A food and travel blog

Once in a while, don’t you just wish you’re outside of the city. Away from the stress, the hustle and bustle and the endless worrying? This is one reason why I love taking weekend trips as it allows me to relax and recharge myself for another busy week ahead. I also love taking in the cool fresh air and enjoying the beautiful sceneries that nature has to offer.

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Food, Travel and Lifestyle

A couple of weeks ago, we took a trip to Hacienda de San Benito located in Lipa, Batangas to dine at their resident restaurant, Terrazas de Barako. Behind the kitchen is a well traveled chef that hails from Britain, Chef Teresa Loeb who has cooked for royalty in her home country and most recently in Brunei.

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Posted by oggie on 6 Feb 2012 at 10:00 am and is filed under Feature, Gut Feel.

Approaching the estate of Hacienda San Benito, we look up to see the view of Mt. Malarayat standing out in the middle of the Batangas landscape of farms and habitation. Coming off the main road after almost two hours of travel, we pass through eight kilometers of farm after farm, a strip which we learned was known as the Millionaires Row as these are private farms of celebrities and tycoons, on the narrow path leading to Barangay San Benito.

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Not too distant from the Hacienda’s gate is a modern infrastructure labeled as “Terrazas de Barako”. Situated next to a coffee farm, Terrazas de Barako is an in-house, fine dining restaurant built for exclusive functions and reservations only. The restaurant is strategically designed with its mountain-side terrace view, and its contemporary kite-shaped exterior architecture perfect for the wellness theme of the whole estate.

Terrazas de Barako is serving organic food in Western, European, Mediterranean, and Asian style of cuisine, but instead of keeping the original recipes, the chef would substitute local organic produce and meat that are harvested inside the Hacienda’s very own organic farm. Behind its kitchen are two busy hands of an innovative chef who has an unconditional passion for cooking and healthy eating. She is Chef Teresa Lobb, an ingenious English cook who has served many royal families in the UK, Asia, and most recently in Brunei. She’s been to healthy and organic cooking for five (5) years now and did not fall short to satisfy anyone’s’ palate by her well-regarded fusion cuisine.

The exquisite fine dining experience starts by serving a complimentary basket of homemade bread rolls serveChefe Teresa Lobbd with White Beans and Olive Oil Pate. It can take three (3) hours to finish the whole four (4) courses. This doesn’t mean that the service is sluggish, but because every meal should be savored and appreciated. Every dish served is distinctive and engaging. Once tasted, it naturally breaks the silence and opens a discussion on how astounding the food was prepared using very familiar ingredients.

Terrazas de Barako is a perfect place for wellness travelers. Get a taste of the most scrumptious healthy and organic dishes made out of local ingredients fusion with foreign style of cooking.

Source: eatright.ph

It offers a haven where visitors can commune with mother nature and enjoy healthy homegrown cuisine.
The restaurant is situated in Hacienda San Benito, a 22-hectare organic leisure farm and residential community just an hour-and-a-half away from Metro Manila.

It promotes a food culture grounded on organic ingredients and the hacienda’s quad farming practices, which feature animal husbandry, organic farming, aquaculture and entomology. It also houses one of Lipa City’s largest apiaries (bee yards).

“Taste Buds” on Mornings@ANC got a rare preview of the apiary and the wooden hives where the bees make honey.

“Hacienda San Benito is the first Philippine organic sanctuary,” Hacienda San Benito President Ricky Ocampo said. “Our main goal is to teach Filipinos to avoid eating anything that has pesticides. We distribute all of our organic veggies around the leading groceries in Metro Manila [under the brand] called San Benito Wellness.”
Ocampo co-owns Terrazas de Barako with British chef Teresa Lobb.

He said the restaurant is aptly named for its location–a terrace area–and the kape barako or the Philippine Liberica, a bold coffee with a distinct pungent smell, which is indigenous to Lipa City and is part of its heritage.

Items such as the kape barako can be purchased at Terrazas de Barako’s Finca Central, a 5-hectare commercial integrated farm that grows organic herbs and vegetables, fruits and ornamental plants, and features goats, horses, ostriches and koi from Niigata, Japan.

