Bibingka and Dampa

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Bibingka and Dampa

We hope you all had a nice Christmas.  Thank you for all of the extra emails, messages, Skype sessions, etc.  Last night was much quieter than Christmas eve: karaoke ended earlier, fewer firecrackers, the first morning without 4am misa de gallo or simbang gabi  in over a week.   Christmas day felt very festive yesterday with families sitting around together in the streets sharing food and drink all day long.  We were greeted with maligayang Pasko by strangers throughout the day.  Little girls had their hair styled up and donned new pink dresses while boys wore crisp shirts tucked into pants (a departure from the usual shorts, tanks, and flip-flops), even as they carried out their usual street games.  And no holiday here would be complete without enormous videoke machines moved out into public spaces, not unlike other nearby southeast Asian countries.  Here’s a video of a karaoke session from our street on Christmas day.

We enjoyed our first bibingka, a traditional eggy pancake-like Christmas cake usually served after the early morning mass lets out.  While we’ve tried many delicious foods here, this is one of the first that we think you could easily replicate back home.  The traditional recipe uses rice flour but if you can’t find that, here is another using all-purpose flour instead.  We recommend the grated coconut (try to find unsweetened grated coconut) instead of sugar and cheese as the topping.

This afternoon a classmate from my Spanish class took us out to Dampa sa Libis for lunch.  Rose knew of four other of these dampa restaurants selling fresh seafood in this style.  The pictures tell the story better, but basically we picked out fresh prawns, live crab (alimango), tilapia, and bangus.   After selecting the seafood, customers proceed to the counter and select a cooking method before heading inside the dining area to wait for food.  Rose ordered Sinigang na sugpo (sour soup with tiger prawns), bangus stuffed with onions, tomatoes, garlic, and soy sauce, ginataang alimango (coconut milk crabs), and pinaputokna tilapia (tilapia stuffed with onions and tomatoes, marinated in oyster sauce, wrapped in tinfoil, and grilled.  Neither of us had ever eaten crab and we created quite the mess.

since it was the day after Christmas it was not very crowded at first

Step 1: pick out tiger prawns, bangus, other items

deciding if we want to get any squid

squid

Getting crabs instead. Male or female? Big or small?

all the different cooking options

the non-air conditioned seating area, apparently this is normally packed

huge bowl of sinigang na sugpo

delicious coconut milk crab

making a mess

bangus on left, tilapia on right

neighbors greeting us as we return to Marikina after our walk through Attune