Sunday, 16 January 2011

• 5 Hour/10 Course Philippine Feast

  I'm a bit of a compulsive list maker.  Whenever I have visited or lived in another country, I pour over guide books and pick friends' brains for the best things to see and do.  Then, I make my "bucket list" per se - the list of everything I want to accomplish before leaving.

  In fact, I even made one of those for New York City, where I live now, because I always hear of people living somewhere for years and never seeing the essentials.  I don't want to be in that boat, always regretting something I could have done, but didn't because I just never got around to it.

  So, you can imagine that, when I lived in the Philippines for five years, I did the same.  One of the heralded tours, and one which was on my Philippine bucket list, was a foodie tour, led by Ivan Man Dy and his merry band of foodie dudes, of the Pampanga region in the Philippines, culminating in a 5 hour, 10 course meal by the renowned architect cum chef, Claude Tayag.

  This tour began by leaving Manila at 7am and returning close to midnight.  After the mid-day feast, most of us were close to comatose, but managed to stay awake for the yearly festival of lights, a handmade lantern competition with lights synchronized to music!

  That's it in a nutshell, but I wanted to share some pictures of the massive coma-inducing, but magically delicious Filipino meal that we had the extreme pleasure of partaking.  I hope you'll have the time to take one of these Filipino food tours someday yourself.  Enjoy!

  

  

  Arrival time:  About 12:30pm.  Places neatly set with native abaca placemats and table runners, we anticipate what is to come...

  A fresh glass of dalandan juice (tastes like an orange, looks like a lime, but very delish!) with brown sugar ice cubes!  Sooo refreshing on a balmy day!

  Course 1 (about 1:30pm): Pickled Vegetable Salad with glass noodles

  Course 2: Fried Banana Lumpia (eggroll) topped with green hotsauce and XO Chili Sauce and wrapped in a lettuce leaf (amazing!) OR...

  

  ...depending on what day you took your tour, you might have gotten the Sushi and Fresh Vegetable Spring Roll instead.

  

  

  Course 3 (around 1:50pm):  Fresh fern salad, plucked right from his garden.  He was happy to send all of us home with some clippings so we could plant our own.

  Course 4 (around 1:30pm): Blackened pork ribs served with a scoop of rice.

  

  

  Cool off time was needed after the first four courses.  Rolled up frozen hand towels were distributed to wipe your face, neck and hands, keeping you nice and cool and energized to stay the course!

  

  

  Course 5 (around 2:00pm): Pork Bone Marrow.  Feel free to suck it right out of there!  I was a little hesitant, but I gave it a try.  With my over-active imagination, I was having issues and phsyching myself out over sucking marrow out of a bone with a straw.  I'm pretty adventurous, but I have my limits.

  

  The lechon (roast pig) is sliced to perfection by the chef himself.  Crispy crackling could be heard as the sharp knife divided the skin into small squares...

  Course 6 (around 2:15pm): Squares of lechon skin, crisp and served with a liver gravy...OR...sisig, ground up "parts" served with various spices - a Filipino favorite à la Claude Tayag!

  

  Course 7 (around 2:48pm):  We are tasked with assembling our own "soft taco", comprised of prichon (fried and shredded pork), kimchi, tomatoes, onions, cilantro, green hot sauce and XO chili sauce.  All wrapped in home-made flour tortillas.  This dish was, by far, my favorite!

  

  Course 8 (around 3:15pm):  Sinigang - a sour soup with pork cubes, okra, taro root and a cone of rice wrapped in a banana leaf.  Add calamansi (cross between a lemon and lime), chili and other spicy sauces to taste.

  

  Course 9:  A delicious, and possibly American inspired dish of barbeque pork, served with carrots, new potatoes and Baguio (northern city in the Philippines) beans.

  

  Course 10:  Finally, at around 5pm, we are offered two different desserts - (1) a creamy crème brulée topped with a sugared ball of egg yolk, a sugared ball of purple ube (a root) and a ball of sweetened, compressed rice and (2) a square of white sweet something, possibly coconut flavored and sprinkled with nuts and brown sugar.  Not to sweet.

  We were offered pandan (a leaf native to the Philippines) tea to round off the meal, along with a tour of the chef's home upstairs, which he had built himself, solely from recycled wood and construction materials.

  It was a wonderful food-filled day and I'd highly recommend any of the food tours that these guys do!  Check them out here or look up UltimatePhilippines.com.  You can also check out some of the local (Manila) 2-4 hour food tours at on his Street Walker Tales Blog or Old Manila Walks.

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