Philippines / Metro Manila / Dining / West Asian Cuisine

There is not much West Asian food available in Metro Manila. The whole region from India to Turkey is therefore covered in one section of our dining guide in spite of existing variations.

West Asia is the globe's corner of forbidden foods. Based on medieval religious perceptions, the Moslems don't eat pork because they consider it dirty, and the Hindus don't eat beef because they believe that cows are sacred.

Particularly India could be a showcase on the beneficial effects of enlightenment; she notoriously has a problem of malnutrition and anti-religious enlightenment could be part of a relief to it if the populace could be convinced that there's nothing wrong with eating beef.

Largely because of religious prohibitions lamb and mutton are the most common meats in all of West Asia. However, there is a definite distinction in the preparation which does not depend on different religions but on whether coconuts are grown in a region or not. The Arabian and Iranian world does not grow coconuts, and the cuisine there seems to lack sauces. A typical Arabian dish is meat grilled on a skewer called Shish Kebab.

On the Indian sub-continent on the contrary where coconuts are grown, meat is mostly elaborately prepared in thick sauces based on coconut milk.

Actually in Indian and Pakistani cuisine, dishes are named accord-ing to the manner of spicing the sauce. The most common is curry. In Indian and Pakistani terminol-ogy, curry is not a spice but a dish. And depending on the meat used in the dish one has mutton curry, chicken curry, fish curry, or shrimp curry. Vegetable curries are also common in Indian cooking.

The spices of a curry are a mixture of around ten seeds or roots. The dominant spice in all curries is coriander seeds that have a flowerish, slightly sweet taste. Coriander makes about a third to one-half of the spices used. Other generally used ingredients are tumeric, a reddish kind of ginger, ordinary ginger, and cumin seeds which look like and resemble caraway in taste. Mustard seeds and poppy seeds are part of some curry mixtures.

Curries do not have to be hot. The degree of hotness depends solely on the amount of chili that is added. In Indian street cuisine, the amount is enormous, so enormous that it is, for ex-ample, impossible to determine whether the curry dish is served warm or cold, so enormous that a Westerner can merely dip bread or rice in the sauce.

Coriander and cumin, once crushed, do not maintain their flavor for long, particularly when exposed to light. Therefore, a fresh curry powder mixture tastes different from (and much better than) any of these readily available mixtures of McCormick etc, which all are of minor quality to a true gourmet.

Another common sauce in Indian cuisine is Garam Masala. The preparation of Garam Masala is very similar to the preparation of curries, and it includes many of the same spices. However, coriander is not predominant, and it includes cardamon. Cardamon is a very strong spice with a taste reminiscent of fragrant woods; it strongly overlays all other spices used in this mixture and it also gives the sauce a grey-brown appearance. Cardamon, by the way, is one of the more expensive

spices but it is not half as expensive as saffron. A common Indian vegetable are lentils. They are often pureed and served as a spiced pulp, named dahl.

Overseas Indian and Pakistani cuisine always tends to use less chili, but curry dishes still are generally hotter than any Western cuisine.

Except for the West Asian res-taurants listed below, the tourist belt has a number of cheap, simple Arabic food stalls which cater mostly to Middle Eastern people living in the area; these food stalls have the sanitary standard of street kitchens and are not recommended to the health con-cerned traveler. Furthermore there are a number of nightclubs oriented to Middle Eastern enter-tainment taste; they generally also offer some Middle Eastern short orders, commonly at high price but low quality.

Where to eat:

West Asian Restaurants

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