TBK Asks- Do you know your onions?

 

I found this photo sequence on Facebook and I thought it would be useful to illustrate a blog I had planned. I wanted to highlight some of the differences between Philippine and English cookery.

The Pinoys use a lot of Onions and the majority of the Sari Sari store sell Red Onions. These are individually priced with the price written on them with a marker pen. Recently the price of onions went up and there were a lot of memes online about onions being more expensive than petrol. The average Philippine salary is 10,000 pesos a month (£151) and the average red onion is around 10 pesos, but with big families and onions used a lot a price increase can have a big effect on the pinoy pocket.

The Brits tend to use more yellow onions but here in the Philippines these are usually only found in the Supermarkets. Some English recipes also ask for Shallots but I have never found any here in the Philippines so I tend to use red onions.

Apparently there are also white Onions but I have not seen them nor are they usually asked for in Recipe books.

Chester, the Hooman, also advised me on some other differences between Pinoy and Brit cookery:

• The Pinoys use a lot of Garlic ( often a head of Garlic is used here instead of a clove of Garlic there)
• Ginger is used a lot in Pinoy cookery

Luis then informed me of the importance of Rice in the Pinoy diet:

• Pinoys have rice with every meal- breakfast lunch and dinner
• Pinoys even have rice with spaghetti ( and soup)

             I was served rice with my Chicken Tinola at Victoria Beach house

• Most restaurants offer Unlimited rice
• A rice cooker is essential

If I have Pinoys here I always ask if they want rice and we have a huge sack of it ( I do not eat rice ) and I let them make their own.

Another thing that is hard to find here is Fresh Mushrooms- you can get tinned whole mushrooms occasionally and tinned sliced mushrooms are easy to find, but not fresh mushrooms. As a steak lover and a lover of English Breakfasts ( sausage, egg, mushroom, bacon and tomato) I find this very annoying- the tinned variety does not taste as good as the fresh version. 

Another thing I find strange with Island Life is we have so much fresh food- daily people walk past my window selling fresh fish, prawns ( Hipon) , vegetables etc and the chickens roam free . We grow thousands of Coconuts and Papaya , Pineapples and bananas and yet the recipes refer to canned pineapple, or Pineapple titbits, or tinned peaches or tinned tropical fruit!

One problem, similar to cooking in Bahrain , is that most stores have a very limited range of items. They stock the big sellers /fast moving items like rice ( by the sack load), Chicken, hot dogs, ice cream, whitening cream, insect repellent and pork. However items for International cuisine ( Steak, Lamb, Salmon, Smoked Salmon , Naan bread, chick peas, Hummus, Poppadom's, Malt Vinegar, HP sauce ) are hard to find. 

Some can only be bought on line like HP sauce and Malt Vinegar ( through Lazada and Shopee) and others ( Salmon, Steak , Lamb) frozen and imported ( and therefore expensive) in specialist Deli's like Puerto Deli, Deli Mart and more, Bruno's. Even then supply cannot be guaranteed as they only restock occasionally. A classic example is Cranberry Sauce , essential for Christmas dinner with Turkey.

 I scoured all the shops for weeks before December and was constantly told it was " on order" and " arriving soon". We ate our Turkey without Cranberry sauce and without Brussel sprouts. Then in January Deli Mart announced it had restocked and had Cranberry sauce available! I bought a jar having checked the expiry date was past 25.12.23. I am glad I have a big fridge and freezer and plenty of storage space in my kitchen. When I see something I use often I buy it and keep it until I need it! Strangely some sauces which you would not expect to find here, like Lea and Perrins, is readily available!

I was just chatting to my British neighbour here and he added that tea bags are hard to find. I was telling him I can only buy Earl Grey tea in El Nido! 

TJ reminded me when I first arrived that most boarding houses do not have kitchens so there are no refrigerators or freezers. Often the Sari Sari store is the only place with a freezer and, more importantly, a generator to keep it running in our regular "Brown Outs" ( power cuts). So people shop daily and only buy small amounts . Chester ( the Hooman) also explained the long queues on certain dates at the ATM. When people get paid ( usually the middle or end of the month) they go and get their money from the ATM and pay their rent ( half of their salary) and then buy food with what is left. When Jhoanna first started shopping for me and when TJ was visiting regularly and cooking for me they would bring little sachets of food ( like the ones below I got free when I spent 10,000 peso ( £151) in Robinsons last week.

I find these sachets ( particularly Tomato sauce and Tomato Paste) very wasteful as they are hard to seal when used and they generate a lot of plastic waste which cannot be recycled. So I try and buy big jars of the items I use most often and keep them in the fridge. That way I only need to get my shopping weekly and buy the fresh items like meat, fish and vegetables. 

I hope you have found this blog on shopping and cooking in the Philippines of interest and if I missed anything, or if you know where to find something I do not please let me know!

Next week TBK asks " what's it like shopping in Palawan" and we are going to make a Vlog going shopping with Jhoanna on Sunday. If you have any other ideas for  Blog or Vlog please let me know.