Moshi Koshi and the lovely, Shio Butter Corn
Finally, after everything that’s been happening lately, I decided to take some time off and meet up with my friend Ange for some Japanese food. I specifically wanted to go to Moshi Koshi since I’ve heard a lot about it and it’s pretty near my place.
Moshi Koshi is a small place, and you order on a counter and pay there as well. There weren’t that many people in there…atmosphere was modern, but still a bit cozy. I love casual places, it’s pretty easy to get comfy and just talk about anything you can think of. Prices were pretty reasonable. Servings were large enough for just being a tad over what I can really eat comfortably, which is a plus for most. So here’s what we had:
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Kabayan Lugawan: Innards with Lugaw
One of our chefs, Mark recommended this place. I was really intrigued by the fact this particular lugaw place had eyes, tripe and intestine as part of their lugaw repertoire. To be honest, I’ve never eaten a cow’s eye (or whatever it was in there, it might have been a carabao eye…who knows?!). So after my short trip to balintawak, we headed over to Kabayan Lugawan in Kamuning which is open 24 hours.
Laman Loob na Tinubuan ng Lugaw…this was how I felt about this dish. As the lady was ladling my portion onto the bowl (they had run out of my favorite, isaw or intestine), I was just amazed at how big this thing was…it was really an entire eye with the socket and some of the meat that surrounded it. It gave me the creeps. I ordered “mata & goto” or eyes & tripe with my soup.
Though the serving didn’t look that big…it was. Lugaw is a rice porridge, made out of whole grain rice, broth and meats. This thing felt like an giant bowl of rice and soup.
A Night Trip to Balintawak Cloverleaf Market: Butchers
As I said, there were only 2 reasons for me to go to this market 1) really cheap veggies and 2) carabao meat.
Yes folks…Carabao Meat. The dignified National Animal. I don’t find anything wrong with the slaughter of carabaos for meat, just as long as it’s not double dead and it was actually partly raised for its meat. It doesn’t make the animal any less dignified…in fact, it is a good source of cheaper-than-beef protein. I think the “illegality” comes from the way it was butchered or the chance that again, it might be double dead/contaminated…but that’s why you also have to be heaps vigilant with what you’re buying.
There was a really odd smell when you hang out in the butchering area of the Balintawak market. I really think that it’s because of the hanging slabs of carabao meats and carcass because it doesn’t really smell that way in other places. Carabao meat is way darker than beef and gamier in flavor, and tougher too.
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A Night Trip to Balintawak Cloverleaf Market: Vegetable Section
Finally, after a long time of just talking about it, I’ve finally found the time to go to the infamous Balintawak Market at night. My friend Sam, who currently operates the restaurant in Banawe called Mandarin Sky is a regular here…as in every few days in a week! Although it has always sent shivers up my spine to go to this place at night (talk about the bad publicity relating to everything that is double dead!), I was still pretty much interested in the 2 awesome things this place had to offer: 1) REALLY CHEAP fresh vegetables and 2) Carabao Meat. I’ll get to the carabao later.
Anyway, my “tour” started off in the vegetable section. At 11:30pm, this place was kind of polluted. There were these 8-wheeler trucks parked inside the complex continuously dispatching sacks and sacks of fresh vegetables. Yes…dirt cheap. I didn’t ask around much, but one of my favorite veggies ever, zucchini was only at P40 per kilo. Yes…P40…when they sell it at the grocery for maybe 5x the price. So I got myself 2 kilos…enough to indulge in my sedentary holy week.
Looking at the packed vegetables, you kind of get the feeling that you need to absolutely buy a lot here. Everything is either in mountains, sacks or these giant clear plastic bags. There are vegetable leaves on the floor, but it’s relatively not bad except for the smoke. There weren’t that many people which was a relief. I had lots of arm room to take all the pictures I want.
Still these were mainstream vegetables. They didn’t have the special stuff as in farmer’s (like pako or zucchini flowers etc), but it was cheap. And I kind of understand how restaurants and start off food businesses get from this place. It is THE source that’s within Metro Manila…and the prices are just mind boggling. I’m just glad that my friend knew exactly the “good hours” to come over to this place without having to freak about the tons of people pouring in, and it does get pretty tight in there I’m sure.
Watch out for the meat section in part 2. 
Mushroom Burger’s Summer Treat: Tornado
I am proud to say that I worked on this project a month before it was launched. Mushroom Burger has a summery treat that combines soft served ice cream and some delicious toppings. Of course, for this shoot, we used the stay forever soft served but still we used their in-store toppings.
One of our pegs was the current McFlurry peg, to be honest, I think we did so much better. It’s really different when lights are up and everything is styled.
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Between Baking & Barking
There is something to be said about establishing a food business…especially when you’re alone…it takes over almost everything you do, and if you don’t get to fix the schedules, it will eventually take up all of your time. These days, from juggling my day job and food styling, I now have to add a 3rd component to my work schedule: baking. My online pet bakery is starting to take up lots of time because of the orders I’ve been getting. Since everything is pretty much made to order, there have been days when I would come to kitchen from a grueling shoot, just to bake.
