The Pilgrim’s Pots and Pans

We were told to value every grain. Every single precious one was handled with reverence. We could not indulge in it for it was no ordinary cereal. Duman, the delight of my childhood, my current unfolding mystery. Little did I know that it would take me home and send me searching the world for clues to the past – of relations forged across the seas. Or were there?

My personal pledge last year to learn how duman gets to the table from the field was fortunately accomplished. Quite fortuitous too that for this year’s Duman Festival, Arti Sta. Rita held an exhibit to better understand how duman is made. It took several weekends for me, Terence and Herbert, two of Arti Sta. Rita’s multi-talented members, to get the right pictures of lacatan malutu (red-husked glutinous rice), the specific variety from which duman is made. With our literal “field trips” we realised how special these plants are. There was a very precise method sustaining this tradition.
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On Friday afternoon, I went home looking almost like Cinderella before her fairy godmother’s arrival. I was carrying a clay pot, a cooking spoon, two semi-burnt bamboo tubes, two bags and soot on my dress. It was also drizzling and I had no umbrella. That most likely completed my forlorn look.

But forlorn I was not! I just had a wonderful day! Who wouldn’t if one got to sample food rarely eaten? I had a taste of something from the groaning tables prepared by public elementary and high school teachers from all the towns of Pampanga. This was for the celebration of the 434th Aldo Ning Kapampangan (Pampanga Day) with the theme Kapampangan: King Sunis, Terak, Teatru, at Apag king Dulang (In Songs, Dance, Theatre, and Food).

Never before have I seen so much Kapampangan specialties in one place. The products of each town were prominently displayed – eggs from Minalin, turrones de casoy and sans rival from Sta. Rita, puto seco from Baculud (Bacolor), pure carabao’s milk pastillas de leche from Magalang, burung asan from Candaba – name it, it was there!
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A preview of what is to come…

The picture on the left is of regular lowland irrigated palé which will become abias and then nasi.

In English this time: Palé is Kapampangan for standing rice stalks and the unhusked rice grains. Milling would turn it into abias and when cooked is called nasi. In Tagalog, those terms would be palay, bigas and kanin respectively.

On the right is the rainfed lacatan malutu or red-husked glutinous rice used for duman. I took the palé picture on a cool afternoon sometime in the summer (April-May) while the lacatan was photographed at mid-morning Sunday, 30 October, last week but both sheafs of grain are approximately of the same age, based on how they bow to the sun.

Everyone is invited!

I wrote about last year’s Duman Festival on this blog. This year, I’m making good on my promise to document the process of bringing it from the field to the table. In fact, I was out taking pictures of the lacatan malutu (red-husked glutinous rice plants) yesterday, with two of Arti Sta. Rita‘s writing staff comparing common rice leaves and stalks with those of the lacatan. Most of the documentation will be on the Duman Festival website (online but still under construction).

Come join us. I hope it becomes a food bloggers’ and friends’ meet-up in a provincial setting. It only takes an hour by car from Mandaluyong or an hour and a half if commuting by bus. Sta. Rita is 15 minutes away from the San Fernando exit. Here’s a map to the festival venue.

by Manny Soriano

For this month’s Lasang Pinoy, I am glad to once again host an entry contributed by a Filipino-Canadian food and music enthusiast. He was born and educated in the Philippines and migrated to Canada in 1971. His mother was an excellent and practical pastry and savoury cook who operated a hotel with his father who was a coffee and cigar connoisseur. Manny started baking in highschool and worked as an accountant till 1999. He took baking courses since 1990 and opened a Filipino pastry shop in the west end of Toronto in 2000.

If the movable feast aspect of our streets spoiled you, swelled your head and made you think streetfood is uniquely ours, think again. Walk along the cobbled streets of Salvador de Bahia and you will find rows of immaculately dressed ladies selling shrimp flavoured red fritters that once tasted transports you back a world away to Aleng Asyang’s okoy from just around the bend. Don’t even get me started with Mexico. In fact you can find streetfood just about anywhere the rational, sanitizing, regulatory mindset has not yet imposed its will upon people’s native sensibilities. In neighbouring countries justly celebrated for their streetfood, totalitarian obsession for civic tidyness has now began to rear its head, this time to compel hawkers to toe the line and gather under the watched-over roof of food courts. A really foolish if not impoverished trade-off for the freedom, surprise and serendipity of traditional streetfood scenes, if you ask me. Besides, the allure of streetfood is discovering it right there and consuming it right then, with as little delay as possible and certainly without having to detour first to an officially designated concentration centre. You see, we are all impulsive four-year-olds when it comes to food. We want it when we want it. Satisfying this urgent need is streetfood’s primal appeal.
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