“Er, what exactly is a butter bar?” I ask.

Admittedly, it’s a scary proposition – a (cookie) bar made out of butter.  (!)  Though I have no problem ingesting loads of butter melted and mixed into cakes and cookies, to actually eat something so unabashed of its “provenance” is daunting.

Yes, even for dessert-obsessed me.

It arrives looking like cheesecake made in a 13×9-inch pan, complete with the sunken “custard” and crusty edges. For some reason, my previous conversation with Lovely Ann Palanca, the baker of these bars, echoes in my head: “Please don’t ask me how much butter I use to make one recipe, Lori, ‘cause it might scare you away.” (Ha, not likely). On a more serious note, Lovely struggles to describe her creation. “… they’re like brownies without the chocolate. Some people say it’s like cheesecake too… [with] a crust and a moist filling. I used to call them death by butter.” Hmm, not a bad way to go. On another occasion, Lovely attempts more descriptions.

“A cross between a cheesecake and a blonde brownie crust?”

“Toasty butter cake crust and buttery topping?”

“Butter bars because it has loads of butter in it?”

We could go on all day.

A cross-section yields what appears to be cheesecake on a blondie (white brownie) crust. My front teeth glide into the cheesecake, its residual cool from the refrigerator initially numbing my tongue. Then the flavors open up: cream on vanilla softly bound by eggs and the slow heat of the oven.

And the crust. Ooh. Like the true blondie it is, butterscotch and vanilla pitter-pat and push-pull on my palate, frank flavors as exuberant as the name of the cookie bar they belong to. It’s also distinctively salty, a salty-sweet that makes my mouth water, makes me reach for another slice. How serendipitous that Lovely “… ended up with this [butter bars] when I was craving for the butter cake of Vargas Kitchen.”

I send a batch of butter bars off with my Bin when he goes to the office. He returns and reports, “They loved them but agreed that the name didn’t do it justice.” “Well, what would they call it then?” I ask. “Cheesecake blondies.”

I heart butter bars

When I talk to Lovely again, I ask her if the name “butter bars” insults present-day health sensibilities. “Not really, anything with butter is good.” (Hear, hear!) “Foodies know that butter makes the party complete. Filipinos love their sweets. As long as it’s “delish,” [it] doesn’t matter whether they gain or not. Eating in moderation is the key. A small piece will go a long way.”

Butter Bars by Lovely’s Kitchen
Savory items available: Chicken liver pate with brandy, Sardine Pate, Chicken Satay with Peanut Sauce, Roast Beef, Tartufo Pasta with Prosciutto, Gorgonzola Rigatoni with Prawns, Seafood Supreme on Puff Pastry Shells

Baked goods: Butter Bars (P700), Deep dish cookies/chocolate chip lava cookies, Tres leches cupcakes.

0928.3244051 / (02) 8535752 for inquiries.
Email: lovelyp99@yahoo.com

I bend over the cup, dip my tasting spoon in and slurp the dark liquid. It’s too hot! My throat is electrocuted by the scalding liquid coursing down it.

By sheer serendipity, I’ve wangled a meeting with Robert Francisco, the proprietor of Boyds Coffee Company (Philippines). Very busy and obviously very versed in the language of coffee since his immersion into it 16 years ago, I admit to some trepidation upon meeting him. His company’s conference room looks like a shrine to espresso machines, their cool, metallic lines broken only by coffee paraphernalia:  bottled syrups, coffee bean dispensers, numerous coffee books, and collections of cups and coffee makers.

Robert breezes in and immediately busies himself making espressos and lattes for me and my friend, Z, who worked with Robert a few years ago. Our coffee is made with Midnight Blend, a medium-dark roast with full body. The black coffee made from it is smoky without the thwack! I usually get from super strong coffee.

But it’s the latte that Robert whips up that proves unforgettable. Crowned with a touch of froth, [a] latte heart  is created by deftly moving the pitcher’s spout to and fro. It’s awe-inspiring just to watch. The latte itself strikes the enviable balance of milk and coffee with neither one dominating the other; each sip finishes with a milky caress.

