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Yikes!
Three straight weeks and not a word written about food. I think that’s
the first time I’ve done that since... sometime in 2004?
It was kind of nice, actually, but I’ll try not to get used to it.
(No promises.)
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On Feasting and Fortitude
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It’s a pint-sized kamayan feast! Isn’t it adorable?
No
slight intended. Though wee, this meal was mighty. And if you’re
looking at that photo and reading that description convinced I’ve lost
all touch with reality... I mean, you’re not wrong, but not for the
reasons you might think. Run a quick image search on “kamayan feast” and
start scrolling down.
See? I’m not as crazy as I sound. Usually.
I
don’t wish to speak for my Pinoy pals, but one gets the sense that the
kamayan’s raison d’être is to go big: Filipino foodstuffs heaped high
upon banana leaves that line the length of the table, awaiting a
ravenous and jubilant crowd that will stuff themselves silly — hands
only, please — basking in the glow of each other’s company as surely as
they do in the majesty of the spread.
Sadly,
a big crowd would be distinctly ill-advised at the moment. But Brian
Webb is slinging a prefab mini-kamayan that’s awfully freaking good.
You
likely know Brian as the fellow behind Hey Joe!, the on-again off-again
Filipino food truck that’s meandered around the Valley for over a
decade. Brian’s wife, Margita, hails from Cebu — smack dab in the center
of the Philippines — and chefly fellow that he is, Brian has taken a
shine to Margita’s culinary heritage and together they’ve worked to
share it with Phoenix. Most recently, the vehicle (both literal and
figurative) is PHX Lechon Roasters, slinging pop-up lunches and take-home kamayan feasts a couple days a week.
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Kare kare, sinigang and dinuguan from Casa Filipina in Glendale.
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Now,
some will argue that Phoenix, writ large, is a little hesitant to
embrace new (to them) cuisines, but I submit — however wearily — that
breaking the ice is more often a matter of meeting Phoenix on its own
terms. East Valley suburbanites might balk at gul bossam, mul naengmyeon
and samgyettang, but slap a little short rib on the grill or dunk fried
chicken in a spicy sauce and damned if they don’t fall over themselves
making Korean food some of the most popular stuff in town.
Point
being, if you speak in huge piles of grilled, fried and smoked meat,
you’re speaking Phoenix’s language, no matter the accent.
So
while the local fooderati have banged their collective head against the
wall for years trying to generate mainstream interest in dishes like
kare kare, sinigang and dinuguan, we’re fooling ourselves if we don’t
admit that where Filipino cuisine is concerned, this is the kind of
stuff that will be Phoenix’s gateway drug.
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Don't get me wrong, it's a helluva drug.
The
spread — complete with rice and banana leaves for $50(!) — can vary
from week to week, but two sure bets are that there will be lumpia, and
that no matter how many you order, there won’t be enough of them. Long,
crisp cigars stuffed with a gently seasoned ground pork filling, taken
for a dip in the familiar sweet-sour elixir. What we need is a movie
theater that hands out buckets of these instead of popcorn.
Chicken,
on this occasion, takes two forms. There are rough-hewn chunks of
Cebu-style chicken adobo, fried to a bubbly textured crisp and perked up
with a few sweet strands of atchara — little piles of shredded pickled
papaya — or a squirt of fresh, pert calamansi.
A
feast like this needs a centerpiece, and lechon manok strikes a fine
figure. It’s a roasted chicken, sure, but it’s an exceptional one, juicy
and lacquered and ripe for the picking, especially good after a dip in
sawsawan — a chile- and garlic-flecked concoction built on soy and
coconut vinegar. Tearing into this fella with your bare fingers exposes
the kamayan’s more carnal qualities, and even if certain family members
(who shall remain unnamed) insist on utensils, this is when the evening
takes on a particularly festive quality.
Webb
knows his crowd pleasers, though, and the lechon kawali has long been a
signature item. This is some freakishly good pork belly, and I will
never tire of mang tomas, its creamy, liver-fortified running mate. But
the beauty is in the textural contrast — layers of sizzling crisp meat
stratified with meltaway pork fat, both crunchy and unctuous and porcine
as porcine can be.
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For dessert? A little ube pandesal, natch, purple-hued, yam-based, stuffed with sweet cheese and sweet jam.
As a family, we’re only four, but that doesn’t stop the evening from feeling like an event.
I
guess that makes this the kamayan for our times, a decadent if
diminutive mini-feast for a singular quarantined household, all of us
stupidly stuffed on a per capita basis even if the table — by all rights
— should have been thrice the size. Too many friends we still can’t
invite. Too many celebrations deferred. It’s enough to make you wistful
if you aren’t too busy stretching and groaning and waddling off to take a
nap somewhere.
