Murphy Was A Filipino

We all know Murphy’s law: What can go wrong, will go wrong. Having run a company in the Philippines for over 15 years I can attest… Murphy was a Filipino. We had just about every catastrophe imaginable:

Typhoons
Droughts
Petulance (even the dreaded cadang cadang)
Revolution
Communist Attacks
Worker strike
Export Taxes

I could go on and on. The one offset to all these issues was the amazing capabilities and hard work put forward by the people of our Philippine company. Having done business around the world, I will take our Philippine management over all of them. I will never forget the call when our logistics manager told me he had to reroute trucks taking containers of product to the port around a military standoff between factions of the Philippine army during the overthrow of the Marcos regime. Business isn’t usually life or death, but then it was. General Foods/Kraft had been doing business in the Philippines since 1928 and the only time supply got disrupted was during WWII. The Philippines has had problems, but filipino people found ways to get the job done.

What is the super club message from this story?… prepare for things going wrong, have a back-up plan, so when things go wrong, you have the means to work around them. Chances are, if you have done the preparation, your guests will never even know you had a problem.

The Philippines also has some amazing culinary offerings. The fresh seafood is fantastic. We had a plant on the southern island of Mindanao near the city of Davao. The hotel we stayed at was right on the bay and they had a nightly seafood barbecue. The prawns were huge. A predecessor of mine once said: “Seeing the size of the prawns in Davao, I now know why the rest of the world calls them shrimp”. The chef would grill them and serve them with garlic butter.

Another seafood specialty was a sea bass called “Lapu-lapu”. You have to love a fish that is named after the native chief that murdered Magellan. Yup, Magellan the first man to circumnavigate the globe was killed by a Filipino. The world lost a great explorer, but the chieftain got a very tasty fish named after him.

There are lots of things about Philippine cuisine that you might want to take a pass on. Ask a Filipino what they miss about the food of their youth and it is amazing how many will say balut. Balut is a developing bird embryo. You know, an egg with a little texture. Another of my least favorites, is durian fruit. This is a tropical fruit that is described as: “Taste like heaven, smells like hell”. I have been on a plane where passengers brought durian aboard as a carryon. Before you know it, the whole cabin smells like soiled baby diapers. One of my rules of international cuisine is: Be extra careful if someone tells you something is a local delicacy. I grew up eating lobster in New York and have heard people call the green guck in lobster a delicacy. Yuck!

A Philippine delicacy – balut.

(Durian Fruit)

(Lanzones)

(The best mango in the world)

The good news is that the Philippines has the most amazing tropical fruit imaginable. The mango and pineapple taste different, and is better, than anywhere in the world. The papaya and melons are fantastic. The Lanzones fruit was a rare treat. That’s the good news. The bad news was that when the Lanzones came into season, a large number of our plant workers wouldn’t show up because they could make more money picking Lanzones… What can go wrong will go wrong.

If you enjoyed this blog and similar other stories/supper club lessons follow me on Facebook and Twitter and subscribe to get future blogs at www.impromptufridaynights.com/blog and check out my book Impromptu Friday Nights a Guide to Supper Clubs. Published by Morgan James Publishing and available through most channels where books are sold.

Check Out Raven & Lily Restaurant In Collierville Tennessee

Some people can flat out cook. We are all not created equal. Some people are just gifted when it comes to cooking. If you live anywhere near Memphis you have to try Justin Young’s cooking at his new Raven & Lily restaurant on the town square in Collierville. Justin is an amazing chef and his food is outstanding.

Justin isn’t an overnight success. His culinary training combines a wide array of experience. He grew up cooking. He went to culinary school in at Johnson and Wales in Charleston. He worked in several white tablecloth restaurants between South Carolina and Memphis. He spent a year working at a 3 star restaurant in Lyon France. Justin has also worked on and off for Erling Jensen in Memphis for years.

Yes I am biased, Justin also worked with me at Kraft Food Ingredients. At Kraft, he was our executive chef and I got to see Justin combine the art and science of food. As stated above, the guy can flat out cook.

Justin opened his first restaurant in Oakland Tennessee a few years ago. The restaurant was a success, but the location was a bit of a challenge. The new location is on the square in Collierville and closer to a much larger customer base.

The menu at Raven & Lily is eclectic, it ranges from sandwiches to steak and seafood. Every nuance will delight his customers. Justin describes his menu as Modern Southern. Everything is very innovative and outstanding. I like to ask Justin for a tasting menu and just sit back in enjoy. Another reason why the tasting menu is great is that I wind up trying things that I would never order and wind up loving them. For example, his shrimp and grits are great. For me, shrimp and grits are cliché and never my favorite. Justin’s shrimp and grits are really special.

Justin makes a bordelaise sauce that is to die for. He gave me the recipe many years ago and I make it every year around the holidays. It is a production to make, but boy is it good. In Justin’s words, it is like candy for a kid, you can’t get enough of it. You could put this sauce on anything and it would taste great. It is worth a trip to Raven & Lily just to try the sauce.

