“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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One of the things one must remember when eating the food of another culture is to savour it on its own terms, never impose your own. That is me reminding myself, after having partaken of the Bacolod tinola (some say tinowa).

(I’m publishing with only the introductory write-up to force myself to deal with the backlog. I’ll be back in less than a month, tee hee!)

When talking to our town’s renowned cooks, I ask about how long they have been cooking and who taught them to perform magic in the kitchen. Some took cooking seriously very early, some as young adults but to a person, each one had kitchen duties as children. Everyone remembers receiving methodical instructions from their mothers, fathers, grandparents or relatives who were also accomplished cooks. It seems as if they spent years of apprenticeship in the informal setting of home kitchens.

Iska’s theme for Lasang Pinoy 8: Kusinang Bulilit, Lutong Paslit! has made me realise that I would love to explore the topic of informal apprenticeships in the future. For the meantime, I’ll have to remember how I started cooking as a child since the only juvenile I have around is a gigantic kitten who perches on the kitchen bench as soon as I start with prep work.

Pampanga has a long tradition of trade, arts and crafts long before the arrival of the Spaniards. Pre-colonial society had a system of apprenticeships where the youth got to learn their craft from the masters. To a certain extent, I still feel vestiges of this practice when I see and remember how children are sent off to “help out” relatives during fiestas and other special occasions. In many traditional families, it does not matter if one is poor or with a house attended by servants. Each child, whether male or female, is expected to help out with household chores.
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