The Miele Guide

The World Pastry Cup is a renowned biannual competition that pits the world’s best pastry chefs against one another in front of a live audience. To be held in Lyon, France on the 25th and 26th of January this year, the World Pastry Cup 2009 will see 22 international teams competing for the coveted championship. The Asian countries competing this year are China, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan.

As you can imagine, the participating teams are all feverishly preparing for the competition. I had the chance to preview the Singapore team’s showpieces and sample a few of the delicious creations they will be presenting. Team Singapore is led by pastry chef Pang Kok Keong of Canele Patisserie Chocolaterie. Together with chef Pang, team captain Hoi Kuok I (Conrad Centennial Hotel), team members Ng Chee Leong (Shangri-La Hotel) and Lim Choon Sing (Goodwood Park Hotel) and team assistant Ruben Sosa (Mandarin Oriental Hotel) have all been working hard.

Team Singapore's three showpieces

The industrious team has clocked in more than 900 hours during the past 14 months in preparation for the upcoming World Pastry Cup. “Practice makes perfect,” says chef Ng, who explains that each team is to prepare one ice sculpture, one sugar show piece, one chocolate show piece, 12 plated desserts, three chocolate cakes and three ice cream cakes from scratch in 10 hours. The pieces will then be assessed for artistic style and taste by an international judging panel with one judge from each participating country.

Chef Ng reveals that the planning process was a meticulous one. “At our weekly meetings,” he discloses, “we sketch out our ideas, discuss them with chef Pang and test them out. Those that are feasible are kept and the disastrous ones are trashed!”

The team leaves for Lyon, France on 19th January where they will have one final rehearsal there before the actual competition. “We hear that is really cold in Lyon right now,” chef Pang says. “The final rehearsal is a good chance for the team to accustom themselves to the weather before the competition and tweak the recipes if necessary.”

We wish all competitors the very best of luck!

Lai Kit Yee was awarded The Miele Guide Culinary Scholarship which was open to a citizen or permanent resident of one of the Asian countries evaluated in the Guide, with the exception of Singapore. The 29-year-old from Hong Kong harbours great ambitions of becoming an internationally recognised female chef. Currently a Commis II and grill chef at the Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong, Kit Yee’s foray into the culinary world began just two years ago, when she made the momentous decision to leave her sales job (she was a section manager at HMV Hong Kong). “I didn’t want to spend my entire life being just a sales person,” she confesses.

The gung ho young lady decided to take up a working visa scheme that the Hong Kong government was promoting back then and left for Australia in pursuit of something different. “I wanted to learn more about the world, its people and their different cultures,” Kit Yee explains. She also felt that it would be a good opportunity for her to learn to be more independent.

Initially, it wasn’t easy to find a job in Australia, but Kit Yee managed to complete brief stints at a seafood wet market and a bakery. These experiences transformed her career goals. “It was unforgettable,” Kit Yee says with conviction. The nine months spent Down Under ignited a newfound passion for the culinary arts. She grew to love the process of cooking, which she also found to be “very fun”. Kit Yee decided to explore the possibility of cooking professionally and signed up for a culinary course at the Hospitality Industry Training & Development Centre (HITDC) just a month after returning from Australia. The one-year course provided her with the necessary culinary basics she needed to kick start her career in the kitchen. She graduated with a certificate in Western Cuisine and Food and Beverage Operations in September 2007.

Kit Yee admits that she has always felt strongly about food. However, prior to her decision to train to become a chef, she rarely ventured into the kitchen. “My mother did all the cooking and I never bothered to help her in the kitchen,” she admits with a chuckle. “I just watched and left everything to her.”

Nevertheless, Kit Yee’s culinary talents and hard work have since earned her several awards including a silver award at the Hong Kong International Culinary Classic 2007 organised by the Hong Kong Chefs Associations (HKCA) and the Hong Kong Exhibition Services Ltd (HKES). She came in second in the Western Cuisine, Professional Vegetarian category.

