Anyone for a duck foetus? Fried or boiled?

Many years ago I was given a copy of a wonderful book called “Exotic Food” by Rupert Croft-Cooke, published in 1969. Dipping in to it was a wonderful experience… how would you set about cooking armadillo, elephant tusk, rhinoceros thigh and other such delicacies?

 

 

Maybe it was because of that book that I have always made it one of my live-by-rules to try everything at least once and never to say ‘how disgusting’ or whatever, dismissing it out of hand. And so it was I tried dog meat in Hong Kong in the 1970s (Alsatian meat with Hoi Sin sauce – yummy!); baby milk-fed camel in Saudi Arabia (mega-yummy); sea slug (not so yummy), snails cooked in garlic (more, more!), and a host of other delicacies which – if you were to believe some comments on the web – you would avoid at all costs.

 

My latest revelation was a delicacy found across south-east Asia – in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and the Philippines in particular.

 

When I used to work for the BBC World Service, I was always somewhat amused when asked by the Vietnamese language section if I could provide them with chicken eggs from my eight Rhode Island Reds that I used to rear in my garden in London. But not any egg, you understand. No; they wanted what they called trứng vịt lộn, wherein the eggs when laid were fertilised, then left for a couple of weeks or so before being cooked and enjoyed for their meaty taste. I never did supply their needs (not least because I didn’t have a cockerel at that time) but it always left me intrigued as to why they were so eager for what they considered to be a great delicacy. Only now have I come to understand what they were on about!

 

Here in the Philippines they call them ‘balut’ or ‘balot’ (which in Tagalog means ‘wrapped’). It is commonly eaten as streetfood. Imagine a developing duck embryo that is boiled alive and eaten straight out of its shell. The perfect balut egg is normally 17 days old, which is when the duck chick still does not have a beak, bones or feathers. Apparently in Vietnam however, they prefer them to be 19-21 days old, the point at which the bones of the chick are firm, albeit that they soften when cooked.

 

The process is quite straight forward. Fertilized duck eggs are kept warm in the sun and stored in baskets to retain that warmth. After nine days, when the eggs are held up to a light you can see the embryo forming inside. Some eight days later the balut are ready to be cooked, sold, and eaten.

 

Duck eggs that have not properly developed after nine to twelve days are sold as ‘penoy’, which are cooked in a similar way to a regular boiled egg, but have a meatier taste to them.  So that the producers and sellers know which is which, the penoy shells are marked with a cross …

 

 

You eat them like hard boiled eggs, but it’s normal to dip the pieces in a vinegar sauce or add salt too…

 

although they can also be deep fried in batter for a very satisfying appetiser.

 

I was recently in the rice growing region of central Luzon when I was asked if I would like to try some balut. I could see grins on the faces of the Filipinos around me. Would this Westerner shirk away in disgust? Alas for them, they were disappointed. ‘I would love to’ I replied.

 

Tina, my hostess, showed me what to do as friends and family stood around to enjoy the show…

 

First I was told to crack a small hole on the rounder, wider, end of the shell and then to extend the hole a little more and to sip the broth from the inside. Wow! Delicious! 

 

Next, the opening is enlarged even further and it’s now you can add your seasoning, or just plain salt depending on your preference. But I opted to try it without anything added so I could savour the real flavour.

 

 

It’s now you make a start on the duckling foetus. Some slurp the whole caboodle out of the shell and munch their way through; others use a teaspoon to lift the meaty egg out of the shell. Either way, it really is delicious, once you have put aside any squeamish notions you might have.

 

 

At the very bottom of the egg is a very tough lump of egg white. That too is eaten, but it’s a real chew to get through it, and for me was the least appetising part of the balut. A shame one ends with that bit – although I read that some people don’t bother with this bit and just throw it away.

