Corned Beef

Corned beef is humble and glorious. It was one of the canned goods brought to the Philippines in the early twentieth century by American colonialists who didn’t trust local ingredients; what the Americans saw as mundane necessity, the Filipinos found exotic and learned to make irresistible.

As a kid, I ate it for breakfast, hashed and crisped, next to the requisite rice and sunny-side-up egg. So when I got to New York I was ready to fall in love with Jewish deli food and the mammoth