Feb 27 2007

Malapascua dinner

Published by at 9:05 pm under Scott's Adventures,Uncategorized

For breakfast, Noel makes a wicked dish called Kinilaw; it’s a spicy mixture of very tiny de-boned raw fish mixed with chopped onions, hot peppers, vinegar, and a thick coconut milk created by combining the milk with shredded coconut meat and then squeezing it out so that the milk is almost white and much richer than normal (the coconut meat is discarded – the very part of the coconut we usually use in the West is junk here!). The mixture is very tasty and has a nice spice burn lacking from most Filipino fare; I love it! Seb can barely take a bite though; in addition to hating fish (culinarily crippling on an island of fisherman!), his throat is still sore and he’s almost unable to swallow.

While Noel’s “cooking,” Seb and I get a lesson in opening coconuts with a machete from generator man. We hold the husk and cut-and-twist the top until the nut spills milk, then dump the milk into a flask and split the whole thing in half to get at the tender, sashimi like meat inside – all the while trying not to chop off a finger! The closest doctor’s several hours away (and there’s not exactly a lot of ice about), so any mishap and my typing would be degrees worse than it already is. The meat is scrumptious though, and easily spooned out of the shell and slurped up.

There’s a bit of a ruckus, and we find that our neighbor has come by to complain about the noise the generator was making the previous night. The family, and especially our generator man, get very excited at the complaint, and the situation quickly deteriorates into a shouting match with fists waved and small items thrown. Seb wisely steps in and tries to reason with this Canadian ex-pat – he’s apparently moved here with his gay Filipino lover to live a quiet, environmentally friendly lifestyle (complete with solar powered stereo) and feels that this huge, diesel monstrosity that’s been installed by his bedroom must be caged. The Pepitos (the side of Mabel’s family he’s dealing with) are fiercely independent, and think he has no right to tell them what to do, doesn’t understand the Philippines or their island lifestyle, and should run back to wherever white-man land he came from! Seb does his best, and since neither the neighbor nor his lover speak Visaya (despite living here 5 years!), Seb is really the only one he can converse with sensibly anyway. The man doesn’t want to back down, and it’s clear we’re going to be dealing with him for the duration. However, Seb comes away hoping he’s calmed the situation enough to prevent the Pepitos from burying the guy in a shallow grave…

Seb’s making dinner! We’ve been subsisting of a traditional diet of fried pork, fish and rice for several weeks now, but our recent Bogo trip has allowed Seb to stock up with enough Western delicacies to make Spaghetti Bolognaise. It goes over quite well (even with massive amounts of garlic!) but I catch a few family members sneaking some dried fish and rice a little after dinner – some things you can’t change; I guess a Filipino’s dinner is one of them.

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