Hacienda San Benito also features the works of some of the country’s top architects and designers, counting in award-winning industrial designer Kenneth Cobonpue, architect Jason Buensalido, and designer Teng Bustos. Some 300 lots in this property have so far been purchased. Each lot owner is encouraged to practice farming outside their rustic home for a true hacienda feel.

Ocampo noted that while much of the 22-hectare hacienda specifically caters to its lot owners, visitors can enjoy the mountain view, the natural scenery of vegetable gardens, the organic pool, and the Capilla de Sagrado Corazon, adding that the restaurant, which is open to the public, is designed to be a dining destination in itself.

“We don’t want the place to steal attention from the food. You travel for the food and the restaurant and the ambiance of eating there,” he said.

Destination cuisine

Given fast-paced lifestyles where people look for more quality time, Ocampo said Terrazas de Barako fits nicely into a burgeoning trend in the food industry: destination cuisine.

“It has been a trend in the world that you travel for food and eat where everything is freshly-picked and organic,” Ocampo added.

He noted they’re following the trend sweeping various parts of the world: a shrimp farm in Hawaii, a fine dining restaurant by the rice field in Bali, to name a few.

“We would like the Filipino people to have that as well and Lipa is cool and close to Metro Manila. It’s a new concept right now and it’s about time because Lipa City just opened its STAR Tollway which is an alternative for people instead of going to Tagaytay.

“The promise of Terrazas de Barako is to stay as natural and organic as we can and adapt Filipino cuisine to what Chef Teresa has served to the royal families,” Ocampo said.

“Teresa Lobb is a resident and wants to retire here. [She was] a chef of royal families in Europe and Asia, [and] we want people to get to taste her food,” Ocampo added.

Chef to royalty

Chef Teresa, who hails from London, specializes in vegetarian and wellness cuisine. For more than 10 years, she worked in some of Brunei Darussalam’s fine dining restaurants, and whipped up delectable dishes for British, Libyan and Brunei royalty.

“I’ve been working in the restaurant (industry) for more than 30 years,” Chef Teresa said. “I’m into health and well-being, and when I got my plot here and saw this restaurant, I knew that my destiny was going to be here.”

A self-taught cook, she revealed that dessert has become her specialty in the course of her 23 years in the catering business.

The menu at Terrazas de Barako is not fixed, said Ocampo, as Chef Teresa will use ingredients that are in season. “It’s going to be changing every week.”

Chef Teresa added that with the season for strawberries almost over, and the mango trees bursting with fruit, these could very well make it into their crepes and souffles.

Menu options

Chef Teresa said Terrazas de Barako offers soups, breads, pastas, and dishes with various meats such as wagyu steak, lamb, ostrich, goat, and free-range chicken.

Ocampo added that in offering an alternative dining experience, while they don’t serve much pork, they serve cuchinillo– a pig fed with organic vegetables, which Chef Teresa serves with her original granny sauce.
Light desserts such as souffles, with the flavors of lemongrass and basil pesto are also on the menu.
Chef Teresa said 99% of the ingredients are homegrown. Most of the food go through braising in the oven to bring out the flavor of the meats, much of which are grass-fed and produce less cholesterol, and add vitamins E and C to the diet.

A 4-item course

“Taste Buds” got a preview of a 4-item course: an organic tomato soup served in a bread bun and topped with basil pesto; a spinach, lettuce, cucumber salad with peppers and onions topped with a homemade dressing recipe Chef Teresa has had for many years; a salmon dish with a savory blueberry sauce with mashed potatoes and peas; and a chocolate roulade with strawberry and black pepper ice cream.

Chef Teresa told us that even the flowers from which bees gather nectar are all edible, inasmuch as they are garnish on the salads.

She then prepared the main course by searing the seasoned salmon, heating the berries in the pan and pressing them to bring out the juices, and making a roux with chicken stock and cornstarch. Chef Teresa then served that with a nest of mashed potato with boiled peas.

The saltiness of the fish and the natural sweetness of the blueberries gave it a savory flavor.

