Street food

I nearly died of delight when I saw these series of pictures over at My Sari-sari Store by Belgian photograper, Sidney Snoeck. No matter how hard we try to recreate some of the best food in the Philippines, there's just no way to replicate the colour, aroma and taste of street food. These take me back to my childhood...

Taho
Hands down, my absolute favourite. On my last visit to Manila, my Tita (Aunt) bought half a dozen cups from the street vendor. I would have eaten them all except that I had to share with my much younger cousins. Fortunately, I can make a pretty close approximation of taho here at home. Still, there's nothing like running to the front door when you hear the magtataho calling out.

Dirty ice cream
I know the name sounds odd and, to be honest, I didn't have any the last time I was in Manila because I was paranoid about getting food poisoning. But dirty ice cream is basically no-name ice cream sold by through street carts. It's like a manual version of the Mr Whippy van!

Bananacue
I'm guessing that this name is a combination of "banana" and "barbeque" because it's basically fried sugar bananas skewered on wooden sticks and coated with caramelised brown sugar. A kind of tropical version of the toffee apple. The main problem with recreating this dessert is finding the right kind of banana to use. We usually go with frozen sugar bananas from the Asian grocery, but they're never really as sweet and juicy as the fresh kind.

Fishballs
This one isn't very difficult to recreate, either, and is one of the most popular wares in any Filipino fiesta (the most popular usually being the pork barbeque--Filipinos will go gaga over those). The sauce makes or breaks a fishballs vendor.

Click here for more street food goodness. Forget about hygiene--it's all about the taste.