Or how to come up with something tasty even under pressure…

The Filipino sweet tooth is reflected in our cuisine – from a multitude of kakanin (usually rice-based snacks) to mouth-watering confections that leave everyone asking for more. There’s also the other side – how the popular palate demands to sweeten almost everything – even that which is supposedly not meant to. Established transnational companies have to come up with sweet versions of catsup and sauces for the Philippine market. A Japanese friend noticed how our Japanese restaurants serve good food up to her standards, except that it’s sweet and I didn’t even notice. We also horrify purists with our sweet spaghetti sauce. But then, each culture adapts imported food to its local conditions. Not even established food staples are spared a local interpretation. For commercial institutions most especially, what is of utmost importance is to satisfy their customers. Though not commercial in scope, I also had some satisfying to do two Sundays ago.

Late on a Saturday afternoon, I found myself having to do some cooking the following day even as I had to attend a godson’s first birthday party and fulfil previous commitments. If I hadn’t come home from the city the night before, it would have been easy to make excuses but right at that moment, I was in the centre of it all. I couldn’t refuse any task as they were of equal importance. My godson is the first child of one of my best friends, M, who’s also a classmate from kindergarten till high school. Only a matter of life and death, or extreme forgetfulness, could make me miss his party.

The cooking duty was mainly my own doing when I found out Sunday was also the little girl next door L’s fourth birthday. She is the only child of a couple my mom and aunt recently took in. More than just hired hands, they’re almost like relatives.
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As a new graduate, I shared an apartment with several college students and young professionals. We had a great time playing house, with scenarios much like the sit-com Friends. In theory we cooked or brought our own food but in reality, we partook of what each brought into the house. That kind of arrangement suited us well since there was nobody assigned to kitchen duty.

We lived in a compound of two apartment rows facing each other. The tenants of the other apartments were also students, young professionals and a few families. The children would oftentimes come to our apartment with their books and crayons, play and eat with us, to the consternation of their parents.

Usually, I cook when I get home from the office. Technically, I would just cook for myself and my brother but of course I would cook enough to feed around ten people, which include my housemates and any stragglers. Even when I come home late in the evening, at around 10 p.m. as soon as the pan hits the stove, people would be coming out of the woodwork.

The recipe I’m posting today is one of my bestsellers, so to speak. It’s a variation of the Stir-fried Vegetables with Oyster Sauce recipe of sometime back and quite easy to cook. I got it from one of my mom’s cookbooks, Vegetarian Cooking by Carole Handslip. This one uses another kind of beans - mangetout also known as citsaro or snowpeas - and tofu. When I first tried this, it made raves even with the non-vegetable eating crowd. Enjoy!
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Perhaps it’s now too late to back out of this blog. I realised that what I want to accomplish entails a lot of archival and field research, not to mention some testing of recipes from long ago, perhaps not cooked for at least a generation. However, the more I think about it, the more excited I get. This not only feels like a trip down gastronomy lane but an anthropological study as well. I have already had a few eureka moments in the last few days.

For the past week or so, I have been asking my mother for information about food that I have not heard of for sometime. In her usual lucid and detailed explanation, Mom would describe ingredients, procedures and implements that are traditionally used in Kapampangan cooking. Sometimes, a few minutes of our conversation would be worth at least three blog entries. Right now, I have already made a list of field trips that I need to go to, farms and produce that I need to photograph, people I have to interview and so on and so forth. In a way, just planning the articles has made me more aware of my roots. Just the other day, even all by myself, I had a lesson in etymology.
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