Properly caffeinated, we move on to cupping. Highly simplified for today’s purpose, cupping is “coffee tasting,” a sensory evaluation of coffee. A line of small bowls each filled with various colored liquids is placed on the table as well as a cup of spoons soaking in warm water. Called tasting or cupping spoons, they provide a consistent measure for appraising coffee. They remind me of those silver soup spoons used in grand old hotels.

Robert instructs me and Z to chew on bits of lemon zest, the contents of the first bowl. “We’ll start with bitter and sour,” he begins, picking up a piece of zest. “Sour is broken down into two – astringency and acid.” Being a fan of all things sour, I have no trouble with this tidbit of tartness. The zest is mapakla, that physical sensation of puckeriness; think: unripe banana. The second thing we try, the lemon slice, is more about acidity, that quality in coffee that deals with a lemon-like tanginess.

So far, we’re simulating the tastes of astringency and acid just so that we know what each tastes like. Robert goes ahead and slurps the ominously clear liquid in the third bowl. His expression reveals nothing but he cautions us, “… not to taste a lot because you might get gulat” (surprised). I spoon some up and slurp. “It’s vinegar diluted with water!” I laugh. “I could drink this straight.”  Z and Robert laugh (at me, I think). “I wanted to give you a sense of a lighter version, the sense of tartness in coffee,” Robert explains. “We have to distinguish where the asim (sourness) comes from: immature coffee? improper preparation? improper ratio? Given that it’s all the same, where is that acid coming from? Like wine, acid in coffee gives it that kiliti, that snap!”

The fourth bowl is simply salty water. “Coffee is definitely not salty,” Robert avers.

After tasting the liquid in the fifth bowl, I’m reminded of taho, specifically the caramel-like sugar syrup that comes with it. Or sago’t gulaman. “Where’s the gulaman?” I ask jokingly. “Correct!” Robert exclaims. “It’s arnibal, brown sugar and water.” He then instructs me and Zarah to hold our noses and take another slurp of the brown sugar water. “Pinch your nose and don’t exhale. Just slurp.” “It just tastes sweet but not distinctive,” I reply. My voice sounds tinny since I’m still pinching my nose. I let go and exhale. A rainbow of flavors immediately becomes evident. Robert tells us, “… a big factor in flavor when you taste … is that last step of exhalation … then you taste flavor.” Obviously, smell and taste are co-dependent and almost difficult to separate, especially when assessing flavors.

The last bowl holds the coffee we drank earlier, though at a cooler temperature and brewed black. To me, it just tastes bitter. Though Robert is urging me and Z to “…try to look for the faintest taste of arnibal, the floral, herbal, and nuttiness…”, I can’t agree. That’s one mature palate on this guy. What I still taste however is the lemon; its oil has stained my taste buds. Similarly, it’s the oils in coffee that are responsible for coffee’s diffusion of flavors on the palate.

One of the more intriguing things I learn from the cupping session is that whatever food I pair with coffee influences its flavor. A bad cup of coffee with a good donut can taste fantastic, dismaying though that may be. Robert is firm about not pairing coffee with any food but allows that no one can afford to be too much of a purist. He admits to, “… my favorite, monay na mamon from San Pablo, Quezon. (!) [It’s] called cheesecake from Rodela’s bakeshop, cheap from the carinderia. It looks like broas in cake form with cheese on top. Fantastic.” His eyes sparkle at the recollection.

Taking a deep breath, I then ask Robert, “What’s your position on creamer … Coffeemate … in coffee?” He turns and fixes me with a hard stare.

I’m thinking that I may have a serious pancake addiction.

