A Filipino Culinary Alphabet, Part 3

From S to Z, from Sinigang to Zamboanga

You can find Part 1 here, and Part 2 here

Work and family life have been a little bit more chaotic of late, so whilst I do have a couple of drafts for proper essays on the go, I haven’t quite been in the right mindset (or had a block of dedicated time) to complete them.

So, in lieu, here’s Part 3 of the Filipino culinary alphabet I did on Instagram last year and earlier this year; hopefully actually publishing something will unstick some of this mental block I’ve been having.

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S for Sinigang

Continuing with my alphabet of Filipino food, of course it's got to be S for Sinigang, the famed sour Filipino soup. I wrote about it in more detail in my piece on Soup Season, Filipino-Style.

Protein - usually seafood like prawns or meaty fishes (or sea bream heads, in this photo), but also often pork and sometimes other meats - are simmered with vegetables in an aromatic broth informed by the sourness of a variety of different fruits, vegetables or leaves. It's a wonderful combination: the richness of the protein contrasted with a sharp tang, coming together with heaping spoonfuls of steamed rice to make for a delicious, wholesome and restorative meal.

The most common souring ingredient is tamarind, but other things can be used: bilimbi/star fruit; kamias; unripe guava; green mangoes; green papaya; santol; alibangbang; sour citruses. Really, it's a dish that comes straight from the sea and land of the Philippines. And because it's so flexible in terms of its ingredients, it's no wonder that it has travelled with the diaspora to foreign shores, where alien ingredients like sorrel and rhubarb have been used to create a (new) taste of home.

T for Tinola

We've got T for Tinola - the quintessential chicken soup. I wrote about it in more detail in my piece on Soup Season, Filipino-Style.

Redolent with ginger, boosted with aromatics and patis/fish sauce, and bulked up with a good bunch of veg (like malunggay, chilli leaves, pak choi, sayote and green papaya), it's a great comforting hug in a bowl - especially when paired up with heaps of freshly-cooked rice!

It's mine and my wife's go-to when wanting a hot and hearty meal during winter and when either one of us is feeling a little ill or down: straightforward to make, very few ingredients needed, and deliciously restorative.

U for Utan Bisaya

Why not U for Utan Bisaya, a vegetable soup from the Visayas? Again, I wrote about it in more detail in my piece on Soup Season, Filipino-Style.

Quite literally 'Visayan vegetables', utan bisaya is one of many vegetable soups that proliferate throughout the Philippines. Yes, we may love ourselves a good old pork, chicken or seafood dish, but we have plenty of veggie bites too!

Bring a tropical country, the Philippines abounds in vegetables of all sorts that can be grown and harvested throughout the year. Whilst we often see them as accompaniments and bulking ingredients alongside meats and seafoods in a wide range of dishes, it is in soups where I think vegetables really shine. I have a feeling that it ties back to a primal Filipino preference for the fresh and immediate, similar to some of the treatments of seafood we have: minimal cooking that preserves the flavour and texture of what has just been harvested.

And that's what Utan Bisaya is all about. A variety of vegetables, simmered in water or stock with aromatics, lightly flavored with perhaps patis/fish sauce, bagoong/fermented shrimp paste, and served up with rice. The last time I made it, I had some roasted red kuri squash, malunggay, okra, sayote, cherry tomatoes and radishes.

It makes for a rather fresh, light yet earthy soup, full of nutrients and lovely restorative qualities. We did pair it up with some lechon kawali/deep-fried pork on the side, but hey, we're only human.

V for Vetsin

Perhaps going a bit off-piste with this entry for my Filipino culinary alphabet - V for Vetsin (It's not because there aren't many Vs in Filipino cuisines, of course not...!)

Vetsin is one of the Filipino names for monosodium glutamate, or MSG - so-called because one of the early major suppliers in the Philippines was the Tien Chu Ve-Tsin Chemical Ltd. Nowadays, other brands have weighed in, like Ajinomoto, and other formulations too, like the ever-popular Magic Sarap.

Like in many other cuisines, MSG powder is used quite a lot in Filipino cookery as a handy and surefire flavour enhancer. It's sometimes said that it's particularly suited to the Philippines, given that many dishes already have a blend of sweet, sour and/or savoury flavours i.e. lots for MSG to work with.

And like elsewhere, there is a bit of a divide on whether MSG powder should be used or not - just look [spoiler alert] at how MSG is revealed as the secret ingredient in Mikey Bustos’ song about adobo. Although I grew up pretty much mainlining MSG in the form of Aromat (it went on EVERYTHING when I was a kid), I don't actually cook with the powder much, even if at all - you can see how untouched my jar is!

But that's perhaps because I use MSG that can be found in other, more 'natural' forms: like in patis/fish sauce and in bagoong/fermented shrimp paste. Let's not forget that MSG is found naturally-occurring in many different foodstuffs, all perfectly normal to eat. And so it is with my way of Filipino cookery vs those who do use MSG powder. Different delivery methods, same delicious outcome.

W for Walkman

Yes, this is a legit entry for the culinary Filipino alphabet. For these are grilled pig ears, a popular street food snack in the Philippines. Ears? Where you listen to your Walkman?? You getting it now??? (For those of you too young to have experienced a Walkman, do Google it)

The great thing I find about street food is that it is often a testament to resilience. It exists because it offers a cheap way of eating and making money, with little equipment or tools required; consequently, it's often where we see a lot of creativity in making the most out of the least. It can be a fantastic way of serving a community and bringing people together; it's one reason why Filipino streets and roadsides are always so bustling!