 

Balut are also prepared in deep fried batter for a more wholesome eating experience…

 

 

As well as buying from street vendors – where they typically cost between P12 (around £0.18) and P20 – balut and penoy have moved into mainstream cuisine in the Philippines; supermarket food halls typically sell them – such as at this kiosk in SM City, Parañaque

 

 

where you can also get one-day old chicks, which are typically deep fried and eaten whole…

 

 

The chick has the added ignominy of having a wooden stick shoved up its backside so you can handle it easier … and then the only decision you have to make is whether to start on its head or its feet…

 

Because just-hatched chicks have few of their internal organs fully developed, one of the biggest parts at this age is the bile duct. For this reason the taste (once you have munched your way through its skull) can be very bitter. Most people opt to dip the body into a sugary-vinegary-oniony mix to hide the bile while still enjoying that fresh-cooked-chick taste.  Poor thing! But happy stomach!

 

What gets me is the way some of the web sites around cyberspace describe these delicacies as if they are particularly gross. For instance:

 

I think balut eggs might be the yuckiest looking food I have come across. Although we have no hestitation in eating eggs, or even young animals, balut eggs just push all of the ‘eww’ buttons in my brain.

 

Say buh-loot. Then shudder in fear.

How weird can a food be, you ask? Balut is way up there in the ionosphere of weird, far past gonzo. Balut is fear itself. Though a snack much beloved in the Philippines, balut to us is a torture of an item, a bizarrely-conceived if not abjectly demonic dish. It’s not a pretty sight.

 

Balut is the culinary heart of darkness. If you eat it, you have reservations about doing so. If you know about it, you have strong opinions regarding it.

 

Superman has his kryptonite and I have balut. It is probably one of the (if not THE) exotic foods I fear most.

 

Oh, stuff and nonsense! Gimme a balut egg anytime – why, it’s even better than Alsatian meat … with or without Hoi Sin sauce!

 

A Feast for the Eyes as well as the Stomach

I remember when growing up in north London in the 1950s and 60s that one of the pleasures that one looked forward to was going out to dinner, which on the whole was not something we as a family did on many occasions. It usually meant a birthday or some other celebration was coming up, and invariably a really special occasion meant “going Chinese”.

 

Of course I was pig ignorant in those days about Chinese food. Usually it meant Cantonese style cuisine and it was de rigeur that we ordered sweet and sour pork, fried rice and lychees out of a can to finish off. It was accompanied by jasmine tea; and sometimes on really special occasions we had deep fried battered bananas with ice cream as well!

 

When I was in my teens I discovered Peking Duck – and we would go right across to the other side of London to a restaurant in the East End in order to get it.

 

London in those days – and even now to a certain degree – catered for a very westernised palette. Little did I know until very much later how varied and very different food in China is to what we had been brought up to believe.

 

Having now been in China for nearly two years, I have been keen to improve my education in this particular subject! But last week I was taken to a restaurant by my friend Zhijuan to try out a cuisine that I had never encountered before – and I can only wonder how I could have missed out on such wonderful food all this time!

 

The restaurant is called JinJiaChun MianShiFang (晋嘉春面食坊) and it’s located in the Huilongguan area in the north of the city. I was taken there after spending an afternoon teaching English to Chinese kids – of which more in a later blog.

 

 

Unlike many restaurants that have stone lions or PiXiu guarding their portals, you can spot this one immediately – it has stone dragons.

 

 

The restaurant specialises in ShanXi style cuisine. ShanXi – 山西 – is a province located in the North China region and is also called Jin – 晋 – after the state of Jin that existed here during the Spring and Autumn Period. ShanXi literally means "mountain's west", which refers to the province's location west of the Taihang Mountains. It borders Hebei to the east, Henan to the south, ShaanXi to the west, and Inner Mongolia to the north and is made up mainly of a plateau bounded partly by mountain ranges.