Check out the Bordelaise Sauce recipe

One other thing about Raven & Lily, it is very affordable. They don’t have a liquor license yet so it is BYOB. Bringing your own wine keeps the cost down. Everything is reasonably priced. Look at this way, you can get the best white table cloth restaurant quality food at about half the price. Go there soon before and I can influence my former student on how to price.

This reminds me of an unrelated story:

I was playing golf with my buddies a few years ago when my friend Jim hit a bad shot and went into a rant cursing himself and the golf gods.
His playing partner Newman waited for Jim to regain his composure and encouraged Jim to not get so mad saying: “After all it is just a game”.
Jim came back explaining that the piece Newman was missing was the fact that he was a “very, very good golfer”.
After a more than pregnant pause, Newman countered with:
- “Ah-hah! That is the data I didn’t process

Again, the “Ah-Hah moment” story is completely unrelated, but I saw Newman today for the first time in years and I love the story.

For supper clubs, if you are up for a bit of work, try the bordelaise sauce. Otherwise, check out Raven & Lily in Collierville. The chef can flat out cook.

Fueling For An Ironman

Not every Impromptu Friday Night is a culinary event. We had a dinner party before my son, Brian Kenny and his best friend, Eric Brown, competed in the Ironman 70.3 Boulder. The keys to the menu included:

High carb
Low fat protein
Simple/bland
Fueling an arduos endurance test

The resulting menu included:

Cheese Gougères
Pasta With Mama Agata Sauce
Grilled Chicken Breast
Grilled Focaccia
Green Salad With Mom-mom’s Vinaigrette
Mango Sorbet With Fresh Berries

(From top left clockwise: Grilled Chicken, Pasta with Mama Agata Sauce, Salad, Grilled Focaccia, Gougeres)

The party was fun, but fueling for an Ironman is serious. Unlike many runs, an Ironman is serious stuff and anyone that completes one is a real athlete. The Ironman 70.3 Boulder consisted of:

1 mile swim
56.1 mile bike race
13.2 mile run

The cool thing is that preparing for the Ironman has kept these two friends close. Brian and Eric have been best friends since they were three years old. When Eric and Whitney moved from Memphis to Colorado Springs last year we wondered how the friendship would evolve. Preparing for the Ironman has kept them in close contact. And yes, they are competitive.

(Brian and Eric at 3 and after running the Boulder Ironman. Note the cowboy boots and shorts on Brian. Always the trend setter)

The Boulder event seems like more exercise than many of us will have in a summer. For Brian and Eric, it was just training for Ironman Florida that is 140.6 miles in November:

2.4 miles swim
112 miles bike
26.2 miles run

The Boulder Ironman was tough. There is the Boulder altitude and 95 degree heat that was a challenge. To test the guys even more a straight-line wind of 30 to 40 miles per hour kicked up as they were running the last mile. Of course the wind was blowing right into them. Did the guys have enough fuel in their system from the pre-race dinner? You know they did.

(Brian, Eric, Whitney and Lauren)

Trying to develop menus that are lower fat has become the norm. High carb on the other hand was a bit of a twist. Keeping everything relatively bland was a bit of a challenge for me, but the results were tasty enough.

Gougères have become a staple of entertaining at our house. These cheesy puffs are always a crowd pleaser. They are definitely high carb and high protein with lots of egg and cheese. Not exactly low fat, but they are a tasty starter for any meal. Baking at over 5,000 feet altitude did present a bit of a challenge. I added an additional half-cup of flour to add structure and eliminated bacon (Boo-Hoo) and shallot. The result was more of a cheese pancake than a cheese puff.
Pasta With Mama Agata Sauce There is nothing better than a simple sauce with great ingredients. Susan and I spent the day on a hillside farm in Ravello Italy with Mama Agata. It was truly a great culinary experience. One of our many takeaways was a great tomato sauce that has become a foundation for many supper club menus. If you need a simple, quick tomato sauce that will be a crowd pleaser, this is the answer. It is also low fat and uncomplicated, two things that were key to our pre-race strategy.
Grilled Focaccia. In place of a high fat garlic bread, I made this grilled focaccia that worked well. We found a crusty French country loaf at Costco. I sliced it open lengthwise, brushed on a light spread of olive oil and then grilled it for 1 to 2 minutes on high on each side. After taking it off the grill I sprinkled with kosher salt and rubbed with raw garlic. The result was quite tasty as well as lower fat and high carb.
Green Salad With Mom-mom’s Vinaigrette. The meal needed something green and this was easy and always a favorite. My mother’s vinaigrette is quick, easy and probably the most copied recipe from anything I have published

Check out the Facebook Live video from the event. https://www.facebook.com/Pkhedge/videos/10156624816699675/

The meal was great. The guys did well in the Ironman. They had no gastro issues (yeah). While they had planned to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and Gatorade endurance energy gels during the race, they didn’t. They finished the Ironman in 7.5 hours and burned off over 4,000 calories all fueled by our Ironman Supper Club.

Comments on the Feature Image: I love this one for several reasons.

It shows two friends living a dream together.
Great attitude
The magnitude of the swim behind them (distance, throng of competitors)