Pinoy Foodie

I was born and raised in the Philippines. Recently, I realized that many of my good memories of life in the country are about food or are food-related. I created this blog to share with you my pleasant memories as well as my random thoughts on food, cooking and eating. Hope you enjoy reading my posts. I welcome your comments.

Monday, February 27, 2006

Feed the Prisoners

“Feed your prisoners,” I yelled to my friend Eppie, at the other end of the line, on the eve of her birthday.

Eppie was no prison guard and her hostages were no suspected terrorists. She had in her garage the live crabs and lobsters that she had bought from Chinatown for her birthday lunch the following day. Earlier, when she had called to tell me about her magnificent finds, I had warned her that they might escape. I had suggested that she put them in her bathtub filled with water then lay a mosquito net over them (if she had one here in Toronto) but she strongly rejected the idea. They would stay in the pails and basins in the basement.

In the evening I called her up to tell her to feed her prisoners. I had remembered that when I bought live curachas (sea crabs that look like lobsters) in Zamboanga, the vendor put some greens in the box so that they would not get hungry on the plane ride.

But Eppie strictly said no to food for her prisoners. In the Bisayas, the crustaceans have to undergo a colonic cleansing called “laming” before being cooked, therefore: NO LAST SUPPER ALLOWED.

Thursday, February 16, 2006

The Filipino Diaspora and the Global Nomads

My non-Filipino friends turn green with envy when I pack up and go to visit friends or relatives in different parts of the world. They are surprised at how widespread my connections are.

That’s because the Filipino diaspora has created a global network of pads to crash in for my friends and me when we travel. There is always someone to offer us a bed in a house or apartment in many cities and villages in the world.

Filipinos are known for their hospitality so families and friends, and sometimes even friends of friends, are always welcome, especially in places where there are few fellow Filipinos and, consequently, no Filipino stores and karaoke bars to link them to their culture and each other. How often do they find someone to sing "My Way" and share home-cooked food with?

Our visits to Filipino homes abroad have introduced us to different versions of the sinigang and the adobo. The sinigang in a village outside of Stockholm was soured by rhubarb. The adobo in the countryside of France was simmered in wine vinegar. Even the fruit salad in Belgium was different in that it had cream cheese instead of Nestle cream and was sweetened with honey. My friends have had kare-kare with lamb as the main ingredient in the Middle East, rabbit adobo in the Netherlands and dinuguan made with boudin noire (blood sausage)elsewhere in Europe. Very recently, I ate a high cholesterol dish of pasta with taba ng talanka sauce at a potluck dinner in Miami that inspired me to make a pasta sauce of bottled gourmet tuyo back in Toronto.

Guests are also introduced to friends. It’s an occasion for a potluck party with everyone showing off his and her adaptive culinary skills and signature dishes. Men who in the Philippines would never have ventured in the kitchen prove that they can cook and enjoy it too. I am always impressed.

At the potluck party, a plan is often hatched to visit a popular tourist spot. Come the weekend, a caravan of Filipino-owned vans venture out, packed beyond the limits with family members and enough food for a survival reality TV episode.

In London where I visited my kumare Marites while she was a scholar at the London School of Economics, we rented a van to go to the Lake District, stopping by Nottingham,where Robin Hood’s legend started, for our first picnic-style meal, then spending the night at a bed and breakfast in York, the border with Scotland. We were with Marites’s husband, Vet, and son, Alab, and a Filipino couple.

On my last night in the English capital, I hosted dinner. Vet and Marites brought me to the wet market very early in the morning and we bought newly-butchered meat and fresh seafood, vegetables and fruits. I tried to cook something Canadian but was at a loss. So on my next trip to Los Angeles and San Francisco, I brought smoked salmon and maple syrup and cooked dinner for my friends in exchange for their hospitality.

