Sybaritic Diversions

If there is any drink in the world that soothes me like no other on my most stressful days, it would have to be a little treat called royal milk tea.  Seriously: not even the richest latte nor the most seductive hot chocolate can compare to the comforting creaminess of this refined drink.  Each sip of this tea is infused with the citrusy fragrance and savor of bergamot which keeps it from becoming too rich on the palate. 

Interestingly enough, this drink has long been a part of Japanese pop culture.  In Japanese kissatens (coffee shops), this is served in delicate cups with a madeleine or two on the side.  Tres elegant et soignee, oui?  In Banana Yoshimoto’s novel Amrita, the character Kaname (Noodles) orders royal milk tea and the main character - Sakumi - notes that this is a most appropriate drink for her given her innate elegance.  Come to think of it, many popular Japanese junk foods - like Pocky, for instance - are flavored with royal milk tea.

Of course, you will ask the obvious question "What in blazes is this woman talking about?"  Oddly enough, it’s a very simple thing: Earl Gray tea brewed in milk rather than in water.  The end result is richer than the usual water-brewed tea cut with milk.  Yet it isn’t as stodgy as it sounds since, as mentioned above, the bergamot in the Earl Gray balances things out.  Moreover, it’s quite easy to make at home:

Royal Milk Tea

• 1 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon loose Earl Gray tea
• your choice of sweetener (honey, sugar, Splenda, etc.)

Bring milk to a boil in a heavy saucepan over medium high heat. Add tea and reduce heat to low. Cover saucepan and let mixture steep 3 minutes. Strain tea and sweeten to taste.

However, if you don’t feel like faffing about your kitchen with a saucepan and strainer, there have been a number of commercially-prepared milk teas on the market for the past decade or so. 

Japan’s Kirin Brewery has practically been selling the milk variant of their extremely popular Gogo-no-Kocha (Afternoon Tea) for ages.  Of late, there have also been more decadent Gogo-no-Kocha variants: the much richer Cream Tea, Royal Milk Tea 30 with 30% more milk than the regular version, and Rose Life which is lightly flavored with rosewater.   Plus, there are some instant (powdered) versions of the drink available in both bulk form and single-serving sachets. 

In recent years, Taiwan’s UNI-President has been offering Mine Shine milk tea as part of its Cha Li Won line of bottled teas.  Of late, global food giant Nestle has also joined the milk tea bandwagon but only in Japan.  The Nestea line sold in the Land of the Rising Sun includes a ready-to-drink royal milk tea variant as pictured above left. 

Just to gild the lily, Nestle offered Nestea Sakura Milk Tea last spring: a cherry-infused beverage that must have gone perfectly with sakura viewing.  (Honestly:  it’s things like these that really make me wish that I lived abroad.  The things Nestle puts on the local market aren’t even half as interesting!)  Whichever milk tea eventually catches your fancy, be sure to enjoy it in a comfortable chair with a good book in your hand and soothing music playing in the background.  Fat, fluffy pet cat to warm your lap and/or gorgeous paramour whispering sweet nothings in your ear absolutely optional.

***Shopping Notes***     UNI-President Mine Shine milk tea is available at all 7-11 branches.  Kirin Gogo-no-Kocha is available in the Japanese food sections of Rustan’s Supermarkets, The Landmark Supermarket - Makati, and Makati Supermarket.  To complete your royal milk tea experience, you may want to order a few chocolate-chip madeleines from Kookie Korner.

On 12 June 2005, Nicky of the food blog Delicious Days tagged three other people and kicked off The Cook Next Door, an amazing meme that has enabled the world’s foodbloggers to share a bit more of their respective backgrounds and the very foundations of their love for food and cooking. 

For this particular meme, - in fact, the very first that SybDive is participating in, I was tagged by the wonderful ChichaJo of the equally wonderful blog 80 Breakfasts.  (Unfortunately, I have no idea who to tag next!)  Anyways, on to the meme:

What is your first memory of baking/cooking on your own?
I tried baking chocolate-chip cookies in my mother’s turbo broiler when I was about fourteen.  I was trying to impress a guy in my sophomore-year class.  Unfortunately, I set the timer wrong and ended up with a scorched mess!

