Confused Octopus

Tamaya, octopus are one of the favourite foods here, but in my opinion, Filipinos don't do the best by them.

The first one I ever tasted was in Cyprus, where an octopus attached itself to my bare white heel , as I was preparing to dive. My companion picked it off, bashed it on the rocks where we were sitting (to tenderise it), and told me how to cook it in slowly in red wine for a very long time (with the usual extras).

Octopus cooking is a very delicate art; it's one of my long-term projects to learn exactly how.

Blanch, raw, slow cook, rapid boil, or what?*

Somewhere along that gradient, there's a point where the meat will come out fresh, tender and tasty. That's the moment when the real cook will know he's got it just right.

I'll keep trying.

Meanwhile, consider these poor octopi, who are extremely good at doing camouflage, but have been wholly confused by being put out to expire on a chequered background.

Update 1: The answer to this is to get the first cooked point just exactly right, or stew the damned things for hours to get back to it.

Tridacna - Giant Clams

Tridacna clams belong to the family that is supposed to grab your foot if you're a careless diver, and hold you trapped until whatever, which is rubbish.

There are some truly enormous ones, Tridacna gigas, which might actually do that after a bad night out on the town, but the more usual species in the Philippines, and around the Indo-Pacific, is Tridacna squamosa, the Fluted Clam.

It's usually quite large, and full of good meat, which I don't really understand. I've never come across a Tridacna teenager, or any other juvenile, although, of course, there are small(-ish) ones, that perhaps I ignore.

The ones shown in the above photo come from Surigao City market, where they are sold in the 'cheap corner'. (That's why there's some seaweed on offer at the front).

But de-shelled, the reasons for eating this shellfish become very, very obvious.

It's nutritious, of course, but I suspect it's visual qualities have a lot in common with full frontals published by the likes of Larry Flynt.

You wouldn't find this shell in ancient shell middens, because it's too damned heavy to carry back home.

All you need is something to cut the joint muscle between the two halves of the shell. That could be any old bit of stone or wood that you can pick up.
Then you take home the meat, and leave the shell behind.

Coconut Harvest

This is the usual three-monthly coconut harvest from the sixteen trees in my garden. The usual haul is 5 sacks, each of about 25 kilos kopras meat (about 100 pieces per sack).

It's a wonderful, bountiful tree - see: Coco Loco

It does everything you can think of, except, possibly, marriage guidance, but it's almost certainly got a secret chemical that will help with that kind of problem.

One brave fellow climbs the trees and trims off the ripe coconuts, and they come crashing down like small bombs.
Then they chop the whole nuts in half, and scoop out the meat with a specially-shaped knife, a lugit.



The meat is now kopras, but it has to be dried first, in a tapahan, which is really a bodged-up smokehouse, like this. The smouldering coconut husks are used for fuel, and the process takes most of a day.

I've often wondered why the operators of the tapahan don't also use the process to cold smoke a few fish or sides of pork, but perhaps they've never thought of it

Siargao Zingiber Project - Sidelining

For the first time, I got up off my bum, and went myself with my crew (Ron & Shedney), to find some new and exotic ginger plants reasonably nearby.
We went to Victor's Flying Fox Bar, built, like only a total crazy could do, out in the boonies, opposite a perfect jungle mountain, where the flying foxes do a grand fly-past every evening, dead on time at 2.5 minutes past dusk.

We walked along the edge of the mountain, and we did find a couple of new ginger plants (which I'm waiting to have identified).
But, more than that, we found some other strange plants that I don't have much of a clue about:

This is wild ubi, a purple yam, that, domesticated, is a great favourite here in the Philippines. It's even a top flavour for ice cream. Purple ice cream? It's delicious. Only in the Philippines.

And we found these, abandoned: Puso banana buds, but only the stripped skins, the buds taken off to make into a fabulous salad.

And then this one, known locally as padjaw. It's an aroid, but I don't know much more about it, and I don't know why it grows 'pretend peppers'.

Venus in Blue Jeans

I've been having a lot of idle fun in the past few days, playing with the Paint.Net program. It's fun, it's free, and (I think) it does most of what you might want.