A trip to Paris was supposed to be a reunion of UP-Mass Comm graduates in 1999. It was Mario’s idea to hold it in Paris and Lek, the city resident, followed up on it. But after all the e-mailing, only Tess and I made it. We stayed in the vacant studio apartment of Lek’s in-laws, close to the Basilica De Sacre Couer, but she insisted that we go down (halfway down the hill) to their apartment for breakfast every day. This was where I had the best croissants and pain du chocolat. Lek bought them from a bakery below Montmarte every morning.

It wasn’t our first time in the romantic city of lights. Tess lived in Europe in the 80’s because her husband, Philip, was stationed in the NATO headquarters in Belgium. When I went on a European tour by rail, I was able to visit them there. So the trip to Paris almost twenty years later was also an opportunity to reconnect with our other friends. Tess had dreamed of this time when she could travel again with her friends, free of the kids. From Paris, Tess took the train to Brussels to see her Belgian friends while I took another to Switzerland to see my former officemates Lulu and Wennie. I met Lulu in Geneva where she worked. After work, Lulu and I drove back to France where she lives with her husband in a village close to the border. Her Danish husband, a nuclear physicist, works for a nuclear plant located in that village. They had bought land from a farmer and constructed a modern cottage on it. Inside, the house looked like an IKEA store, full of Scandinavian-style furniture and small appliances that they had brought from Denmark. On my first night there was a potluck party at their house and someone had brought a rustic rabbit stew. The next night I requested Lulu to let me try raclette. She had the grill so we had it at home.

I saw Tess again in San Diego when I went to the Grand Canyon. My other California friends, Mario, Gemma and Efren drove to San Diego on a weekend, had breakfast with us at Tess’ house and then we went to Baja California for steak and lobster and some shopping. But we got lost and went in and out of the highways, paying toll every time. It was also raining hard. Mario’s cute idea of drinking wine on the beach was crashed. I ended up bringing the vintage wine from the oldest winery in Mexico all the way home to Toronto as a souvenir.

Another time I went to Maryland to see another friend, Nini. We rendezvoused with our common friend Laura at her World Trade Organization office in Washington. We also had a tour of the Canadian Embassy courtesy of Connie and her husband Luc before driving to Virginia for dinner at their home. I shouldn’t forget to mention that I made a mistake of flying to Baltimore at midnight, not knowing how far the airport was from Nini’s house, so I had to spend the night somewhere. Pura to the rescue --- her sister worked as a nurse at Johns Hopkins and had an apartment at the harbourfront. Ipin (for Josephine) even gave me a brief tour of Baltimore in the morning. We went to the fresh market and bought lunch there.

I stayed with Nini for two nights. From Washington, I took the train to New York. My friends, Mon and Tere, and their daughter, Bambam, met me at the station, took me to dinner, then brought me home for the night. The next day, I took the subway to Manhattan with Mon on his way to work and met my friend Ada at the Strands Bookstore on Broadway where I always load up on discounted books. Ada and I went to our friend Amy’s restaurant "Cendrillon" at Greenwich Village. We chatted the whole day and never left the place until I was scheduled to fly back to Toronto. Amy and her husband Rene sat with us at our table and relived our days at university.

An invitation to Hawaii still stands from our friend Ariela.

Many of my travel friends have left the Philippines for good or for better. Like me, they have become part of the Filipino diaspora. Some of them have settled comfortably outside the Philippines. Others are still in a state of transition and indecision.

The diaspora continues to spread. Other places await the global nomads.

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Manila Street Food

The Philippines has a busy street life. There, the street is a happening scene.

Many activities take place on the streets including the basic activities associated with simple living. But the economic and cultural ones are what attract foreigners --- the hawkers who sell everything from food to pirated CD’s, the performers who beg (or should it be the beggars who perform?), the hookers, and the fashionistas.