The original Walker Bros. baked apple pancake

When I tried the Walker Bros. apple pancake three years ago, it sparked an epiphany – but I didn’t know it then. After all, I had just one bite of that pancake and I don’t recall any bells or whistles or the sounds of angels playing harps on high. It was just a pancake, for crying out loud; and it wasn’t even my dish.

this may be the thinnest pancake I’ve ever eaten

Fast forward to the present, and I find myself thinking more and more about that baked pancake. I can’t pinpoint what sets it off, but my incessant pancake reveries load the gun, and an onslaught of baked pancake recipes pulls the trigger. I make one baked pancake in 2007, two in 2008, and NINE in 2009, and this year’s only half over!

This isn’t just your average, Pancake House, stack o’ flapjacks pancakes that I’m talking about here, but baked pancakes. Also known as Dutch babies, Dutch Bunny, German Apple Pancake, or oven pancake, this doughy disc is a spectacular result of the lifting power of eggs and heat. The batter is simple: milk, flour, butter, salt and two to three eggs. Mixed in a blender for better aeration, it’s then poured over a shallow pan (usually 10-inches wide) in which some fruit (usually apples) has been caramelized with brown sugar, butter, and cinnamon. It’s baked quickly in the oven at high heat and it comes out like the diva that it is; dramatic sloped sides, a golden exterior pocked with burnished bits of molten sugar, and the now-translucent slices of fruit scintillating in juice, heady with the scent of melted butter.

Excuse me while I wipe the drool off my keyboard.

Because an oven pancake has no leavening (baking powder, baking soda), its texture is a cross between crepe, popover, and pancake. It’s quite dense, definitely not your typical fluffy buttermilk pancake. But it makes for a stunning breakfast or brunch centerpiece. It’s also impossible to stop eating. Most people blanch at its size, managing only a quarter portion, at most, half.  I, on the other hand, can polish off the whole thing by myself.

My goal in making all these pancakes is to recreate the baked pancake that I had at Walker Bros. in Chicago three years ago. Though a return trip there would be ideal, it’s not possible at present, so I make do tweaking and trimming, refining and revising in order to achieve that slightly cakey, sticky-sweet Walker Bros. wonder that is my Holy Grail of Pancakes.

Related Posts:
Recipe here. (Just one of the many I’ve tried).
Pancake making in Rotterdam

An unlikely name for a specialty chocolate line that celebrates Filipino flavors.

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469 – 1527) was an Italian political philosopher and statesman. His political treatises – most notably, The Prince (1513) - generated controversy (then and now) because of its outlined strategies devised to keep a dictator in power. Those musings are the basis of modern political philosophy, giving rise to the terms, “Machiavelli” (one who connives and contrives) and “Machiavellianism” (the use of deception or scheming, usually in politics).

Like the name Machiavelli, its chocolate namesake is also susceptible to all sorts of interpretations. Says Raul Matias, the chocolatier-owner of Machiavelli Chocolatier, “Historians made him [Machiavelli] look bad but actually he’s very pragmatic. He believes that there’s no such thing as absolute good, absolute virtue, which I think is true. He was way ahead of his time.” Pointing at his boutique’s signage, he avers, “It’s a very strong name. And easy to remember. The quotes on the website are also from him.”

Politics have no relation to morals. – Niccolo Macchiavelli

Chocolates have no relation to morals. – Machiavelli Chocolatier

In just under a year since Machiavelli Chocolatier has hit local shores, runaway favorites include the Yema de Manila (patterned after the leche flan ), a divination of egg yolks and sugar mixed with chocolate, and Purple Yam Yum whose whimsical color peeks out upon first bite. I never even considered that ube and chocolate would work, but here it does. There’s something appealing about the balance created between the earthiness of the tuber and the smoky tones of the chocolate.

Raul spent what he calls, “… the first half of my life” in the States working as a Physical Therapist. As his interest in that profession waned, he remembered his childhood love for chocolates, specifically his daily breakfast of Nestlé Crunch. “I loved chocolates even back then,” he recalls. So, through hard-edged diligence, Raul put himself through four years of schooling in Canada and Paris, pursuing his passion for the cocoa bean.

