Talagang masarap!

It was supposed to be a no-occasion dinner; the organizer/s stressed as much. But as it turned out, there was more than one reason to celebrate.

Unilever, a conglomerate of many household brands, hosted dinner at the new "in" place, Lily–at the "other" Hyatt Hotel, "the one with the casino" is how it is usually differentiated–for local food writers. If I were of a suspicious or conspiracy-inclined mind, I’d guess I was included in this list because of a tendency toward gluttony that I am rumored–falsely, of course!–to have. But nevermind; it was a most pleasant and enlightening evening.

First off, it was quite a surprise to find out that Unilever now includes 15 of the most popular consumer brands around, including Lady’s Choice, Best Foods, Knorr, Lipton and Selecta in food; Axe, Close Up, Cream Silk, Dove, Ponds, Rexona, Sunsilk and Vaseline in personal care and beauty products; Domex and Surf in house cleaning products. I didn’t realize that I had been buying and using so many of their products, and contributing even more to the company’s bottomline by patronizing restaurants and other food outlets that are industrial customers of their new Unilever Foodsolutions division, headed by Danny Sison (their office in Parañaque has a fancy new food center that I am dying to see). Why, perhaps that sumptuous dinner we enjoyed even contained some of their products!

The piece de resistance of the dinner was a new book that combines two of life’s greatest adventures–travel and food. It is peripatetic cuisinier Ronnie Alejandro’s nth book, this time in collaboration with Mike Santos (he, previous to this, is famous for transferring his ancestral house–plank by plank, stone by stone–from Navotas to Antipolo; that venture has also been chronicled in a book). The two scoured the length and breadth of the archipelago in search of good eats, and listed their delicious finds in this huge and heavy volume, aptly called Wow! Ang Sarap! the Best of Philippine Regional Cuisines. It is, in fact, a tourism brochure–albeit a cumbersome one–that will guide locals and foreigners on a scrumptious journey of our islands.

The treat for us–aside from the multi-course dinner and, for me, quality "Monkey Pick Iron Buddha" tea–is that we were given preview copies of the book, since it will be launched only at the end of April. This is Unilever’s third book with Alejandro; publishing should soon be added to the business repertoire of Unilever, at the rate they’re turning out tomes. The first two are on Laguna de Bay and the Pasig River; there is a planned book on the Manila Bay to complete the "water trilogy", but that is another story of another book for another day. Before that happens there is a good chance that Wow! Ang Sarap! will have a sequel, because there is still so much more material that could not find space in this volume, so many more mouth-watering delights that our towns and provinces have to offer the galivanting gourmand.

Not to let the cat out of the bag–or the pagkain out of the supot–but here’s something about the book to whet your appetite. For organization’s sake, the book is divided into sections according to the sequence of a meal: appetizer, soup, rice and noodles, fish and shellfish, poultry, meat, vegetables and salads, desserts and drinks. There are recipes for practically each dish, and photographs too, and the dishes run the gamut from sinigang to sisig, from pancit habhab (of Lucban, Quezon vendor Amy San Gabriel) to pomelo salad, from kinilaw na tamilok to adobong takway. There are not just recipes but little explanations and anecdotes, which make it more than just a food book or a cook book.

Unilever corporate development general manager Chito Macapagal revealed that, just to make sure the authors really tried out and vetted the recipes, he randomly picked out recipes and asked his wife to try them out–in effect going on a cross-country food journey for a whole week!

For his part, Ronnie is as enthusiastic about food as ever, and having him as my dinner seatmate was as much a joy–if not more so–as partaking of Lily’s excellent hot and sour shark’s fin soup, Peking duck and steamed garoupa. He recalls cooking his first adobo at the Peace Hotel in Shanghai in 1966 (not his greatest success, he laughs, the vinegar overpowering everything else). We compare notes on our favorite Chinese restaurants in Manila. He raves about the new M Café at the Ayala Museum and its innovative young chef (a creme brulee with pepper?). He talks about biking in New York and the day the World Trade Center towers collapsed, about traffic in Manila and a limosine service from Kennedy Airport to his apartment in Soho.

By this time Ronnie will be back in New York, sleeping off jetlag before he returns to Manila late next month. I honestly think he shuttles between New York and Manila more often than I go from Port Area to Makati!