In the bohemian neighbourhoods, artists and craftspeople create and sell their works on the sidewalks. Riskier transactions also take place stealthily on the same sidewalk. Trendy cafes have patios from where clients can view these activities. I remember my friends and I driving to the Remedios Circle after midnight on New Year’s Eve to see the costumes and gowns of the socialites flocking to Adriatico for coffee after a party at one of the posh hotels. The city would be full of smog from the firecrackers and fireworks, making driving hazardous, but we would navigate the highways and the residential streets fast to catch the procession. In those days, coffee offerings were not as diverse as they are today so we settled on “chocolate eh”. At our favourite café, we could get churros to go with it. Viva la dulce vida!

At the university belt, vendors line the street just outside the gates of academe. Tight security prevents them from sneaking in. Students buy their lunches or snacks from these sidewalk vendors. They are not limited to hotdogs and French fries like their counterparts in Toronto. They can have the exotic for lunch, like adidas or IUDs ( these are chicken feet and intestines on skewers), grilled while you wait, and manggang hilaw, peeled and likewise skewered for easy handling, with bagoong on the side. The students can also have a proper and more traditional lunch of rice and viand on the street because some smart vendors can convert their trucks into diners with stools that clients can sit on.

At the University of the Philippines, vendors can actually roam on campus because many of them live on university property that has been squatted on. But the choices of UP students when it comes to street food are more limited to peanuts, turon and balut. UP students, however, can go to food outlets that are roofed under the Dilimall and the cafeterias run by the University Food Service. There are also pricier and better-looking eateries where they can celebrate a special occasion or take their dates.

For snacks, the streets are the foodie’s paradise. The variety is as vast as the landscape. And the experience is cultural --- very Filipino I should say.

Foreigners can get to know the Filipinos and their culture by participating in the street life of the city. But they should exercise caution for they may develop some stomach problems or fall prey to pickpockets. A Filipino guide is recommended.

Monday, February 13, 2006

National Dish - Is there one?

A segment of the youth-targeted TV show “Flip” once asked a number of young Filipino-Canadians what the national dish of the Philippines was. The question elicited answers from adobo (most expected) to bopiz (a surprise). The variety of replies only shows the diversity of the cuisine and not the ignorance of the youth.

It is natural for the young people to assume that the dish they are most familiar with is the most common in the Philippines, and therefore, is the national dish. But these young people are oftentimes mostly exposed to their families’ Filipino cooking. What they cook at home, of course depends on where their families came from. If the family’s from Ilocos, pinakbet would be a familiar dish. If the family’s from Bicol, laing and other hot, coconut-based dishes would be common to them.

Regional cuisine is influenced by two factors: geography and history. Food from the Ilocos Region is different from food in Mindanao partly because of their locations. The north is rugged and has a dry climate. The Spanish colonizers had a strong presence in the area. The Chinese boat men also came to trade. Mindanao, on the other hand, was frontier land with abundant natural resources. Some parts of Mindanao were not colonized by Spain. And since the region is close to other Asian countries like Malaysia, Borneo and Indonesia, it became part of the barter trade in the area. Not surprisingly, it received the cultures of these neighbouring countries. The cuisine of Southern Mindanao, especially of Muslim Philippines, shows a strong Malay influence.

There are, however, dishes that are known from north to south. They cross regional lines and are considered national dishes but there may be variations in the ingredients or the process of cooking.

Adobo, sinigang, pancit bihon, dinuguan, kare-kare and lumpia are standard menu items in every Filipino restaurant in Canada and so every Filipino-Canadian youth who is connected to his heritage should know these dishes.

The question, however, was “What is THE national dish of the Philippines?” There could only be one answer.

Just what should be the characteristics of the national dish, granting that none has been officially proclaimed? Should it have an affinity with the culture? Should it reflect history? Should it be indigenous or have, at the very least, a Filipino-sounding name? Should we go simply by popularity?