 

The province has a rich cultural heritage, with more than 70% of all ancient architecture in China built before the Liao and Song Dynasties. The Yungang Grottoes, for instance, with a history of more than 1,500 years, is one of the largest cave clusters in China and comprise 53 caves and over 51,000 stone statues, representing Chinese Buddhist cave art from the period of 460-525 AD.

 

ShanXi actually has over 35,000 relic sites that include architecture, grottoes, houses, murals, and sculptures with distinct features, giving ShanXi the nickname of “ancient Chinese culture museum”. Small wonder, therefore, that this restaurant chooses this as the main decoration theme on one of its walls.

 

 

Zhijuan and I first order TuDouQieZi PaYouMian (土豆茄子扒莜面), which is a typical local speciality. It consists of fried vegetables made up of potato, aubergine, green peppers, tomato and spring onions, mixed with a tomato sauce…

 

 

… and they all sit on top of steamed rolls made of oat flour – known as YouMian WoWo (莜面窝窝) – which form a honeycomb-like cluster into which the sauce and ingredients slowly fall. Truly scrummy!

 

 

Next up, a dish that is found all over China, but almost probably originates from SiChuan (四川). It requires the use of an ingredient unfamiliar to most Western cooks: Dried Cloud Ear, also known as Wood Ear fungus and in China as MuEr (木耳). YuXiangRouSi (鱼香肉丝) normally contains pork, chili and green vegetables. The way it is cooked in ShanXi uses vinegar, soy sauce, sugar and chilli together with doubanjiang (a spicy, salty paste made from fermented broad beans, soybeans, salt, rice, and various spices), which give it a slightly sweetish taste.

 

YuXiangRouSi is generally understood to mean pork shreds prepared in the manner of fish; and translates as "fish fragrant pork shreds", even though there is no fish in it! Its unique quality can be attributed to the shredded fungus and green shoots, which contribute to a flexible yet strikingly crunchy texture.

 

 

Up next is MaPuTofu, which probably needs no introduction. Another dish, basically regarded as coming from SiChuan, the fact is that everyone makes it these days.

 

The name MaPoTofu is roughly translated as "pockmarked grandmother beancurd," named after an old woman who supposedly was cast out of Chengdu owing to her disfigurement. One day, a weary trader happened upon her shack and she was so delighted with his company that she scraped together her meagre provisions to create this dish, which is made from tofu and meat and cooked in a chili bean sauce, though the ShanXi style is slightly less mouth numbing than its SiChuan counterpart.

 

 

So that’s the first course, which we munch our way through prior to the “pièce de resistance” which I have been briefed beforehand is something that I should go and see being prepared.

 

 

Now, it is said that Italian pasta is a direct descendent of Chinese noodles, Marco Polo having returned to Italy in the 13th century and introduced his fellow Italians to what would become a staple of their diet; and ShanXi claims the honour of being the first province in the Central Kingdom to come up with the idea of noodles!

 

Among the various noodles, Dao Xiao Mian (刀削面 – knife-shaved noodles) are probably ShanXi’s most famous. And it is said that shaved noodles are as much a feast for the eyes as they are for the mouth.

 

Basically, a chef stands in front of a huge pot of boiling water, with a large lump of noodle dough in one hand – possibly weighing as much as 9kg. The dough is very hard, and is mixed by machine from just flour and water and left to stand for half an hour.

 

 

He shaves the dough with a thin, arc-shaped knife into the boiling water; and it is said that a top chef can shave as many as 200 bits a minute.

 

 

The tradition of making shaved noodles has been carried on in ShanXi since the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368), and apparently every summer, the annual ShanXi International Noodle Cultural Festival is held in the city centre.

 

 

Once cooked, the noodles are lifted out of the pot and a sauce with mince is placed on top of them, together with a pinch of coriander. The texture is slightly rubbery and more chewy than most other noodles, but really tasty!

