Cooking with Arn X

I miss home cooked Filipino meals. There’s an eat all you can Filipino buffet here along Clark street called “Little Quiapo” where you can eat inihaw na baboy and crispy pata until your heart jumps out and slaps your face.

I don’t eat there much though. It lacks that home feel since their meals taste more like cafeteria food. Besides, that restaurant is located between two cemeteries and it’s not a good location to chow down tons of Crispy Pata.

I want a home cooked Filipino meal and nothing says that more than...

Tapsilog

The famous Filipino food portmanteau. It’s the Filipino equivalent of America’s ham and eggs. It’s basically tapa (fried marinated beef), sinangag (garlic rice), itlog (egg) with atchara (pickled papaya), sliced tomatoes and vinegar with soy sauce and chopped onions. *drool* Oh, for the eggs, I like mine sunny side up and really runny. Mmmm!

Enter Arn – the sous (maryosep) chef.

I went to the market and picked out the meat. There was this woman there who was smelling, poking and thoroughly analyzing (as if there was something printed in the meat) the meat. I don’t know anything about determining if it’s good meat or not. I walked by the meat section, analyzed the price tags, grabbed the cheapest meat and walked away. What cut is it? Is it fresh? Is it proper for tapa? Heck, I have no idea. Who cares? I only have a few dollars with me so I grabbed the cheapest one. Life is simple nga diba?

Back home I sliced up the beef and marinated it in soy sauce, garlic, pepper, salt, sugar, etc then left it in the fridge overnight.

The next day, I cooked up half the batch. I fried up an egg and pan fried the rice with garlic and pepper. The egg was cooked nicely. The rice was perfect and the beef, well, it was too black to tell if it’s burned or not anyway.

Next, the taste test. I took a bite and there was silence. I chewed and swallowed and there was still silence. I looked out the window and I saw a pig flying around.

Arn burning food or messing it up is pretty normal. Arn preparing a decent meal is unusual is rare but not surprising. Arn cooking a great meal? Unheard of.

The tapa tasted great. It was tangy just the way I want it. It was even better than the tapa I eat at Goodah! and this can beat the crap out of the fast food tapa meals back home. I’ll even say this was the best tapa I’ve ever had. The eggs are just the way I like it - crispy edges but runny in the middle. It was so good it felt weird because I’m used to the overcooked, underseasoned mess I always have for lunch.



Maybe it's about time the cooking gods gave me a break right?