By Gene Gonzalez

It is always a gastronomic vacation every time I get to stay in Gino and China’s place in Baguio. I love the vibe of their street tucked away in Loakan, a short walk to Amparo’s Apothecary where couple Amparo and John never run out of new and artisanal products that are earth- and human- friendly. On this street I love to forage for wild cucumbers or pipinitos, wood sorrel, nasturtiums, and wild greens that we accent our upland cooking with.

I love to crash on the sofa, waking up to watch by a grand window, a majestic mountain backdrop with flowering trees in front and just be fascinated by handsome sunbirds feeding on the nectar like tiny, yellow, and green whirling tops in midair.

Fresh picks in the North the Baguio market filled with fresh tomatoes

By the side is an old-fashioned brick fireplace where, a folly, I once had smoked sliced fresh bacon without the curing salts much like how they did it in Western cultures and also the Mountain Province tribes. Now it is more organized and better done as Gino and China have hung wires for their cottage smoked bacon, which recently got China to build a brick smokehouse to accommodate larger slabs of meat.

Going to both upper and lower sections of the Baguio Market is a treat for me and Lucia, my granddaughter who started her kitchen education with picking strawberries and now has added to her umami interest the selection of tomatoes. Baguio market is a great place to map out and be familiar with the food, especially to lowlanders like me used only to what produce the warmer climates can offer.

My first fascination is the rice section because of the unique varieties the sellers can offer. Long ago, the native upland varieties were wonderfully textured and polished such as Kintoman which is an aromatic, rounded, fat grained rice with a lightly mucilaginous exterior when cooked. Because of the healthy eating movement, this rice is now sold unpolished (now more expensive but cheaper costing process) and has its own merits since its leafy, pandan and freshly threshed stalks aroma. (I wish they would give choices as polished and unpolished have their culinary delineations. There are other varieties that can be tried out like galo or a violet rice variety with aromas of light chocolate tablea when cooked.

Plenty of harvest Baguio's sweet strawberries and varieties of upland rice

Recently I cooked a batch of the most expensive tinawon and the aroma of dried roses and cocoa filled the air. This is much better than any expensive wild rice variety that normally is an accompaniment to turkey, duck, lamb, rich meats, or game. There is also balatinao which was one of the varieties featured in the first Madrid Fusion Manila. Another curious variety I have seen recently but sold in other stalls not selling rice is young black rice called dodomen. The sellers say it is much like pinipig when newly husked and can be eaten fresh. This could be a discovery for duman lovers. Anyway, I tried cooking this dodomen with sugar and coconut milk and since it was not totally dehydrated, cooked really fast with a wonderful al dente like texture. For a last item sold in the rice area are dehydrated cakes of rice yeast called bubod. These are used in making fermented rice wine or tapuy and used in fermented sticky rice cakes of the same name.

Since one needs a lot of ingredients for ginataan bilobilo one does not have to but different root crops to feed a whole town but diced yams and sweet potatoes come in a convenient pack enough for a whole family merienda conveniently located beside the coconut grating and milking area. The caveat is buying nangka for flavoring this hot Filipino pudding which seems to be expensive everywhere in this market.

Of course since this place is the vegetable bowl of Luzon, one can expect a lot of surprises in the produce areas. Some beautiful finds are Yellow French beans that of course with their original green cousin are sweetest sauteed or blanched for a salad when cooked after purchase. Oftentimes one will chance upon the finer and smaller leaf watercress which are the tips and are the preliminary harvest. The flavor is milder and the texture lesser watery.

Accenting a salad is not a problem whether one forages for nasturtium or ternate flowers but also sprigs of chay sim flower tops. A few leaves can also go into the salad or will make a delicious simple stir-fry with garlic or oyster sauce. For a good umami load, there are Spanish tree tomatoes (tomatillo)  that are absolutely packed with flavor and range from orange to a deep rich maroon. Peppers in any form grow very well in this temperate zone so one will find Habaneros that are evenly egg yellow in color but most recently I got to purchase some shishito peppers used in several Japanese izakayas and served grilled. Ketnip leaves are also merry available if and it’s easy to do an outdoor samgyupsal grill since supermarket butchers and good meat abound.

If one is cooking Mediterranean, Mexican, or Middle Eastern, the Baguio market has a wide selection of dried pulses and legumes. I saw pinto beans, Middle Eastern fazul and lentils for stewing. And if stewing or braising, buy a pinikpikan chicken buy the large culls and make a coq au vin with a whole bottle of red wine and caramelized onions. The small native chickens are definitely for very long simmering and these tasty but not tender birds will mean serving them a day after. Both culls and native pinipikans have unlaid chicken eggs that come with the beat up fowl and make excellent adobo. Another good braising item to look into is itag. Whether it’s the salted or smoked typed, these preserved pieces of air-dried pork are loaded with flavor as it undergoes fermentation with the exposure to cool mountain air. An additional smoking is used by the upper or higher areas probably because salt was less available because of their inland and higher location. I’ve topped fast fried tidbits of itag on carbonara much like a pancetta and I’ve used itag like a tinola but long braised so that the soup is thicker and headier and on the last moment dropped foraged veggies like wild ferns.

Finally, besides the multiple copies of the Baguio Country club raisin bread and of several that are meager pretenders to this delicious tradition (it is really a wonderful recipe even with its “healthy whole wheat and multigrain variants). It is difficult to find a decent baguette in this city (maybe you can drop me a note if you know a bakery). But I did discover that Le Monet Bakery does a version that is great for hearty eating in cold weather. It has a light crumb and the crust can take some good toasting or baking much like the Vietnamese bread for banh mi. Eat hearty and enjoy the chill!

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