She noted that the salmon is a fish that’s a very rich source of minerals, full of antioxidants and natural oils that are good for the body.

Chef Teresa pointed out that instead of the salmon, though, one can substitute gindara, a white cod, and maliputo, a freshwater fish found only in Taal Lake, considered a rare delicacy in Batangas.

She said they hope to have Lipa City’s maliputo on their menu very soon.

Chef Teresa also showed us how to make a chocolate roulade using a flour-free flatcake, with strawberry ice cream.

She began by whisking the egg yolk and egg whites separately and folding them into a chocolate mixture, then baked it in a 180 C oven for 12 to 15 minutes.

Once that’s been allowed to cool, Chef Teresa topped it with a layer of ice cream made with all-purpose cream, strawberries seasoned with peppercorn, and sugar.

The trick to the roulade, Chef said, is to roll it gently as the flour-less cake will tend to break. It helps to put the cling wrap-lined cake on a table with a towel, and use the cling wrap as a guide as you go, before keeping the roll in cling wrap for freezing.

The flour-less cake is slightly sweet but delightful, more so with the ice cream filling that has just the right fruity flavor of strawberries. It is best enjoyed with a hot and aromatic cup of Lipa-grown barako coffee.

Terrazas de Barako is at Hacienda San Benito, Barangay San Benito, Lipa City, tel. nos. 772-4262, 772-1697 loc. 112 or 110. Visit the Hacienda San Benito website for more details.

“Taste Buds” is a weekly food segment on Mornings@ANC. It features some of the country’s most talented chefs, their food ventures, house specialties and new introductions to their menu. It airs on ANC on Tuesdays between 10:30-11 a.m.

She knows how to cook and to spice each dish the right way so the flavors of the ingredients complement each other like the symphonies of the various instruments blending in perfect harmony to create one great orchestral masterpiece.

But more than her expertise in mixing and matching just to come up with a good dish, Chef Teresa is someone who knows the value of food. In an industry where food is the centerpiece, she creates simple and unpretentious dishes with understated flavors yet teasing the palate, even delectably beleaguering the taste buds just to grasp the very essence of it.

Dining at the Terrazas de Barako, where Chef Teresa is slaving herself behind pots and pans just to serve her guests with the freshest and most sumptuous dishes, could last for three hours if you rushed through the meal, but it would more likely to be a leisurely four hours. Not because the service is so slow but because each meal is meant to be savored. Every little morsel of the food taken lends an opportunity to initiate a conversation among the diners.

When we arrived at her quaint restaurant located inside a 22-hectare upscale farming subdivision at the Hacienda San Benito, the fresh mountain breeze of Mt. Malarayat greeted us and the panoramic view of lush greeneries welcomed us to what seemed like a much-sought-after summer treat – to keep us from the hustle and bustle of city life, let go of our worries, and breathe into the wonder of Mother Earth.

As the door chimed, the frail-looking lady in a white chef’s coat working in a simple but efficient kitchen turned around and greeted us with her charming demeanor. “You’re in for a treat,” she said with a sweet smile.

We all smiled, assuming it was just a pleasantry, but she really meant it. Chef Teresa was preparing a dessert she just thought the night before. “This is the first time I’m doing this. So, bear with me,” she said.
Chef Teresa would be cooking for the first time the Ube Souffle in Young Coconut, a healthy version of the traditional souffle. Instead of using flour, Chef Teresa substituted ube to come up with her version of soufflé.
While she was busy whisking the egg whites and mixing all the ingredients, Chef Teresa told us what’s for lunch that day. “For the starter, I would serve roasted pumpkin and carrot soup,” she began. “I just harvested vegetables in my garden. I thought of serving grilled vegetables, mix them in a garden salad and toss them with a dressing from my grandmother’s recipe.”

She served us a hot bowl of roasted pumpkin and carrot soup, spiced with a dash of nutmeg. While nutmeg is usually used for desserts, Chef Teresa shared that nutmeg goes well with pumpkin.

