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Forget Thanksgiving, my November is filled with Filipino food. I stopped in at Pinoy's Place in Hayward the first week, attended a Filipino popup dinner last week, and next week is the special Filipino festivities and dinner at the California Museum. I've said before, I lack knowledge of my mother's cultural foods and so I try to gain more by eating it when I can

That Filipino popup took place at a small cafe borrowed for the event. You can find a great selection of popup feasts throughout the Bay Area via Feastly.com. This website presents chefs in a few select cities that put on these events on a regular basis. Many are professional chefs that do not have restaurants and are looking for a way to share their food. All different kinds of meals are available, such as...




I opted for the Pinoy Heritage 8 course meal and was surprised to find that it was a chef I had experienced before. I had run into Chef Francis Ang at Cochon and Heritage Fire events in the past. It was his deep fried balut that I had tried a year and a half ago. Some notable points on his resume include working for Gary Danko, being named Food and Wine magazine's "People's Best Pastry Chef" for the West Coast, as well as, being nominated for Zagat's "30 Under 30" in San Francisco. Be sure to check out his future dinners on Feastly.com
I'll be trying to get him here in Sactown for a popup. Turns out he's going to be working with our own Ramon Perez of Puur Chocolat at the Dandelion 12 Nights of Chocolate next month. 

Hopefully these shots will entice you to try out either Francis' food or Feastly.com.  Please read on a bit for a couple of interesting notes as well.


Deep fried quail egg and pomegranate soda with basil seeds

This amuse buche has an interesting note in that it was supposedly a play on Sarsaparilla and egg drink in the Philippines. Turns out Sarsi is a brand of soda and the Sarsaparilla is their root beer. People will pour it into a glass and then add an egg. Some people beat the egg first, but others don't. Then they drink it down. It's supposed to be an energy booster because of the protein and sugar. Probably a hangover cure too.

Octopus salad with eggplant salted egg kale cherry tomato and Squid Ink


Kalabasa flan with pinkabet, delicata squash, acorn, xo bagoong
Chicken Pancit with malunggay noodles, black truffle powder
At this point was the chicken pancit. The interesting piece of the dish is that the noodles were made with malunggay. The English known name for it is Moringa. Apparently it's from a bushy plant with tiny leaves. It grows in Asia and in the Philippines it most often served in their monggo bean dishes and soups.


amberjack bulangang with miso, guava, Taro, winged Bean, radish

Black tea Panna cotta, calamansi sorbet, honey crisp
Calamansi is a small citrus fruit used in a lot of Filipino dishes. It is pretty tart.

Coconut flan with dacquoise, yuzu, banana ice cream
Ube canele
Ube is the same as taro and Filipinos use it often in desserts where it is usually bright purple in color.

Back in 2011 I made lemon posset. It's an easy British dessert made with just cream, sugar, and lemon. Lately, I have been thinking of things to use my passion fruit puree with and it occurred to me that the posset would be perfect. 

If you have fresh passion fruits at your grocery or Asian store, it's perfect to garnish at the end with the seedy insides of the fruit. Here, I used raspberries. 

Where to get the puree? You can get a big container of Perfect Puree at Whole Foods in the freezer section. 


Passion Fruit Posset
3 cups heavy cream
1 cup white sugar
1/3 cup passion fruit concentrate (reserve a couple of tablespoons)


In a saucepan, stir together 3 cups of cream and sugar. Bring to a boil, and cook for 2 to 3 minutes. Stir in the majority of the passion fruit puree. Pour into serving glasses, and refrigerate until set, about 5 hours. Before serving, drizzle a bit of the remaining puree on top. Garnish with fruit (optional).