Deep Fried Chicken’s Neck

This is a poor man’s KFC. That’s the closest description that I can think of for this street snack. The neck part of the chicken is typically the most disliked part because it has less meat and bony vertebrae compared to other part of a chicken. One particular food cart on the corner of España Blvd and Blumentrit made the disliked part of the chicken into a hit. 

The cooking method is simple. They coated the chicken neck into a mixture of flour and dry seasoning then deep fried.  The food cart who sells this product started as simple snack cart with just the fried chicken neck until they added deep fried chicken skin as an alternative to pork “chicharon”  (pork skin crackling) ,and rice into their menu. Lately, the owner of the food cart had acquired monoblock chairs for customers. Well, even with new amenities installed, most customers that buy from this food cart still prefer to eat while standing.  

This food cart provided the steady flow of hungry commuters and workers around the vicinity a cheap fix for their fried chicken cravings. The price of P15.00 would get you five inches of breaded chicken neck with bigger mass of skin and meat. Reducing the length of chicken neck one inch with less skin and meat is P13.00. Reducing it another inch with lesser skin and meat is P12.00. Add P5.00 of rice, then your fried chicken neck becomes your full meal. Each fried chicken neck comes with a small bag of sweet and sour sauce to enhance the flavor or to neutralize the fatty taste. The deep fried chicken skin cost P5.00 for almost or ten pieces. What I like about the food cart that sells this crackling, is that, they really fry the chicken skin perfectly.

Fried Siomai

A friend of mine told me that I should make a comparative review between Ministop's Siomai and from the ones I sampled on the street. His request got my head swayed in disagreement. I know they're both siomai but it's like comparing between stainless owner- type-jeep made from a local mechanic's shop to a high end assembly line of Land Rover. Get what I mean?

So, I'd rather compare fried siomai found on food cart on the streets at the same level. After a thorough search around my neighborhood, I ended up only in one food cart that serves just that. Ok, that was disappointing. My supposed to be a comparative review plan ended up as a simple food review. Perhaps nobody has thought of making a competition out of this food from my neighborhood. The source of this fried snack is at Blumentrit corner P. Florentino St.

As you can see, the filling is just a centimeter in length and the rest is siomai wrapper.

Fried siomai takes off traditional way of cooking it through steam. If others like their siomai to be "chewy" and soft, deep frying it makes it crunchy,  adding a bit of noise while chewing it. And of course an additional intake of fat to your system from the cooking oil.

The price of this snack is P10 for every four pieces. This is a good temporary relief from hunger. Breaking open one sample shows not a complexity of ingredients but peculiarity. I was expecting something that has a meatier texture found on embutido or on a typical steamed siomai, but this particular sample of fried siomai is "starchy". 

The filling is ridiculously small and flat wrapped on a single siomai wrapper. If there's something I could distinguish from it's contents, it would be the carrots, onions, black pepper and the rest, well, I don't know. It's crunchy outside because of the wrapper but the inside is quite soft. The chance of distinguishing a ground pork from the filling is 1 out of 100. I did notice a tiny piece of ground pork but that was when I ate the last the piece. Oooppss.

From Nuts to Nuts

I consider this one of my greatest challenge- reviewing fried peanuts. I mean, for me it all taste the same. I'm not sure if my taste buds went numb from eating samples of fried food for days. I'll be focusing my peanut review on food cart that has been a part of  our local street food history within my area of residence..and the rest are new comers.

Now, let's make a comparison.

 

A. Fried peanuts sold at España-Blumentrit.

B. I bought this one at Maceda St.-España

Both of this fried peanuts is bagged on a standard six inches by one and a half inch of paper bag. I both folded the paper bag further to check which one yields much content. Unfortunately, both of the bags measured only three inches after folding. So, I got myself a small glass and a ruler to exactly measure their actual content.

A. Fried peanuts at España-Blumnetrit. This is equivalent to two teaspoon.

B. Fried peanuts at Maceda-España.

Like Ive said earlier, I can't seem to discern the difference between two sample that I brought home for review. They have the same level of saltiness and crunchiness. They both cost P5.00 for such a small amount. The only thing that I noticed is the garlic.

Garlic makes an ordinary peanut aromatic and something that your taste buds will crave for. Most vendors fry their peanuts with garlic. The fried peanuts from España-Blumentrit has a generous amount of thinly sliced moderately done garlic which is tastier than the ones bought at Maceda-España with only  one piece of small overcooked garlic. If you saw a burnt garlic on fried peanuts, it only means three things. One, the peanuts is re-fried with the garlic. Second, the vendor might have recycled the same garlic cloves over and over again within the frying process on every batch of new peanuts. Third, the vendor forgot or neglected to screen the burnt garlic.

The Quest for the Best Deep Fried Spring Rolls part 2

Here it is! My next review of spring roll from another food cart located at P. Florentino St. corner Blumentrit just outside of URC compound. I was waiting for this food cart to resume their business and to my surprise, they did open late in the afternoon.So, I bought three pieces of this six inches fried spring rolls for P7.00 each and headed back home.

 This fried spring rolls is really amazing! You can tell  by the way it looks that it is loaded. I had eaten quite a lot of  fried spring rolls lately, I could say that, this one is quite exceptional. The bean sprouts and carrot strips is still fresh and crunchy even if it's deep fried. There's no dominant taste. Each of the vegetable ingredients complemented each other. Including ground meat to this spring roll will make it expensive. To augment the need of creating a protein taste of a ground meat, the vendor creatively infused tofu as meat substitute. The quality of oil used and the technique on how it was fried really affects the freshness of the vegetable filling.

Another  interesting feature of this fried spring roll, is that, it was wrapped around for only three times (check the picture above). Some fried spring rolls only appear full outside because of layers of wrap. This one need not to impress your eyes. It really is a good quality. The service of the food cart is very nice.