Pampanga Culinary Tour...part 4

I have never been known to be an artsy fartsy kind of guy. I've tried my hand in designing before but it always ends up mediocre or lackluster. But to see multi-faceted artiste-extraordinaire, Claude Tayag's work up close, it was just simply amazing. A wood sculptor, furniture designer, painter, writer and chef all rolled into one...God must have been plenty generous to him when he handed out talents that day he was born (1956)!

Claude Tayag with his wife Mary Ann and Anthony Bourdain (photo courtesy of http://philippinebackpacker.org/PinoyPridePage.aspx)

So we were at his restaurant/house called Bale Dutung (prior reservations , minimum of 12 persons, are a must as walk-ins are never entertained) for our last stop of the Culinary Tour. It was also the priciest at around Php2000 (US$45) per person. This was the meal that I anticipated the most, I even decided to skip breakfast for this as my colleagues in the teaching facility of SPUQC adviced me that this was to be the highlight of the tour specially the 5-way roasted pig. Let the meals begin....

For starters, we had the cooking demonstration by Claude on how to prepare Sisig (a combination of pig ears and chicken liver). I consider this to be a staple of Pampanga Cuisine, my fondest memories of this is Aling Lucing's sisig along the train tracks which is a must-visit for me everytime I am staying in Clark. Unfortunately success has its price, Aling Lucing's murder has been shrouded in mystery up to this day. The sisig prepared by Claude was very tasty because of the chicken liver but I was kind of missing the crunchiness which is what I usually look for in my sisig. Nonetheless, it was a good starter.

Next up was a pako (fiddlehead fern) salad similar to the one that was served at Lillian Borromeo's. The similarities end though when it came to presentation. As Ms Borromeo's salad was more like a potato/chicken salad type of concoction, Mr Tayag's was more like a Caesar salad. Both were definitely good but I prefer Ms Borromeo's as I was not too partial to Mr Tayag's balsamic oil aftertaste.

An import from Bacolod , the next dish is Chicken Wings cooked ala Inasal (sticky sweet/vinegar/achuete sauce covering the chicken...i may be wrong here in describing Inasal). The Tayag's made their own version and it was delicious. (I actually bit into it before I remembered I had to take a picture first, hence, you will see a small bite at the tip of the chicken)

As explained by Mrs Tayag, above dishes are intended to coat the stomach in preparation for the rich/fatty/oily suckling pig about to be served five ways. The five ways came about due to Mrs Tayag's dislike of Lechon Paksiw which is usually the by-product of an unfinished suckling pig. To avoid throwing away the leftovers, Mr. Tayag decided then to cook the pig five ways so as not to waste any part of it.

First up, the crispy skin of the pig. Admittedly not one of my favorites since this is source where most of the bad cholesterol come from...

The pig's skin comes with liver sauce making it a extra savoury

2nd way is shredded fried pork wrapped in tortilla with Claude's Oriental sauce. So far, this is my favorite among the lot. Not too heavy and quite tasty, I actually ate two of them!

3rd way was Sinigang na Letchon. This is a popular Filipino soupy dish but instead of using the usual pork or fish, they substituted it with Suckling Pig. Not a fan of Sinigang but this was something I could stand and enjoy

Served with rice wrapped in Pandan Leaf to counter the sourness of the soup

4th way was ribs served with eggplant and a modified sisig topping. Light and easy to prepare dish.

Last but not the least was the 5th way, or Asado as the Tayag's would call it. For a Filipino-Chinese like me, Asado or roasted pork with a sweet sauce in Chinese is a favorite dish of mine so i was expecting this to be good. It turned out to be good but the taste was definitely no Chinese Asado. It was more like a Filipino Mechado. They also served this a la Carving style like how the Europeans or Americans serve it since carving is nonexistent in Filipino cuisine

And not but not the least is dessert called Paradiso, 3 balls (ube, macapuno and sweet potato) swimming in a sweet custard-like cream. A fitting end to a 3 hour lunch meal that was both gastronomically fulfilling and mentally stimulating

But wait! apparently the meal was not yet over. A van carrying around 80 halo-halos (or Ice Kacang if you're from Malaysia) from Kabigting's. Kabigting's halo halo kind of reminds me of Razon's Halo-halo which is also from Pampanga except that they vary a bit in the ingredients. Razon's has bananas, macapuno strips and leche flan while Kabigting's had corn,white beans and pastillas...plus condensed milk to make it smoother. I does kind of remind me of mais-con-hielo with a bit of a twist. With a heavy meal preceding it, it was such a waste to see a lot of the students not finish their halo-halos. I personally prefer Razon's but getting to taste something different from time to time does prove to be a nice treat as well.