Food for the pure of heart
With Valentine’s Day around the corner, let me share a short story of food, relationships, and how they all relate—with a fabulous recipe at the end.
I have a friend who dated a guy who liked to cook. The highlight of his culinary repertoire? Creamy sauces made in the French style. This included béchamel, mousseline, beurre blanc, and bearnaise sauce—and these sauces covered everything he cooked, from fish to steak, to eggs, and the little vegetables he ate.
The food covered in sauce also covered his not-so-good personality and pretentious taste in food, which was really a reflection of other pretenses in his life—but let’s save that for another column. This fellow fell under the category of people who think food has to be complicated, reflect a labor of love, or impress people (again, covering up a lot of things).
But it is the purity and simplicity of ingredients and simple dishes that truly show the skill of one’s cooking. Suffice to say that my friend didn’t stay long with this fellow, as she soon discovered his cream-laden food reflected a personality that also tried to mask many toxic behaviors.
Only the best for my loved ones
Sourcing for good ingredients—like finding the right partner—isn’t easy. It takes me two days to get everything I need for a week, just ask my husband. I’ve never bought everything in one place.
On Saturdays, we go to at least five different places to source the exact items I need. Tomatoes from one place, sprouts from another, organic liver for my dogs, and organic chicken and gluten-free bread in another store. This particularity with ingredients is one of my love languages to my family and to the people I cook for.
Finding the cleanest, in-season food that renders the freshest taste with minimal seasoning is how I like to show that I care. But strangely enough, finding good seafood isn’t that easy in Manila. I’ve become a little traumatized from eating seafood from the supermarket, since my husband and I got food poisoning from bangus when we were first married.
I was lucky to be friends with Enrique Valles, who now owns Pacific Bay. Back then, he was distributing seafood under their company’s commercial company, but would take small orders from friends. He would source apahap and monkfish that I missed from my time in London for me.
Today, he runs Pacific Bay with his wife, Isha, the former editor of a local media publication. Together, they’ve created a one-stop shop for quality seafood.
Love is pure; love does not need to be covered in sauce
Love, like food, should remain pure and transparent in nature. My current favorite at Pacific Bay is their halibut fillet. Halibut, like the hearts of women, is soft, delicate, and fragile—so handle it with care. It picks up on flavor so quickly and cooks so easily that it’s the perfect dish to make for a date.
While I’ve poked fun at cream sauce, it does have its place and time (read: not on everything). However, I’ve tweaked this dish to have the cream-like sauce serve a higher purpose—to add more protein. The sauce of this halibut dish is made using Greek yogurt. It holds its form while allowing other flavors to penetrate, and still produces a sensuous mouthfeel that cream gives. The sauce is flavored with dashi, which is novel in the sense that it adds a different layer of umami to the dish.
And so in love, just like in cooking, my message to you, dear readers, is to be intentional. Be intentional in your love and how you show affection, and be intentional in every ingredient you add to your food. At the end of the day, people will see through your cooking—and your heart.
Halibut steak with brown butter dashi sauce
Ingredients
300g Pacific Bay halibut fillet
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
4 Tbsp unsalted butter
1 cup Greek yogurt
1 tsp dashi powder
1/2 tsp Japanese soy sauce
1 bunch spinach, washed and trimmed
1 to 2 tsp neutral oil or butter, for sautéing spinach
Fresh parsley, chopped, for garnish
Procedure
1. Season the fish. Pat the halibut steak dry and lightly season both sides with salt and pepper. Set aside.
2. Brown the butter and make the sauce. In a saucepan over low heat, melt butter until it turns golden and smells nutty. Whisk in cream (loosen first if using all-purpose), simmer gently to emulsify, then season with dashi powder and soy sauce. Keep warm on low heat.
3. Pan-sear the halibut. Heat a non-stick pan over medium. Lightly oil if needed. Sear halibut about 2.5 minutes per side (thickness-dependent) until opaque, just flaky at the center, and nicely browned.
4. Wilt the spinach. In a separate pan, sauté spinach with a little butter or oil until just wilted; season with a pinch of salt.
5. Plate and finish. Nestle seabass over spinach, spoon brown butter dashi cream over the fish
