The Times Cook in the Philippines

I was invited as guest cook to the Manila Peninsula in June 1989. Outside, temperature and humidity levels hovered around the low 90s; although it was much the same in the kitchen, I kept getting requests for steak and kidney pudding, and one guest even asked if I was going to do steamed sponge pudding and custard. But, as someone else remarked, if you wait for cooler weather in the Philippines, you would never eat those dishes. I’m not sure I would want to, but there were clearly a lot of homesick expatriates in Manila, and I compromised by cooking bangers and mash and cottage pie.