And so it is with Walkman, and many of the more, er, 'interesting' Filipino street foods. As the food writer Doreen G Fernandez noted, "In the 1950s, only chicken legs, thighs, and breasts, and pork chunks used to be barbecued. In the economic crisis of the 70s, however, almost every part of the pig and chicken came to be used..." For sure, Fernandez is not saying that nose-to-tail eating only started during the Martial Law years (Filipinos have been doing it for yeeeeeaaars), but certainly poverty drove many more to it, and in more inventive ways.

And by inventive, just look at the names of such foods! Walkman for pig's ears; Betamax for cubed congealed pig's blood; PAL (Philippine Air Lines) for chicken wings; Helmet for cockscomb; Adidas for chicken feet; IUD for chicken intestines. The names do date them a bit, but again this indicates the point in time during which they really proliferated.

So what are Walkman like? A curious mix of soft chewiness with some charred crunchiness, with that classic smokey-sweet-savoury-tangy flavour from the marinade and the grilling, enhanced by your sawsawan of choice (spiced vinegar for me, please). A tasty meal for pennies? Why not?

X for eXtra

Okay, so I struggled a bit to find something suitable for the letter X in my Filipino culinary alphabet, as you probably imagine there are not many foods that start with that letter.

So why Extra? We Filipinos are definitely Feeders and Eaters, if your family is anything like mine. There was always extra, plentiful food available at celebrations, often far too much to eat. This wasn't necessarily about excess, but about generosity: the leftovers were there for people to take home with them, in their little tupperware or what we might call baonan.

It's almost expected that guests will be able to take home a little bit of food from parties and fiestas. Lumpia are a firm favourite for this as they're highly portable, though with the right container even stews can make it home. Those families with the little stacks of takeaway containers hiding away in the cupboards, saved over the years for moments just like this, will know what I mean!

Right from the outset of The Adobros, over a decade ago (!!!), my brother and I always made a little extra food to offer seconds to our guests - not only wanting to tap into that sense of 'extra-ness' in Filipino hospitality (our friends would often ask us to make extra food for them, cheeky buggers), but also taking a more contemporary inspiration from the Pip's Dish pop-ups run by Philip Dundas (if you remember that old Citroën garage hiding off Upper Street), where a second helping was always guaranteed.

I like to think that that 'extra' ethos of Filipino hospitality has stuck with The Adobros throughout the years: putting on a veritable buffet feast for various organisations; filling up private dining clients' fridges with extra food; offering up seconds at supper clubs at home. We always ensure that our guests always left with bellys full and hearts content.

Y for Yema

Yema belongs to the big Hispanic family of egg yolk-based sweets and treats that exist in the Philippines. Indeed, yema is Spanish for egg yolk, and the traditional recipe is egg yolk cooked down slowly with sugar until it thickens into a rich paste, shaped either into pyramid shapes or balls (the photo above shows a Gene Gonzalez recipe published by Yummy PH of yema balls with a caramel shell).

Why egg yolks? During the Spanish colonial period, there was an extensive programme of church-building; the preferred recipe for mortar required huge amounts of egg whites as a binding agent. So, what to do with all those leftover egg yolks? Make them into sweets!

Similar treats and similar stories can be found right across the territories of the former Spanish and Portuguese empires - just look at the origin story of the famed Portuguese egg tarts, pastéis de nata, first made at the Hieronymite monastery in Belém.

It is further speculated that yema is related to the famed Yemas de Santa Teresa, round egg yolk pastries made in Àvila in Spain; and like other Hispanic dishes that made their way to the Philippines, they were adapted to local tastes and ingredients.

You'll often find yema wrapped in colourful cellophane or tissue paper and offered up as pasalubong, or a gift to take home for friends and family after a trip to show you've been thinking of them. So: if anyone's coming back from the Philippines any time soon - do you fancy bringing us back some yema?

Z for Zamboanga

The city of Zamboanga, situated right at the far western tip of its eponymous peninsula in western Mindanao, has always fascinated me. Founded by the Spanish as a fortress against the Muslim Moros of the south, it quickly became one of the most diverse places in the Philippines: the home of Spanish/Mexican administrators, Americano soldiers (notably including a contingent from Peru and Panama in the 1600s), Visayan labourers and conscripts, Chinese artisans, merchants from Manila, and local Tausug, Badjao and other Moro traders and suppliers.

A local Spanish-based creole language developed to allow these disparate populations to communicate and work with each other - the authorities often disparagingly called it 'lenguaje de la calle' or 'lenguaje de cocina', the language of the streets and kitchen. Now known as Chabacano, it serves as one of the lingua francas of the region, and is embraced as a cultural symbol of Zamboanga. What was once a symbol of aggressive colonialism, has become tempered over time by coexistence and mixing with the local indigenous cultures to produce something new and different.

Likewise, the mixing of these populations has produced one of the more distinct regional food scenes in the Philippines. Fiesta dishes like paella and lechon jostle with street foods like satti (satay), and Tausug royal dishes like tiyula itum (burnt coconut beef/goat stew) are eaten alongside sweet cassava-corn tamales called biyaki. And of course, the rich seas of the Sulu archipelago provide for an abundance of seafood: Zamboanga is especially renowned for its curacha (spanner crabs), either in alavar sauce or coconut milk. It's a wonderful reminder of the wondrous variety of the many Filipino cuisines, many of which I am completely clueless about.

I am yet to visit, but hopefully I'll make it one day soon. And I think that finishing off this culinary alphabet with that sentiment is rather fitting: ending one journey by looking ahead to the next!