She joined the Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong in November 2007. “Working at the Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong is hard work and I have to put in long hours, but I also get to work with great chefs at the same time and I find that to be a great blessing,” she says. She reveals that her very supportive mentor Uwe Opocensky, executive chef at the Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong has already made her promise to return to the hotel once she has completed her studies at At-Sunrice GlobalChef Academy.

Kit Yee is grateful for the opportunity to extend her culinary knowledge and improve her skills through this scholarship. “I love challenges,” the dynamic chef declares. “I am ready to transform the pressure I expect to face into motivation for me to try my best in fulfilling all the responsibilities that’s expected of me.”

We look forward to catching up with her after she has commenced her training at At-Sunrice.

When The Miele Guide Culinary Scholarship Programme was first announced in July 2008, we received many applications from promising individuals. Picking just two scholars—one from Singapore and one from one of the other Asian countries covered by The Miele Guide—was not easy. We are very excited that the two individuals who were finally awarded scholarships are such passionate and highly motivated talents. They are Malcolm Lee Seow Meng from Singapore and Lai Kit Yee from Hong Kong. They will both begin their course at the At-Sunrice GlobalChef Academy in December this year. This post, which focuses on Malcolm, is the first of a two-part feature on our two scholarship winners. We wanted to find out more about their culinary backgrounds and get them to share a little more about what it is that inspires them in the kitchen.

Malcolm aspires to create memories and evoke emotions through his food. The 24-year-old will be graduating from the Singapore Management University (SMU) later this year with a Bachelor in Business Management and is looking forward to diving straight into a career in the kitchen immediately after that.

All it takes is a conversation with Malcolm to realise that his decision to go straight from university to culinary school was a carefully considered and planned one. Malcolm confesses that his love for food stems from his Peranakan upbringing. His mother, a Nonya, is a home chef and her love for cooking rubbed off on him. She also has very high expectations of herself. Malcolm remembers her refusing to serve a dish she had painstakingly prepared simply because she felt it wasn’t good enough. That decision left a strong impression. Today, he attributes his desire to present his potential customers with only his very best efforts to his mother’s own uncompromising standards.

According to Malcolm, cooking came naturally to him when he was a student at Yishun Junior College. When his friends got hungry, he would gamely experiment with whatever was in the refrigerator. “I found that I really enjoyed it and was encouraged by the fact that they actually liked my food,” he says with a smile.

It was a chance encounter in the United States that convinced Malcolm that he should pursue a career in the professional kitchen. While in the US on an independently sourced Work and Travel Program, Malcolm noticed that Harry’s Tap Room in Washington Dulles International Airport was advertising for a line-cook. He applied for the job and got it. More importantly, his bosses noticed how industrious he was and promoted him to head cook just three weeks into the job. This gave Malcolm the chance to really learn from professional chefs, some of whom took the time to show him the ropes.

The hard work at Harry’s Tap Room was crucial in preparing him for realities of working in a professional kitchen. Upon his return to Singapore, Malcolm became more and more interested in the culinary profession. He threw dinner parties for close friends in a bid to expand his culinary repertoire, and studied cookbooks as well as classic culinary techniques. But it was a friend’s keen observation that led him to the next turning point on his culinary career path.

A fellow project group member at SMU noticed Malcolm’s food-themed desktop wallpaper. This precipitated a conversation about his love for food. Days later, this friend asked him to consider becoming a business partner at Frujch, a now defunct café at the SMU campus which was run by undergraduates. The café needed someone to oversee food and operations. It was also having problems with its menu and its owners needed some advice.

“When I came on board,” Malcolm explains, “I trashed the old menu. The old menu was not very appetising. The ingredients were mostly canned and processed, and there wasn’t much variety.”

Malcolm’s menu overhaul proved to be a tremendous success. He speaks with great pride when he recalls the Frujch’s first day of business after the makeover. “I thought only 20 people would come,” he admits. “I was pleasantly surprised that by the afternoon, the food was sold out. I had to send friends out to buy more ingredients. Yet, by 5pm we were sold out again!”

