Market to Dampa to Stomach

Filipino Cuisine is often unheard of in Australia, let alone Sydney. Our cuisine is often given a miss in favor of foods from our neighbouring Asian countries. However, lately our cuisine has stamped out a little niche in ChinaTown.
I liken Filipino cuisine to being Spanish cuisine by way of the New world (ie. South America), with dashes of Asian and Polynesian influences for good measure.
Many of these Dishes in this review are from my Travels in the Philippines. I visited a local Establishment in Manila known as a DAMPA. Basically you purchase your ingredients from the market next door, you take what you've purchased to the Dampa and the cooks prepare the meal to your requirement/specification.

Sweet and Sour Lapu lapu (Coral Trout)

 The First Dish is Sweet and Sour Coral Trout. The skin is crispy, underneath the white flesh is moist and flaky. You have the right amount of sweetness and a sour element that just cuts through oiliness of the deep fried Preparation.

Seaweed Grape Salad

 This dish isn't for everyone. Basically it's Seaweed grapes, some call it Vegetarian/green Caviar. This preparation is simply pickled and served with tomatoes, onions and a Filipino Wild Lemon called Calamansi.

Basically the above two pictures are just a demonstration of what the Dampa can do with your Market fresh produce. In this case they grilled a Tuna Belly and made some Tempura Prawns! YUM!

Halo-halo

Every Filipino will know what this is! This is a Halo halo, a Filipino dessert made with a number of sweet elements. Let's start from the top and work our way down... We have an Ube (Purple Yam) Icecream, Leche Flan (Creme Caramel) atop some shaved Ice mixed with an evaporated/coconut milk. On the base we have a mixture of sweet red beans, jackfruit and jelly. For many this suffices as a drink for others this is a Dessert. I can tell even Filipino's debate what to class it as... All I can say is Drink/Eat/Consume it!!

I couldn't really say that this is a review on Filipino Cuisine without showing off the dish most Balikbayan's (Overseas Filipino's who come home) salivate over when they arrive home.

Lechon Baboy

 This is Lechon Baboy (Whole roasted Pig). Filipino's pride themselves on preparing this. The process alone usually takes a few hours. Basically, the pig is stuffed with lemon grass, onions and herbs; and roasted and basted evenly until the skin forms a candy red finish. Anthony Bourdain, well known Television traveler and food critic, once said that this is "The best Pig Ever!"