Ham, Hot Cocoa and Halayang Ube

Christmas is so in the air that I could not help thinking and smelling in the subconscious the goodies I used to enjoy as a kid.

My mind is skipping Christmas dinner altogether because it consisted of ala-fiesta food savoured and attacked at my grandparents house in Nueva Ecija.

I'm thinking about New Year's Eve Media Noche as I sip hot Tim Horton's chocolate amidst a minus two degree celsius Saturday morning in Toronto.

I've never been a cocoa guy; I've always been a coffee guy. But come New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, I've always craved for a steaming cup of cocoa.

It's been the tradition in our family to have tsokolate on New Year's Day. My mother and aunt always bought the cacao (hard Spanish chocolate) and on Media Noche, they used a special batidor to stir the pot or carafe to produce a cup of bubbly tsokolate. Of course they'd already added ground peanuts on the pot, so we would be drinking tsokolate mixed with peanuts. Aaah.

Of course, our Media Noche, was not complete without the jamon. As far as I can remember, my father used to receive holiday gifts from his clients, and year in and year out, he got at least two pata ng jamon ( ham legs). As these were raw and wrapped, they'd be hanging by the kitchen wall until New Year's Eve when our Ate donned her chef hat and cooked the ham. She boiled the ham in a tall biscuit tin where she'd put her secret mix. I suspect it consisted of beer, Seven Up, pineapple juice added with chunks, and brown sugar.

Once the ham was cooked, it looked like the Excellente ham from Echague, complete with the sugary, salty syrup. Yummy. Sometimes, we had the ham for breakfast up until February.

While living with my aunt and uncle, my sister Jo and I were Uncle's little Santa's help. My Uncle was the official cook in the house and days before New Year, he'd devote an entire day preparing halayang ube, and we would help him carve designs out of the purple ube.

As my uncle was an all around guy- sastre, karpintero, artiste, cook, etc - he'd have halayang ube in various designs served in colorful platters. He'd give me and my sister tubed "cut rite" with holes at the bottom, and we would put the trimmings on his designs. So the halayang ube would come out like cakes with frosting.

In my parents' house it was the eldest sister who was the official halayang ube preparer. Years later when she migrated to the U.S. and had kids, she still made halayang ube the centerpiece of her many special dinners. Her kids called it purple cake.