The Pilgrim’s Pots and Pans

“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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This was another IMBB of many options. So many noodle dishes, so little time!

For this month’s theme, Amy chose Use Your Noodle to make us think and improvise around a food article beloved the world over. I am already looking forward to reading the other entries during the round-up.

It is still cold even in this tropical country. There are nights when one wishes for a nice steaming bowl of something, anything to keep down the chill. Oh the possibilities one can think of! But then a hearty noodle soup was right up there on top of the list!

Although it wasn’t easy choosing my entry for the month, I knew I wanted something I haven’t had for sometime like mami (pronounced ‘mah-mee’). This is a noodle dish innovated by a migrant Chinese entrepreneur who started out very humbly in the late 1900s then was so successful he was able to build up a chain of eateries in Manila. In fact, the word mami is a combination of his name, Ma Mon Luk and the word for noodle – mi. Kirk over at mmm-yoso!!! has even had an encounter with his descendants in the US and writes about it in Asian Noodles – I Want My Mami. What Ma Mon Luk pioneered has since then become very popular and can now be found almost everywhere – from respectable restaurants, makeshift eateries and even as street food!

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Sam at Becks & Posh is hosting this month’s edition of Is My Blog Burning? with the theme I Can’t Believe I Ate Vegan! Much as turning vegan has never entered my mind – I’m too much of an ecology empiricist – I have to admit it wouldn’t be such a radical change in lifestyle if I decided to. I grew up in a very traditional household, culinary-wise. This means we ate rice, mostly fish and vegetables on regular days. Since I am a vegetable lover, I later found myself experimenting with all-vegetable meals.

Modesty aside, my dishes have always been successful that even avowed carnivores and vegetable haters have eaten them with gusto. Vegan is but a step further. One of Sam’s stipulations is “conjure up some Vegan food so fantastic that anyone who eats it won’t even be the slightest bit aware that absolutely no animal-derived produce has passed their lips.” A big problem since almost everyone I know doesn’t have qualms about eating vegan. They just don’t call it that. This is Asia after all.
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