Me so stupid. Host must cook for hero. Most heroes taken.
I’m talking Neanderthal again. But for my pahabol to the Anniversary Edition of Lasang Pinoy: Cooking for Heroes, I’m preparing a smallgasbord (read: a mishmash) of dishes for Apolinario Mabini, staunch anti-imperialist (though I think he pledged allegiance to the Americanos and died a few months later), dreamer of a Malay confederacy and foreign minister to Emilio Aguinaldo’s short-lived cabinet.
What to do. What to do.
If I was already alive at that time I would persuade him to talk to our neighbors and prepare a unified plan of action for independence from the colonists, hire fierce warriors from the Middle East, and establish trade with Japan, and perhaps reconnect with Madre Espana (her pride is wounded after all at the mock battle in Manila Bay). What an unholy alliance to ward off the bullies from the west.
So there, my food selection pictured below are limited: pork omelette (Siam), soy chicken (Singapore-Malaya and China), shoarma (Turkey), squid curry (India, Indo-China), mango kani salad (Japan), pak choi shiitake mushroom stirfry (China and Japan) but I would also love to add some kari noodles and char kway teow (Singapore-Malaya), gado gado salad and cumi cumi madura (Dutch East Indies) and pho (Indo-Chinese Vietnam). For dessert, I would serve pilipit and balicucha (Philippines), haw flakes (China), yema balls (Spanish Philippines), plus pandan cake (Dutch East Indies) and moh let saung (coconut milk and sago from colonial Burma).