On closer inspection, Malcolm’s new menu proved to be a strategically conceived one. “Economy of scale is very important,” he says. “I designed the whole system to ensure that Frujch did not lose money.” In order to reduce food wastage and manage a sizeable cash flow, Malcolm devised an efficient inventory that utilised a common core of fresh ingredients.

His stint at Frujch might have been short (it lasted from January to April 2008), but Malcolm insists that the experience gave him something he would never have found in textbooks or tutorials. “By that point, I knew I wanted to be a chef,” he reveals. He even took up French language classes in school in order to prepare himself for the apprenticeships he intends to take on at the many great establishments the country is renowned for. However, this young man is admirably realistic about his chosen career. “If there’s anything I have learnt from my experiences,” he divulges, “it is that being in the kitchen is hard work. That said, I am prepared for all the hard work I can get.”

We look forward to catching up with Malcolm again in a couple of months. In our next post, we will be interviewing Lai Kit Yee, our Miele Guide Culinary Scholarship Programme recipient from Hong Kong.

The table décor for the night.

The 2008/2009 edition of The Miele Guide, our inaugural issue, was launched on Friday 31 October at a very special gala dinner held at the Grand Hyatt Singapore. It was a gastronomic night from start to finish. More than 300 invited chefs, restaurateurs, industry professionals and international journalists came together to celebrate with us. The cocktail reception started at 7pm and by 8pm, everyone was seated in the beautifully decorated Grand Ballroom. The black table linens were paired with chic gold table runners and complemented by an elegant raised red rose centrepiece. Donovan Chan, creative director of Beach House Pictures (who is working with us to develop The Miele Guide TV show) was one of the many guests who thought that the décor was very tasteful. He added that the simple elegance exuded a maturity that was reflected in the Guide itself. The Miele Guide was creatively presented to each guest on a white plate as the evening’s first entree. Served by the banquet waiters, it was a cheeky gesture that amused many.

The food served was impeccable—thanks to the team at the Grand Hyatt as well as our guest chefs from Iggy’s and Mozaic—and the atmosphere was infectious. The ballroom was abuzz with conversations that were clearly food-centric and the guests had the opportunity to forge new friendships and rekindle old ones since everyone was free to choose their own seat at the dinner. The air of excitement was unmistakable. Restaurateurs and chefs sat side by side and focused on the stage in the centre of the room as the lovely emcee for the night Angela May signalled the announcement of Asia’s Top 20 (the 20 restaurants ranked in order in The Miele Guide) after appetisers were served. Mahendra Karkera, owner of Mahesh Lunch Home in Mumbai thought that Angela’s spontaneity made everyone feel at ease. Mahendra had flown in from India just for this dinner and felt that it was a very special one.

Elbert Cuenca of Elbert’s Steak Room in the Philippines had only praises to lavish on the many people who made the Guide and the gala dinner possible. “This was a wonderful evening, I am honoured to be one of the 320 restaurants featured in the Guide,” said Elbert.

Ignatius Chan was speechless when his restaurant, Iggy’s, was named Asia’s top restaurant. He admitted to being increasingly anxious as the list was announced. His biggest fear being that Iggy’s didn’t make the cut at all. The honour, Ignatius said, goes to the entire team at the restaurant, some of whom have been with him since the very beginning. It is an acknowledgement for their commitment to quality and consistency which they will all treasure.

The night ended on a deliciously boozy note when The Lounge section opened. This area saw the Sorum brothers Dannie and Ben-David, and Thomas Anostam of the Flow Cocktail team from Bangkok dishing out cocktails as delicious as the meal served at the dinner. The Miele Guide Signature cocktail was a hit. Topped with a flamed cinnamon meringue, the raspberry and apple Absolut Vodka creation was served in a martini glass decorated in ribbons in the official Miele Guide colours, red and white. Vivienne Chow, a journalist from the South China Morning Post had only this to say after tasting several of them: “These are wicked!”

