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Bahay kubo, kahit munti Ang halaman doon ay sari-sari. Singkamas at talong, sigarilyas at mani Sitaw, bataw, patani.
Kundol, patola, upo’t kalabasa At saka meron pang labanos, mustasa, sibuyas, kamatis, bawang at luya sa paligid-ligid ay puno ng linga.
(Country house, although small The plants there are varied. Jicama and aubergine, winged beans and peanuts String bean, hyacinth bean, lima bean.
Winter melon, sponge gourd, bottle gourd and squash And there is also radish and mustard, onions, tomatoes, garlic and ginger and all around, there are sesame seeds.)
Ah, Bahay Kubo. The famous Filipino folk song that we’ve all sung at some point in our life (currently every night for me, as part of Zoë’s bed time routine). A simple and short tune about a country thatched stilt house, the bahay kubo, surrounded by a garden with an abundance of vegetables – eighteen in total.
Perfect as a soothing lullaby, and so easily hummable. Nothing more to it, right? As with all popular songs, though, there is something within that speaks to us on a deeper level, something that explains why it resonates so strongly with people.
In a piece for Vittles, I wrote about how the idealistic imagery of the song exists in sharp contrast to the deep and brutal inequalities of Filipino society, subsequently acting as a beacon of hope and aspiration – for land, ownership, simplicity, and plentiful food. In Eaten Magazine, I followed the song from its undocumented roots in the Tagalog heartlands all the way to being a formalised part of a school curriculum designed to shape a new and independent nation; a song seen as embodying values and an image of the Philippines for all Filipinos, through the medium of vegetables that everyone could relate to, and eat.
Having written enough about it, you’d think that I wouldn’t have much else to say about Bahay Kubo. Well, you’d guess wrong; I will be needing more content for this Substack after all!
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Kapitbahay Kubo, the ‘modern sequel’ to Bahay Kubo
Jokes aside, my recent musing about the song was spurred on by the recent gifting of a book for little Zoë from her ninang/godmother: Kapitbahay Kubo. Described as a modern ‘sequel’ to Bahay Kubo, it features the anthropomorphic neighbour (kapitbahay) house to the original bahay kubo. Nearly like the original, kapitbahay has seventeen vegetables in their garden; unlike the original, these are a completely different set of vegetables.
Bahay kubo, kahit munti Ang halaman doon ay marami. Patatas at carrot, petsay at repolyo Ampalaya, kangkong, alugbati.
Gabi, okra, munggo’t malunggay At saka meron pang puso ng saging, kintsay, sayote, labong at saluyot sa paligid-ligid ay dahon ng pakô.
(Neighbour house, although small The plants there are many. Potato and carrot, pak choi and cabbage Bitter melon, water spinach, malabar spinach.
Taro, okra, mung beans and moringa And there is also banana heart, Chinese parsley, chayote, bamboo shoots and jute and all around, there are fiddlehead fern leaves.)
When I was writing that essay in Vittles, one part that I wanted to work in but which didn’t quite make the cut was a discussion about why only certain vegetables were included in Bahay Kubo. If the original song has come to be seen, as per the words of Jordy Navarra, chef of Toyo Eatery in Manila, as representing “the terroir of the Philippines”, then does the selection say something about what we consider to be truly Filipino vegetables and ingredients? The first written record of the song, in the 1924 Filipino Folk Songs, provides no such context.
As the anthropologist, Stephen Acabado, noted in his book Bahay Kubo: A Filipino Children’s Song, quite a few of the vegetables are not even native to the Philippines. It’s easy to spot the American imports, introduced by the Spanish via the Manila-Acapulco galleons: jicama, peanuts, tomatoes, kalabasa squash, lima beans. Many of the others originate from the Asian mainland. Ginger, considered to have been domesticated in maritime southeast Asia, is perhaps the only truly ‘indigenous’ plant. .
But what about in terms of usage? We have the holy trinity/ginisa vegetables - garlic, onions, ginger, tomato - which form the basis of much Filipino cookery. They absolutely belong in the song. Conversely, during my journeys in the Philippines, I’ve never encountered hyacinth beans, lima beans and mustard greens, with sponge gourd and bottle gourd being seen only infrequently. Regardless of whether this speaks of their regionality, seasonality, rarity or even just my ignorance, it makes me wonder why they got to make the cut, when plants like malunggay/moringa and kangkong/water spinach, which grow and are eaten everywhere, didn’t get a mention.
