(I guess it is a trait worthy of note — Kapampangans and their penchant for food and cooking. When my mom sent me a copy of the column by Tito Randy I could not help but of course be reminded of Dad and his cooking. Nineteen weekends have passed since, nineteen family dinners no longer spent partaking of Dad’s special home-cooked meals. I miss them more than I ever imagined I could.)
Inquirer Opinion / Columns
http://opinion. inquirer. net/inquireropin ion/columns/ view_article. php?article_ id=102836
PUBLIC LIVES
Public Lives : Remembrance of meals past
By Randy David
Columnist
Inquirer
Posted date: November 24, 2007
MANLA, Philippines — My mother would have turned 85 last week.
Instead of visiting her grave at Himlayang Pilipino, where she lies
buried beside my father’s bones, I chose to go home to Betis, where
she cared and cooked for a husband and 13 children. When she died in
2000, we restored our house as a tribute to our parents’ patience and
selflessness, and as a diary of our childhood.
On her birthday, I went to her room and looked at the pictures and
clothes she left behind. I went to the kitchen and sat alone before
the gleaming dining table of narra wood, but I could neither see nor
imagine her in any of them. Her memory, I surmised, resides not in the
things we can touch or see. She lives, most of all, in our taste buds.
When I began to think of the meals she cooked for us, her presence
became all at once palpable. At eight in the morning last Saturday, I
felt a sudden yearning for “kilayin,” a type of pork “adobo” laden
with lots of liver and other organs. Naturally, we didn’t have it in
the house. The help had started to fry some eggs and slices of Spam
for breakfast. It didn’t seem right, I thought: the smell of food
wafting from the kitchen collided with my reminiscence. All through my
childhood, I never had Spam for breakfast.
So off I rode to the neighboring town of San Fernando where some
restaurants have kept alive elements of the local food tradition. At
Holiday Land, they were still serving breakfast fare, but the kitchen
was busy preparing the lunch buffet for the day. I asked if I could
order an early lunch from the range of buffet dishes. They showed me
what they had, and sure enough, there was “kilayin.” It was all I
wanted, with freshly boiled rice and coffee.
The meal was excellent, but it lacked something that, I realized
later, could only be supplied by time. The “kilayin” that my mother
served at breakfast was almost always a few days old, left over from a
previous meal. This was a dish that improved in taste as it aged. My
mother would send it to me in a well-sealed bottle during my early
years in the University of the Philippines, when I had to struggle
with the relentless monotony of cafeteria food.
We did not have a refrigerator at home then. By necessity, therefore,
almost all the meals we took were freshly cooked. The occasional meat
dishes, served sparingly and stretched out to a couple of days by my
frugal mother, had to be of the type that would not easily spoil.
Invariably they had to be vinegar-based, like “adobo,” “dinuguan,”
“kilayin.”
My mother would sometimes buy half of a pig’s head. She would
carefully take out the brain, dip it in eggs and flour, and fry it,
assuring us that this protein-rich dish would enhance our retentive
powers. She would trim the fatty layers of skin around the neck,
slowly fry it to extract the lard, and put it aside to flavor some
vegetable dishes. She would then boil the entire thing until the skin
turned luminous. Parts of it — the ears with the soft crunchy
cartilage and the cheek went into a clear “sisig” laced with “nipa”
vinegar, red onions, red chilies, and crushed black pepper. The meaty
parts, the snout, and everything else were chopped and mixed with
fresh pig’s blood and then simmered in vinegar. We call it “tidtad”
[chopped]; elsewhere, it is known as “dinuguan.”
But we were mostly raised on fish and vegetables. The “bangus,” or
milkfish, was our staple fish. Frying it was the quickest, and my
mother made sure no part was wasted. She meticulously dug out the
intestines of the fish, washed them, and deep-fried them separately.
Fish broth, sweet-soured with guavas and lightly salted with one or
two pieces of “tuyo, “or dried fish, remains etched in my gastronomic
memory. We call it “bulanglang” ; elsewhere it is known as “sinigang sa
bayabas.”
My favorite “bangus” dish, however, the rough equivalent of Marcel
Proust’s madeleine cookie, the one taste that he says “takes shape in
the memory alone” so that it is never easy to recreate it, is the
simple grilled milkfish. My mother’s way was to stuff its belly with a
mixture that was a separate dish in itself — chopped pork, red
onions, ginger, garlic, pepper, fresh “bagoong” [shrimp paste], and
the young fragrant leaves of the tangle plant. The fish was then
wrapped in banana leaves and slowly grilled over charcoal.
Even this was already special. We grew up on the most simple but
equally memorable dishes. After a rainy night, we would pick mushrooms
from the banana clumps in our yard. My mother would put the umbrella
mushrooms in a small bowl of water, add a little salt, and place the
bowl inside the rice pot when the rice was nearly done. The outcome
was a light consommé that preserved the earthy taste of this edible
fungus.
On stormy days, my mother would serve us a quick broth that was as
delicate as anything special I associate with her kitchen. It was a
broth based on the lowly “tinapa” [smoked fish]. The “tinapa” was
lightly sautéed in garlic, onions, and lots of tomatoes. Water was
added and the dish was brought to a boil. Before it was served, a
beaten egg was added, and then the whole steaming bowl was covered
with the young leaves of the “ampalaya” [bitter gourd]. The result was
a symphony of three basic tastes: the sea-saltiness of smoked fish,
the subtle sourness of a yellow tomato, and a hint of “ampalaya”
bitterness.
I don’t know how such dishes came about, but though they have vanished
from our tables, they remain vivid in our mouths. Michael Pollan (”The
Omnivore’s Dilemma,” 2006) calls them “ritual meals (that) link us to
our history along multiple lines — family, religion, landscape,
nation, and, if you want to go back much further, biology.”
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