Eating the Philippines

Much to both of our surprise, Z and I last night enjoyed a healthy Filipino meal. And discovered the most amazing seaweed: lato.

A type of Caulerpa which sprouts succulent, grapey, bubbles in long tendrils like fresh green peppercorns, lato has all the translucent gorgeousness of fresh salmon roe. And it’s probably the closest a vegetarian will ever get to caviar. Even better than the Mekong riverweed, served nori-style, that we ate in Luang Prabang.

Even before you get onto the fast food trail, so many iconic Filipino dishes are just plain wrong. Take halo halo. This is a “fruit” salad, made with chunks of jelly and tapioca pearls, mixed with shaved ice, ice-cream, puffed rice, soy beans and oodles of condensed milk.

Or knockout knuckle (pata), Pampanga style. An entire pig’s leg, slow-cooked until the crackling is crispy and the meat below is succulent, fatty, deep red and falling off the bone, topped with crispy, deep-fried garlic. We ate this — along with soft-shell crabs tempura style — at Bistro Remedios in Manila, and my arteries are hardening just thinking about it.

Even the local take on the ubiquitous noodle soup is fattier than other South-East Asian versions. While beef bulalo, the silky, succulent broth made with the fat, gelatine and marrow of ox knuckle and precious little else, speaks for itself.

Anywise. Here we are on Palawan, the most westerly island of the Philippines, so close to Malaysian Borneo that James Brooke, the hyperactive Victorian adventurer who became the first “white rajah” of Sarawak after containing the head-hunting pirates who plagued the place a century and a half ago, set up a town and a watchtower, called Brooke’s Point, down South.

Last night we went to Ka Lui, in the provincial capital, Puerto Princesa, a gorgeous, half-open, bamboo and palm structure, equipped with floor cushions, and one of the island’s few destination restaurants.

It’s a simple menu. In essence, you eat one of four catches of the day with vegetables of the day, sweet potato mash or rice, preceded by soup and completed with a fruit salad. Side dishes run from stingray or eel in coconut sauce through to kilawin, the Filipino answer to Peruvian ceviche.

Z had the giant shrimps. I had the tuna steak. (Then he decided he wanted the tuna steak, so we swapped.) For greed, we ate kilawin na lato on the side: chunks of raw tuna, marinated in calamansi, vinegar, ginger, chilli, garlic and a hint of palm sugar, accompanied by washed, raw lato.

To die for. And, for once in the Philippines, not literally.

As you’d expect from an archipelago of this size, with some of the world’s finest reef, the seafood in the Philippines is pretty amazing. And freshwater fish, too. Bangus, or milk fish, a sweet, dark, toothsome freshwater fish, farmed across the nation, is the national fish, and a popular breakfast dish.

Tanigue, a member of the mackerel family with a flavour close to that of marlin, is gorgeous, whether fried, grilled, or served in kilawin or as sashimi. Tuna, blue marlin and swordfish are wonderful, too.

Chuck catch of the day together with veggies in a sour soup, and you have sinigang, which is right up there with Vietnamese canh chua in the galaxy of regional sour soups.

Still on the healthy tip, chicken tinola is not to be missed. This is a gorgeous soup-stew of chicken, green papaya, peppercorns, garlic and gallons of ginger.

Filipino cuisine is not generally big on vegetables. But there’s some standouts. Green papaya works wonders when slow-cooked: all the sweet flavour of baby courgettes but with a firm, unfibrous texture that holds well in stews.

A type of bell-pepper leaf, with a look and texture similar to young vine leaves and a flavour like a meatier, less bitter spinach, is gorgeous in sinigang, alongside chunks of young taro. Chinese mustard greens have a great tang, while bitter gourd served with shrimps and oodles of garlic is a classic side dish.

We had a salad of red eggs (brined, fermented duck eggs), tomato, onion and young rainforest ferns — the local answer to fiddleheads — in Bistro Remedios. Deep viridian green, they have a dark, chlorophyll freshness and crunchy texture that is outstanding.

And then, of course, at least in the northern islands, there is the inescapable pork. Chicharon, or pork scratchings, are sold from stalls. Pork adobo, slow-cooked in a tangy palm vinegar sauce, is a gorgeous, stand-by staple. Lechon, or thickly basted suckling pig, is a special occasion feast. Barbeque pork, caramel-sweet, succulent and crispy, served with a chilli vinegar to cut the fat and the sugar is to die for. And mechado, a tangy, scarlet stew with peppers, potatoes, pork and beef, appears in every local point-point eatery.

I always struggle with Asian desserts. The sweet, mild, subtly aromatic flavours don’t really do it for me, and so the ubiquitous ube (purple yam) goes right over my head, though the Spanish-Asian fusion leche flan, a heavier, grainier take on crème caramel, works well.

But Filipino peanut brittle, hawked on every form of public transport, in rich, dark, circular caramelised cakes, crammed with fresh-toasted dark peanuts and sprinkled with sesame seeds, is outstanding. And the tamarinds which grow like wildfire in every possible permutation of flavours are gorgeous.

Anywise. It is time for breakfast. Which will not include the lurid, tooth-hurtingly sweet breakfast sausages, longganisa, that are so mystifyingly popular here.

We are here for another month or so, so if you have recommendations of foods we should try, send them over, and we’ll do our best to eat them. Z, god bless him, tells me I have lost weight. I find this very, very hard to believe.