I picked up on this during my conversation with the writer, Carla Montemayor, part of my research and brainstorming for the Vittles essay. Two of the vegetables she had the fondest memories of eating when growing up were labong/bamboo shoots and saluyot/jute. Where were they in the original Bahay Kubo song? Were they not important enough, or valued enough, to be chosen?
Perhaps we can turn to Flora de Filipinas, the extremely comprehensive and detailed 19th century work by the Spanish friar and botanist, Fr. Manuel Blanco, to understand this a little better. For bamboo, more specifically the kawayang-tinik variety (spiny bamboo) that is usually harvested for labong, Blanco wrote:
Sería gastar mucho tiempo el decir los infinitos usos y aplicaciones de ésta y de las otras cañas…
(I would spend an inordinate time in describing all of the infinite uses and applications of this and other bamboos…)
As for saluyot… well:
Los indios dicen que tomando por la nariz las semillas molidas de cualesquiera de estas especies se expelen los flatos.
(The natives say that inhaling the ground seed of any of its varieties through the nose can help expel flatulence.)
An illustration of saluyot/red jute, Corchorus aestuans L., by Francisco Domingo, included in Flora de Filipinas by Fr. Manuel Blanco
Blanco’s work, drawing heavily as it did upon the knowledge of local healers, reveals that pretty much every plant he documented was valued in some way by the locals. It therefore does not provide any indication that the vegetables included in Bahay Kubo were revered, or had some special significance attached to them, moreso than others, thus warranting their inclusion in the song.
Acabado, searching for some meaning, sees in the motley crew of vegetables an appealing representation of the diverse origins of Filipino peoples:
…we should embrace that our identities like the mga halaman in the munting bahay kubo are results of long history of living interactions, resulting to a sari-sari, a layered and diverse cultural groups of people who continue to evolve, enrich, and emancipate.
He sees it as an indication that Filipinos have long interacted with, and embraced elements of, the wider world beyond their shores; there is no merit to the idea of the isolated and insular Filipino only having their eyes opened up by the arrival of the worldly, and civilised, Western coloniser.
But that interpretation could be applied to any combination of vegetables found in the Philippines. It does not tell us why, say, jicama was included over corn, or aubergine instead of mung bean. Perhaps the ones found in Bahay Kubo were chosen and arranged, in that order and combination, primarily because they fit the melody perfectly. Kapitbahay Kubo, on the other hand, although intended to be sung to the same tune, just feels a little clunkier; it doesn’t work as well as the original.
Perhaps it is a bit much to ask a song from the Tagalog regions of Luzon to include vegetables much-prized elsewhere in the archipelago. Whoever composed the song back in the mists of history very likely did not foresee that it would be taken up by the nationalist cause and turned into a tool of nation-building, one known by all Filipinos; after all, why would they?
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What the two songs, Bahay Kubo and Kapitbahay Kubo, do show is that there is a richness and abundance of culinary plants in the Philippines. And this is just scraping the tip of the iceberg.
One of the Instagram accounts I love following right now is Lokalpedia, run by John Sherwin Felix. Travelling around the Philippines, he has been documenting as many fruits, vegetables, herbs, spices and all sorts of culinary ingredients as possible, with the goal of producing a vast visual library, possibly in book form. Given that the Philippines is considered one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, there is a lot of ground for Felix to cover. You can read more about his work in this interview with Esquire Philippines.
The tabon-tabon fruit. It has long been used in Mindanao as a key ingredient in kinilaw, with its juice used to neutralise the fishiness and acidity of the dish. Understanding how tabon-tabon is used today has helped archaeologists provide answers on how long kinilaw has been consumed in the Philippines: a dig site in Butuan uncovered halved tabon-tabon alongside fish bones bearing knife cuts from cubing, that were at least 1000 years old. Photo credit to Lokalpedia
For Felix, though, this photographic work is not just an idle hobby. A key aim of his is to draw attention to those ingredients that are at risk from disappearing: the result of native habitats being destroyed, of traditional ways of living and producing being disrupted, and ultimately of a loss of transmitted knowledge.
I immediately think of Montemayor, who lamented to me that she finds it hard to make many of the vegetable dishes that she grew up with, because the ingredients available to her here in the UK are just so different. There has been a break, a rupture, in her culinary traditions. This has no doubt been replicated thousands, or even millions of times, across the diaspora.
