2 bright pies: Buko pandan pie, ube macapuno pie

It's as good a weekend as any, just chillin', killing Nazi Zombies in Call of Duty, and having lots of pie. We're sampling two classic Filipino pies:

The bright green pie is "buko pandan." Buko is coconut, and pandan is a long and slender leaf used in Asian cooking. As Canadians have various words to describe snow, Filipinos have many words to describe coconut.

Buko is the general name for coconut, but more specifically it is fresh coconut meat from green coconuts. When you chop the top off this kind of coconut you can slip a straw in and drink a lot of refreshing coconut water. After which, you can crack the coconut open and eat the soft white meat.

Niyog is from more mature coconuts. I'm tempted to say ripened, but they're not fruits so they pretty much just dry up. Niyog is where you get coconut milk from, which is used in many Filipino dishes, as well as Thai curries. This is also the type of coconut that shows up in your local grocery's baking isle. This coconut has but little juice left, and the meat is dryer. It's commonly grated or shredded, and coconut milk is squeezed out of the shredded meat. Note the distinction between coconut juice or water and coconut milk. Watch a video: http://bit.ly/2CGdQ0

Pandan doesn't normally make dishes look neon green. This pie uses pandan extract, as we're too far from the tropics to do fresh pandan justice.

The purple pie is "ube macapuno." Ube is purple yam (pronounced ooo-beh), a staple of many Filipino desserts, from cakes to ice cream. I'm not quite sure how to describe ube's taste, but it's yummy. Macapuno is yet another coconut variant. It's made of young coconut strips cooked in sugar and water, producing a thick syrupy concoction. Real macapuno comes from "mutant coconut" bred by the Philippine Coconut Authority, which yields more of the soft flesh required for macapuno's production.

Both pies were really good but the buko pandan pie would have to be our favourite. They are a little dry and though stored in the fridge are best served at room temperature. I can say that buko pie from Laguna, just south of Manila is the best I've tasted, though living in Toronto, this pie is a good fix. Buko pie, legend has it, was invented by an old American woman in Laguna during the American occupation coz she couldn't find enough apples around. I miss the Laguna pie's soft pliable crust, and big chunks of coconut meat packed in a sweet gooey filling. Yumm!

- Mark

Mabuhay Festival: Filipino food, arts & culture

We spent half a Saturday at the annual Mabuhay Festival & Trade Show, held at the Metro Toronto convention centre. Although the festival was mostly a trade show and performing arts festival, Tasting Toronto was there for a taste of authentic Filipino cuisine.

We started off with some Sago, a sweet and refreshing chilled drink of caramelized sugar and vanilla with tapioca pearls (sago). This is the Philippines’ answer to bubble tea, and I could’ve sworn growing up that we invented the stuff. No matter. Although it only comes in 1 flavour, unlike bubble tea, it’s still one of my favourite summer drinks.

Next we had a Pork Siopao. It’s a variant of the Chinese steamed bun, and was filled with a sweet and savory Pork Asado. This was yummy, a meal onto itself.

We then had some colourful Puto. These are sweet rice cakes that can be had as a snack, an appetizer, or as the lady behind the counter was telling us, a perfect complement to the pork-blood stew (Dinuguan) she was serving. I’m noticing everything’s been sweet so far. Filipino’s must have a sweet tooth.

For our main sit-down meals we had the following:

Pancit Palabok – Noodles with fish sauce, garnished with hard boiled eggs, green onions, crushed chicharon (pork-rinds), squid adobo, flaked fish meat, and shrimp.

Tocino – Sweet cured pork.

Lumpiang Shanghai – Shanghai style mini eggrolls (lumpia), stuffed with salted pork, served with a sweet and sour sauce.

Chicken Afritada – A chicken stew.

Menudo – A stew or pork & liver with chick peas, pickles, raisins, and Vienna sausages.

Chicken BBQ – The skin on this thing was soooo good because that’s where all the marinade was. I justified eating this on the grounds that the subcutaneous fat had already rendered away. The marinade was sweet and tangy, with hits of lime, soy sauce, fish sauce, and honey.

And of course, there’s white rice at every meal!

We had some prawn crackers after the meal, which I downed with a can of Sarsi, a sarsaparilla-based soft drink that kind’a tastes like a mix of root beer and Pepsi.

For dessert we had a frozen coconut. The freezer friendly packaging is a really good idea for tropical cravings. It was a reasonably good dessert, but we were definitely wowed by the elegant presentation in a coconut shell bowl.

Dessert #2 was a Filipino classic, Halo-halo. It’s shaved ice with ice cream, evaporated milk, sugar, and all sorts of preserved fruits and beans.

There were a lot of food options, including myriad desserts that we had no room left to try. Other foods there were: Bopis, a pork lung stew; Balut, fertilized duck egg with a nearly-developed embryo inside; Adobo, chicken or pork cooked in soy sauce and vinegar; various types of Pancit (noodles); Bibingka, a sweet rice cake with salted egg, on a banana leaf … and many more.

On our way out we grabbed a Buko Pandan pie (buko means coconut, and pandan is a leaf used in cooking). It was bright green, and really good!