On Philippine cuisine

The Philippines is a matriarchal society. I read an interesting anthropological study on why this phenomenon exists. Even in the pre-Spanish times, the typical Filipino families lived clustered together in villages or barangays. At each dawn, the Filipino male would leave the house in order to go to their farm located outside the village. For those living near the seashore, the males would also leave very early while it was still dark to go fishing. Both the farmer and the fisherman would not come home until nighttime. During the entire day, it was the wife who managed the affairs of the household and the family.

At the end of a long day of toil, the Filipino male would come home tired from his labor. He would turn over to the wife whatever was harvested from the farm or the sea. It would be the task of the female to process the harvest and to sell it to generate income for the family. This started the tradition of the Filipino wife who would manage the financial affairs of the family.

This would be different from the western and Chinese family where the house would be located in the middle of the farm. The male therefore was able to supervise both the farm and the household at the same time.

Therefore, many of the cultural practices were developed by the Filipino women, including Philippine cuisine. The late Doreen Gamboa Fernandez wrote an interesting article entitled “Mother Cuisine” that answered the question: Where does a cuisine begin?

This is what she wrote: “In the Philippines, before the markets and the carinderias, the restaurants and the cooking schools, there were the mothers, sisters, aunts and grandmothers of our lives, cooking every meal and ultimately creating what we call Philippine cuisine. They were the ones who devised the products of field and forest, river and sea into our native sinigang and laing, pinais and pakbet. They were the ones who adapted foreign cooking methods and formulate them into our pancit (Chinese), achara (Indian), apritada (Spanish), pritong manok (American).

“Who but they would have the patience to debone a chicken and stuff it with ground meat, sausages, pate de foie gras, truffles, pickles and the like to make a relleno or galantina for Christmas?”

It has been said that just like Philippine society, Philippine cuisine is matriarchal. At family gatherings, the center of the celebration is the get-together for a meal. It is the Filipina matriarch who invariably takes center stage in this gathering by deciding what dishes will be served.

In her book “Essays on Philippine Food and Culture,” revised and updated in 2020, Fernandez also wrote about food in Philippine literature.

Among those samples or stories that she wrote about was one about a fishing expedition in “Noli Me Tangere.” In this chapter of the novel, there was a discussion on the best way to prepare sinigang. The character Aunt Isabel was quoted as saying: “The ayungin is good for sinigang. Leave the biya for escabeche, the dalag and the buan for the pesa…. the banak is to be roasted, wrapped in banana leaves and stuffed with tomatoes.”

Another interesting story is NVM Gonzalez on the pan de sal: “The bread of salt.  How did it get that name? From where did the flavor come? What secret action of flour and yeast? At the risk of being jostled from the counter by other early buyers, I would push my way into the shop so that I might watch the men who stripped to the waist, work their flat wooden spades into the glowing maw of the oven. Why did the bread come out brown and the size of my little fist?” This was from his short story “The Bread of Salt.”

Fernandez wrote an essay that Philippine cuisine is difficult even for Filipinos to understand. Philippine foodways, according to her, reflect Philippine history.  She said, “The foreign influences being indigenized into a changing culture…. The study of food as culture within the context of colonization leads to an understanding of the fate of the local culture under the hegemony of the dominant cultures of the colonizers.  For example, many Filipinos consider the national dish to be the adobo. This was actually derived from the Mexican adobado. There are those who consider the pancit as a traditional dish since it is found at feasts and family dinners. This is however clearly derived from Chinese noodles, although it has been indigenized in various ways.

The real indigenous food which existed before Chinese, Indian, Spanish or American contact are those of the Malay origin. The dishes that are of this tradition are those that are simply cooked, steamed, boiled, roasted on coal, simmered in vinegar. The most typical and widespread examples of these dishes are the sinigang and the kinilaw.”

In spite of the presence of so much foreign influenced cuisine, Fernandez says:  “Yet it is indigenous cuisine which will steadily supply the town and city markets, the tables of the peasants, the poor and the lower middle class who constitute 90 percent of the Philippine population…”

At the time of the publication of this book, she also wrote: “Native food will not get written about in too many cookbooks or magazines or featured on television.”

I am happy to note that presently, this is no longer true. Filipino cuisine is beginning to come of age and is even featured on television with programs like “Chasing Flavors” by Claude Tayag.

*      *      *

Email: [email protected]