Who had the most influence on your cooking?
My maternal grandmother, the late Francisca Esperas vda. de Kagawan, used to regale me with stories of the recipes she cooked when my mother and her sibs were kids and the food they ate whilst traveling with my grandfather who was in the diplomatic service.  In fact, I think the whole maternal side of my family contributed to my love of food and cooking since they all loved to eat and cooked magnificently.

Do you have an old photo as "evidence" of an early exposure to the culinary world and would you like to share it?
**blushes in embarrassment**  Er, I do, but the evidence points to a severe case of childhood gluttony that remains unresolved to this day.

Mageiricophobia - do you suffer from any cooking phobia, a dish that makes your palms sweat?
I have major issues about cooking pancit Canton (the Filipino take on chow mein).  I’ve refused to cook the darned dish ever since I made the mistake of using the wrong stock cubes for the broth.  (I accidentally used sinigang - sour soup - cubes instead of chicken bouillon!)

What would be your most valued or used kitchen gadgets and/or what was the biggest letdown?
My mom’s turbo broiler - same one I used for that scorched first batch of cookies - has pride of place as the gadget of choice.  It’s this hand-powered food processor my mother bought off one of those home-TV-shopping shows that lies idle all day.  Bloody useless thing that was!

Name some funny or weird food combinations/dishes you really like and probably no one else.
Suman (sticky rice logs wrapped in banana leaves) and Chinese-style stewed pork.  Worse, I also like melting slices of Edam cheese over boiled rice and sliced chorizos de Bilbao.  But the real killer has to be instant lomi spruced up with frozen squid balls and quekiam. ^_^

What are the three eatables or dishes you simply don’t want to live without?
Dark chocolate, my mother’s paella Valenciana, and salmon sashimi.

Favorite ice cream?
Toss-up among Selecta’s Monk’s Blend Coffee Crumble, Haagen-Dasz’s Bailey’s, and F.I.C.’s Green Tea.

What food will you probably never eat again?
No question: Kabaya Umeboshi (Pickled Plum) Pretzels.  Never again; it took a month for my tastebuds to recover from that.  **shudders**

Signature dish(es):
Caramel-topped cinnamon rolls, penne al forno, and Chinese-style barbecued ribs.

Question added by Zarah: On average, how many times a week would you cook something to satisfy your sweet tooth?
Once a week; twice when I feel particularly depressed.

Question added by Cathy: What do you usually eat for breakfast?
^_^  The beef hofan  and phoenix claws at Macau Restaurant - twice a week.  Otherwise, I’m a siopao-for-breakfast sort of girl.

Question added by Alice: What are your stand-by dinner options when you don’t have the time or the inclination to follow or create a new recipe?
Instant noodles. ^_^  (I’d have said sencha and senbei, but that just wouldn’t be me.)

Question added by Karen: What would you like to cook someday that you haven’t tried before?
Paul Prudhomme’s turducken - but, really, that’s godawful ambitious!

Pictured at left is some macaroni salad on a bed of mixed salad greens and a miniature tuna salad wrap.  It’s the lunch I packed for today.  Last night, my mother went into domestic mode and prepared a light but satisfying supper.  A really crisp Ceasar salad, mushroom soup, and tuna salad wraps made quite interesting with green olives - healthy, refreshing and seriously satisfying. 

Then she kept us plied with her killer-diller oatmeal chocolate-chip cookies studded with little bits of pili nut brittle.  Just when everything was getting to be so virtuous, she feeds us these uber-decadent cookies that are crisp at the edges, chewy in the middle, and chocolaty all over.

All that said, I really have to doff my chef’s hat to my mom.  She really is something else.

When you’ve been cooking for as long as I have (which is roughly about ten years) or if you come from a home where food is practically a religion, you probably have a kitchen that’s more than up to snuff for preparing both the simplest of snacks and the most elaborate of feasts. 

It doesn’t have to have the fanciest appliances (say: a SubZero fridge, an AGA cooker, and a Gaggenau deep-fryer), but it has to have a refrigerator in good condition, a working stove, a proper toaster, and a cupboard well-stocked with essentials. 