Still,
this was immensely delicious. And served on the back patio in the
chromatic light of a setting Arizona sun, it felt like an instant memory
— an ephemeral, understated moment of bliss in a year that’s yielded
far too few. We all need more of these.
With a little luck, maybe the next one won’t be so small.
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Here’s a photo of some omurice I made last weekend. Why? No reason. Just taunting you.
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The Return of Pasta Night
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At
the risk of sounding like I’ve finally succumbed to the calls for
“collabs” (don't worry, I haven’t), I’m going to engage in a bit of rank
salesmanship for a moment.
Barilla has changed our lives. This requires some explanation.
We
are a pasta family. Or we were, anyway. Once upon a time, perhaps 12-15
years ago, I made pasta for dinner three nights a week. Literally.
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When
Dr. Doux was diagnosed with diabetes, however, pasta went from mainstay
to occasional treat before eventually slipping out of favor entirely.
She’d insist the rest of us should make some for ourselves and she’d
scrounge something up, but there are too many delicious foods in this
world to torture somebody you love with a dinner they shouldn’t have. A
plate here and there while dining out did the job just fine.
Then,
all of a sudden, everybody decided that wheat was the devil’s grain,
ketosis was cool and alternative pastas were everywhere. Man, was I
excited to give those a try. And man, did they ever suck. I cycled
through a few brands of mushy garbage before throwing in the towel and
swearing off alternative pastas forever.
I don’t remember what inspired me to revisit that decision a few months ago, but woo, am I glad I did.
Bean-based pasta technology has apparently come a looooooong way in the past five years. I gave Barilla’s red lentil and chickpea
pastas a spin, and you know what? This stuff is surprisingly good. It’s
not a substitute, exactly, either in terms of texture or taste. If you
try to slip some onto Giovanni Scorzo’s
dinner plate, he’s still going to come after you with a cleaver. But it
tastes great and it has a firm but delicate bite that satisfies in a
way that I honestly never thought alternative pasta could. And the best
part? The glucose meter looks at a giant pile of lentil pasta and
shrugs. This isn’t even cheat fuel. It works well enough to be a
household staple.
All of which is to say that pasta night is back, baby, and man, am I having fun with this.
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I picked up some guanciale from The Meat Market
in Carefree, a throwback to the mid-aughts when I used to plow through a
pound of cured pig jowl every week (this is, regrettably, not an
exaggeration). I’m digging this stuff. It pairs that sweet succulence
with a little bit of gamy funk, and the family pasta — Amatriciana with
whatever shape suits your fancy that evening — is back on the table.
An
unexpected bonus is that legume pasta has actually upped my sauce game.
You know how a little starchy pasta water emulsifies your condimento
and gives it a luscious, silky quality? Cook chickpea pasta for a few
minutes and the pot develops a cap of foam that looks like an oversized
dollop of stiff whipped cream and thickens your sauce like a boss. And
while the lentil foam isn’t quite as feisty, it still runs circles
around wheat where silky sauce is concerned.
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No wheat was harmed in the making of this pasta.
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I
don’t mean to mislead. You can pry my durum wheat from my cold, dead
hands. But not only don’t I mind this stuff, I even enjoy it.
(That one’s on the house, Barilla. You’re welcome.)
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Department of Corrections
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Way back in Vol. VI, astute readers might have spied this oops:
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“You
could have had a stellar Northern-style laap — a savory cousin to the
sweet-tart Southern versions you know, heavily herbed and laden with
crisp shallots and garlic.”
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I meant to contrast Lom Wong’s
northern-style laap muang with the stuff you find in Americanized
restaurants more heavily influenced by the foods of Bangkok. But in my
haste to make that distinction, my phrasing left a lot to be desired.
This statement is wrong. On two counts.
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First, if we're talking the geography of Thailand, while Bangkok is furthER
south, it’s hardly southern. Southern Thai cuisine is a whole ‘nother
breed of food that’s damn near impossible to find in the States, and
certainly in Phoenix.
Second,
the laap upon which most Americanized versions are based, while popular
in Bangkok, actually originates in northeastern Thailand and Laos. So,
yeah.
We regret the error.
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My
self-imposed two-month work moratorium drew to a close about a month
ago, and....... yeah, I’m going to extend that a little bit longer.
Something To Doux isn’t going anywhere for the time being, provided I
don’t get too comfortable not writing about food. But I *am* starting to
kick around some thoughts and I might try to rope y’all in sometime
soonish. I have ideas. We’ll see how serious I am about them.
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In the meantime, stay safe out there, people.
Order food, carry out, tip like crazy.
Your restaurant pals need you.
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