Wayne Lundberg wrote:
> "Dirty Sick Pig" > wrote in message
> news:0Jbgi.2374$YS.1641@trnddc03...
>> Hello! This is my first ever post to this group.
>>
> ---snip for brevity---
>
>> All this yada-yada is making me hungry. I'd better attack my camarones
>> rebosados and push 'em down with Cerveza San Miguel and Tecate Beer.
>>
>> [Please don't be offended by my screen name. It's been around Usenet for
>> more than ten years.]
>>
>> DSP
>
> My culinary 'gusto' is basically Mexican, and tropical Mexican at that.

I'm really interested in how Mexican food adjusted to the tropics!

> I love a Mango de Manila, thrive on avocados and corn based anything. But I
> also have great admiration for some 'Filipino' goodies.

I would gag if you tell me you can eat one Philippine avocado all by
yourself.

As for corn-based Filipino food, I can only think of charcoal broiled,
roasted, boiled and lately, microwaved whole ears of corn. There is one
corn-rice-cocomilk gruel dish, but it calls for canned cream of corn.
Ginataang (boiled in coconut milk-"gata") Mais (who needs a translation)
is an in-between-meals goody designed to spoil any appetite left for
lunch or dinner.

There is only one island, Cebu, where corn is really the staple and not
rice. Everywhere else rice reigns supreme.

> Back when I had my own machine shop I let my secretary, a Filipina, lead the
> company July 4 party. We got a pig, shoved a shaft up it's you know what,
> put the shaft on uprights, built a good fire and while my foreman and I
> sipped tuba and beer during the night, took turns turning the shaft (and the
> pig) until dawn's early light. The ladies went to work making poi, rice,
> other goodies too many to mention since a Filipino day of eating consists of
> at least 20 dishes including the roast pig.

I already promised to start a sub-thread on Philippine and Mexican
lechon laid side-by-side. Still working on it, there will be pictures!

Poi is Hawaiian, a paste made from the root of taro. If the cook
doesn't know his or her stuff, you simply die. Taro is not poisonous,
but improper processing and cooking can turn it toxic. It's also good
for making permanent fences, archs and trellises.

> Now that I'm in Chula Vista, otherwise known as Chula Juana for our Siamese
> joining with Tijuana, I still hanker for a good mango de Manila...
>
> Tell us more!

The term "Mango de Manila" almost caused a diplomatic rift between the
Philippines and Mexico just over a year ago!

This mango variety is the best the Philippines has to offer, and
probably the best in the world. However, it's called "mangang kalabaw"
in the Philippines, which is irreverent and unsavory to the unwary.
Kalabaw is Asia's tractor, the water buffalo (carabao), and produces
piles twice as big as a cow's. Water Buffalo Mango doesn't sound so
cool and appetizing in any language including Filipino.

Water Buffalo Mango has a sub-variety called Susong Dalaga (maiden's
tit). A dwarf variety is called Supsupin (suckable) <sigh>.

Anyway, the main buffalo here, I mean, beef, is Mexico's branding of
Mexican-grown fruit as manila mangoes, with Mexico arguing strongly that
"manila" (not "Manila) has long ago evolved into an adjective, and there
are available worldwide such things as manila paper, manila bags, manila
hemp, manila rum, manila rope, and manila men (NOT mail order husbands
but more on this on a thread on Louisiana shrimp).

Of course Mexico was taking advantage of a term not technically true,
but the term "manila" no longer belongs exclusively to the Philippines.
It's just like "hola" that no longer belongs exclusively to Hispanics
and "shalom" that no longer belongs to Jews, but to the whole world.
Other examples are "Aloha" and "matey."

The Philippine government's reply was to cite champagne as an example of
a term which cannot be used on a bubbly unless it was produced in the
Champagne Region of France, and a host of other examples. However, this
practice and the other examples used by Manila are enforceable under
international treaties, the main ingredient lacking in Manila's
arguments. Naturally, it lost "manila," but I can't really see any
damage done.

As I see it, Mexico is inadvertently helping the Philippines promote one
of its most exported fruits and foreign exchange earner--fresh, candied,
sun dried, juice, nectar, canned, bottled, mashed, and for Filipinos
overseas, green pickled. Mexico only exports fresh mangoes and no other
forms or by-products. And Mexican manila mangoes can't even come close
to Philippine manila mangoes in size and sugar content. Must be the
soil and water combination. Side by side, there can be no competition.
Only the shape and profiles are the same.

As an aside, Philippine mangoes have long been banned in the U.S. (only)
as a possible--but NEVER proven--carrier of exotic tropical insects. I
think this is more an industry protective rather than a disease control
measure.

So, enjoy your Mexican manila mangoes, probably the only fruit good
enough to warrant heated diplomatic exchanges between capitals and
almost caused Mexican and Filipino ambassadors all over the world to
quit talking to each other.