Of course, some pieces of kitchen equipment become indispensable in certain circumstances.  If you’re Asian (Filipino, Japanese, Chinese, et al), you have to have a rice cooker and a rice dispenser.  (And I feel so sorry for the poor man who had neither in his condo!)  Urbanites [and some suburbanites who are too tired or busy to fix proper meals] should have a microwave oven to heat stuff up.  Oh, and any of the following are absolutely essential: a kettle, a hot-water jug, or a water heater.  Regular SybDive readers know why I insist on these and I guess I need not elaborate here. ^_-

Why am I writing this post today?  This was a suggestion from a friend of mine who pretty much has a lot on her plate and sets great store on microwaveble plastic containers and plastic cutlery.  It was just a notion, but it gave me a lot to think about last night. 

The tastes of many Filipino households have evolved over the past twenty-five years.  Seriously: 25 years ago, the average middle-class Filipino household would have been shocked by such exotic foods like sushi or tom yam goong.  These days, tom yam is just a more exotic take on classic sinigang and sushi is a quick snack you can order from the corner Japanese kiosk.  That said, what we may find essential to our kitchen activities these days may not necessarily be the same ones our mothers and grandmothers had in their cupboards years ago. 

Filipino kitchen buffs these days are more adventurous and are, thus, willing to explore a wealth of culinary possibilities.  While some staples - rice, flour, salt, sugar - are eternal, there are a number of things that have also become a standard part of home gastronomy.  That said, I present my ten most important culinary essentials:

Italian Seasoning   This plays a key role in a number of savory dishes.  You cannot make a fabulous lasagna without this and even a standard-issue meat sauce becomes absolutely heavenly when you throw in a bit of this heady herb mixture.  For simple yet flavorful grilled meats, rub some rock salt and Italian seasoning onto pork or lamb chops about an hour or so prior to grilling.

Pre-packaged/pre-cut salad greens   These are a wonderful way to get your five-a-day veggie fix.  What’s more is that they can also be used to add nutritional value to sandwiches.

Chocolate   What manner of kitchen worthy of the title would find itself out of chocolate?!  (I shudder at the thought.)  A stash of chocolate in any form in one’s kitchen lends itself well to the preparation of quick desserts.  The ideal set-up would involve a box of unsweetened baking chocolate, a jar of unsweetened cocoa, and a bag of semisweet morsels in the cupboard and a small hoard of eating chocolate in the fridge.

Garlic   Whether you love it or loathe it, you need it.  Otherwise, even the simplest dish of sauteed vegetables will fall flat on its face.  My personal preference is for the minuscule cloves of Ilocano garlic from the north; they’re more flavorful than the huge Taiwanese cloves available in many supermarkets.

Commercially-prepared Italian-style Spaghetti Sauce   This forms the basis of many of my savory dishes.  It can be used for dishes other than pasta as a richer alternative to regular tomato sauce.

Balsamic Vinegar   Best for dips and dressings as it’s more flavorful than most commercial vinegars.

Extra-virgin Olive Oil   Come on: you can’t possibly imagine dipping homemade foccaccia into anything less now, can you?  Vinaigrettes and all manner of salad dressings also come to life with the addition of olio extra-virgine.

Pre-packaged Frozen Fillets   Chicken or fish, fillets are a cook’s best friend when it comes to quick lunches or suppers.

Soy Sauce   You should never attempt many Asian recipes without this.  Cheaper brands come into their own when used for traditional braised or stewed dishes; the pricier ones are best used as dips.

Short-grain Rice   This is really versatile and tends to cross cultures.  Use in sushi, maki, temaki, risotto, and paella; you can never go wrong with it.

Well, that’s my list.  What about you?  What are the things your kitchen can never be without?  Leave a comment here or drop me a line!

…is a monstrous jug of creamy iced coffee.  I’m on the verge of falling asleep at my desk and the ersatz coffee from the pantry vending machine just isn’t cutting it anymore.  Oh, well…

***New Product Alert***   It’s currently summer in Japan, party season as is obvious.  In the Land of the Rising Sun, beer is the social lubricant of choice and nothing goes so well with it than a bowl of crisp green edamame pods.  These are young soybean pods boiled - well, more like blanched - in lightly salted water.  Like peanuts in the shell, you crack the little suckers open and munch on the beans inside.  It’s a taste that sort of grows on you. 

That said, Japanese urbanites don’t have to faff about with the whole "blanch-in-saltwater" deal because of the new edamame-flavored variant of Glico Pretz.  That’s right: as seen above, these are salt pretzels flavored with green soybean.  According to a few other Jap-a-holics and some Nihonjin tomodachitachi of mine, it’s pretty good.

