Lingering on the fringes of the Asian continent, equivalently influenced by its local neighbors, international shipping routes and years spent under Spanish and American hegemony, the Philippines long ago blossomed into something of a culinary funhouse, accommodating an outsized hodgepodge of ingredients, flavors and hues. The dazzling results can be seen in exciting dishes like afritada, embutido, bibingka and halo halo (the pictures say it all, sort of), their sing-song names and vibrant colors seemingly sprung from some magical fantasyland.
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According to scattered news reports issued earlier this year, the Hydrox, the original incarnation of the black and white sandwich cookie, is slated to return in late 2014. This may be great news for fans of dessert diversity, but it's not going to change much otherwise; whatever niche the new/old Hydrox may find, whatever founding status it possesses and whatever other advantages it boasts, it's still doomed to play permanent second fiddle to the monolith that is the Oreo. American's reigning #1 cookie has long since ascended to a cultural plane of which few products can dream of reaching, integrated in the very fabric of national culture, and it's not going to be removed from that firmament any time soon. Yet there's always market-share crumbs to be snatched up, particularly abroad, where a product's impression may not be as favorably clear-cut. When taking on a juggernaut like the Oreo, it's probably smart to go the route that the Japanese snack company Bourbon has here with its Bitter Cocoa Biscuits, stealing the signature colors but making their product appear just a tad classier than the original. These biscuits aren't really bitter, and aren't especially fancy, suffering from the same superior cookie/inferior creme dynamic that always plagued Hydrox. Yet like that supposedly soon-to-return cult favorite, they are a bit better for dipping into milk, important since this is the only civilized way to consume a sandwich cookie, no matter what cutesy twist-and-lick nonsense gets promoted in Nabisco ads.
Everyone has a different definition of what constitutes ‘fancy,’ with especially broad variations occurring across national and economic lines, but in the realm of the sweet most would agree that the French have this elusive descriptor locked down. And while the global masters of pastry may not be solely responsible for the wonders of the meringue - the Swiss and Italians both also claim ownership and probably had something to do with the confection’s creation - the airy snack does fit squarely into the French dessert tradition, with its routine elevation of earthbound items to a divine plane via the wonders of furious frothing. This brings us to the Philippines, an island with more than its share of foreign influence, but which has never hosted any sustained French (or Swiss, or Italian) presence. How then do we end up with the Puto Seko, subtitled here as ‘fancy cookies,’ which taste like a dustier, denser cousin to the meringue?
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The coded language of snacks, sandwiches and seasonings, in NYC and beyond.
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