Chicharon (Pork Skin Crackling)

P20.00 worth of chicharon with a bag of spiced vinegar

A fried peanut vendor on the corner street of España-Blumentrit sells not just peanuts but fresh deep fried chicharon for P20. I once saw this peanut vendor frying pork skin when I passed by his food cart. It's an assurance to his customers that the chicharon is fresh and not packed or stacked on shelves for weeks.

This is a concept that's somewhat unique to the rest of his competitors. He added chicharon to his existing display of fritters of all sorts. No one among the peanut vendors ever tried to duplicate his idea. The vendor is like a street food version of R. Lapid's Chicharon.

It’s easy to tell that the quality of oil used through the color of chicharon. Here, the color is white (check the photo above). It means that oil used for frying is fresh not recycled. The seasoning is kept into minimal. So, it's not salty.  There's no grainy feeling of salt around the chicharon. It's crunchy all the way down to the last piece. It's fresh with no porky or greasy aftertaste.  There’s huge difference to the taste compared to the commercial version sold on the streets and grocery stores. 

It really feels good to see few street foods that offer something fresh for a change.

 

Meatballs

Taking my food review very seriously takes me to a lot of interesting and disappointing results. The latter statement proves true on this portion of my article. I have to admit I fell for different misleading products that never delivered the result it promises most of the time.

At first look, I thought it was a hardboiled egg coated on brown batter peddled along the corner street of España Blvd and Blumentrit. The lady who sells this stuff told me that it was a meatball with a price tag of P2.00 per piece.  I mean, seriously, I never saw any street food that sells meatballs for a snack at a cheap price. So, I said to myself, that, this stuff could be something that’s interesting to review. With so much enthusiasm in my mind, I bought four pieces of this stuff and went back home.

Its a meatball with no meat.

 Surprisingly, it wasn’t a meatball at all when I took my first bite.  It’s another example of bad or misleading product name. Time and again, I sliced through each of the one and a half inch meatballs hoping to see traces of meat but I only found very few strands of corned beef, pieces of minced onion and onion leaves and the rest is made of batter. I can’t even taste the strands of the corned beef. The meatball is spongy like Japan’s Takoyaki. Perhaps, the owner should have renamed her product into “cornedbeefyaki”. Hmmmm…I like the sound of it, “cornedbeefyaki” (yucky). The texture is like a puto (steamed muffins) that was deep fried. 

My experience on this meatball is a combination bad advertising and bad culinary skills. If I were the lady’s kitchen instructor, I will give her a big “F” as her grade.

Cheese Stick

A five inch fritters

Cheese stick lovers out there, beware. Stay away from the location of the food cart that I'm going to mention later. There's nothing inside the lumpia wrapper for your taste buds to enjoy for this particular sample. Only one food cart offers this kind of food along Blumentrit corner España and it cost P1 per piece.

Where's my cheese??

Peeling each samples layer after layer of wrapping for that coveted piece of cheese and I found nothing. The uneven red orange color around the cheese stick isn't a melted cheese. It's a powdered cheese used on french fries brushed around the lumpia wrapper before frying. I was hoping that the cheese stick would somehow deliver a bit of saltiness of cheese powder, that, didn't work either. Instead, the cheese tasted sweet, a taste that shouldn't be there. Wow. It's the worst and shortest food review that I ever had.

Lumpiang Shanghai Review

When I was a kid, I remember how my Mom prepares lumpiang shanghai exclusively for special occasions, but not anymore. This food that was once a part of a regal lineup of cuisine during festivities is now a common commodity on food carts. Where else can I find such insane variety of fried food? It’s in Blumentrit. 

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See the similarity of the filling

Lumpiang shanghai bought at P.Florentino St. corner Blumentrit

 

Fried siomai bought at the same store at P.Florentino St. corner Blumentrit

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The lumpiang shanghai that I bought at Blumentrit corner P.Florentino St. is below average for my taste. Here’s why. The meat and vegetable filling is starchy and the meat is overly minced or grounded into almost mush. I can barely taste the meat or vegetable. The owner of the food cart is really cunning when it comes to food presentation. He used the same filling of a fried siomai that I reviewed earlier. Customers that eats at this place is fooled by thinking they are eating an authentic lumpiang shanghai, where in fact, they're eating a siomai filling wrapped in a lumpia wrapper (see the pictures above). That's what you get when you don't "play" with your food before you eat it. They should have renamed the food into "lumpiang siomai" or "siomai na lumpia". Either ways, it's a totally bad idea and preparation.

 

Lumpiang Shanghai bought at España-Blumentrit

I really can't complain. Street food will always be a street food. The lumpiang shanghai sold along España Blvd corner Blumentrit fared pretty well with the taste and texture of the meat but not on the volume of filling inside the wrapper. Minced vegetable is quite visible and easily identified while eating. I tasted no trace of meat extenders. The  meat filling indicates that it was cooked with soy sauce. I set aside a piece for later eating but when I returned back to eat it, the once fresh cooked pork meat tasted quite sharp and sour. I have no exact words to describe it but I'm pretty sure that it's not spoiled. The taste is somewhat pretty close to aged meat. That's the closest description I can imagine.