Thanksgiving Menu – Purple Yam, Thursday, November 25, 2010
2:30 – 9:30 pm
Binacol is an old Philippine cooking technique of slow cooking chickens in bamboo tubes
Instead of the traditional turkey, Purple Yam will celebrate Thanksgiving with chicken slow cooked in bamboo tubes with young coconut juice (buko) and tamarind leaves as its souring agent. Back home in the Philippines, this is an old and forgotten cooking technique which we are trying to revive. For my birthday party in Manila this past October, we flew in Mrs. Remedios Sugon of Bacolod to show us this lost art of packing into bamboo tubes the chickens and its flavoring agents of lemongrass, onions, tomatoes, potatoes and native sour leaves known as libas and cashew leaves.
Remedios "Aling Reming" Sugon of Bacolod preparing the chickens for binacol
Tanglad or lemongrass and pieces of young bamboo are some of the flavoring agents of binacol
The old cooking technique involves putting the chickens, young coconut juice and all the other ingredients in a bamboo tube, sealing the top and burying the tube in earth and live coals. The bamboo tubes are left there for several hours until the chickens are cooked. The aroma and flavor of the fresh bamboo tube are part of the binacol romance which we are looking forward to recreating in our Thanksgiving menu.
Update: Due to some personal requests from close relatives, Chef Romy has added a roast turkey to our menu.
Thanksgiving Menu (A la Carte), 2:30 – 9:30 PM
Pomelo salad with breadfruit chips, $ 9
Fish curry soup, $ 10 appetizer / $ 19 main course
Crispy rice wafers with Korean barbecue beef short ribs, $ 12
BINACOL – poussin (baby chickens) slow cooked in bamboo tubes, $ 21
Roast turkey in guava jelly glaze with fresh guava sauce, $ 19
Adobo – quail and rabbit braised in coconut vinegar, garlic & chiles, $ 20
Black rice paella with Manila clams and lobster, $ 25
Sinigang – pork belly in tamarind broth, $ 18
Desserts, $ 8
Bibingka – rice cake in banana leaf with Gouda and feta cheese
Water chestnuts with agar-agar, jackfruit, tapioca pearl and fresh coconut milk
Persimmon bread pudding with chocolate ice cream
Ensaimada (Philippine brioche) with hot chocolate
Halo halo – iced dessert with sweet beans, macapuno, jackfruit, kaong, cocogel, leche flan and purple yam ice cream
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Dear Amy and Romy,
Your Thanksgiving menu looks amazing, delicious and very tempting…! Would love to be there so will try our best and bring the little ones too.
Love,
Jeena
Frank and Jeena, we MISS YOU!!! Hope you can come.
your menu looks very delicious. i am so curious though on the black rice paella. i’ve tried paella before but not with black rice. Asian cuisine really include a hearty meal! i’d love love love this menu line up!
The black rice paella was a dish that Romy created 15 years ago for Cendrillon. Many people mistakenly assume that it is “black” because of squid ink. But it is truly black rice (actually very deep purple). This is an Asian paella because black rice grows in Asia and we use a little bit of Thai curry, coconut milk, lots of Asian veggies (longbeans, loofah), mushrooms and seafood: clams, shrimp and crab.