Every culture has its own idea how to nourish a woman who has just given birth. Here at home, the traditionally prescribed dish is soup of lean white fish. Contrast this with the Cambodian post-partum diet of hot and spicy (also salty) food, plus alcohol — no fruit of any kind, since fruit cools the body, hence supposedly bad.
Every Filipino student knows — or ought to — that colonial Spain governed us through Mexico. What we refer to as “Spanish influence” is in fact that which had been filtered through that outpost in the New World. Arguably, Filipino cuisine owes a lot to Mexico.* And yet when you ask the average Pinoy about Mexican food, the most likely answer is taco, or, if in a pinch, tequila (which counts as sustenance in my book).
White rice is a staple in many parts of the world, indistinguishable from one place to the next. What gets people’s attention is when it is presented differently, as with pusô/ketupat, in which it is cooked in a pouch of woven palm fronds, or, in the case of hineksa’ aga’ga’, the traditional rice dish of the Chamorro of the Mariana Islands, colored with annatto, hence known as “red” rice.
“You want to eat like a local,” Luchie said, “start acting like one.”
“But it’s three in the morning!”
“That’s right. Go wash up.”
Quick — what do you think that dish in the photo is? Did you say “fried chicken?” That was what I thought, too. Not that the chicken looked bad — far from it, in fact — but I was hoping for something less run-of-the-mill for my first proper Hong Kong meal.
When it comes to pork chop, what grabs my attention is the layer of adipose tissue beneath the skin. Yes, I’m talking about good old fat. Fat is where a good deal of the savoriness in pork chop is (whether fat has actual flavor I leave to the scientists).
It is easy to deride Filipino street food as nutritionally bankrupt. I am, of course, referring to the most affordable kind: tempura, fish ball, and squid roll, basically deep-fried flour paste that taste nothing like the things they are named after. It’s all about the sauce.
It had been a while since I watched television. Catching the tail end of yesterday’s early evening news, what got my attention was not Ian King’s coming-out as a transwoman, or the world’s oldest living person possibly a 118-year-old lola from Negros — heck, no, it wasn’t even in the news.
A light, steady rain began to fall early the other night. Inday-inday, we call such precipitation: a lazy rain, “girlish,” taking its merry time about its business. Soon, Jenny texted that she was stranded at the gym (she had brought her bike to badminton practice). “Looks like we’ll just have to hit the grocery tomorrow.”