In case you’re one of those die-hard junk food junkies and pretzels don’t exactly catch your fancy, there’s an edamame alternative for you.  Tohato, maker of my all-time-favorite-treat Caramel Corn, has a savory little number called Bino that captures the flavor of edamame quite well.  This snack involves little green corn puffs - similar in principle to Caramel Corn - dusted all over with flavor.  With the Tanabata-no-Matsuri (Star Festival) coming up, I don’t see any reason why these two snacks should be excluded from your party menu.

Anyways, now that I’ve dispensed with today’s shameless product alert, let me tell you about Saturday’s baking experiment which involved copious amounts of flour, butter, caramel, and chocolate.  It’s something I first encountered in Mademoiselle Clotilde’s amazing food blog Chocolate and Zucchini, specifically in the category Chocolate is My Friend.  A friend of Clotilde’s in England sent her a packet of Sainsbury’s chocolate-topped caramel shortbread - a real taste sensation if ever there was one.  Think of it as a Twix bar: only thicker, more substantial and satisfying.  Having a major league sweet-tooth, it was a recipe I just had to try.

I’ve made shortbread before, usually the traditional Scottish kind made with oatmeal.  It’s a crumbly kind of cookie best eaten with a hot cuppa tea and a few Scottish terriers frolicking at your feet, but these doggies are optional.  I wasn’t exactly prepared for the richness of the shortbread that forms the base of this dessert: it uses about a cup of butter or margarine and it’s so rich!  However, the condensed-milk-caramel that fills this treat isn’t as rich as it appears to be.  Even with the chocolate, it’s more comforting than decadent.  For a less heavy dessert, skip the chocolate and just scatter about a quarter-cup of chocolate chips or an equal amount of chopped nuts. 

I should advise everyone, however, to cut this dessert into very small pieces.  Unless you’re a glutton of monumental proportions, eating whole slabs of this dessert is totally off. 

Chocolate Caramel Shortbread

For the shortbread:

• 450 grams all-purpose flour
• 150 grams granulated sugar
• 1 cup margarine

For the caramel filling:

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 can condensed milk
• 50 grams brown sugar
• 1/8 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/8 teaspoon almond extract

For the topping:

• 250 grams dark chocolate, melted 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees / Gas Mark 4.  Grease two 7 x 11-inch baking pans.  Mix flour and sugar; rub in margarine and work mixture to a clumpy dough.  Divide dough between the pans and bake for 25 minutes; set aside.  For topping, melt together butter, condensed milk and brown sugar over a gentle heat. Boil for 5 minutes, stirring continuously. Add vanilla and almond extracts and beat well. Pour evenly over the cooked shortbread and allow to cool.  Spread melted chocolate over topping and allow to set thoroughly before cutting into fingers.   

One drink that has been piquing my interest for the past few months is Seattle’s Best Coffee’s Black and White Mocha.  What it is: a shot of espresso flavored with chocolate syrup and topped up with milk, cream, and a dusting of cocoa powder.  What it tastes like: Yummers!  Moreover, it comes with a free checkerboard cookie (chocolate/vanilla) that peeks out over the cream.  I don’t usually go to SBC for a caffeine fix, seeing how their preparations are a tad too sweet for my palate, but I’ll make an exception with this particular product.  It looks cute, tastes wonderful - what more can you ask for in a coffee?

***New Product Alert***   Jap-a-holics like me will probably go for this new product that just popped into the snacks section at J-Box.  Made by Kawashidou, this little packet contains - drumroll please - green tea-flavored senbei. That’s right: we’re looking at rice crackers with the bittersweet taste of matcha baked into them. What’s more is that these taste more like western cookies than traditional rice crackers.  If you know anyone who’s a sucker for green tea and senbei, you should turn them on to this particular treat.  (Eh, Takafumi-sama…!  Would you like some matcha senbei?  At least, you won’t have to brew tea anymore…)

For some odd reason, I didn’t feel like having a proper lunch today.  As a result, I went out and ordered a slice of Mexicali’s meringue-topped butterscotch pie to take-away.  That’s the pie on the left.  Note that I’d already eaten the layer of meringue by the time I remembered to take a snapshot.  Not bad, really.  Plus, when eaten between sips of capuccino - even the ersatz vending machine kind from the office pantry - it’s rather sublime.  (Affordable, too: a slice of pie is just PhP 55.00!) 