The Sorum brothers adding the final touches to The Miele Guide Signature cocktails.

We would like to thank our guests who made the time to join us at this celebratory dinner, as well as the many people to worked hard to make it possible. We hope that the evening marks not only the launch of our inaugural edition of The Miele Guide, but also the start of something big and exciting for the restaurant industry in this region. We look forward to seeing you, as well as even more new faces, next year.

Putting together the inaugural edition of The Miele Guide has been an exciting journey. Our team has been working hard since the beginning of the year to ensure that the guide you will soon be able to hold in your hands will be a useful resource for finding the best places to dine at in Asia, as well as a publication that reflects the tastes of diners in Asia.

We want to thank you, the public, for telling us which restaurants in Asia are your favourite. We are also grateful to our 84 jury members from the 16 Asian countries covered in this year’s poll for sharing their expertise. The Miele Guide is very much a collective effort, one that we believe will bring our region the culinary recognition it deserves.

The 2008/2009 edition of The Miele Guide will launch on Friday, 31st October, at a gala dinner in Singapore. The chefs and restaurateurs whose restaurants have made it into our inaugural issue have been invited to join us at this exclusive red carpet, black-tie event where Asia’s Top 20 restaurants will also be announced. This gathering of Asia’s best will be a celebration of the work and talent of the region’s food and beverage professionals. Joining them will be members of the media, including some of the world’s most respected food and lifestyle journalists.

A total of 320 restaurants will be listed in this year’s guide. In-depth reviews of Asia’s Top 20 have been included. These restaurants have been ranked based on the results from public voting and anonymous tastings by our team. To find out which restaurants made it to this list, do return to our website and check out our blog!

Interiors of Blue Frog.

Blue Frog is a dining space in Mumbai that defies most restaurant design conventions. For starters, it is a hybrid between an acoustic lounge and a dining area. Steering away from the usual plain wide spaces and white table cloths, this restaurant boasts cutting edge interiors that are both aesthetically pleasing and functional. It is hard to miss out the glowing acrylic resin surface of the millwork circles that surround the restaurant. These colour-changing glowing surfaces lend a cool ambient lighting to the otherwise dark space. When it is blue, it gives out an aquatic vibe.

A close-up view of the millwork circles that form each dining booth.

These circles also form individual booths that separate one table from the next. Each booth is able to seat up to 10 people. The height of the seats is also staggered to provide an uninterrupted view of the open centre stage where performances are held. Call it dinner-theatre or a novel-concept restaurant if you wish, but it is a given that diners who visit the Blue Frog are always in for an aural, visual and tasty treat.

The unusual concept behind this restaurant is refreshing but what distinguishes Blue Frog from other restaurants isn’t just its cutting edge design but also the performative function it holds. We were curious to find out more about the people behind the unique concept of this super cool restaurant and that led us to seek out both Chris Lee and Kapil Gupta of Serie Architects, the brains behind Blue Frog’s design concept.

We found it amazing how this talented pair of architects managed to pull off this project despite living in different countries. Chris resides in London while Kapil works from Mumbai. Kapil insists that this seamless collaboration would not be possible without the existence of the internet. He says that they are always a Skype call away from each other and reveals that there is an intuitive synergy between them, after working together for almost a decade.

Both Chris and Kapil met when they were housemates and students at the Architectural Association School of Architecture London. Chris used to run Chris Lee Architects and Kapil, the Contemporary Urban India. Both now run Serie Architects together. Chris informs us that Serie works in a typological way, inventing by “harnessing the cumulative intelligence of considering things in a series”.

To Chris, architecture is beyond shock, especially if it has to do with form. When asked if he thinks Serie’s designs are as avant-garde has seen by the public, Chris reveals that he doubts there are any avant-gardes in this day and age. He explains further, “If there is to be a new breed of avant-garde, it has to be based on a transformative ideology that goes beyond form.”