But I think too of my (admittedly anecdotal) observations of eateries and shops back in the Philippines. Many eateries tend to focus on filling meals for value, which is often a combination of (cheap) meat and rice. Of course, popular chains like Jollibee and Mang Inasal are all about the meat, and offering unlimited rice has been a wildly popular of getting the diners in. But think of our ‘silog breakfasts: meat or fish, fried egg, rice. Where are the vegetables there? And as much as I enjoy and appreciate my mother-in-law’s cooking in Cebu, vegetables are not a big part of her repertoire!
As for the shops, what you quickly come to realise is that many of the choices available to consumers are dictated by a select few corporations and conglomerates. As an example, I had been thinking about sinigang powder mix, sold widely by Knorr and Mama Sita’s, and how it seems to be flattening our conception of sinigang, the sour soup that is much-loved by Filipinos. The sourness can come from a variety of souring agents, of which there are many in the Philippines, but somehow the tamarind version has very clearly won out and is seen as ‘the’ sinigang (it is the version I grew up with, despite my mum growing up with sinigang made with balimbing/star fruit). Is this the result of tamarind being chosen to be the flavour profile of the ubiquitous powder mix? My wife’s uncle, living in the far south in Sarangani, told me that he uses the powder mix because he has difficulty finding fresh tamarind locally - but surely the local version of sinigang would have used other fruits or plants instead!
It is hard not to think that the Filipino foods that we consume today, at least those most visible and celebrated, seem like a far cry from the image offered up by Bahay Kubo. Of course, we can’t expect a cuisine to stay static: trade can introduce new dishes ingredients; colonialism can shape trends diets; economics can dictate what is readily available; tastes can change. And of course, Bahay Kubo tells us nothing about the carnivorous and pescetarian ways of life that do exist across much of the Philippines. But the idea of a bucolic life, of a simple country house surrounded by bounteous vegetables, does seem like a blast from the past.
There are various movements to try and reclaim and rediscover what we mean by Filipino food, like Felix’s Lokalpedia project. Interestingly enough, one sector of Filipino food that is really pushing the narrative of rediscovering Filipino food is veganism.
I have lost count of the number of times that people have reacted incredulously when I say that I am offering up vegan alternatives, as if the very concept is impossible. San Francisco-based chef, Reina Montenegro, recounted to the San Francisco Chronicle how she was abused for cooking up vegan Filipino food (“We’re Filipino. We eat meat”), something which my friend up in Manchester has talked about as well.
Given the historic prestige of meats like pork, the plentiful bounties of the sea that provide sustenance for many, and the widespread usage of flavour enhancers such as patis/fish sauce and bagoong/fermented shrimp or fish paste, it is a little understandable for people to think that veganism is an alien concept for Filipinos.
But as I like to tell my guests, veganism is more compatible with Filipino food than they may realise. After all, an oft-mentioned hallmark of Filipino cookery is its flexibility. Look at ginataan: often thought of as a dish, it’s more rather just something cooked in coconut milk. You can ginataan a lot of things, and you will see that vegetables are the primary ingredients in ginataan all across the country. And you don’t need to use bagoong or patis to flavour it, if you so wish.
Adobo too - we can sometimes think of chicken and pork being the main and most common ingredients of adobo (hence the logo of The Adobros, hahahahaa), but in reality the true essence of adobo is something cooked in vinegar, and anything can be made into adobo. Have we forgotten that adobong kangkong, water spinach adobo, is a popular side dish?
Looking again at Bahay Kubo, perhaps its focus on vegetables is a reflection of how flexibly they can be used in various different Filipino dishes. You can ginataan them all, you can ginisa them all, you can make sabaw with all of them… they can sustain us in so many different ways. Perhaps Bahay Kubo does show how central vegetables can be to Filipino food, if only we realised it. RG Enriquez-Diaz, the brains behind Astig Vegan, wrote in the preface of her cookbook Filipino Vegan:
Ironically, it wasn’t until I gave up animal products that I developed a stronger passion for Filipino food. It turned out that becoming vegan did not pull me away from my heritage - it drew me closer to it. Becoming vegan meant that I had to study and dissect the traditional recipes to replicate them properly. I grew fascinated learning about Filipino food’s cultural context, history, and significance. When I was eating meat, I didn’t care for any of these; I simply ate the dish.