There was also a bunch of warm homemade bread rolls on the side, really soft and perfect with butter with dill. It was followed by mixed vegetable salad with grilled juicy vegetables tossed with a house dressing.
Every now and then, Chef Teresa would stop at our table to make sure that everything was alright, asking how the food was, or serving us with something to make our meal truly worth the experience.

When asked what’s in store for the main course, she said: “I would serve fish – a maliputo.”
“They told me that maliputo can only be found in Taal Lake. It is something indigenous in Batangas. I want to try a different way of serving it aside from just frying it or stewing it as sinigang. I’ll put a twist on it.”
But she had qualms about serving fish with bones: “I don’t want one in fine dining. It’s hard to eat elegantly with fish that has bones.”

Chef Teresa admitted that she’s not a ‘meat’ person. “My father is a butcher. When I was young, he would bring lots and lots of meat. But I wouldn’t eat any of it. I would get scolded for not eating meat,” she related.
She continued: “Yes, I cook meat sometimes. I prepare lamb, ostrich, and mutton. I would slow cook the mutton for three to four hours to make it tender. Baby animals are good; they are tender. You don’t need to cook them for a long time.”

“I cook almost all kinds of meat, except horse,” she said reiterating that horses are for riding and not to be eaten. “I would never ever cook or eat a horse. I love horses. I love to ride them every morning.”

The main course of pan-seared maliputo with ube and pakchay in green pepper sauce arrived. The purple hue of the mashed ube which contrasted well with the greenness of the pakchay was a feast to the eyes and to the palate. The chef opted for ube instead of the more popular mashed potato.

Chef Teresa went all out with the dessert. As a self-confessed dessert connoisseur, she revealed that her favorite part of the day is the playtime with dessert. She could make any dessert by using ingredients that are normally ignored. For her, every dessert is always a surprise.

“While I was walking around the hacienda, I saw this beautiful blue flower, she said. “I wanted its color for my meringue. I picked the flower buds and dipped them in the water, slowly crushing them to capture their essence,” shared the ingenious chef.

At one time, when she saw a malunggay tree, she thought how nutritious this vegetable was. She wanted to use it in one of her dishes. She thought, maybe, it would make a good crust if she combined it with flour and egg. But what would be for the tart filling?

She searched through the garden and around Hacienda San Benito, and there it was – a fruit-bearing tree with green, elongated fruits. She didn’t know what the fruit was, but Chef Teresa came up with something.
When she showed us the fruit, we cringed. Kamias? Who would have thought that a sour fruit that is usually used for sinigang would make a good filling for tarts? Chef Teresa surely took the word innovation to the next level.

Our dessert, you guessed it right, was malunggay-crusted deep kamias tart with homemade coconut ice cream. It was uniquely delicious, not to mention the Ube Souffle in Young Coconut she served just in time.
While the carte du jour was simple and minimal, Chef Teresa made sure that everything served was satisfying and healthy.

Terrazas de Barako is located inside the Hacienda San Benito in Brgy. San Celestino Lipa City. For reservations, call 806-2580, 806-3834 or 0927-9091867.

Terrazas is situated inside the 22-hectare Hacienda San Benito that offers modern “haciendero” (landlord) lifestyle.

The subdivision is designed such that there is a common farm in the middle where organic foods are grown.

While the strawberry fields, Koi hotel, apiery and animal husbandry are closed to the general public, there is one area where visitors are welcome: Terrazas de Barako.

Terrazas de Barako is a restaurant located in a modern thatched-roof terrace overlooking the farm’s Barako coffee plantation.

The 230-square meter restaurant, designed by Buensalido Architects, has a strategically skewed structure, giving the space a unique and contemporary feel despite the traditional materials.

Terrazas de Barako’s design is all about balance. Echoing Hacienda San Benito’s farm architecture theme, the fine dining restaurant has a distinctly Filipino ambiance.

The stone pathway leads guests over a small pool up to the stone-clad facade, which bears the restaurant’s name in elegant lettering.

The dining area is small but spacious, with only a few tables set with bright blue cloth place mats that complement the furniture’s earth tones.