In 2004, Raul shuttled between Florida, Connecticut, and New York apprenticing at various chocolate boutiques and molding truffles with the likes of notable pastry chef, Fritz Knipschildt. “Those stores were very secretive about their techniques. I’d only arrive when the ganache was already made,” he exclaims, waving his hands animatedly, a charming mannerism of his. Before the year ended, Machiavelli was born in a rented professional kitchen in New York. “I’d make chocolates on the weekend and peddle them from store to store,” Raul remembers.

Machiavelli met with moderate success and after much thought, Raul decided to bring the business to Manila. “Wala pa naman chocolatier na Filipino,” he muses, “and I really wanted to come home.” A pause, and then he declares, “I’m very patriotic!”

I fix him with a blank stare.

Raul chuckles, “Believe it or not, Lori, I’m a Filipino first and last.”

“My gosh, I wish I interviewed more people like you,” I reply in amazement.

But once we move to the display cases and I take a good look at the chocolates’ gleaming exteriors, there’s no denying the Pinoy national pride that Machiavelli chocolates are a paean to. Flavors whose names conjure tropical, sugar-full fantasies that are as exotic as the ingredients used to make them: Coconut Screw, Lychee Noir, Guava Asia, Negros Crunch Dark, and my favorite, Ivorie (IH-vo-ree; short “I”) Jack. The latter is a white chocolate ganache infused with langka (jackfruit), its distinct aroma and flavor enhanced by the lushness of the white chocolate – sweet, flowery, a touch of peach even, layers of flavor building a taste-echo of memory in the mouth. Truly, European chocolates married to Asian flavors.

”Experience the chocolate. Eat it slowly. Sit down and drink water in between flavors. Arte no? Raul laughs.

Using native ingredients is the cornerstone of Machiavelli Chocolatier. Raul’s latest creation, the Negros Crunch (dark and milk), is named after the muscovado sugar that Negros is famous for. “Negros used to be the top exporter of muscovado. [Abroad], it’s now called Barbados sugar. I want to take it back, I want to take history back.” He details upcoming flavors, one he calls a classic “vintage truffle” made with Palawan honey. “Ayoko maging boring,” Raul says proudly, emphasizing his point with his hands. “I like reinventing and I want Machiavelli to stay forever; it’s a global name, no boundaries.”

Machiavelli Chocolatier
G/F Rustan’s Makati, Essenses Area, near Glorietta 4.
(02) 483.9854
www.mach-chocolatier.com

14g, P75
10g, P50

Or you could smoke it like Mark Twain or Fidel Castro or any of those other famous cigar smokers. Whoever it’s for, these cigars are too good to be ignored.

They look like big Cohiba cigars, cylindrical objects reclining inside a faux felt-lined box. Their textured gold and silver wrapper is unfurled much the same way a suman is – an over-under motion of one hand while the other holds the object aloft. As each paper layer falls away, the darkness of its chocolate cloak is revealed, a “cigar” whose size and heft bespeaks quality, long filler (continuous not ‘chopped leaves’) and rolled by hand.

In this case, these cigars’ “fillers” consist of gianduja, a hazelnut milk chocolate enmeshed with feuilletine (FOO-ye-teen; French feuille: leaves).  Feuilletine are shards of crispy wonder reminiscent of shattered sugar cones but much more delicate and immensely more addictive. When combined with this that tastes like glorified Nutella presented in a compact hand-held sweet, the taste sensation is akin to that of nibbling on Ferrero Rocher or Kinder Bueno, but magnified 100 percent. Imagine that.

It’s the type of thing that I eat slowly, every bite, every crunch resounding in my ears, the reverberation somehow cascading to my tongue, exemplifying the experience. Sooner or later, I’m going to bring out the Cognac and call my dad to come over. I almost forget to give him his box of hand rolled, chocolate cigars.

