Zilpah at Bilhah
Maid in the .jpeg of Gad
Daughters of Labhan
You may call them "sufganiyot," but I call them "jelly-filled goodness from the 2 Filipino ladies who run the 24-hour Donut Hut." #hanukkah
— Kat Lenhart (@katlenhart) December 21, 2011
Now, why the Filipino donut? In the book there are a few Filipino characters: a boy who delivers the detective his lumpia, housemaids, a chauffer, hired thugs and the one who owns a donut coffee shop called Mabuhay Donuts. He is a 70-year old Filipino ex-boxer who is a valuable ‘informant’ to the detective.
Pages 172 - 173:
The Filipino-style Chinese donut, or shtekeleh, is the great contribution of the District of Sitka to the food lovers of the world. In its present form, it cannot be found in the Philippines. No Chinese trencherman would recognize it as the fruit of his native fry kettles. Like the storm god Yahweh of Sumeria, the shtekeleh was not invented by the Jews, but the world would sport neither God nor the shtekeleh without Jews and their desires. A panatela of fried dough, not quite sweet, not quite salty, rolled in sugar, crisp-skinned, tender inside, and honeycombed with air pockets. You sink it in your paper cup of milky tea and close your eyes, and for ten fat seconds, you seem to glimpse the possibility of finer things.
The hidden master of the Filipino-style Chinese donut is Benito Taganes, proprietor and king of the bubbling vats of Mabuhay, dark, cramped, invisible from the street, stays open all night long. It drains the bars and the cafés after hours, concentrates the wicked and the guilty along its chipped formica counter, and thrumps with the gossip of criminals, policemen, shtarkers and shlemiels, whores and night owls. With the fat applauding in the fryers, the exhaust fans roaring, and the boom box blasting the heartsick kundimans of Benito’s Manila childhood, the clientele makes free with their service. A golden mist of kosher oil hangs in the air and baffles the senses. Who could overhear with ears full of KosherFry and the wailing of Diomedes Maturan? But Benito Taganes overhears, and he remembers. Benito could draw you a family tree for Alexei Lebed, the chieftain of the Russian mob, only on it you would find not grandparents and nieces but bagmen, bump-offs, and offshore bank accounts. He could sing kundimans of wives who remain loyal to their imprisoned husbands and husbands doing time because their wives dropped dimes on them.
