Besides the christmas ham, puto bumbong and bibingka, two more pasko sa pilipinas staple foods are castanas and quezo de bola. That very famous ball of real edam cheese overflows in the grocery stores enticing Filipinos with its attractive and festive red color to come pick it up and to serve it with cut slices on the side or to wrap it up in a lumpia wrapper and deep fry it to make cheese sticks for the Noche Buena.
Many people especially kids may not like the taste of the quezo de bola with the first few bites since we are all accustom to cheese foods for all other days of the year, you know that kraft eden cheese or magnolia cheese blocks that we can easily get in the grocery and mini-marts that are sold way cheaper than balls of real edam cheese.
This is also why quezo de bola is special as they
are hard to come by before the christmas season but when october and november starts to roll-in, expect stores to stack up on this special cheese, which are mostly imported from Holland although we already have some locally made edam balls.
are hard to come by before the christmas season but when october and november starts to roll-in, expect stores to stack up on this special cheese, which are mostly imported from Holland although we already have some locally made edam balls.
Well, if westerners have their own roasted chestnut roasting on an fire, we have that too in pinas except well, we don’t have jack frost nipping at our noses 🙂
Whoever goes to Divisoria for their annual christmas gift shopping will probably pass by these street vendors busily mixing the castanas on their oversize cauldron just outside 168 Mall… the smell is intoxicating that you can’t resist and buy some castanas or roasted chestnut. Castanas are best eaten when hot by the way.
And lately a lot of malls are already selling castanas that are freshly cooked so you can see castanas being roasted in action even without going to jampacked Divisoria. The smell is undeniably very christmassy.
We will be updating Paskong Pinoy for Filipino recipes using Quezon de Bola soon, please check this christmas blog once in awhile 🙂