In Filipino-American households, dishes like adobo, laing and dinuguan sit side-by-side with the stuffed turkey, ambrosia salad and pumpkin pie on the Thanksgiving banquet. EthnicGrocer.com can provide you with the ingredients necessary to concoct these non-traditional recipes.
Too bad its Philippine section does not have a wide selection of products. One glaring omission: Banana Ketchup. Or rather Banana Sauce. Did you know that the U.S. FDA has outlawed ketchup not made from tomatoes? Philippine exporters such as Del Monte, UFC, Jufran and Mafran have had to relabel their banana ketchup as “banana sauce” for the U.S. market. Here’s an excerpt from a related article:
Ketchup is a combination of vinegar, sugar, spices and some solid. There are ancient recipes that use almost anything but tomatoes – walnuts, mushrooms, gooseberries, even anchovies – as the solid ingredient.
…the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was not a big fan of ancient recipes. If something was going to be called ketchup, it had to be made from tomatoes.
Happy Thanksgiving!