To be fair, most of the beans I got to smell smelled wonderful. Most had a robust, strong coffee scent that make you want to have a cup at first sniff. Coffee is big in all of Vietnam. Being one of their leading export products, naturally, the locals have thought of other ways to market it. Besides plain old brewed coffee, one of the more popular coffee products for locals and foreigners alike is the cà phê sữa đá, or iced coffee with milk in English (my favorite!).

Making the delicious cà phê sữa đá

To make, filter finely ground Vietnamese coffee beans using their individual filter thingamajigs (or use a conventional coffee maker). Pour the filtered coffee into a glass full of ice and mix in condensed milk to suit your taste. Or you know, find the nearest street vendor selling the stuff and have it brewed, mixed, and packed neatly in a disposable container ready for sipping under the hot Vietnamese sun in 5 minutes all for just 10,000 dong (about 25 pesos). Luckily for us, it was easy to get our iced coffee fix daily from the street vendor in front of our hotel (the hotel staff order theirs from the same lady).

Other yummy coffee products: Kem Trung Nguyen (coffee ice cream, with coffee syrup. Yum!), street iced coffee, coffee chocolate cake

Vietnamese coffee is such a delight that the family hoarded and bought too much of it to bring back home, both as pasalubong and for personal use. Including my mom. She doesn’t drink coffee. Btw, advance happy mothers day to Mama and all the loving mothers in the world!

Here’s the thing, we forgot the book when we headed out so he had to wing it. Steaks au poivre and Pommes de terre sautées became Bim’s Butter Garlic Steak and Boiled Potatoes.

Look at how smug he is!

Here’s what you’ll need:

- 750g of beef tenderloin cut into inch thick slices
- 1 stick of butter
- 1 small bag of baby potatoes
- 1 clove of garlic, skinned and minced
- Salt
- Pepper
- Rosemary (optional)

I’m not entirely sure why he keeps pointing at the meat

Here’s how to make a hearty homemade steak dinner:

Garlic butter steak
Season the meat with a liberal amount of salt and pepper and set aside for 15 minutes. Melt 2/3rds a stick of butter in a non stick pan. When the pan is hot enough, sauté the garlic in butter just until the smell of garlic fills your kitchen. Remove the golden bits of garlic and set aside. Turn up the heat until it’s hot enough and sear the meat, 6-8 minutes per side for medium well done steak (less if you like it rare or medium rare or medium and more for well done steaks). Put on a plate and sprinkle garlic (from earlier) and rosemary on top.

Boiled potatoes
Fill a pot with water, put potatoes in, sprinkle with salt and wait for it to boil. Let the water boil for a few minutes and then poke one of the taters with a fork to check if it’s done (it’s ready when you can easily stick the fork in). Drain the water from the pot and mix in the rest of the butter with the potatoes. Add salt to taste (you can add basil too, if you like).

Best served with salad on the side (thanks Lianne and Roma!).

Bim gives his steaks a 6 out of 10 rating, I give it an 8. The meat was tender and the flavor was just mouth-watering (loosely translated as “You should cook for me again!”). Wearing this apron alone added 1 to the total score.

Before going back to Manila for good, my officemates and I decided to take the weekend train to nearby Marseille as a last hurrah of sorts. It was just a 2-hour train ride from Lyon, just as long a drive is from Manila to Tagaytay minus the traffic. We were at the huge Marseille train station before noon and had the whole day to take in the change of scenery.

Full parking, please proceed to basement 2

Marseille couldn’t be more different than Lyon. While Lyon is squashed somewhere in the middle, Marseille is in the south of France, by the sea, making it a port city. As you can see from the photos, there is no shortage of boats in this area. If anything, docking space is what they’re short on. And because the city is next to the ocean, fresh seafood are aplenty! For someone who adores seafood and hadn’t had any for a while, that was very welcome news. (tastebuds went omgilusomuch)

Seafood everything! Also, everything is so orange.

For lunch, we decided to enjoy the view and chill at a cafe along the coast, called Le Macinissa Cafe. Their menu did not lack for seafood, and we went a little crazy and ordered anything with sea dwellers in them. Seafood paella, seafood pasta, and salmon spaghetti were our picks and they all looked like they were cooked in one (delicious) pot. But that’s not just it, the real star of the show was the bouillabaisse, Marseille’s specialty.