 

 

To wash all this down, the most common drink is not beer or hot tea, but hot water served in kettles that stand on plates on the table, and get filled by the waiting staff periodically. It reminds me of the culture of the ancient Britons when being invaded by Julius Caesar as depicted in ‘Asterix in Britain’ – and if you haven’t read that book, then your education is sorely lacking!

 

(Basically the Brits used to stop whatever they were doing in the middle of every afternoon to drink hot water and milk - I won’t spoil the rest of the story; you should read it yourself. And Julius Caesar, being the cunning strategist that he was, used to wait for them to have their water-and-milk break before sending in his crack troops. Thus was Britain conquered!)

 

 

But I digress. Although we were some of the first to arrive, it is obvious that we have been talking so much and enjoying watching the cookery ‘show’ that we are now some of the last in the restaurant. In Europe and the Middle East the restaurateurs will often dim the lights as a subtle hint to their guests that it is perhaps time they should be thinking of making a move.

 

Here in Beijing it is not yet 8.30, yet we are left in no doubt that it is time for us to make a move too when the waiting staff bring out large tubs of soapy hot water and proceed to do the washing up on some of the neighbouring tables vacated by earlier diners!

 

 

OK. Hint taken. We’re on our way. Really we are. But it was a great meal. Scrummy and Yummy! Not to mention Dee-Lish!

 

A few days later I am in the area again and this time Zhijuan suggests we try out one of the fast food joints around the corner from her office. “Why don’t we try out ShanXi style again?” she suggests. Why not indeed?

 

There’s a fast food restaurant called Xikou Popo – 西口婆婆 (literally: grandmother or old woman in the Xikou area), but once inside we discover that this is not a ShanXi style eatery, but ShaanXi style. OK, you won’t be surprised at this ‘faux pas’ as your favourite blogger is a hard-core, Genus-Expatrius, Mandarin-challenged laowai, but I wonder how many Chinese also get it wrong sometimes.

 

I turn to Wikipedia for enlightenment: Shaanxi should not to be confused with the neighbouring province of Shanxi, it advises (now it tells us!). The Chinese pronunciation of 陕西 and its east neighbour province 山西 differs only in tone, and hence when written in English without tonal marks they would be spelled identically as "Shanxi" according to standard Hanyu Pinyin Rules. One solution is to employ diacritical marks to denote the tones. Thus, "Shǎnxī" means 陕西 while "Shānxī" refers to its east neighbouring province 山西, however this requires marks which are not available in standard English character sets.

 

However, another method was adopted to distinguish these two provinces. The spelling "Shaanxi" was contrived for the province 陕西, following the Gwoyeu Romatzyh romanization system developed by Yuen Ren Chao. The spelling for its neighbour 山西 remains to be "Shanxi". This interesting spelling, "Shaanxi", is the official spelling of the province and it appears on Chinese Government's official web portal.

 

So there you have it. Easy when you know, isn’t it!

 

ShaanXi is considered one of the cradles of Chinese civilization, Wikipedia continues. Thirteen feudal dynasties established their capitals in the province during a span of more than 1,100 years, from the Zhou Dynasty to the Tang Dynasty. The province's principal city and current capital, Xi'an, is one of the four great ancient capitals of China and is the eastern terminus of the Silk Road, which leads to Europe, the Arabian Peninsula and Africa.

 

Inside, the fast-food outlet is basic, but snug and clean. On one of the walls are ropes of dried corn and garlic – which is apparently a typical decoration of ShaanXi.

 

 

The owners have taken some thought in decorating their little ShaanXi home-from-home and one of the walls also features a novel use for steam-baskets that I haven’t encountered before.

 

 

One look at the prices is enough to confirm that this eatery gives extremely good value for money. Typically 10 kwai per dish (about £1); and when the food actually arrives, they come in gargantuan portions. Zhijuan takes a take-away menu to keep at home…

 

 

The staff are extremely friendly, not least the table-clearer-upper who leers through a hole in the wall just over my right shoulder.