Other than Blue Frog, both architects have also worked on another restaurant called The Tote. Also located in Mumbai, The Tote features a special tree-branch system, clearly inspired by actual rain trees surrounding the space. To create this effect, they punctured a series of openings in the roof, corresponding to the intersection of tree branches, allowing light to penetrate and cast natural tree-like shadows.

Chris tells us that both Blue Frog and The Tote deal with the issue of identifying a precedent type and then transforming that precedent. Explaining the concepts for both restaurants, he lets on that with Blue Frog, it was the meeting of a section of a theatre and the plan of a restaurant. For The Tote, it was the re-interpretation of the A-frame roof truss with the generative logic of the tree branch.

Kapil goes on to explain how Blue Frog is a very good example of performative design thinking. He tells us that the design behind this restaurant was driven by the desire to resolve the conflict between two antagonistic functions: the restaurant and a live music venue. Kapil says that it is through this resolution that the “artistic” can emerge. While it is true that some restaurants struggle with artistic integrity when trying to maintain function, Chris thinks that artistic integrity and function are not mutually exclusive.

According to Kapil, clients who choose to work with this talented duo do so because they are looking for an inventive solution, not just a signature aesthetic. When questioned about their signature style, Kapil lets in that they do not have one because they are “invested in research and constant innovation”. He continues to tell us that it is not difficult to convince a client once they have recognised the tangible value that this kind of inventiveness creates.

Explaining Serie’s thought process, Kapil tells us that the typological thinking that they believe in provides a strong conceptual framework from which they operate from. “Solutions come quickly and intuitively as the context of a project reveals potential typological adaptations,” adds Kapil.

Thanks to architects like Chris Lee and Kapil Gupta, the future of restaurant design brims with endless possibilities where diners can come to savour not just the food but the cool aesthetics that make up the surroundings.

The cocktails we drink today are nothing like what they used to be, back in the 18th century. According to The Museum of the American Cocktail, the first recorded definition of this liquor-based drink dates back to 13 May 1806 in a New York publication known as The Balance and Colombian Repository. Back then, cocktails were referred to as “a bittered sling” as it was a “stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water and bitters”.

More records of the early cocktails can also be found in the first bartending guide How to Mix Drinks, or The Bon Vivant’s Companion that was written by Jerry Thomas. First published in 1862, this guide gave precise instructions for mixing beverages using recipes from Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Spain, and Germany. Thomas included 10 cocktail recipes alongside popular beverages like juleps, sours, punches, and cobblers. His guide sparked off a renewed interest in these social drinks and thanks to the recipes provided by the former principal bartender at the Metropolitan Hotel in New York, cocktails were officially introduced into bars.

Today, cocktails are not only drunk in bars but also in restaurants. Cocktails are also facing a growing resurgence, one that involves a substantial culinary twist, providing a larger presence at the dining table. This would have been impossible in the early 19th century when laws banning the consumption of alcohol were passed in the United States. Known as the Prohibition era, this period popularised underground speakeasies that served bootleg liquor. This bootleg liquor had a strong taste and instead of mixing it with bitters, people mixed in fruit juices, sugar water and soft drinks, resulting in more palatable cocktails. These cocktails were well received by many who would visit these speakeasies (also known as cocktail lounges) during ‘cocktail hours’ prior to dining at restaurants where cocktails were not allowed.

Cocktails returned to the dining scene after Prohibition laws were lifted in 1933. Today’s cocktails have evolved from being simple concoctions to more complex ones good enough to rival a main course at one’s meal. Today, the cocktail has become a star potion showcased in restaurants that understand and embrace the concept of food and cocktail pairing.

“I certainly encourage cocktails to be promoted in restaurants,” says Dannie Sorum, one of Southeast Asia’s most sought after mixologists and a self-professed food fanatic. “It is part of the dining experience to start off with a nice cocktail aperitif to get your taste buds stimulated and ready for the meal.”

