Kastilaloy fare

Old Cavite Puerto (now Cavite City) was, in the 18th century, by royal decree, the shipbuilding and repair location of the galleons plying the Manila-Acapulco trade. And it was so until 1898. While the rest of the province remained rural in its cooking, Puerto residents drowned everything they ate in Spanish olive oil. Their pochero (aka cocido) or boiled beef dinner was, and is still eaten by some, alinear style—meat, potatoes, vegetables and saging all cut up and dressed with vinegar and olive oil, just like a salad. Similarly treated is its potaje de garbanzos—chickpeas with bacon slab. And where in da Pilipins would you find the everyday ginisang mongo, with shrimps or lowly tinapa so lovingly laved in vinegar and olive oil? (Try it, it’s great!)

Cavite old-timers have left memories of torta de patata, salsa monja, bacalao a la Vizcaina, pochero guisado, lengua estofada, chorizo de Bilbao, croquetas, sopa de pensamientos (calf-brain soup), pescado en salsa blanca, morcillas and butifara and turron Alicante to their apo sa talampakan.

Our legacy of good eating is largely Spanish, and for that, most of us are almost willing to forgive Padre Damaso.

Slow cooking

Take just ice cream. Long ago, said my Tia Nene, it was special, not available from every corner. Called sorbete, ice cream was homemade in a wooden bucket freezer with a crank, and the whole family was drafted to turn it.

Ice from a block was put in a jute sack and cracked with a hammer. Then the pieces of ice were arranged around the can within the bucket. Salt was sprinkled on the ice. The sorbete took almost an hour of churning to make and it had to sit and chill some more before being declared fully done.

Sorbete flavors were de café (mocha), mantecado (vanilla), ube, langka pinipig. All the rest came later—atis, makapuno, strawberry and chocolate. For de café, nothing would do but coffee beans from Batangas or Benguet, home-roasted on the day it was bought. The bouquet filled the kitchen as the ground beans were poured from the roasting pan right into the carabao’s milk simmering on the stove. The coffee was brewed right in the cream with eight egg yolks—no wonder the old sorbete tasted so good.

The ube in the ube ice cream was the root crop from Bohol—moist, dark purple, full of secret promises. The tubers were pounded in a mortar then passed through a cheesecloth to refine all lumps. Sorbete de nangka included bits of cool minced jackfruit for added flavoring. Ripe mangoes were grated on a loosely woven shallow basket called bistay, in order to produce a smooth, creamy puree.

Instants were not yet invented. No synthetic mango or lemon or strawberry flavoring ever took the place of the real thing. When almond was called for, it was no extract in a bottle but imported whole almonds peeled, soaked overnight and ground. Ice cream was a labor of love.

Ice cream was introduced by the Americans. If only for that, I am willing to forgive them, too.

‘Sawsawan’

The individuality of the Filipinos is best expressed in the sawsawan—an assortment of dipping sauces usually mixed by the diner himself at table. They are to go with the viands he is about to eat. One to four little saucers of sawsawan may appear at any one meal. Vinegar with crushed garlic to go with charcoal-broiled pork chops (inihaw na baboy) or pork skin cracklings (chicharon); bagoong, a sauce of tiny shrimps and kalamansi for broiled fish; patis and kalamansi for boiled chicken (nilagang manok); soy sauce (toyo), vinegar and crushed garlic for roast pork. In the middle of the table stands, at the ready, a bottle of vinegar in which red hot peppers forever stew.

Lumpia (spring roll) has a different sawsawan depending on whether it is served fresh or fried. A sawsawan of vinegar, soy sauce and crushed garlic will do for fried vegetable lumpia containing green beans, cabbage and soybean cake. But it will not do for fried lumpia containing ground pork and diced potatoes which is dipped in a sawsawan of vinegar and crushed garlic sans the soy sauce.

Another kind of fried lumpia is made of mashed chickpeas (garbanzos) and bits of Vienna sausage. The sawsawan tailor-made for it is vinegar, chopped hard-boiled eggs and onions. Fresh lumpiang ubod (heart-of-palm) deserves its own pre-cooked brown sauce. This is made out of brown sugar, soy sauce and cornstarch stirred over a fire and served with macerated garlic.

Sawsawan is a predilection of the Tagalogs of Luzon. In the Visayas, patis, a basic Tagalog sauce, is hardly ever used. Tagalog gourmets make it a ceremony to match the right foods with the right sawsawan but leave it to the individual to make personal adjustments. Lechon sauce, for instance, varies by the province from salty to very sweet—though basically, it is precooked, liver-based and thick.