 

 

For our fast-feast, we start with pi dan (皮蛋) also called song hua dan (松花蛋) – otherwise known in the West as preserved egg, hundred-year old egg, thousand-year-old egg, and millennium egg.

 

They are traditionally prepared by preserving duck, chicken or kwail eggs in a mixture of clay, ash, salt, quicklime, and rice hulls for several weeks to several months, depending on the method of processing. (Ours are obviously chicken eggs, but it’s nice to see eggs still on the menu when they have been removed from so many other eateries because of the present H7N9 virus that has wiped out a few poor souls in the south of the country.)

 

Through the above process, the yolk becomes a dark grey colour, with a creamy consistency and with a slight smell of sulphur and ammonia, while the white becomes a dark brown, translucent jelly with not a great deal of flavour.

 

Apparently, the transforming agent in the egg is its alkaline material, which gradually raises the pH of the egg to around 9 - 12 or more during the curing process, which breaks down some of the complex, flavourless proteins and fats, and produces a variety of smaller flavourful compounds.

 

Some recipes involve the infusion of tea in boiling water, to which is added quicklime, sea salt and wood ash from burned oak. While wearing gloves to prevent the lime corroding the skin, each egg is individually covered by hand, then rolled in a mass of rice chaff to keep the eggs from adhering to one another before they are placed in cloth-covered jars or tightly woven baskets. The mud slowly dries and hardens into a crust over several months, and then the eggs are ready for consumption.

 

And jolly good they are too!

 

 

Next, we are brought a noodle dish known as Qishan saozi mian (岐山哨子面) which makes use of simple ingredients, such as pork floating in a sour and spicy tomato-flavoured soup with sweet vinegar and diced spring onions and with garlic and coriander. Here your blogger soon gets the hang of eating slippery spaghetti-type noodles with chopsticks (while mopping up with copious amounts of paper serviettes!)

 

 

Our next dish is one of ShaanXi’s specialities – hand-pulled dry noodles, called jing pin you po mian (精品油泼面) which – unlike the ShanXi speciality – is made by stretching out the dough by hand, rather than shaving off strips from a dough block. It comes with chicken and egg and green veggies and loads of dried chillies and garlic

 

 

Zhijuan calls over one of the waiting staff – a friendly soul who offers to let this laowai see the dough being prepared.

 

 

Inside the kitchen the chefs are throwing the dough around with gay abandon. They obviously enjoy having an audience. (Just think of having to do this every day for a living)!

 

 

There’s a super-sized dough making machine, which reminds me of some of the spaghetti making machines in Europe, but on a much grander scale of course.

 

 

We munch. We talk. And the time just flies by. And before we know it, an army of restaurant staff are scrubbing floors all around us and the lights are gradually being turned off. I glance at my watch. It is not even 9.15. People obviously eat early in this part of town. As we pick up our bags to leave, the staff all smile – a relieved smile, now that we have taken the hint, I wonder?

 

 

Zaijian. Byebye. We’ve enjoyed it. ShanXi or ShaanXi style... I love them both!

Did GBS Ever Visit the Philippines?

 We all know the expression that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach (as well as the rider that the best way to a woman's heart is a man with a sense of humour who will wash the dishes!); which probably means that men in the Philippines must feel truly loved.

 

As George Bernard Shaw wrote: There is no sincerer love than the love of food. If you adore your food, then the Phils is the place for you!

 

Your favourite blogger has just been out there to one of the Calamianes islands, north of Palawan – Busuanga to be specific – where he revelled in one of the seven deadly sins … viz, gluttony!

 

Every day you can find fresh fish on display of every size and shape. Even on Christmas Day when this pic was taken, there was plenty for sale, albeit the market was half empty.

 

 

Naturally the fish market in the town of Coron is slap bang by the harbour. And fish are being continually churned out onto the marble slabs as you stand there, trying to avoid being dripped on by smelly fish water; but the best time to buy fish is, of course, early in the morning.