Handmade Chocolate Cigars by Bizu
P1,025 per box, 5 cigars to a box.
Total weight: 767 grams (approx); measuring 7.5”x1.5”
Each cigar is 5” across, 1” in diameter.
See Bizu website for details and store information.

It’s otherwise known as a “tomahawk chop” because it resembles that Native North American small axe, but at this restaurant, it’s delivered with an unbearable amount of attention.

On the menu of I’m Angus Steakhouse, it’s called a US-Duroc Pork Chop, the “Black Angus of Pork” because of its heft (15 ounces) and because it’s cut from the rib section of the loin with the upper part of the rib bone attached. Also known as a pork rib chop bone-in, this particular cut is regarded by (US) butchers as the prime rib of the pork loin (where the best pork chops come from).

Good fried or baked, it’s outstanding when grilled as they do at I’m Angus, the steakhouse of the Werdenberg group, mother company of Säntis, Carpaccio, Chesa Bianca, etc. A relatively intimate restaurant with just seven tables lorded over by an open kitchen and a much larger (smoking) space at back, this restaurant is one where I immediately know I’m going to be taken care of.

Perhaps too well taken care of.

The second my bum hits the chair, a server classically clad in all black, scurries towards me with a stool for my bag. I decline because I’ve got a bag hook for it. Water seems to instantly appear in our drinking glasses and as I open my menu, here’s another server: back erect, pen at the ready, her eagerness to serve practically luminescent on her face. Uneasy, Franco and I scan the menu and order quickly. When our server notices we’re not having wine today, I swear I see her chin droop. Bread is served with a flourish of “A soft roll today, Ma’am, Sir,” followed by, “and some butter, herbed and spicy.” Being rabid water drinkers, our glasses are refilled when they’re only half-empty. My table napkin is about to slide to the floor – and I only notice when a server suddenly materializes by my side: “Your napkin, Ma’am.”

It’s of utmost importance for every server to intuitively understand the dance of “deliver and disappear” that must be adjusted for each customer; any more or any less and good service crosses the fine line to obsequiousness. “I’m not sure what’s worse, being paid attention to or not at all,” muses Franco, after his glass is filled for the nth time.

And on it goes in this vein. When Franco takes out his camera (a most ballsy move), four pairs of peepers bear down on our table simultaneously from across the room as if by weird psychokinetic force – MISSION: ELIMINATE CAMERA! Any second now, there’ll be a blinding white light and then, bye-bye Franco’s camera. (Thank god it doesn’t happen that way).

Quit Playing With the Pepper
When our mains arrive, the servers perform that song and dance number of swooping down on the puny pepper mill (which is sitting on our table), holding it aloft like a Beretta, and ceremoniously asking, “Care for some fresh pepper?”

I hate this part.

I don’t understand why there’s such a big to-do in most restaurants about grinding pepper. Any idiot could do it. And most pepper mills I’ve seen aren’t anything I’d certainly pay attention to, with the exception of the one at The Spaghetti Factory at Glorietta; that one was like 18 inches long and so big that I half-expected peppercorns to come spitting out of it like a machine-gun. But anyway, yes, I don’t get the pepper hanky-panky bit at restaurants. I want to grind my own pepper, please. Why not ask me instead if I’d like some freshly-ground salt? I love salt more.

Despite eating under the ingratiating act-like-your-grandmother’s-watching-you stares of at least two servers, Franco enjoys his dish and I enjoy my tomahawk chop. Almost two inches thick and about twice as wide, my first slice releases wafts of porcine perfume. Oozing juice, evidence I believe of a good long brining, it’s tender and almost too subtle – until I scatter some fresh rosemary needles and a grind of coarse salt to accompany each bite. Such a simple addition makes the flavor bloom most extraordinarily. I appreciate the quartet of mustards offered: blueberry, tarragon, Dijon, and something I understand to be Burgundy.

Next time I’ll order the Tomahawk Beef Steak and eat it with my hands. (Evil laugh).

I’m Angus Steakhouse
See website for details and menu.