Food Memories from Childhood as the theme for Lasang Pinoy 10 is most fitting for me. I always say that what I know about cooking has much of its foundations in my childhood. My appreciation for the intrinsic values of traditional cooking methods was born from that period and is in no small measure learnt from my grandmother. Today, 31 May 2006 is her 20th death anniversary. She may have been gone for two decades, almost two-thirds of my life but the seeds that she planted have grown and bloomed. After all, I am writing about it, am I not?

We had many rules about cooking and had as many about eating. Aside from table etiquette, there were rules about serving food, specific platters or bowls were used for corresponding viands. There were many unspoken rules such as what we ate for specific meals and how many times a week we were supposed to have meat.

Since my grandfather had a botica (pharmacy) until after the Second World War, we have a relatively health-conscious family. My grandmother was strict about having vegetables and fruits at every meal. Fish was preferable over meat. Chicken was next while pork and beef were served twice or thrice a week at most.

We never felt meat-deprived because it was accessible to us anytime - stored raw in the freezer, or cooked in clay pots. Of course if the aroma of the cooked meat was ‘calling’ us and it was irresistible, we could always ask for a bite but no more.

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One very Filipino eating trait I notice is the preference for soupy or saucy dishes. Traditionally, each meal had a soup which did not have to be separate from the entrée. The classic sinigang and tinola are good examples. But then we also do not serve dishes in a sequence, like soups and appetisers, salads, mains and so on. That’s a topic for another day.

Soupy and saucy dishes are a flavour contrast to the blandness of rice which is the backbone of every meal. More often than not, the soup or sauce is poured on and mixed with the rice. In Kapampangan we call this ambulâ (halo in Tagalog). At least in our house, this has become so ingrained that when we cook, we deliberately add more liquid just for the panambulâ.

The recipe below is an example of a soupy dish my grandmother cooked very often. I only know it by its Kapampangan name - Lutung Camatis â Babi - literally pork cooked in tomatoes. I am not sure if it has counterparts in other regions. It is a flavourful blend of slow-simmered meat and still-crunchy vegetables. This dish is versatile enough to be adjusted to individual preferences. Some prefer it to be mostly meat. In our family, we are not very avid meat eaters so what we do is to cut the pork into small cubes and add more vegetables. Every now and then, we also use bulig (dalag or mudfish) instead of pork.

I’ve seen a version of this dish which has a lot of beans in it that it’s already similar to the Spanish fabada. The beans we use are similar to lima beans except that they’re flatter and wider. They are called bulé baluga - bulé meaning beans in Kapampangan and baluga referring to the indigenous Aetas who come down from the mountains bringing us the yearly supply. I know that the term is supposedly not politically correct anymore when referring to people but that’s how we’ve always called these beans. I’ve also been told by our visiting Aetas that they’ve always referred to themselves by that name that they don’t feel slighted when hearing it. However, I guess it also depends on which tribe they’re from. Again, I digress.

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Look at breakfast, how festive it is
For sure you’re going to like this
Meat and peas - no pressure
Of course, a few eggs for good measure
Alas we have a meal we can’t miss!

For this month’s edition of that non-event event - the End of Month Egg on Toast Extravaganza (EoMEoTE) - which Jeanne at Cook Sister is so graciously hosting, I tried to let the rhyming flow - to the detriment of the genre, as you can see.

The dish is very simple, it can be whipped up in the most rudimentary of kitchens. The ingredients are also available all year round in almost any marketplace. It makes me wonder why in our household, we only have it once a year, on our town fiesta. Other families in town seem also to associate it with special breakfast occasions.
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