Intended to complement and excite, the possibilities for cocktail creation are infinite, making for a fun experience. Take for example, Sorum’s Black Forest mojito, a combination of rum, Moët & Chandon, freshly squeezed lime, blackberries, strawberries and raspberries which he created for The White Rabbit, a restaurant on Harding Road in Singapore. This fruity summer berry cocktail was created to complement the restaurant’s signature Black Forest cake dessert by playing with a common berry base note. The owners of The White Rabbit had approached Sorum because they wanted to create a delicious cocktail menu that would not only complement their dishes but heighten the dining experience of their diners.

“The owners of The White Rabbit already have a very deep knowledge of what they want, which is great,” says Sorum who goes on to explain how every project is different and that he usually starts off by meeting his clients to discuss their vision and what they have in mind.

“From there, we come up with some concepts and start trialling the drinks in our laboratory in Bangkok,” he explains.

Dannie Sorum, a cocktail consultant based in Bangkok.

The Swedish-born cocktail expert trained in Australia and first ventured into Asia in 2004 when he came to Bangkok to lead the pre-opening of a new restaurant and lounge. “The jobs kept coming,” he recalls, “and we had several contracts waiting for us so we made the decision to set up our new office in Bangkok.”

The 24 year-old thus became one of the founders of Flow, a cocktail consultancy which was established in Bangkok in 2006. Flow has clients in Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and Singapore. And its clientele include some of the top luxury hotels in Asia including Singapore’s St. Regis where Sorum helped concoct another dish-inspired cocktail called the Suzette. A drink that is basically a cocktail version of crepe Suzette, a classic dessert with a strong citrus flavour, it consists of a mixture of Belvedere Pomarancza vodka, Grand Marnier and flambéed Californian oranges. The cocktail is served hot alongside a plateful of mini crepes. This creation demonstrates just how everyday or classic dishes can inspire a cocktail that extends and repackages the experience of a dish beyond a diner’s expectations. Nonetheless, Sorum maintains that his creations simply offer a way to relate new cocktail flavours to something we are already familiar with like food or baked goods.

The Black Forest mojito at The White Rabbit and the Suzette at the St. Regis are just two examples of how entirely new cocktail combinations yielding different flavour profiles are being experimented with and created to match main dishes in restaurants.

Lotus, an Australian-style restaurant and bar located at Pottinger Street in Central Hong Kong is also offering its diners food and cocktail pairing experiences. The restaurant is extending the flavour of its dishes with unique five-course food and cocktail pairing menus. Some tantalising options include the lime cured tuna with green mango, rose apple, Vietnamese mint and dried shrimp paired with a pomelo and papaya bellini. The bellini contains fresh pomelo, papaya, honey, black sesame syrup, peach, elderflower and sparkling wine. The fruit-based cocktail is only one of many created by international celebrity cocktail mixologist Grant Collins for the restaurant’s signature cocktail list.

When it comes to pairing cocktails with food, there are two possible outcomes. Depending on its focal ingredient, a cocktail can either counter-balance your dish with a contrasting flavour, or it can complement it, if it shares a common theme ingredient. Ultimately, your cocktail should enhance your meal. Award-winning food writers Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page explain this concept further in their book, What To Drink With What You Eat. Both Dornenburg and Page believe that it is possible to synergise food and drink, exciting one’s taste buds at the same time. The guide chronicles the various possible marriages of beverages with different types of food to enhance not just the taste but the experience of both. They interviewed a variety of chefs, restaurateurs, sommeliers and other connoisseurs for suggestions on food and beverage pairings. The book also features non-alcoholic beverage pairings that break away from the notion that wine is the only or best beverage to be paired with food.

