If you have time for lunch or dinner from today until Saturday, May 31, I highly recommend that you take a food walk through time at the Mandarin Oriental Manila’s Paseo Uno. Entitled Pasos del Tiempo, (A Walk Through Time), it’s a Filipino-Spanish Food Festival featuring guest Chef Ed Quimson, who has gathered some of his family’s treasured heirloom dishes and shares them with us.

Chef Ed is part of the fourth generation of the Tuason family, an eminent clan exalted for their gastronomic get-togethers. Having known Chef Ed since 2001, I’m grateful to be able to partake of these dishes that he’s often told me about, dishes of his beloved grandmother, Consuelo Tuason, (“Lola Tutong” because she loved the “tutong” of cooked rice) whom he credits to this day for his passion in the kitchen. “We traveled extensively together around the world and she introduced the world of food to me,” he says.

paella

If you make it to the festival, I urge you to try the Sinigang de Carne y Cerdo, a type of sinigang that acquires its sourness not from tamarind but from tomatoes. Chef Ed’s brother Martin, tells me, “Most people mistake this sinigang for a pochero because of the tomatoes but this is how Lola used to cook it. Sometimes she’d use kamias, but generally, this sinigang is sour-sweetish vis à vis something sour.” Do also try the Agachonas a la Adobadas, snipe or pigeon cooked adobo-style. It’s quite salty so make sure to pair it with lots of rice.

roast turkey with tomato stuffing

You can’t come away from the Festival without trying the Lengua, an outstanding dish of tongue slow-cooked in tomato sauce and finished with olive oil. I don’t joke when I say that it moves me to silence. And of course, there’s the famous Tuason turkey stuffed with ground meat bathed in a piquant tomato sauce. Look for the chutney that’s beside it and be amazed at its citrus zing. Naturally, you also shouldn’t pass up the Chicken Galantina, a special fiesta dish that graces every Filipino’s Noche Buena table.

dulce de santol. Remove the sugar shard and replace it with a scoop of vanilla or macapuno ice cream. Plop!

For dessert, there are two sweets I highly recommend, but only if you’re a hardcore sweet tooth like I am. First, there’s the Dulce de Santol, a sort of fruit “compote” that’s a beautiful deep ruby in color. Spoon the thickish liquid into your mouth, alternating with bites and sucks of the santol fruit. Again, it’s very sweet, so Chef Ed recommends scooping either vanilla or macapuno ice cream onto the dulce de santol and eating them together. It sounds almost scarily sugary, but it’s a dream combination that’s at once sour and sweet.

Chef Ed’s Leche Flan is the leche flan you’ve been looking for: quivery and thick in the mouth, it dissolves with the slightest press of the teeth and just a bit of resistance contributed by the sliced bread that tops this glorious custard.

Pasos del Tiempo at Paseo Uno
Mandarin Oriental Manila, Makati Ave., Makati
Lunch and dinner
May 26-31, 2008
For reservations, call 750.8888.

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