In one of my previous incarnations as a junior government bureaucrat, I was travelling all the time yet hardly saw the places that I went to. However, not having enough time to go around did not stop me from visiting the marketplace or the grocery just to have a feel of the daily life of the populace. I would also eat where locals go and sample their fare. If I only knew then that I would be maintaining a food blog! Sigh!

Among the places that has my heart (and stomach) captured is Rome. Whether in the office canteen, the trattorias or ristorantes, I was fascinated with the simplicity and freshness of the cuisine. Even as I was preoccupied with work, at the back of my mind I was trying to dissect what I was eating such that I could cook them myself. I’ve always been partial to red sauces for my pasta and in Rome I learnt of combinations that I wouldn’t have come up on my own. Returning home, I recreated some of the recipes which I now regularly cook. Following the same principles, I have also come up with my own recipes.
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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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Having spent my childhood in the province and in Pampanga at that, I took for granted that everyone knew how to cook. It seemed to me that it was something instinctive, something naturally learnt, like speaking. In our family, even those who were not considered excellent cooks had very passable culinary skills. And even then, they also had excellent taste in food. My grandfather was probably one of them.

My maternal grandmother would always tell us stories about our grandfather’s slapdash cooking skills albeit in jest. One incident was when he was left at home with their very young children. Lola laughingly related how she was still on the street in front of the house when her children regaled her with how Lolo dropped a live fish into a boiling pot of soup. Lolo was also extravagant with spices, and I probably took after him, based on the number of times I was reprimanded for using a lot of cloves, oregano and laurel. Fortunately for Lola, I was born after my grandfather passed away, otherwise she’d have run out of spices very often.

Aside from Lolo’s more down-to-earth cooking and his penchant for spices, he also loved to replicate dishes they had in expensive restaurants. He also experimented with original recipes. Below is one of them, which he called lutong Bombay, perhaps due to its curry-like flavour. Our clan never tires of this recipe. It is very simple to cook and most of the ingredients are usually available in any pantry.

Chicken, being the versatile meat that it is, soaks up the flavour of the spices. Garlic and ginger compliment each other, and gives it the decidedly Oriental aroma even from afar. The tomatoes lend some sourness that balance the hot-spicy flavour of ginger and garlic while the potato gives the sauce some body, even as it absorbs the flavours of the other ingredients.
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