OMGNOMNOM! Marseille Bouillabaisse

Famous chef Julia Child once said this about the bouillabaisse: “to me the telling flavor of bouillabaisse comes from two things: the Provençal soup base – garlic, onions, tomatoes, olive oil, fennel, saffron, thyme, bay, and usually a bit of dried orange peel – and, of course, the fish – lean (non-oily), firm-fleshed, soft-fleshed, gelatinous, and shellfish.”

Our order tasted like authentic bouillabaisse (or at least, in accordance with Julia Child’s description). The bread was served in a basket with this wonderful spicy mustard dip. The meats were fresh and were served in a separate dish but we decided to put all of it in the soup base (which was a good idea). The soup was very tasty (and orange) with a hint of spice, probably from the saffron, without being too rich or too filling. Together, it was a successful marriage of seafood and spice (and everything nice, hyukhyuk).

If you’re in Marseille, you cannot, and should not pass up THE bouillabaisse. It’s part of the true Marseille experience.

Maybe it’s the hue of the cakes, but I’d call these golden more than orange

It’s very easy to spot a bahn cam vendor along the streets of Vietnam because the “cakes” are carefully stacked on top of the other in a basket and carried on top of their heads, making the bearer a head taller than the crowd. When you do find one, you can get one of these sweet treats for 10,000 dong (roughly about 22 pesos).

I would think that this is their version of our local turon

In English, “banh cam” is translated as orange cake. Funnily enough, there’s no orange in it and neither is it a cake (watda?!). The banh cam is a sweet treat made of soft mung bean filling covered by glutinous rice, deep fried in oil and then generously topped with caramelized sugar mixed with a healthy amount of sesame seeds. It’s not unlike the more common Chinese buchi but is a whole lot sweeter. The banh cam is perfect as dessert, or as an afternoon snack when you’re running low on energy juice. Omnomnom!

More Vietnamese noms coming up!

This cute toaster-looking thing popped up amidst the sea of information about kibble

They have several super cute products: the classic Babycakes Cupcake Maker, Babycakes Cake Pop Maker, Babycakes Donut Maker, Babycakes Flip-Over Donut Maker, Babycakes Pie Pop Maker, Babycakes Pie Maker, Babycakes Chocolatier, Babycakes Whoopie Pie Maker, Babycakes Waffle Stick Maker, and the Babycakes Waffle Maker (product page here). Whew, that’s a lot of Babycakes. But they all seem so worth it, if only to brighten up the typical yuppie’s unused kitchen.

Although I want the entire set, I can settle for 3: Babycakes Cupcake Maker, Babycakes Cake Pop Maker, and the Babycakes Whoopie Pie Maker

Another great thing about these toaster thingies is that baking a batch of cupcakes is easy-peasy. Like that ad by Smart Telecom says, “Your time is your life, the less of it you waste, the more of it you live”. With Babycakes makers, you can satisfy your sweet tooth in almost an instant- your cupcakes, cake pops, or doughnuts will be ready in 5-10 minutes.

At only $25-$30 per Babycakes maker, they’re definitely a steal. Unfortunately, these cutiepies aren’t available locally (If they are, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE tell me how I can get my hands on them) so if you have a relative from the US, you can have it shipped to them and beg ask them to bring it back to Manila when they can.

That's Paul Bocuse on the bottom-right corner photo

Paul Bocuse, who is from Lyon, has contributed largely to French gastronomy. His restaurants are all over the city, one of which has received the rare 3 star rating by the Michelin Guide (link to his restaurants here, it’s in French but you have Internet, so use Google Translate). He is also considered as an ambassador of French cuisine, for promoting and sharing the French way of cooking to the world. Students from all over the world who have trained at the Institut Paul Bocuse have become master chefs as well.

The book has dedications from officemates! D'awwwwwshucks.

The book includes hundreds of French recipes that I hope to replicate one day. In line with this, I declare on this post, that sometime during the course of the next few months, BaconTunaMelt will be filled with  successful executions of recipes from this book. We’ll try to keep the kitchen disasters down to a minimum (hopefully!) and try to make fabulous French nomz in Manila.