Though I don’t regret anything, with the loss of my parrot recently and the huge change in lifestyle I’ve gone through the past couple of months, I guess anything that keeps me busy these days is welcome. Sometimes though, I find myself getting burned out much easier especially when it comes to my day job. I can’t really say I’m passionate about staying in my cubicle all day trying to work out student affairs and running the school…it’s a hefty job that doesn’t have much room for creativity, except of course in problem solving.
Still, I consider Whole Pet Kitchen something that is keeping me on my toes in terms of creativity and development, everything is a work-in-progress here. It surely makes my pets happier and nothing gives me more joy than to see my dogs enjoy a treat I’ve made. Hopefully someday, Jack will finally be able to go to work with me on a regular basis once I have established my bark-ery, I don’t think he would be able to come with me to my commercial shoots.
So between baking & barking, I still have time to study my craft. Editorial styling for my pet bakery gives me some room to keep having an outlet for my relaxing food styling aside from all the commercial jobs. Props are pretty much limited to some human stuff and to ensure that it has a doggie component, I have to add the obvious like a food bowl, or a toy, and even a leash. So far, it works. Like a marriage of human and dog food. Hopefully, once I get all balanced, my food adventures will find its way back to my blog. For now, I’ve got the jobs to blog about…when I actually have some time (eep!).
Menu Makeover for Mushroom Burger — Other Dishes
I’ve been so caught up with work lately that I completely forgot to update my blog. So far, I’ve been working on multiple projects which we will hopefully see published in the next few months. For now, my life has been centered either behind the camera, in the kitchen, or behind my laptop in the school. It’s been quite a crazy month trying to balance everything but finally I see some projects being published and I’m pretty happy with the outcome (and so are my clients). Mushroom Burger is currently updating their look for their stores and menu boards and will be coming out with new products soon.
For now, they’ve been making waves of changes by putting up the images we worked on late last year. Mushroom burger doesn’t only serve sandwiches, they also have a lot of other dishes like spaghetti, pancit and rice meals, desserts which we all took time to shoot to achieve the central look (it’s always best to just have the same people working on your project to make sure standards are kept).
Since the pegs were major fast foods, the styling had to keep up. Everything had to be carefully made from the ingredients they had given me (except of course, the fake soft serve which is a different story). For the spaghetti, I needed to make those little curls in the side ala old school to achieve the super commercial look.
As for the soft served, it was literally a pain! The twirly took about an hour to perfect to get those perfect swirls…and I think it took about 8 – 9 really good ones for them to pick out which they wanted. The trick with soft serve is practice, practice, practice, when you have a good formula that you can work on. Admittedly, my formula has changed drastically from my first soft serve job to today…it took 2 years for me to experiment on a good recipe that I can actually do by feel. Continue reading “Menu Makeover for Mushroom Burger — Other Dishes” »
Kenny’s New Side Kicks!
Finally, it’s become a bit easier for me to spot some of my works online thanks to Facebook. I went to Rockwell the other day and found a poster I worked on a few weeks ago. Tadaa! Kenny Roger’s new side dishes (and yes they are as yummy as they look!)
We worked on a bunch of new items too during this day but I have yet to see them on the walls. Ben Chan’s Blacksheep studio has become a nice second home to me, this was our 3rd shoot together and we’ve already managed to get to know each other’s styles and likes which made shooting a breeze.
For this shoot, I just used whatever ingredients R&D gave me. I did a bit of straining on the beans because they’re pretty saucy but we wanted to highlight the beautiful and colorful beans. Added a bit of beans in the background and some of their ingredients just to make it a bit more inviting. It was a good work day…looking forward to seeing the new stuff we worked on as well!
Making Soft Cheese from Scratch in the CACS After-Work Workshop!
Cheese is my super favorite, favorite food! And for the first time in the history of anything, the Center for Asian Culinary Studies, along with Chef Elena Rivera, had their first cheese making workshop open to the public! Yes, you don’t have to be a professional chef to make your own cheese, and the fabulous mix of people in our class proved it!
When making cheese, first you need some good milk. For the cheese making class, we had a choice of 3 kinds of milk: goat, buffalo and cow.
Then, some cheeses need a bit of a push using a starter, or rennet which you add to the milk and helps make curds. But we also learned how to make Mascarpone which basically used lemon and lots of time and love.
Usually, you gently heat the milk until it reaches the right temperature, turn it off then let it cool a bit before adding your helpers to make the curds.
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Mushroom Burger’s New Menu Design – Sandwiches
This was probably one of my most challenging projects late last year. I was tasked to overhaul Mushroom Burger’s menu images and the client decided on getting one of Manila’s super food photographers, Allan Tuazon of Subject Matters Photography, to do the job with me. The thing about this shoot: the peg was really from major fast foods from different countries, I had to up my game 200% because we had to do 10-12 shots per day to be able to finish the menu within the specified time period…without letting the quality suffer.
This shoot, like most commercial food shoots, focused on the food. We didn’t have props, backgrounds or anything. Basically, it was a gray background and a white surface. Alan’s giant portable Apple display made things even more nit picky because it magnified details 100 fold haha!
The thing with sandwiches, especially when having a fastfood peg is that everything has to conform to a specific shape…everything has to be aligned, perfect, without looking fake and stiff. The client basically had his eye on exactly what he wanted, and this helped me and Allan a lot since they reinforced a certain look they wanted to achieve for their restaurant (hey, if you are going to overhaul you menu’s image, you really have to be sure about what you want right?!).
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