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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Shrimp ceviche

Gaiety and spontaneity are trademarks of most Filipino societies. Being very sociable, camaraderie is at the heart of many relationships. Perhaps it also comes from the nature of our traditional occupations – farming and fishing. Our ways of living rely on being with others, helping and sharing in the labour and the harvests.

This camaraderie is even more apparent when unwinding after a day or night’s toil. It is then when beverages come out. And when there are spirits, of course there is pulutan!

For January, Ting Aling at World Class Cuiscene is graciously hosting Lasang Pinoy with the theme Let’s Wash it Down with Booze!! That, dear friends, is another way of saying you don’t have to be a drinker to indulge in drinking food.

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Second of two parts

How did this tradition of harvesting unripe rice begin? Could it have been an experiment during the early period of agriculture? Traipsing along the fields one stormy day in early November got me thinking it could have been a similar time centuries ago when the rice plants had to be saved from wrathful weather way before harvest season.

The town of Santa Rita, Pampanga is known for its turrones de casoy, sans rival and other sweets but towards the end of the year, starting in November, everything is eclipsed as the town anticipates the Christmas season with the sweet smell of duman in the air. A delicacy once known only to a few has now caught a lot of attention during the Duman Festival, partly to revive a vanishing tradition and partly to celebrate life after devastation.

Duman is a seasonal rice cereal still produced the old way in our town. This may have been in existence in pre-Hispanic Capampangan society since duman was already mentioned by Fray Diego Bergaño – “El grano del arroz tierno cerca de madurar” – in Vocabulario de la Lengua Pampanga originally published in the 1700s. It could have happened other towns produced duman in the olden days but Sta. Rita’s is what has endured.
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This is my second entry for the month’s Is My Blog Burning? with the theme I Can’t Believe I Ate Vegan! hosted by Sam at Becks and Posh.

What I’m presenting is a twist on an old family favourite, my grandfather’s original spicy chicken recipe which he called Lutong Bombay (Hi Nupur!). In a way, it is also a continuation of my Lolo’s tinkering in the kitchen to come up with original recipes. His grandchild has now improvised on it to come up with something new yet old, different yet similar. It is actually the garlic and ginger base which lends a very distinct flavour to the dish that made me decide to cook it with tokwa (also tau kwa, firm soy bean cake – tofu will do too).

This entry is also meant to prove that with a little ingenuity, meat dishes can be transformed into vegetarian/vegan recipes.

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Summer is long gone from this part of the hemisphere but frying is here to stay, especially in the Philippines, or Asia for that matter where a good fraction of what we eat goes through a form of frying. When At Our Table hostess Linda announced the theme for this month’s IMBB, I was both eager and yet petrified. What would I cook?

As the date drew near I had to be decisive because I told myself last time that I should stop cramming. And so this entry is just almost-crammed, hehehe! I took my inspiration from my university days, from the finger food we had in student organisations. Each time we had to serve something edible to both members and guests, decent but inexpensive food had to be purchased. Resourceful students would usually buy the ingredients and cook the food into something a bit fancy-looking. Cheese sticks were one of my favourites because first I’m a cheese lover and second because they were really inexpensive. I had other plans for the money we’d be saving such as for killer workshops (read: members required without fail) I was notorious for organising.

It amused me no end later, when as a junior government bureaucrat, I found these same cheese sticks served during expensive cocktails, the only variation was to include a few bits of ham. How far it has gone, the tasty morsel of my student years!
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