Recipes, imagination and personality

To write this I had to reread last week’s column. Did I say anything about Malu selling fruitcakes? I know every year she habitually makes them to give away to relatives and friends. But she didn’t sell them. Then why did I get so many texts and phone calls asking for her number so they could order cakes from her? When I explain that she doesn’t sell fruitcakes, they all sound betrayed.

Then some ask me for the fruitcake recipe, as if I would know it. No matter how close we might be, I would not dare ask anyone for her recipe to give away to total strangers. If I were a food columnist, maybe — but usually the recipes published are not faithful to the ones they cook. I have learned that recipes are very dear to people. It’s their deeply personal brand of cooking. It includes their imagination and their personality.

My husband’s driver who doubled as a cook made a delicious menudo. One of the frequent lady visitors who loved to cook asked for his recipe. He wore his usual frown but gave it to her. Next time she saw him she complained that it didn’t taste the same. He just gave her his famous dour look. He probably didn’t give her his full recipe. I think we bring our personalities into our cooking. His personality was certainly different from hers. She had more charm to contribute to the dish. Maybe her dish didn’t taste the same but maybe it was more delicious in a different way.

I think much depends on the imagination and personality of the cook. If you ask me how I cook chicken I will say I put garlic, sliced onion, some wine usually left over from some gathering or a wine I opened, tasted and found too sour to drink. Then I pour in some soy sauce, add lemon, lime or calamansi, whatever we have, and a dash of pepper. Sometimes I put butter. I can’t tell you how much of each ingredient I put in because it depends on the mood I’m in or what we have handy that day. It always tastes slightly different from the last time but it tastes good anyway. Or maybe I should say it is delicious for me, especially when I eat it with cranberry sauce.

I’m addicted to sauces. Chopped (or is it finely grated) ginger sauce for steamed chicken. The blend of ketchup and Worcestershire sauce for fried chicken or if the chicken comes from a marinade of garlic and vinegar, then soy sauce with calamansi. Plum sauce with roast duck. Mustard and relish with hotdogs. Add ketchup to that for hamburgers. Not sweet ketchup; the ordinary kind with a sour top note, the one that’s delicious with eggs for breakfast. I even put ketchup or salsa dip into my soft-boiled eggs. Vinegar with rock salt for tapa, tuyo and daing (dried fish). Patis and calamansi for boiled beef, chicken or sinigang. I cannot eat kare-kare without putting calamansi in the bagoong (local salted shrimp sauce). That’s the way I like to eat.

We all have our individual eating styles. In the same manner, we have our cooking and baking styles that influence our interpretation of recipes, discreetly but definitely. Also our personalities strongly influence our cooking. Sometimes we open our fridge and see the number of things that are in it that need to be eaten soon. Like olives. Put them in the salad. Maraschino cherries. Add them to fruit salad but just a few at a time. I have a knack for making stew with a lot of leftovers and am amazed at the delicious flavor even as I know I will probably never be able to duplicate it again.

Anyway, before writing this column I did have a conversation with Malu. She still doesn’t know if she’ll make fruitcake this year because her cook hit retirement age and retired. She would have to make it alone. But both of us are growing old and just thinking of the effort exerted, not so much in baking, but in wrapping and taping in foil, then Christmas paper, then boxing and tying ribbons, which is getting too tiring for us. At any rate if she finds the energy to do all that she might have no energy left to handle sales.

Like I said, I’m sorry but I didn’t have the courage to ask her for her recipe. I know there are people who believe in exchanging recipes. I’m a person who doesn’t believe in asking for another’s recipes. To me — and I admit that’s only to me — that’s intruding into their privacy. There are so many recipes for fruitcakes available. Find one then embellish it with your own imagination and magic. Then maybe you will create your very own delicious personal fruitcake brand! You can give that away for Christmas!

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