Celebrating Media Noche especially for Filipinos is not simple. It entails careful planning and serving food that includes both tradition and what's trending.
Tradition includes having twelve (12) round fruits, pasta or noodles, fruit salad or macaroni salad, BBQ or inihaw, ham, quezo de bola, or even lechon. For big families, they may even serve big pots of kaldereta, inihaw na bangus or other savory Filipino dishes. Drinks may include juice, wine, hot cocoa (tablea), tea (sometimes salabat for elders). For dessert, there's fruitcake, leche flan, buco pandan, cookies.
On the other hand, trendy food includes sushi bake (although not as popular now as it did about three years ago), lechon manok, cochinillo, charcuterie boards, baked salmon, samgyup, carbonara (white cream sauce), pesto pasta, caramel cake, mango bravo or mango graham, cupcakes, frozen brazo de mercedes, donuts, among others. For drinks, there was a year when craft beers were favored, then there's sangria, fruity beers, champagne or sparkling wine.
For media noche this year, baked macaroni and lasagna are among the popular choices as well as charcuterie boards and steaks. For drinks, every one seemed to be enamored with rosé wine. But there's one trend that entails eating 12 pieces of grapes under the table. Have you heard about that?
But of course, media noche differs from one table to another. For me and my family, we decided to enjoy a dinner feast and just have a light snack for midnight. These include cheese and sausage, pasta (an afterthought actually), cake and rosé for our media noche. Of course, we also have fruits for that round thingy on the table.
A Blessed New Year to All !!!
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