Does the latest cocktail resurgence mean fewer diners will opt for the more common food and wine pairing? No one knows for sure, but Ryan Magarian, a cocktail consultant based in Seattle, believes that cocktails provide a more flavourful experience than wine. In a recent interview with Epicurious , Magarian said that with wine, “you’re stuck”. He is of the opinion that while wines are bottled and thus immutable, cocktails can be invented and tweaked accordingly to match any dish. Ontario-based mixologist Darcy O’Neil, owner of the informative and popular cocktail website The Art of Drink concurs. In an interview with The London Free Press, he pointed out that when a diner opens a bottle of wine, it is pretty much what he or she is going to drink for the rest of the meal. In O’Neil’s opinion, with cocktails, the process is more fun and creative because you can experience something different three or four times over the course of a meal).’

Sorum, too, agrees. “With cocktails, you can easily bring out new taste discoveries and flavour combinations that go far beyond what you do with wines,” he points out.

The novel concept of pairing cocktails with food presents endless and exciting possibilities not just for mixologists, chefs and restaurateurs but diners as well. Asia, with her exotic herbs and spices has plenty to offer to creative cocktail consultants like Sorum. “I love trying new restaurants. If the food is great I sometimes think of replicating the dish in a cocktail and I start looking for the right flavours once I am back in my laboratory in Bangkok,” he reveals. That was exactly what he did for Loof, a rooftop bar in Singapore. Inspired by the popular spicy Thai broth known as Tom Yum soup, Sorum created a Tom Yum cocktail for Loof. The drink contains a vodka infusion of Tom Yum spices, coconut liquor, lime juice and soda water, and is garnished with a whole red chilli. While it is spicy, the coconut liquor and lime juice balances the heat and the final flavour profile is absolutely refreshing.

With creative, passionate and committed professionals like Sorum leading the cocktail revolution here in Asia, food and cocktail pairings may not be relegated to a fad after all.

As part of our efforts to draw attention to the Asian dining scene, we feel that it is important to also showcase Asian food and drink producers, especially artisanal producers. While we have grown to appreciate the creations of fabulous small producers in Europe, America and Australia, precious little has been said (in English, at least) about Asia’s unique products. Most of Asia’s artisanal food producers boast a tradition that dates back several generations and each of them deserve due recognition. We start with the Philippines with an interview with Anne Marie Ozaeta, one of The Miele Guide’s jury members for the Philippines. Anne Marie is the Editor-in-Chief of both F&B World magazine and Baking Press, two notable and widely read food publications in her country.

Anne, what artisanal product being produced in Philippines are you most excited or passionate about?
The Philippines is brimming with artisanal food products. We’ve got an infinite variety of vinegars, different types of fermented fish/shrimp paste (bagoong), pickled vegetables (atchara), and native sausages called longganiza, to name just a few. But what instantly came to mind in response to this question is kakanin. Kakanin are native desserts primarily made with rice, although other starches like cassava, sweet potato and taro are also used. Unlike most Filipino food that has Chinese, Spanish or even American roots, kakanin has been around before outside settlers and colonizers arrived. It is therefore safe to say that kakanin is truly native to the Philippines.

Assorted kakanin topped with latik (fried coconut milk curds).

The term kakanin comes from the word kanin and kain. Kanin means cooked rice and kain means to eat. There is no such thing as only one type of kakanin–it is a generic category that encompasses infinite varieties and sub-varieties depending on the particular region or village (barrio) it comes from. Some familiar examples of kakanin are bibingka (leavened rice cakes baked with low heat at the bottom and high heat on the top), puto (leavened rice cakes that are steamed), and suman (sticky rice wrapped in banana or coconut leaves and then boiled or steamed). Of course, there are also sub-types of bibingka, puto and suman that would probably take years of research to list down!