 

 

In the Philippines fish (or “isda”) come in many varieties. The country's tropical climate and coral reefs make its waters among the richest in marine life anywhere in the world. (According to some estimates 5% of the world's reef area is in Philippine waters and the marine fish in the area represent 20% of the total marine fish in the world.) So if you love seafood, you have definitely come to the right place.

 

Apparently the average Filipino consumes around 100 grams of fish or fish products every day making it the primary source of protein here. One of the best of these fish (not that I have tried that many, you understand!) has to be the “Maya-maya” or Red Snapper. And prepared Filipino style it’s just gorgeous.

 

 

After being scaled and gutted…

 

 

and then having loads of chopped ginger shoved up its innards, it is slowly steamed …

 

While that is going on, a plastic bag of pearl clam is slit open and prepared for fast frying in a wok, while prawns, too, are washed thoroughly and cooked until they turn a lurid red.

 

The Palawan region is meant to be one of the best for finding giant pearl clams, which can produce large white pearls though, of course, these are not as valuable as pearls from oysters or some other molluscs. About 70 percent of the country’s production of pearl comes from Palawan.

 

 

A great tasting vegetable to accompany this meal is a type of seaweed known as Sea grapes because of its shape. It is usually eaten raw (having first been thoroughly washed, of course) and dipped into vinegar into which chilli has been chopped up. Sliced up tomatoes are added to the seaweed to make a salad, while cucumber and raw carrot make up another accompanying dish.

 

Naturally, rice is also one of the staples for the meal which turns out to be really scrummy. Definitely a path has been found to my heart!

 

 

Everywhere you go, you will find fish on the menu. Like on this island hopping day out, relaxing with a beach-munch…

 

 

or in a sea-side café where this huge squid did not die in vain…

 

 

Not sure if the fish can remain fresh for when you are ready to eat it? No worries. There are all manner of dried fish for purchase in the market too – great if you want fish for breakfast, but you don’t have a fridge you can use…

 

 

Of course, fish isn’t the only staple of everyone’s diet here. Fruit is plentiful right across the Philippines – be it the not-so-humble banana which seems to grow almost as a weed in just about everyone’s back garden…

 

 

Or how about a jackfruit tree (which is actually a member of the mulberry family)? Its fruit is the largest tree-borne fruit which can reach as much as 36 kg in weight and grow up to 90 cm long by 50 cm in diameter. Its flavour is not unlike a tart banana.

 

In the Philippines, it is cooked with coconut milk, while in many other parts of South East Asia, the jackfruit is boiled and used in curries as a staple food. You can even eat the seeds by boiling then in salted water for about 25 minutes, after which they have a milky, sweet taste.

 

Apparently when a jackfruit is still green, it is similar in texture to chicken, making it an excellent vegetarian substitute for meat. But I have to admit that the only jackfruit I have ever eaten in the past is straight out of a can where it has been idling its time away lying in a bath of heavy syrup.

 

 

As for mangoes – well, when I used to work in the Middle East it was always rammed into me how the best mangoes in the world were the Alphonso variety that comes from India. Not so, dear Arabs! Come to the Phils and taste these ones! The Carabao Mango (or manggang kalabaw) is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the sweetest in the world. BTW did you know that the mango is closely related to the cashew? (Well, now you do!)

 

In some countries, a mango is peeled with a knife rather like you'd peel an apple. But you can’t do this with a Filipino mango as the flesh is too soft. Instead, Filipinos slice up a mango lengthwise, producing three flat slices. With the outer slices, you either scoop out the flesh with a spoon or make cubes using the "hedgehog" method – ie make a crisscross grid with a knife, turn the flesh out with your hands and then munch your way through the chunks.

 

Filipinos also love eating green, unripe mangoes, dipping thin slices into an anchovy paste, though I have to say I’m not so enamoured of this myself.