Beef pochero (somewhat like New England boiled dinner) goes with a special sauce of boiled eggplant mashed together with boiled bananas or squash and seasoned with garlic, vinegar and salt. Its alternative is chopped tomatoes sautéed with onions. Bland fish pesa is accompanied by a sauce of bean paste (miso) sautéed in onions and tomatoes. Almost every home has green mangoes pickling in a jar in the refrigerator. Its brine is used as sawsawan to complement small varieties of fried fish. For charcoal-broiled mudfish or catfish, gourmets recommend a sawsawan of boiled green tamarind, peeled and mashed into a teaspoon of water in which it was boiled. In a pinch, however, kalamansi and salt will do.

Sinigang na dalag (mudfish in sour soup) is enhanced by a sawsawan of bagoong mixed with chopped fresh tomatoes and onions. Chinese-style meatballs and patties (bola-bola and kekiam) take to an accompaniment of grated radish mixed with vinegar, sugar and pepper. For stewed fish or paksiw, the sawsawan is chopped fresh tomatoes and patis mixed with a wee bit of the paksiw broth itself.

Aside from the sawsawan aforementioned, vinegar with a little salt is the dipping sauce of salted fish or tuyo and dried beef or pork. Vinegar with chopped onions is for steamed oysters; vinegar with ginger is for crabs and talangka, a small variety of crab.

Patis gives flavor to broth. It is also a dipping accompaniment of boiled beef. It flavors fresh tomatoes and boiled vegetables.

Soy sauce or toyo is made out of fermented soybeans. It is used to flavor Chinese-derived foods such as pansit canton, chop suey and certain soups.

Fish bagoong is of pouring consistency while shrimp bagoong is lumpy. Fish bagoong is the dipping sauce of boiled vegetables, fish steamed in banana leaves and broiled fish. Shrimp bagoong or bagoong alamang is the dipping sauce of oxtail kari-kari, and some prefer it to patis for beef sinigang. Green mangoes are never eaten without bagoong alamang.

There are myriad relishes. The most popular is salted red eggs with chopped tomatoes and a little patis. It is the inevitable accompaniment of fried, salted or smoked fish. When in season, fresh paho, a miniature aromatic mango, sliced and seasoned with patis, makes a treat out of fried fish and meats. Finely chopped green mangoes mixed with tomatoes, bagoong alamang and a few wansoy leaves is an accompaniment of most broiled or fried fish. It is also eaten with a sour dish—paksiw. The same green mangoes, also finely chopped, but mixed with tomatoes, onions, ginger, salted red eggs and shrimp bagoong, is better anytime than mayonnaise on steamed fish.

The precious ‘taliyasi’

Now oftener used as garden décor, the taliyasi is a deep army-size wok without handles, It is used for large-scale or two-day fiesta cooking. Three big stones, arranged in a triangle on the ground, or if such is not available, three short chunks of banana trunks half-buried in the earth, make up the stove. The stalks will not burn and will last until the next day.

The ownership of a taliyasi assured one of a steady supply of ulam. Always on loan for big birthdays and town fiestas, its borrower never sends it back without a package of food for the owner. A good taliyasi makes a round of towns. And when its owner dies, the precious taliyasi is inherited.

Bakery

PAN DE SAL. This oval bun has always been the Philippines’ barometer of the economy, the smaller it is, the harder the times. In western-trained bread shops, it is called sourdough and comes in gargantuan size fit for slicing.

In times past, pan de sal had a crusty top. A bigger bun with an even crustier top was called pan de Navarro. Wonder why no one makes bread with a crust anymore!

PAN DE LIMON, pan de agua and pan de leche are soft breakfast breads with a ridge on top where the halves are joined.

PAN AMERICANO, pullman loaf, flat bread, or once simply “Tasty” (its brand name) is the popular sandwich loaf for slicing.

PAN DE MONJA, whose name has evolved through the years into the racier monay, is still a Filipino favorite. Banking on its popularity, bakeries have produced bigger and bigger joke-size monay. According to Sonny Tinio, large-size monay is called, “Susmariosep!”, the extra large “Abanaku!”

By midmorning the old bakeries convert stale bread into the sweet mamon tostado, so beloved by children. In the afternoon, the recycling continues with the unsold bread becoming biscocho with a curved back. Nothing goes to waste.

The best buy for one’s money is what was once called matsakao,

an assortment of two-day-old breads—diced pan de sal, monay and soft breads—all dumped in a large tray, pushed into the oven and toasted. Anything still stubbornly unbought got converted into vile little pastries with a bright pink or violet filling made out of mashed bread crumbs, its last stand and ultimate reincarnation.