I am fascinated with kakanin because it has been something of a discovery for me over the past few years. Having lived outside of the Philippines for most of my teenage and young adult years, I don’t have much nostalgic memories of kakanin. I’m approaching this food product with a fresh perspective. Every bite of kakanin is an adventure to me. Each puto I buy always involves a different taste experience–whether it is the sticky texture of puto Pangasinan, the brown sugar flavour of puto Biñan, or the buttery pandan or ube (purple yam) puto that I find here in Manila. It’s funny how a product so purely ‘native’ to the Philippines is something that I find more exotic than any other Western sweet and pastry that I’m more familiar with.

Another reason for my fascination with kakanin has not so much to do with its taste but rather, its cultural significance. Kakanin is arguably the most palpable connection to our pre-colonial past. It’s a living, breathing emblem of a native past that most Filipinos can no longer relate to due to centuries of Spanish colonisation. Approaching kakanin from a cultural point of view gives this product so much more significance, one that goes beyond its simple taste or appearance.

What makes kakanin so exceptional?
I find kakanin quite exceptional because it is infinitely complex in its simplicity. Unlike Western pastries or desserts, kakanin usually involves a few ingredients and it takes just a few steps. The process, however, can take hours. If done the traditional way, exact measurements and procedures give way to nuanced adjustments in the grinding of the rice, the adding of the right proportion of water to the ground rice, the mixing with coconut milk, the heat regulation, and even the artful way it is being wrapped in banana or coconut leaves. The type of rice used also plays an important part, along with the coconut milk (whether it is the first or second extraction). Stone ground rice blended with water (galapong) is still the preferred ingredient over the more convenient rice flour. One’s kakanin-making expertise is garnered through ‘feel’ rather than through technical lessons learned at a cooking school.

Except for the bibingka and puto premixes one can buy in supermarkets, kakanin is still not as commercialised as breads or cookies. Processes haven’t been mechanised (except for the grinding of the rice), and as far as I know, preservatives aren’t used, even among the more commercial producers.

Suman wrapped in banana leaves sold at a local Manila market.

Who is the best kakanin producer and why is this so?
That’s a hard question because you’ll get a different answer every time, depending on who you ask. Some people will get nostalgic and recall the suman their mother or grandmother used to make when they were kids. Others swear by the puto of a particular vendor at their town’s market. What I can do is to cite some well known examples of more commercial, albeit still pretty authentic, producers of kakanin that are easily accessible and fairly established:

Via Mare
This is a well-known Filipino restaurant (they have several branches around Manila) famous for its bibingka galapong and puto bumbong. I love the bibingka and it is best enjoyed straight out of the oven with a bit of melted butter and freshly grated coconut. The texture is light and fluffy with salty hints of cheese. The puto bumbong is colored an intense violet and steamed in bamboo tubes. It’s smoky, sticky and sweet-crunchy when panocha (made out of muscovado sugar) is sprinkled on top.

Dolor’s
It is a modest establishment in Malabon (within Metro Manila) that’s famous for its colorful sapin sapin, a round glutinous rice cake made of different kakanin in rings of red, yellow, brown, dark purple, cream. I find its smooth texture to be nice and creamy and it is not cloyingly sweet. They’ve been making this delicacy since the mid-1940s and they still use a lot of the same equipment (like an ancient coconut grinder and coconut oil press) they’ve been using since they first started. Although they’re a fairly commercial operation, they’ve managed to keep their traditional methods mostly intact. (Dolor's is located at 19 Governor Pascual Avenue, Concepcion, Malabon City, Metro Manila, Philippines, Tel: +632 2820071)

Tita Lynn’s Flavoured Suman
Here’s a place (with various take-out stands around the city) that serves a sort of ‘new age’ kakanin that uses artisanal methods and plays with innovative flavours. The owner grew up learning how to make suman tili the traditional way and modified the recipe slightly, adding non-traditional fillings like jackfruit, red bean and chocolate. They even sell a sugar-free suman made with Splenda. They have managed to inject new life and new flavours into an old favourite while retaining the traditional banana leaf wrapper and familiar sweet and sticky flavour. This marks the ‘next generation’ in kakanin making.

Photos by Rikky Arquiza of F&B World Magazine.