Adobo is admittedly the most popular dish of the Philippines and the most well-known across outside the country. It comes from the word “adobado” which describes a method of slow cooking in vinegar and spices. We suspect that the original recipe for our adobo traveled from Mexico through the Spanish galleon trade. Over the years, the recipe was modified and soy sauce as an ingredient was a Chinese or Japanese influence. The recipe was also interpreted liberally in some parts of the country. In the Tagalog Region, mashed liver was added to the sauce. In coconut-producing provinces like Quezon, the meat was simmered in vinegar, garlic, black pepper and coconut milk and the variation was called “Adobo sa Gata.” Then there is Adobo, Bisaya style. It is dry and does not have soy sauce. Pork liempo is cooked as adobo and preserved in the fat. The meat is fried when reheated and becomes crisp like lechon. There are also less common variations that include onion (a no-no to traditionalists) and even sugar (yaks).

Adobo already enjoys the title of “THE national dish of the Philippines” but this can still be contested. The final or correct answer to the question is still evolving, as the identity of the Filipino, likewise, is still being defined.

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Let me take you on a mouthwatering, nostalgic trip to the Philippines

I was fortunate to have traveled extensively in the country and to have lived in four cities for part of my life there. I still have vivid memories of the food I had savoured in many places and hope you will join me in evoking the flavours and aromas of my favourites.

Cebu was a central location for meetings and conferences when dealing with projects and programs in Southern Philippines. It was second to Metro Manila in sophistication, with a busy airport and hotel industry. Thus, I had traveled to the Queen City of the South quite often. Every trip to Cebu was an opportunity to eat at Ding Hau, a Chinese restaurant on the second floor of a building, where waiters serving dimsum wore masks, pre-SARS, and carried the dishes on a tray with a neck strap. We went to Ding Hau for the Chicken Steamed Fried Rice. It was a bowl of saucy rice with chicken and vegetable toppings. I figured this dish was cooked twice, both steamed and fried but I did not know the order of the cooking. It was a dish I had tried to replicate without success because I couldn’t figure out what gave it its rich flavour. Oyster sauce? Not just that. Seafood broth? Maybe. I later learned from a former officemate who recently immigrated to Ontario that the cook had left the restaurant and had taken the recipe with him.

I lived in Davao City for a year and it is one of my favourite cities. It is a foodie’s paradise --- Margie Moran, take note. This was where I tasted and got hooked on durian. Part of my orientation to the city was a trip to the fruit market. My guide purchased a durian fruit and we ate it right on the street, seated on the sidewalk curb. It was like taking medicine --- I had to stop breathing so as not to smell it. One seed and that was it. The next days, everyone I met made me eat durian. It was like an initiation and the key to the city. Over time, I got to like it. Davao had other fruits not common in Manila, like the rambutan and the mangosteen. And of course, bananas and pineapples were more abundant in Davao.

Tuna and other deep water fish were available fresh and the people of Davao had several versions of kinilaw. My landlady’s son added black beans to it which was unique. Grilled panga (jaw) of tuna was a popular pulutan --- but the men won’t share it with you if you don’t join the tagay.

In Chinatown, I had a meal cooked at the table consisting of different kinds of meat and seafood, vegetables and noodles. A pot of broth was set to boil on the stove built in the middle of the table and the ingredients were cooked it. And then a curried sauce was added. I had tried restaurants in Manila offering a meal similar to this one, under the name of Steamboat or Mongolian Barbecue or Korean Hot Pot, but they were not the same as the Davao meal. I suspect that the Davao version has some Malaysian or Indonesian influence.

The food in Zamboanga also has this influence, although it is stronger in the cooking of Muslim families. I had met some Muslims from the other southern provinces who were studying in the city and they had served me some wonderful curried dishes that I found in the menu of a Malaysian restaurant here in Toronto. Turmeric is a common spice in their cooking and coconut milk is also often used. The seafood curacha, a kind of lobster, is only found in Zamboanga.

In Cagayan de Oro, I had the privilege of indulging in sweet soft-shell crabs and super-sweet lanzones from Camiguin Island. And a once-in-a-lifetime experience of having a whole calf barbecued in my team’s (small government bureaucrats that we were) honour at a ranch somewhere in Mindanao.