 

And here’s another wow-did-you-know-fact: It appears that the Philippines holds the record for the world’s biggest mango at 3.5 kilos.

 

And another one for your trivial pursuit questions… If you set fire every morning to dry leaves under a mango tree, it appears the smoke encourages mango trees to bear more fruit.

 

 

One fruit I have to admit in my ignorance I had never come across before is what is known locally as the Chico, otherwise known as the sapodilla. It ripens relatively quickly and bruises easily so it doesn’t really travel too well which is what I will now use as an excuse for my ignorance.

 

The Chico was introduced into the Philippine archipelago several hundred years ago when the Spaniards brought it along with them on their way to colonise the world.

 

This round, brown fruit is slightly smaller than a kiwi fruit and a little bigger than a golf ball. It tastes a little like a malted kiwi flavoured ice cream and has a distinctive sweet taste. The Chico actually contains so much sugar that people with diabetes are advised to avoid eating it. It also contains Vitamins A, B and C, and minerals such as iron, potassium, calcium, magnesium, phosphorous, selenium, copper and zinc. In other words, it’s pretty darned good for you too! Although the perceived wisdom is that chicos cannot be cooked, the Indonesians and Malays will tell you otherwise, stewing it, as they do, with lime juice or ginger.

 

 

My feeling is that chico halves or quarters would also be great dipped in chocolate, rather as one does in Europe with strawberries.

 

But one thing you must be careful with is the seeds – very easy to remove, but if you eat them by mistake, you could end up with severe abdominal pain and vomiting.

 

Another fact I never knew until today is that a major by-product of the sapodilla tree is the gummy latex called "chicle", containing 15% rubber and 38% resin. For many years it was the chief ingredient in chewing gum. Processing consists of drying, melting, elimination of foreign matter, combining with other gums and resins, sweeteners and flavouring, then rolling into sheets and cutting into bite-sized pieces.

 

Over on the other side of the world, the dried sapodilla latex was chewed by Maya Indians and was introduced into the United States by the famous Mexican General Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana in about 1866. He contacted the American inventor Thomas Adams, and while Adams couldn't get chicle to work as rubber, he had the brilliant idea to turn it into a gum base and launched the chicle-based chewing-gum industry. In 1930, at the peak of production, nearly 14,000,000 lbs (6,363,636 kg) of chicle were imported into the US.

 

 

Whether you’re in to picking your own fruit, or simply buying it in the market, the choice on offer is large and the quality amazingly good.

 

 

And that goes for vegetables too.

 

 

One of my favourite sweets, given to me on this trip was a fruit salad steeped in condensed milk and cream, together with a good dollop of sweet corn. To die for! I simply couldn’t get enough of it, and had to force myself to hold back in order to be seen to be leaving a little for the others!

 

And that’s the thing. The Filipinos are renowned the world over as a very generous people; and it is all too easy to find oneself saying yes to an offer of food before thinking through what comes next.
 

Take the time I was asked if I fancied some chicken for supper. “That would be very nice,” I heard myself saying, just before a passing chicken - which until that moment had been simply strutting about, minding its own business - was grabbed by both legs and had its throat slit before being plucked and thrown into the pot. (I’ll bet it won’t make that same mistake in a hurry, that’s for sure!)

 

Well, you can’t get fresher than that. Later that evening I was given a lecture on the finer points of butchering a pig – to which I can only say I am glad I wasn’t offered pork for that meal!
 

For those of a more squeamish disposition (or who don’t have such careless birds strutting their way around the place) you can always stop at a roadside booth and get your chicken ready cooked…

 

And finally, a word to the wise. Whatever your menu, you can be sure of one thing in the Philippines. Almost everything gets washed down really well by a bottle or two of the local brew – the most famous / popular / strongest of which is Red Horse. There’s nothing on the label to say how strong it is, but believe me … it is one of the strongest beers I have ever tasted. But you’ll just have to take my word on that.