Sidcor Sunday Market: A feast of food, flowers and fashion
I finally made it back to the Sidcor Sunday Market at Eton Centris after an absence of three years and was happy to find it bustling with activity. Most of my sukis were still around and thriving in a post-lockdown world.
This is a Sunday market frequented by people who do not necessarily live in Quezon City.
Before the pandemic, I would arrive at the car park before six in the morning and always wondered at the many shoppers who were already on their way out, dark as it was. Were they snagging all the best seafood? No, I learned that these early comers were the plant enthusiasts at a time when plantitos and plantitas did not yet exist.
The plant section is now on the opposite side of where it used to be; coming from the car park the first section is now seafood. But plant stalls don’t only fill up the last section of the market, they wrap around the backside and the variety (and pricing) is incredible.
This is the place to find a native guava that a horticulturist uncle has been looking for. We found it today for P250. When my mother-in-law was in her gumamela phase, Sidcor was a source of varied hues and sizes.
What really struck me today were the bonsai bougainvillea, so lovely and well priced between P1,500 to P3,000! There are other exotic flowers, fruit trees, orchids… all kinds of green things—a gardener’s dream.
But while our resident gardener Gloria was tracking down the guava, I was already in the seafood section, snapping up heavy alimango and delicate sea bass fillets, kilos of oysters to eat raw and tawilis to turn into crispy fries.
At one vegetable stall I bought a large head of (normally expensive) celery, plus broccoli, leeks, cauliflower, cherry tomatoes, carrots, gigantic beets, talbos ng sayote and a tub of strawberries, all for the princely sum of P700!
The talbos is my kids’ favorite green for sinigang and not something you normally find in the grocery.
I spied kalabasa flowers and had to get three bundles of those, as fried kalabasa flowers filled with mozzarella and anchovies take us back to Italy.
To make these fried flowers, cut off the flower at the base and do not wash. Fill the narrow opening with a cube of mozzarella cheese and a bit of anchovy. Coat with beaten egg, then flour, and fry quickly in a shallow layer of oil.
Other treasures at the Sunday market include pako, to turn immediately into a salad of young ferns. Likewise with the seaweed known as lato, which should be consumed the same day as well. Pako, which usually comes from Laguna, sells for P50 a bundle, while the lato is P60 for one-fourth kilo.
These two are prepared almost exactly the same way. The pako should be soaked in water and salt to get rid of any insects (it’s a fern, after all) then drained. Use only the tender upper stems and leaves.
For the lato, cut the seaweed into small clusters. Then both salads are combined with chopped onions and tomatoes before tossing with calamansi juice, salt and pepper.
After the veggie section, I’m off to hunt for Patricia’s pizza, the ultimate Filipinized pizza so beloved by shoppers and my kids. Nearby is the guy who sells barako coffee and delicious Batangas peppercorns. Buy them whole then crush them yourself. The barako is so good but beware that it will really keep you up at night if you indulge.
I always need to get my kids their favorite puto and suman, which I served to them this morning with bottles of pure carabao milk (P80 a bottle).
We discover a stall selling katsa pieces printed with flour labels—my bunso already has a few of these that she buys online. I bought three blouses for P1,000 and that gets a bag thrown in.