As a child I always thought of Baguio as a vacation city and could only imagine what it was like to be a permanent resident there. One time, I went there with an officemate who was born and raised in the city and got to experience life in a house, not a hotel, cottage or inn. Their house was on a cliff and there were watermarks where the flood rose in a recent storm and rocks from a recent landslide. It was New Year’s Eve, so they slaughtered a goat and made kaldereta and papaitan. I heard the goat cry like a baby so I couldn’t eat the meal. Fortunately there was also dinuguan. Pork (or was it goat too?) with skin and fat was cooked until a little burned on open fire and then chopped. There was not much bloody sauce, it was a little dry. This, I was told, was the Ilocano version.

In Iloilo, the best batchoy I have tasted was in the market. But the best pancit molo I have eaten was made by an officemate who was born in Iloilo but didn’t grow up there. The best sisig and buro I have experienced were in Manila, in artist and gourmet Claude Tayag’s Trellis Restaurant in Diliman.

There are countless restaurants in Manila but once in a while a gem among them is discovered by some restaurant critic or a fellow foodie like Doreen Gamboa-Fernandez. My friends and I had followed their leads, trekking to the penthouses of Makati buildings and some out-of-the-beaten paths. Some of these discoveries became too sought-after that they eventually expanded and lost their appeal. I remember the Chinese restaurant in the Pacific Bank building, the Meralco Lighthouse, the restaurant operated by nuns in Paco, Mr. Poon’s restaurant near the Luneta, the kangkong dish at Whistling Oyster, Nandau (for their merlin steak and merlin belly sinigang), Madrid (for the tender roasted suckling pig which could be sliced with a plate), the Manila Hotel Cafe (for bibingka), Josephine’s (for the halu-halo), Tagaytay (for the mushroom burgers), the estero near old Escolta, the reclaimed lands of Cavite, and even some temporary construction sites (of course, you can follow the caterer from one project to the next).

Yes, I’ve been here and there. You can’t scare me with your indigestion stories. When it comes to food, I am adventurous.

Thursday, February 02, 2006

Memories of Home Cooking

Like my fellow foodie, Rikki, I come from a food-loving family that cooks. I realize now that I am sentimentally old, that my fond memories of childhood include food.

My mother spent all her growing up years in the dormitory. She was an “interna” from grade school in Bacolod to high school in Manila and shared an apartment on Padre Faura with her siblings while studying at the University of the Philippines. That means she didn’t have any kitchen experience outside of her home economics class. Her vast knowledge of food and cooking came from reading American magazines such as Good Housekeeping, Ladies Home Journal and McCalls. She became a proficient baker and even joined contests sponsored by Manila Gas and some food manufacturing companies.

My father was born and grew up in a compound in Quiapo. His father was a medical doctor so they were middle class. They had a male cook named Beltran who set the traditions of the household. When my mother moved into the compound, she learned these traditions. There were certain foods that were served on specific days and side dishes that had to be served with the main dish. “Bagay-bagay’ was how she called Beltran’s system of food combining. Pochero went with grilled eggplants soaked in vinegar, crushed peppercorns and garlic. Although cooked together in a big pot, when served, the meat in the pochero had to be in a separate plate from the vegetables. And the broth was served as a starter. Nilagang manok, on the other hand, had to go with ground beef with carrots, potatoes and peas. The sawsawan for this was liver mashed in patis and calamansi.

Sunday was family day. Slow-cooking food for the lunch was prepared the day before. I remember accompanying my mother to the Quinta market to buy the ingredients for kare-kare: tuwalya, librillo, cow’s foot, intestines. These were boiled for hours. It was not only time consuming but labour intensive as well because everything was made from scratch. Peanuts and rice were toasted and ground by mortar and pestle. For all the effort, a big pot has to be made to be worth it. Two cousins lived with us when I was about five years old and other cousins from my mother’s side were always at the house on weekends. There were always many mouths to feed.

For Christmas we made our own ham. My father did the final process of burning the brown sugar on to the fat with a hot iron. It was a male ritual. My mother baked fruitcakes. My uncle who worked in JUSMAG supplied the imported fruits, nuts, cookies and peppermint candies.