Maybe it’s a Silver Palate phase, seeing how one of the authors of the Silver Palate cookbook once had a dinner of nothing but strawberry shortcake as a child.  Maybe I just needed the sugar lift, seeing how I’m currently juggling peer review at work, writing business plan frameworks, and working on another novel redraft all at the same time.  Oh, well…

Mexicali @ Eastwood: 3rd Floor - Eastwood City Cybermall, Eastwood City, Libis, Quezon City

When I was a kid at Benedictine Abbey, I had a habit of perusing the periodicals section of the library for the latest issue of Pacific Friend.  While now defunct, that magazine gave me my first tantalizing glimpses into Japanese culture, both traditional and modern. 

As a budding foodie and already a die-hard Jap-a-holic, one of my favorite PF articles was the one about seasonal namagashi.  There was one specific kind of summer namagashi that caught my eye and that particular sweet is the one above left: a wakabakage. 

Wakabakage is a kanten and an sweet which looks like a fish (either a goldfish or a koi) swimming in a clear forest pool. (Or in an ice cube; sometimes, it would all have to depend on how active your imagination is.)  This particular wakabakage is part of Toraya’s selection for Summer 2005 and it looks absolutely adorable if you ask me.

Speaking of summer delights, this year’s berry crop is being used for some fairly unusual concoctions in the city’s java joints.  Take, for instance, the strawberry and white chocolate fruit cooler from Gloria Jean’s Coffees pictured on the left.  It isn’t exactly the sort of drink you’d like at once because the combination of white chocolate and pureed strawberries is more than a little unusual, but it sort of grows on you.  (I’d still go for the green tea latte, though.)

If your budget doesn’t stretch to fit a strawberry - white chocolate cooler into your day and you’re in the Eastwood City area, then there’s a pretty good alternative being sold at the Coldstone Cafe at the IBM Plaza.  Coldstone’s Cherries Jubilee is an espresso-based cold drink made nice and rosy beige by the addition of milk, whipped cream, and minced cherries.  It’s even topped with a maraschino cherry! A tall one costs PhP 75.00 (as opposed to most shops!) and it’s a great buy.

Coldstone Cafe @ IBM Plaza   11th Floor - IBM Plaza, Eastwood City, Libis, Quezon City

True or false: the delectable treat on the plate to the left is a four-section chunk of dark chocolate.

Give up?

False.  As stated in the title of today’s entry, this is the Japanese sweet youkan, the bean jelly seen so often in manga and anime.  It is traditionally made of azuki (red beans) and kanten (seaweed gelatine or agar-agar) and is most commonly served in the summer.  It is, however, available throughout the year.  The youkan on the left is a kind known as mizu-youkan.  This, in particular, was sweetened with wasanbonto.  Wasanbonto is a traditional form of sugar intrinsic to Japanese confectionery.

Toraya, Japan’s most popular purveyor of traditional sweets, prides itself on "the art of the five senses" and sells products that are truly a feast for the senses.  In truth, a Toraya product should appeal to the touch through a variety of textures, to the sight through unique designs, the names of these products should sound pleasant, the scents should be able to make mouths water, and they should taste wonderful to complete the sensory experience.  That said, like the ao-nashi (a tea-flavored sweet made in the shape of a baby pear and filled with bean paste) shown here, all Toraya confections are both delicious and aesthetically pleasing. 

This season, Toraya celebrates summer with an amazing line of natsu-no-namagashi (summer sweets) sold in its shops throughout Japan and its overseas stores in New York and Paris.  Take, for instance the green tea-flavored natsu-no-yamaji on the left.  The flavor is refreshing and light: not too overpowering or cloying.  Moreover, the way this kanten-based sweet is made evokes a bike ride through the scenic Japanese countryside on a fine summer day: a bright green hill against the clear sky.

Aoume-no-tsuyu, on the other hand, is a sweet that shows off a sharp contrast of flavors.  As its name suggests, the upper portion of this namagashi is flavored with the sharp taste of Japanese plums (ume) while the lower portion has the mellow flavor of an (bean paste).  Clear and tart while smooth and sweet all at the same time.  That said, aoume-no-tsuyu may best characterize the delicious series of contrasts intrinsic to traditional Japanese confections.