• There were barrels of local Butterbeer, based off the drink from the Harry Potter series (it CANNOT get more awesome), but this version has rhum in it (oh wait, yes it can).

• There were tsokolate cupcakes from ChocoATBP (this seriously sounds like heaven to me).

Nom!

• There was Manang’s Chicken (still the best fried chicken in the whole damn galaxy), and

• Carlo’s Kitchen thought to double the sin called liempo, by deep frying it.

Hello, death.

These are only the highlights, you guys. There were more goodies and nomfinds on the actual event. Read the full mouth-watering post from BuhayKuneho on this link.

*photo credits belong to Lianne of BuhayKuneho. Thank you, dear! <3

Soooo.. it’s the new year (even for the Chinese! -this joke’s a month too late). Have you all made your resolutions for the year? Mine are 1.) to be sexy and 2.) to be mature.  I think I’ve broken mine by gorging on beautiful nomz whenever I find them. But enough of that, let’s get on with this post.

Beautiful Barcelona

Let me start by boring you all with a bit of a back story. A few months ago, a small group of us were looking for good places to visit in Europe. The most accessible city for us at that time was Barcelona so we booked our tickets and applied for vacation days ASAP.  A couple of weeks and a few hundred Euros later, we were on our way to Spain, land of our ancestral oppressors colonizers, bringing with us backpacks and adventurous spirits.

Because we got there early, we started with the sightseeing and picture-taking (no vacation is a true vacation without them) from morning until our legs could carry us no more, and I was so hungry, I was ready to eat the next edible thing I see, be it a beetle or a bug.

Salamanca in Barcelona

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you want to look at it), I was with relatively sane people and bugs were out of the question. For dinner, we found our way to this restaurant which came highly recommended by trusted foodies for their supposedly excellent paella and tapas.

Of course, what would a trip to Spain be without trying authentic Spanish nomz and we were told that Salamanca is the best place to go. And so we did. As soon as we entered the restaurant, we were ushered to a table, handed our menus, and were almost instantly served with chorizo and tomato bread (both on the house), popular appetizers in Spain.

All this equals a magical meal.

And then came the main course, the seafood paella. It arrived as a mountain of lobster, shrimp, squid, and oysters on sticky Spanish rice on a hot paella plate. We ordered enough for four (hungry lumberjacks) and the servers were kind enough to distribute them into equal parts to save us the trouble. And it didn’t disappoint. The flavors were rich, the rice was filling, the seafood was fresh, the plate was heavy. This is the stuff that makes those Spanish mestiza hips oh-so-glorious. This is the good stuff.

After stuffing ourselves full, the servers promptly cleared up our table and to our surprise, served us a round of grappa to cap the meal. A little bit of research (Google-ing for five minutes, more like) tells me that not all recommend the restaurant. Our little group, on the other hand, enjoyed our visit immensely. From the quick and attentive service, to the on-the-house appetizers and alcohol, and the mouth-watering nomz, dining at Salamanca was truly a magical experience.

(Dear paella, ILU)

If you love nomz, this is the place for you

What exactly is findyourfeast.com?

Find Your Feast is an engaged and interactive food blog portal and community intended to showcase a variety of the newest and the not-so-new, the popular and the underrated, the classy and even the tacky haunts where you can simply find the most delightfully tasteful treats in and out of the metro, and of course, lest we forget the best recipes you can cook-up in your own kitchen. In a nutshell it is the new one-stop-shop for all of  your gastronomic cravings and MORE. It’s a website for foodies, by foodies.

What are you waiting for? Whether you’d like to share your latest nomfinds, read about a restaurant, or simply talk about yummy nomz with likeminded people from all over the country, Find Your Feast is the foodie community for you!

Clicky details:

Find Your Feast Official Website /Find Your Feast Official Facebook Page

And I mean that literally. I’ve taken to baking chewy chocolate chip walnut cookies when my sweet tooth acts up. The cookies are something Cookie Monster will gobble up in seconds. My only problem is that they only stay chewy for a short while. The day after baking, they’re tougher than what most human teeth can handle. For actual bakers out there (I’m only faking it), how do you keep your cookies chewy?