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My Country, My Kitchen. Monday, April 30, 2007

i just love watching food specials on the lifestyle network. i was watching my country, my kitchen and they were in sicily. italian cuisine is something i find tricky because when i dine out for italian food it's either terrible or superb. there's little grey area and mostly just black or white. but this blog entry isn't about italian food.

if you're not familiar with the show, it is about chefs coming home to the countries that influenced their styles of cooking. most of them didn't grow up in their ancestral land. heck, one white guy even went home to mexico.

i've seen enough episodes of the show to figure out that food says a lot about one's heritage. i'm just sorry to say that, my generation being the e-generation when anywhere on earth is just a few hours away, i fit the fastfood cuisine category. it's almost always improved versions of burgers and chicken-fried steak. i would love to master more filipino dishes, if only they weren't so time-consuming (or if i weren't always so pressed for time).

if i were to be featured on an episode, my first destination would be a dampa. can't get more filipino than dining on fresh seafood without cracking the piggy bank open. i'd probably take lessons from the dampa cooks and take on the challenge of cooking for some of the customers (although, i've hardly ever cooked fish and only seldom do i tackle crustaceans). i'd also talk about how rich the biodiversity in the archipelago is, that the culinary possibilities are endless.

because it is perfectly acceptable, if not mandatory, for filipinos to have merienda, street food has to be featured as well. it's isaw, balut and kwek-kwek galore! devouring of duck fetuses and barbecued intestines need not be shown but should at least be mentioned. i'd settle for sampling kwek-kwek and the conventional skewered pork. of course, off-cam i'd be stuffing my face with isaw.

next on the itinerary would be pampanga at aling lucing's for what was hailed to be the best sisig in the philippines. i'd observe how she'd prepare her sisig, maybe do some chopping alongside, and ask her for her secret.

i'd head south for some of leslie's bulalo and tawilis, and maybe some of their crispy pata. the view is spectacular and the atmosphere is perfect for quality time with family and friends. how many people have actually seen (this i have to verify) a volcano within a lake within a volcano? and, on the way, i'd pull over for some authentic (not armirol) buko pie and other pastries. yummm. i wouldn't mind a bit of a detour and have some barako brew in batangas. just a few sips, though. a cup would give me palpitations; 2 would give me tremors so bad i'd look like a human jackhammer. this would be the perfect opportuinity to promote the philippine coffee industry, and perhaps save the barako from extinction.

then it's off to cebu to visit some relatives. my grandmother's brother-in-law makes the best roasted suckling pig, and he only makes it for family. because it takes practically a day for it to cook, for lunch there's inasal na manok with puso (rice steamed in banana leaves wrapped like hearts, not meant to be eaten on plates, and what is probably the inspiration for the mcrice burger). there'd probably be time to pick some manggang guadalupe (in my humble opinion, the best mangoes ever!) and buy a variety of dried fish. at home, aside from the lechon, there's yet more food on the table, typical of any filipino celebration.

in the end, what makes filipino food so good is the effort to meet the expectations of very discriminating palates and the company with whom one dines.

okay, i've had dinner and i'm hungry again.

Ana played hooky at 9:45 PM

1 Comments:

Anonymous said...: you made me hunger!!! =P dude, italianni's is still the best italian resto for me. love the pannacotta. hehe. but nothing beats the bottomless seafood in dampa! yum... ^_^; 11:38 AM