Travel through food

I felt like I was riding a witch’s broom flying over our 7,000 islands as I walked through the Streetfood area of Terra Madre Asia Pacific held recently in Bacolod City, Negros Occidental. The Department of Tourism did well in supporting this humble effort of a global movement to put forward our diversity in food and culture. Slow Food has always been about good, clean and fair food. Though those principles may seem like a pipe dream for many, once you experience not one but 140 possibilities of preparing food and getting to know rare ingredients, you will soon understand.

The festival was open to the public and to some, this may seem like a food fair similar to what they see in festivals held in different parts of the country. But once you sit down and listen to talks, attend taste workshops and maybe have a “slow” drink, the idea continues to gel in your mind that it is something more that just an ordinary trade show. It is a community coming together for sustainable food production, for preservation of food cultures and, in simple terms – good food, clean food and fair food. That is Slow Food.

Born in Italy in 1986, Slow Food was founded by Carlo Petrini and a few friends in Bra, Italy who gathered to fight for good food as commercial manufacturers attempted to dot Italy’s pristine culinary traditions with “fast” and instant mixes, and color its farms with pesticides and agro-chemicals. No, the movement said. They campaigned one country at a time and soon, in 2006, they reached the Philippines. Starting in 2012, the Philippines joined the exhibits in Terra Madre (held on even years) displaying first our heirloom rice like unoy, jeykot and all other tinawon (meaning once a year) varieties. And every other year thereafter we brought chefs and cooks, farmers and advocates to Terra Madre. During the last one in 2024, we brought home the pride of doing Terra Madre Asia Pacific in our very own country, sponsored by the Department of Tourism, as well as the Department of Agriculture (which has supported since 2012 under then undersecretary Berna Romulo-Puyat), Landbank and the local government units (LGUs) of Negros Island.

We actually had in our midst Rafael Perez dela Torre, a Spaniard who settled in Zurich, Switzerland who started Slow Food Switzerland 35 years ago. He told us first-hand how Carlo Petrini asked him to start the convivium in the Alps. Rafael continues to come to all the Terra Madre celebrations and is happy to see the movement’s growth into some 140 countries. This happened, decades later, after that momentous evening in a restaurant where Carlo told him to start a chapter or convivium.

Here in the Philippines, we now form communities like Slow Food Negros did around the Visayas and Slow Food Manila did in Luzon (Cavite, Laguna and soon Batanes and Lipa). There also are Slow Food Farms for those farms espousing natural farming methods and believing in the Slow Food principles. We recently visited Artfarm Sustainable solutions in Bay, Laguna and met the founders Turo Tolentino and Andrea Alforte. They transformed a 1,500-square meter lot into a Slow Food farm and now accept visitors to hopefully take inspiration from their small enterprise that can slowly (pun intended) change our food system.

What did I find at Terra Madre Asia Pacific? We met farmers from Dumaguete who made us try Bigas Mais (ground white tinigib corn, which is native to us) which could be the solution to our rice problem. It was my first time to try this rice alternative with their special recipe of humba. It really tastes like white rice, just healthier and more local, and no arsenic I’m sure.

We also tried millet grain made into a salad like couscous, as another way of preparing it instead of the usual budbud kabog or suman.

The Batanes group, now on their way of becoming a Slow Food community, was at the Region 2 booth of DOT, serving their luñis, dibang and vunung. What they forgot to do is limit the sampling and selling to spread it over five days. They sold out in one day! The next day, they had to close their booth until more provisions came.

At the DOT-NCR booth, our chefs Heinz Pelayo and Louie Chan Chua served a variety of grains and smoked meats (made into arroz caldo, champorado and paella) all throughout the five days. Because of their versatility, they even cooked our display of bananas to avoid food waste until the last day.

At the TESDA Women’s Center booth, they had batuan cordials, cocktails and fruit strips. This souring ingredient, a small fruit with so much flavor, is the secret of kansi, kadyos baboy langka and most other Negrense dishes. It is not a secret anymore. Chefs from here and there are now using the fruit in their soups. We met the chef from Mount Camisong in Itogon, Benguet who uses batuan for their kansi and adds local strawberry fruits for a different flavor profile, unique to their restaurant. Batuan has been discovered by Luzon’s chefs so I hope the farmers will now plant more trees. Batuan has been listed in the Slow Food catalog called Ark of Taste since 2012. This list is a veritable catalog of endangered species, and the Philippines has about 116 items listed to date and counting. This is how we save these fruits from getting extinct. We list, we use, we eat.

Chefs, including Michelin-starred ones, went around the 140 stalls tasting, sampling and discovering regional ingredients that you otherwise would not see or taste unless you visit the place where it is famous or endemic. Chef Chele found Batanes’ vunung, chefs Miko Calo and Johanna Siy discussed batuan and catmon pastes while eating chef Fiz’s rendang, having just come from a taste workshop.

That is a glimpse of what Terra Madre showed the food community and the producers who grow these “not so popular” produce that may soon follow the way of batuan – to be known in other areas of the country and to continue to be propagated.