Ours was not a traditional Filipino Christmas. It included watching the Pepsi or COD displays and the Holiday on Ice. Noche Buena was optional or very casual --- we didn’t have to wait for midnite to partake of the ham, queso de bola, ensaimada and other special dishes. We went to mass in the morning. On Christmas day, we would gather at my father’s sister’s house for late lunch that extended to dinner. It wasn’t pot luck and we always took home something special that my aunt wanted to share. She was the only daughter of my grandparents so she was their princess, later on the queen of the family. She was also the wealthiest and the most generous. At harvest time she would send her driver to deliver kaing of lanzones from their farm to each home. After each trip abroad we would get our share of pasalubong, never mind if she had eight kids of her own.

Close to Christmas, going to mass at the Santa Cruz church was more motivating for me because it meant coming home with a bag of roasted chestnuts.

In the summer when we went to the beach in Cavite or Batangas, we would bring home baskets of fresh talaba. The helpers would brush each piece to get rid of the mud. Sometimes we would develop allergies or stomach problems but what the hell, they’d go away with a pill and calamine lotion, and finish the oysters.

My father would surprise us with his Chinatown purchases --- century egg, shark’s fins, birds nest. During Lent, my mother would cook bacalau, in tomato sauce with olives and potatoes, as a form of abstinence.

At gatherings on my father’s side of the family, the recipes were passed on through the women. My older cousins all had to help in the kitchen. When my time came for kitchen duty, the women of my generation had been liberated by caterers and take-outs so I didn’t have to serve my time. Now I have to ask my older cousins to teach me the kitchen’s secrets.

There were also travels outside of the country by family members so increasingly we were exposed to more foreign things.

Slowly, Beltran’s traditions were eroded. It took only one generation.

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

A Dog's Life

Welcome to the Chinese Year of the Dog. The element this year is fire so it is going to be a hot dog.

The dog is known for its faithfulness, selflessness and loyalty so in the Chinese calendar the dog is an ethical and idealistic sign. Chinese astrologers therefore say that the year of the dog will bring increased social awareness and interest in society’s vulnerable members. The barking guard dog will also serve to warn us of dangers and injustice.

I am reminded of my late friend Maxtor. Faithful and loyal, yes; but selfless I am not sure. Maxtor had the annoying habit of taking food from the table ahead of others. One time he was able to grab the lace tablecloth with his paw and bring the pork roast down to the floor. The roast was the main dish of the Christmas Eve dinner, what could we say? Naturally, he was scolded, threatened with his human parent’s tsinelas and the word palo then banished to his cage until emotions have subsided.

Maxtor was a purebred beagle. He carried identification papers tracing his pedigree when he was purchased from the dog show. It was a challenge to break him in --- he ate slippers to punish his human housemates, barked and howled and disturbed the neighbours when left alone. He was sent to an obedience school and hardly passed. Through the years, he retained the characteristics of his breed --- a hunter and a sprinter. He had a nose for blood and would tip waste cans when he smelled it. He would run out when the front door was opened, forgetting that there was no vast expanse outside the door to contain his speed and endangering him to motorists.

But when time came to seek his companionship and find solace in his soulful eyes, Maxtor was there to give his all. He jumped with joy when his housemates arrived, he allowed himself to be petted and he slept on their laps while watching television. He jogged alongside them and protected them from harm.

In his senior years, Maxtor was tamed. He slept most of the time. He no longer played catch ball. He was not that interested in food anymore. Only when a boil on his hind leg was diagnosed as cancer did we understand why. The boil was removed by surgery but the cancer cells had spread. He suffered from the pain until it was decided that instead of a leg amputation --- which would not stop the cancer from farther spreading anyway – he would be put to sleep. I accompanied my friend Goya when Maxtor was brought to the clinic for the lethal injection. After all I was his Ninang. I held him and cried. In just a few peaceful minutes, he went to sleep forever.