Letters from Home with Recipes: Pandisal in Diaspora

 

 This recipe is more than two decades kept in my folder of cuttings or recipes and other rough drafts. It was sent to me by my sister upon my request together with other recipes because I wanted to learn how to cook. I thought I might need the talent to impress my in-laws and other German friends. Todate, my sister is still sending me recipes and some tips and I am still dreaming of being able to come out with real delicious stuffs. Over the years, I have been able to befriend nice Pin@ys who could really bake and cook and since then I have forgotten my ambition. I just have to be a nice, thoughtful friend to these talented Pin@ys. I was reminded of it when I ate pandisal (Filipino buns or rolls) in one of the salo-salo (eating together) of  the Filipino Community in Bonn after the novena to the Sacred Heart and the celebration of the Holy Mass. I was also reminded that I still have some frozen pieces brought to me by my brother as pasalubong from his recent visit to Manila. I took home some of the pandisals from the salo-salo to compare them with the taste of the ones brought by my brother from one of the famous pandisal shops in Manila.

To the left are the pandisals from this famous bakery carried as  hand baggage from Manila. To the right are the pandisals I brought home after the devotion to the Sacred Heart. Notice the irregularity in their shapes as they are made out of love and devotion (according to Lourdes, the Pinay who bake them) but I know of the extra squeezing done to them as they were smuggled inside my handbag. I love eating them hot with crunchy peanut butter or with coco jam. Other Pinays said they taste great with canned sardines. I said better with Spanish or Portuguese sardines produced in Germany but never again with condensed milk. I had enough of that sweet memory of food eaten during childhood. Whatever.

 

 

My tip for the recipe is to have a Plan B, i.e. always have German Brötchen in your freezer as substitutes or install a Skype to get direct supervision from your sisters or brothers who could bake, and or maintain friendly relationship with other Pin@ys cooks living  in what they love to term now as Diaspora.