Weekend Alternative

On weekends we often have a pot-luck lunch with family at any of our siblings’ houses. At other times, we dine out to enjoy a different taste. Depending on our cravings of the moment, we choose which cuisine we prefer, from Filipino to Italian, etc. Among our favorites are Una Mas, Sentro and Bizu at Greenbelt, Terriyaki Boy at Filinvest, Cibo at the Ayala Alabang Town Center (with dessert and coffee at San Francisco Coffee), Quick Snack (a small but popular Chinese restaurant on Carvajal Street) and Figaro at the Shangri-la Plaza Mall.

Our most recent outing brought us to Sentro in Greenbelt 3, where we are always surprised with fresh concoctions by young chef-owner Vicky Rose Pacheco who belongs to the restaurant-famous Reyes family. The line is always long but it is worth the wait. It was here that Switzerland-trained Vicky introduced the somewhat revolutionary Corned Beef Sinigang, now its signature dish. It was here where we had boneless galunggong, bathed in oil with lots of crushed garlic. That’s innovative Filipino cuisine at its best. In Vicky’s hands, Filipino cuisine has taken on a new character and if she pushes her creative talents further, we might yet find our food on international platters, a dream we must all aspire and work for.

There’s nothing really different about the techniques she employs. She goes for the standard of reducing stock and simmering to get and seal in natural flavors. Consider the blending of upo (maron) and kalabasa (squash) in a pureed soup, the deep-fried Tokwa’t Belly (bangus, which is healthier than pork) with special vinegar (which she ‘imports’ from Mindanao) and soy sauce, the escabeche of silver maya-maya with a very subtle sweet and sour sauce and topped with a green finger chili, the Shrimps with Ukoy as side dish and the Pinoy Osso Bucco, beef shank with lots of shallots simmered for hours. And do not skip dessert, specially the house specialties Coffee Pie and Coffee Bean Sans Rival. Soon, Vicky will be experimenting on the use of coconut oil. She wants to be sure that its flavor will not overwhelm the rest of the ingredients. We wonder if coconut oil would easily turn rancid.

We are not really a dessert person, but we enjoy the apple pie at the San Francisco Coffee at the Ayala Town Center. Bizu is where we always go home with a plastic bag full of their confectionery items, Chocolate Tulle (paper thin cookies) being a must.

We cannot help but share this with our readers. There is a bank–yes, a real bank–in Italy for aging cheese. It is called the Credem Bank and is located in the hilly town of Montecovolo, near Parma in Northern Italy. This came about because cheese makers borrow money from the bank and since their produce takes about two years to mature and cannot be sold before that, the bank decided to provide the cellars which, in effect, makes the cheese collateral for the laon. The cheese is mainly parmigiano-regiano, each wheel weighing about 80 pounds. At any given time there are 285,000 wheels in storage.

When we make pesto sauce we normally use mature edam cheese or the more common parmesan. From an Italian cookbook, we found out that pecorino gives a sharper flavor. It is a bit pricey and is available at Santis.

At La Tienda, we have been missing the Crismona brand pure olive oil in large 5-liter plastic bottles. Seems they go very fast and unfortunately the next shipment is still coming in September. Compared to other places, La Tienda has better prices.