Mad about FOOD

Unless you’ve visited the United States, chances are you are not familiar with funnel cakes. I, myself, have only learned about this regional specialty when I found a Funnel Cake Factory stall at Glorietta’s Food Choices.  Funnel cakes are traditional cakes from Pennsylvania and are said to be very popular at theme parks, carnivals, fairs and ballparks. It is named such because the batter is poured in a circular motion into a funnel-like mold, then deep-fried. When done, it is sprinkled with powdered sugar and garnished with your choice of toppings. Among the selections are strawberry ice cream whip, peanut butter banana, blueberry whip, nutty chocoloco, mango graham and choco rainbow. I decided to try the caramel almonds variety (P70).

It was so good that I wolfed down the entire cake (about 5 inches in diameter) all by myself. The caramel lends a gooey-ness that balances the texture of the fried dough. It’s a really tasty treat and, I must say, the fun is in the crrrrrunch!

Now if you like Mediterranean food, I’m sure you love the pastries, too. When my Tita Cora asked me what pasalubong I want from Australia, I had no second thoughts when I said "baklava." Huh? Baklava from Australia? Well, see, my aunt is married to a Greek and they know where to buy these delicious baklava rolls with pistachio nuts.

There are many versions of baklava–Greek, Turkish, Lebanese–but my Tita Cora gave me a whole container of baklava rolls, Syrian-style. The phyllo or dough, which looks like a bird’s nest, is made from flour, sugar and water. Each roll is no bigger than a 5-peso coin, but it took me about 2 weeks to finish eating my pasalubong. Burp.

If you’ve been to the most romantic city in the world, you’d probably recognize these pastel-colored cookies anywhere. Yet, when I roamed the streets of Paris for an entire day, I didn’t see one.

Good thing there’s Bizu Patisserie, which brought the Macaron de Paris to Manila. We can now enjoy this famous French pastry described by a website on the city of Paris as "a mouthful of heaven." The cookies are made from a mixture of crushed almonds, sugar and egg whites. Sandwiched between two chewy meringue cookies is a layer of delicately sweet cream. They come in many different flavors like blueberry, raspberry, coffee, vanilla, lemon, etc. My little Bea’s favorite is the exotic rose flavor, while mine is the pistachio (the green one). I’ve read that Bizu employs one person whose sole responsibility is to make these macarons every single day. What a job, eh? The cookies are quite extravagant, costing P33.60 (VAT included) per piece. But because of the ingredients and the meticulous way of preparing it, each bite is worth every centavo.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 21st, 2007 at 2:00 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.