The Pilgrim’s Pots and Pans

Leftovers? What’s so appetising about leftovers?

Everything! That is if you’re in the Filipino kitchen.

It’s the perfect time to have all those leftovers for Lasang Pinoy 15: Recycled, Reloaded, which Mike is hosting at Lafang. I am also perhaps one of the best persons to talk about leftovers since they make up some of my best childhood memories.

Many Filipinos, rich and poor alike, hold celebrations for a child’s first and seventh birthdays. I really have not dug up the significance of these years but I suspect they have something to do with the transition from one stage of a child’s life to another which also correspond with their growing consciousness (from “wala pang muwang” or a total innocent to “may isip na” – capable of thought). To a certain extent, both the first and seventh years are rites of passage for both the child, whether male or female, and the parents.

It is for this reason that birthdays on these years are big events, not necessarily extravagant but certainly something planned and awaited. Relatives, neighbours and friends drop in on the party, more often than not also bringing food which means the celebration might stretch for days.

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Ningnang mais (grilled maize/corn) confection

Looking at the picture, I can’t help but cringe. My only (flimsy) excuse is that I’m making this by myself for the first time. It does taste like how it should but aesthetically, I’m sure to get a failing mark if this were a graded exercise. Perhaps by the time I use up two dozen eggs, it will look better. But as always, I’m getting breathless and much ahead of the story.

When Purplegirl volunteered to host Lasang Pinoy 14 with the theme La Espanyola (spelling is deliberate, just to show how Filipinised it is), I was excited and thought it would then force me to sit down and write my thoughts on Spanish-influenced food.

I have read and heard it asserted that 80% of Filipino food is Spanish in origin. Instinctively, I question the basis of that assumption. How did they come up with that estimate? Has there been a systematic study that gave them such a result? Well, I may have to track that down sometime in the future but I believe it is worth noting that even in my province, which has been highly Hispanised, 80% would be too high an estimate. Even old rich families do not eat Spanish influenced food everyday.

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Filipino cuisine has always been thought of as intrinsically a fusion of many influences both from the East and the West. Mind you, this is not the fusion of deliberately combining seemingly disparate ingredients but the natural co-mingling of cultures that have crossed paths through the centuries. Due to this confluence, a lot of indigenisation has taken place and there are a lot of things we take for granted.

One of these is how we seem to think of tropical fruits that originate in South and Central American as “native” to the Philippines. The avocado is one of these.

This was meant for Ces’ Lasang Pinoy event and has been languishing in its draft form. It took Sam’s avocado taste test to have me post it. Hehe! One of the ways she had them was “mashed up some avocado and sweetened it with Agave syrup before freezing it” – and she didn’t like it at all.

I wouldn’t either. Plain avocado with sugar doesn’t even sound palatable. I am not so good in explaining taste sensations but let me just say it sounds like a dichotomy, two distinct tastes and textures that can’t come together. They need something to meld them together and milk will do that.

Avocado Frosty
Blend together:
2 small avocados
1/2 cup fresh carabao’s milk
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 cup ice cubes (if to be eaten immediately, not frozen)

Chill or freeze. Serve and enjoy!

Note: you don’t need a blender for this. Simply scrape the avocado with a spoon. Add the milk and sugar and mash it slightly. Add the ice. It’s done!

Breakfast is perhaps the simplest of the day’s meals but just like Joey, this month’s Lasang Pinoy host, it has a very special place in my gut, er, heart. My problem though was what to post for Gising na! ALMUSAL! not for a lack of ideas but for having too much!

The traditional Filipino breakfast is quite flexible in that it can consist of the previous day’s leftovers, something cooked especially for the day’s first meal or odds and ends procured from early morning vendors. It has to be ready before people go out to the fields or to the sea. This has been the case for centuries, it is still true at present. Nowadays though, factories and offices can be added to the list of workplaces.

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Summer is long gone from this part of the hemisphere but frying is here to stay, especially in the Philippines, or Asia for that matter where a good fraction of what we eat goes through a form of frying. When At Our Table hostess Linda announced the theme for this month’s IMBB, I was both eager and yet petrified. What would I cook?

As the date drew near I had to be decisive because I told myself last time that I should stop cramming. And so this entry is just almost-crammed, hehehe! I took my inspiration from my university days, from the finger food we had in student organisations. Each time we had to serve something edible to both members and guests, decent but inexpensive food had to be purchased. Resourceful students would usually buy the ingredients and cook the food into something a bit fancy-looking. Cheese sticks were one of my favourites because first I’m a cheese lover and second because they were really inexpensive. I had other plans for the money we’d be saving such as for killer workshops (read: members required without fail) I was notorious for organising.

It amused me no end later, when as a junior government bureaucrat, I found these same cheese sticks served during expensive cocktails, the only variation was to include a few bits of ham. How far it has gone, the tasty morsel of my student years!
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