“A special sauce? Don’t we just have patis with pesa?” my cousin Beng asked.

Patis if it’s served in a hurry but if not, it needs to have the tiltilan that goes with a proper pesa was the answer she got from the members of our clan’s Kitchen Cabinet.

To be honest it is only recently that I have rediscovered the paniltilan but yes, I distinctly remember my grandmother served pesa with a red sauce on the side. This sauce was so fragrant and tasty, it could very well have been the only thing served.

But with all things tasty, let’s start from the top. What is pesa? Perhaps to Capampangans along and near the coastlines, pesa can only be fish, be it bulig, bangus, lapu-lapu or whatever. To others, it has further evolved to include other meats, chicken most especially. This is by no means a nuance in dialects but as a matter of fact, historical.
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Tuesday evening, I get a phone call from an excited Mrs. Lillian Borromeo. A leading TV network will be taping a segment at her home in Mexico, Pampanga and she needs a few one-pot meal recipes that make use of rice as a main ingredient.

Rice, the staff of life in this part of the world. How very Filipino, how very Asian. We find no difficulty listing recipes and then proceed to eliminate those that are too common and those that require too much effort. The eminent people on the dining table (meaning my mother and aunts) help us with the listing, perhaps giving us a wide range of choices that date back to the Second World War. You can imagine how long a list we had – given the length and depth of history we had collectively, hehehe!

Rice is known to have been present in the Philippines since pre-historic era. From that time to this day, rice is not only an everyday staple, but figures in our major celebrations and rituals.

Rice is such a versatile ingredient that it not only serves as backbone of every Filipino meal but can be found in different forms: as a contrast to savoury food, dessert, snacks and what have you.

For the taping, Mrs. Borromeo and I decided on the classic celebratory biringhe, the less common lelut tugac, the historical quisa and a few others. For today’s recipe, we bring you lelut tugac, which is said to be a restorative for those who are sick since it is rich in carbohydrates and protein.

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One of the reasons I so love digging for old recipes is the joy I derive out of discovering new tastes. Or should I say old tastes that are so new to me, the child of the convenience food generation. One of the old-new dishes that I have had recently is cooked out of the whole garlic plant (Allium sativum).

I didn’t realise young garlic bulbs were cooked until my mother brought home a huge bunch from the marketplace and said we were having something my grandmother cooked often. I don’t remember having tasted anything like it, and since I was the kitchen assistant – meaning, in charge of chopping and slicing – it might mean she cooked this way before I was capable of kitchen duty. According to my mother, it was more likely that Lola cooked it way before I was born because she doesn’t remember having had it in at least three decades.

The Western recipes that I have perused only use garlic bulbs while Eastern cuisine utilise garlic leaves. Chinese, Vietnamese and Cambodian recipes very often make use of garlic leaves. The recipe that follows is distinctly Asian, with the use of tofu clearly showing Chinese influence.

Alpa is the generic Capampangan term for sautéed vegetables, usually without vinegar. The Tagalog equivalent would be ginisang gulay. A fast and easy way to utilise vegetables, alpa is everyday food and evokes many warm memories for many Capampangans.

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