him. He marvelled at the resemblance. Somehow the thought of a kitchen personnel who might have TB didn’t sit well with me.  ”Do you think that guy has TB?”, I asked. Hubby eyed his plate suspiciously for 2-3 seconds. Just when I thought I have made him see the light, he reached for the plate of stuffed mushrooms with black bean sauce, Oplok-look-alike already light years away from his mind.

Several months ago he discreetly pointed at a bespectacled man seated a few tables away from us. He had a confident posture and an air of quiet authority about him. Hubby whispered, “That’s Dr. Yamamoto. He’s the best cardio-thoracic surgeon at St. Vincent Medical Center.  Drives only the best cars. When he transferred to another hospital, all the ICU nurses went with him because he asked the hospital to increase their hourly rate. That’s how influential he is.”  He looked at me meaningfully, with raised eyebrows. “Imagine a man like that eating here!”, he continued.

Hubby’s Subtext: Stop your yapping. If a bigtime health professional like him can eat here without fear, so can you.

I guess Loiuse’s Trattoria will have to wait ’til my next birthday.

]]> http://chiquibaylon.net/2009/04/our-place-to-be-a-restaurant-review/feed/ 7 http://chiquibaylon.net/2009/03/300-ilonggo-version/ http://chiquibaylon.net/2009/03/300-ilonggo-version/#comments Mon, 23 Mar 2009 15:20:33 +0000 Chiqui http://chiquibaylon.net/?p=983

I was brushing my daughter’s teeth in the bathroom when my husband called out to me urgently. Thinking that something was wrong, I hurriedly finished my task and rushed outside. There I found him in front of the computer laughing heartily and noisily. “You have to see this!”, he said as he turned to me. Kung gapamati ka drama sa radyo, masadyahan ka gid sini.

Isn’t this a pretty bowl of laswa?

Can you spot the fish?

A steaming bowl of laswa is the best way to cleanse your  digestive system of  all that grease  from the not-too-good-for-your-health dishes served during the holiday season. It resets your mind  from party mode back to the realities of everyday life.    

Nothing screams “Ilonggo” louder than laswa. I dreaded seeing this on the dinner table as a child.  Funny how, when I grew older, I  found myself craving it whenever I was away from Iloilo.  This is my comfort food, I guess. For the past ten years, I’ve picked up some valuable lessons that have reinforced my  skill in cooking this dish.  No more tears now. ( I used to get so upset  when people didn’t eat what I cook. )  Today, I have the audacity  to claim that I am to laswa the way Bobby Flay is to grilling. (Eat your heart out, Daddy!) 

MY LASWA LESSONS

• It’s not as easy as you think. The first time I made it,I thought there was nothing to it.  What’s so difficult about boiling vegetables? Just drop the chunky ones first because they cook longer. Put some salt.  Drop the leafy ones last and voila – it’s all done.  The result— nobody liked it, including me. It’s so deceptively simple that it’s easy to  make a mess of it. The moral of the story is: don’t be overconfident when cooking  rustic, peasant food.  It can humble you in a big way.
• Use a small amount of water. One or two cups would be okey. A dear old lady told me this. She explained that while the vegetables are boiling they will release their own liquids, which will sweeten the broth. 
• I used to just put salt in the vegetables and couldn’t understand why there seemed to be something misssing in the taste.  I realized that I had forgotten all about the subak or the sahog.  Some people use fresh tiny shrimps or sura-sura.  Others use grilled fish.  Dried fish is also good. I like to fry or sanlag my dried fish before dropping it into the pot.  This way it doesn’t disintegrate easily. I put them in towards the end.  My favorite is dried lobo-lobo(silverfish). All these enhance  the broth, but no matter what subak I have, I always use patis(fish sauce).  A tablespoon or two  of this  offensively pungent liquid rounds out the flavor of the dish. It provides a good contrast to the sweetness of the vegetables.
• Laswa is best when cooked just a few minutes before sitting down to eat.  It is no good when it’s cold.