This is John Everett Millais' 'Venus Verticordia' (Venus will turn your heart vertical). It's a winsome, bee-stung lipped nonsense, with slight symptoms of thyroid trouble in her neck.

Here, on the other hand, by Hans Memling, is an old lady who's seen it all.

She ain't going to take shit from nobody.


But this is the best, the Rokeby Venus, by Diego Velázquez.

Truly, Venus in Blue Jeans, and one of the best bums ever painted.

Pool Swimmer

People keep on writing to me about why I've lived in the Philippines for all of 12 years and still like it.

Look at the photo above - 'nuff said.

Lato Seaweed Salad

I do love this stuff.

Koi-Koi, my neighbour, brings me some from time to time, often together with some tajum, sea urchin roe, and they go well together.

They taste like salty little grapes, bursting in the mouth in the same way as caviare, but they're a lot cheaper.

This kind is my favourite. The branches are like little green Walt Disney toadstools.

To eat them, all you do is collect them straight from the sea. If you haven't got fresh sea water to rinse them in, use a little vinegar. But make sure you do wash them; a lot of tiny crabs and shrimp live in the bunches, and you don't want to chomp those as well.

I also featured another kind of lato at: Seaweeds as Food

Pako Fern - Lunchtime Salad

This is pako fern; it grows naturally in the forests around here, and is gathered by women for sale in the local markets.

It doesn't rank very high on local food-value scales.

But it tastes wonderful, as a fresh salad, with the usual oil and vinegar dressing. It's crispy and tasty.

Here, it's thought of as an occasional delicacy, but otherwise as a famine food, the only thing you can find to eat after a typhoon or earthquake.

Last year, when exceptional rains, floods and landslides cut Lanuza (opposite my island on the 'mainland' of Mindanao) off from the outside world, this was all they had left to eat.

If the local people could somehow find a way to get this salad into Western supermarkets, they'd have a winner.
It's very cultivable.

Incidentally, when I talk about the 'usual oil and vinegar dressing', I'm not referring to all those fancy Mediterranean virgin olive oils and balsamic vinegars, that cost a fortune. I'm referring to our very own cold-pressed virgin coconut oil, and the vinegar that results from not drinking all the coconut sap tuba wine in time.

No sooner had I first written the draft of this, than I wanted to find more about this wonderful salad. Here is a photo of pako fern being served in a Vancouver restaurant, from vacationtime at Flickr. It looks as if these are the very top fiddlehead buds, braised lightly.

This is not so good; it's like the French, who braise lettuce, for god's sake. The Frogs don't know nuffink about cooking.


Here is the fern, growing wild, locally.

And, finally, here's a recipe for Kerabu pucuk pakis from a feast, everyday, who seem to come from Malaya, and are obviously interested in food, because they call themselves thedroolteam.

Pakis kerabu
2 cups pakis soft tips, washed and cut into 2" length
1 tablespoon dried prawns, washed and soaked

Dressing
1 tablespoon fish sauce
2 tablespoon lime juice
1-2 bird's eye chillies, chopped
sugar, to taste

Blanch the pakis in boiling water for 2-3 minutes; rinse in cold water and drain.
Drain the dried prawns and chop or pound coarsely; fry in a dry pan without oil over medium heat until fragrant and golden.
Sprinkle a pinch of sugar on the dried prawn to caramelise and off the heat.
Mix together the dressing, adjust to suit your taste (our palates lean heavily to the sourish side); toss in well with the pakis and chill. Mix in the dried prawns to serve.

Malay foods seem to be a lot more subtle and interesting, than Filipino foods, and that puzzles me. Perhaps the Malays have a longer and more 'civilised' culture history than my neighbours on this small island?

Shedney Being a Dam' Nuisance

Part of my reasoning for my extravagant investment in Shedney's new sari-sari store was to stop her sitting around like this beside my work desk, doing her devilish and seductive best to distract me.

Nice green leaf

This is just a nice photo, one of the best I've taken recently, of the underside of a garden leaf. I can't even remember what it's a leaf of, but if you click onto the photo, you'll go to a full-size version that has an extraordinarily calming effect.

Have I just discovered a harmless version of Prozac? Probably, yes. And probably my local postman will misdeliver, again, my royalties cheque.