The fresh air keeps the place naturally cool thanks to the wooden slat windows and large screen panels that draw a subtle line between indoors and outdoors. Even the washroom is a sight to behold, with its ambient lighting, large scented candle, crochet-draped table and soft lounging chair.

Food is main attraction

However, Terrazas de Barako co-owner Ricky Ocampo insists the main attraction is not the architecture but the food itself.

Like any restaurant worth its salt, the first thing guests should recall about Terrazas de Barako is the excellent menu, which changes with the season.

Hacienda San Benito being the Philippine’s first organic sanctuary, guests can look forward to a fresh and healthy meal at Terrazas de Barako.

Most of the ingredients come straight from the farm which does not use pesticides.

The dishes are created by Chef Teresa Lobb, an advocate of healthy living.

When guests come in for a full course meal, they can find comfort in the fact that despite eating a lot, they are eating well.

At a press preview on Friday, the menu featured roasted pumpkin and carrot soup with homemade bread rolls, dill weed and garlic butter, followed by mixed garden salad with grilled juicy vegetables and dressing.

In observance of Lent, the main course was pan-seared Maliputo fish, which can be found only in Taal Lake.

The rare fish was served on mashed ube and pakchay, with a mildly spicy green pepper sauce.

What really stole the show, was the dessert, which we were able to watch Chef Lobb prepare earlier.

The malunggay-crusted deep kamias tart with homemade coconut ice cream was a lovely blend of sweet and sour – flavors that Filipinos typically crave.

The homemade bread was absolutely delicious, and only the thought of the food that had yet to come kept us from stuffing ourselves with the soft rolls, which were perfect for getting every last drop of the pumpkin soup from the bowl.

The chef’s in house dressing, which she has brought all over the world gave the salad a special kick.

Chef Lobb, who says she taught herself how to cook, has been to many places including Australia and Brunei, where she stayed for 11 years as a chef for fine-dining restaurants, as well as for Brunei royalty.

During her years in Brunei, Chef Lobb visited her hometown in England four times, and the Philippines eleven times.

“I just fell in love with the place,” she says.

Chef Lobb is a lot owner at Hacienda San Benito, where she intends to live with her little Dalmatian dog. Despite having “no luggage,” Chef Lobb likes to describe her food in terms of marriage.

Asked if her experiments are always successful, she shakes her head and says, “if it’s a good marriage, yes. If it’s a divorce – I don’t talk about it.”

Chef Lobb brings her favorite hometown recipes with her, like an English chocolate pie which she renames according to where she is.

She says the cake is usually served with raspberry or strawberry syrup, to contrast with the rich chocolate flavor.

“The syrup is the bride, the bride must be the finesse,” she says. At one of her previous restaurants in a Polo club, the oft-called molten lava cake was named Sudden Death.

Perhaps in Terrazas de Barako, the gooey pie will be named after the nearby Taal Volcano, From the surrounding Taal Lake comes the famed Maliputo fish, which was our tasty and colorful main course.

The soft pinkish fish was served on a bed of bright purple ube, with deep green pakchay leaves.

Chef Lobb explains that she cooks mainly Western dishes, though she works with local ingredients. Instead of cooking what is already offered, she finds new ways of cooking local ingredients.

“I don’t like to copy,” she says, sharing that just the other day she found some blue flowers to color one of her desserts.

“My favorite time of the day is playtime with dessert,” she smiles. Sure enough, her dessert of malunggay-crusted deep kamias tart was a playful and surprisingly delightful treat.

A full course meal takes at least a couple of hours, and the relaxing scenery is perfect for enjoying the many flavors.

Since most of the ingredients are homegrown, guests can rest assured that their bodies won’t suffer for their appetites. “We’re doing ourselves a favor, to use nature’s vegetables and fruits and cook them as gently as possible,” says Chef Lobb.

A full course meal costs about P1,700 per head, and reservations are a must.

“I want to keep it small so I can come to the table and make sure everything is okay,” says Chef Lobb. With the wonderful architecture, clean air, and healthy food, things will probably be more than okay. – VVP, GMA News