For Enriquez-Diaz, her adventures into veganism represent the next chapter on what Filipino food could be like, taking the traditional and cooking it anew. For Yana Gilbuena (with whom I dined with some years ago at Quality Chop House when she was visiting London, a little ironic in hindsight), revisiting and rethinking how we eat vegetables ties us back to how our pre-colonial ancestors lived and ate, and is “a way of decolonizing the cuisine, and saying, let's go back to our roots of eating literally what was growing in our backyard or in our farms”.
Either way, it seems that we are on the cusp of some exciting new stuff around vegetables in Filipino cookery - but at the same time, it’s also calling back to a long history of eating our greens. I think a great embodiment of this, rather fittingly for this essay, is the famed Bahay Kubo dish served by Toyo Eatery in Manila: taking traditional produce and ingredients, and rendering them into something different and new. If you can’t get to Manila, or obtain a booking at Toyo Eatery, then why not try recreating the dish yourself? Read on.
I am copying the recipe mostly verbatim, but I have added some lots of annotations here and there, and tidied up some of the unclear language. I’ve also reordered things to put the items requiring longer prep first. The recipe does not indicate how many people this would feed, but I imagine it’s a fair few
1x upo (N.B. you might find these in Asian stores as dudhi or lauki. Otherwise, courgette can supposedly be used as a substitute)
1x cup powdered/icing sugar
Cut upo into half lengthwise, remove seeds and slice thinly, creating crescent slices
Layer slices of upo on a tray. Sprinkle with powdered sugar until completely covered
Dry in the sun for 1-2 days or until dry and brittle (N.B. LOL for the UK. Use a dehydrator if you have one, or try having them in the oven at 60c, checking constantly to ensure they don’t burn)
1x cup vinegar (N.B. I’d probably use Datu Puti cane vinegar, which is available online or in Filipino/Southeast Asian stores, but failing that cider vinegar would do)
4x tbsp raw washed sugar (N.B. a light brown demerera sugar can work)
4x tsp salt
Handful of mustasa (N.B. you can buy both fresh and pickled mustard greens in many Asian stores)
1x patola, peeled and diced (N.B. sponge gourd is also known as luffa, and you might be able to source it from South Asian stores)
1x large radish, peeled and thinly sliced (N.B. radish in this context is akin to daikon/mooli, which is available online and in many Asian stores. You could use the smaller European radishes, but you would need a lot if you wanted to match a whole daikon)
Combine vinegar, sugar and 2x tsp salt in a bowl. Mix until sugar and salt have dissolved and set aside. This is your pickling liquid
Bring a pot of water to a boil and add the rest of the salt. Blanch the mustasa for 5 seconds then transfer to a bowl of ice water, and drain once cool. Place in a jar and cover with the pickling liquid, refrigerating for at least one day
Place the patola pieces in a jar and cover with the pickling liquid, refrigerating for at least one day
Rub the radish slices with salt, leaving for 5 minutes or until it softens and releases liquid. Place the slices in a strainer and wash off the excess salt. Using your hands or cheesecloth, squeeze the radish to get rid of as much excess liquid as possible. Place the radish slices in a jar and cover with the pickling liquid, refrigerating for at least one day
Sigarilyas/Winged Beans and Sitaw/String Bean Mix
Handful of sigarilyas, sliced into half-inch pieces (N.B. winged beans can be bought online, but the more common runner beans would be a good equivalent)
Handful of sitaw, sliced into half-inch pieces (N.B. in Asian stores these would be long beans or snake beans… but the green beans from supermarkets would do fine)
2x cup vegetable stock, cold
1x tbsp coconut/vegetable oil
1x onion, minced
5x cloves garlic, minced
1x inch ginger, smashed
Salt and pepper to taste
Bring a pot of salted water to boil and blanch the sigarilyas and sitaw separately for 8-10 seconds. Transfer to an ice water bath, and drain once cool. Steep in the vegetable stock overnight
In a pan, heat oil over a high heat and stir fry the onions, garlic, ginger, sigarilyas and sitaw. Remove the ginger, then season with salt and pepper to taste
Burnt Kalabasa/Squash
1x squash, quartered, de-seeded
2x tbsp coconut cream
Salt to taste
Cover squash with foil and place in a pot with the lid on. Pan roast over medium heat for 1.5-2 hours or until squash is tender and deeply caramelised (N.B. I’d imagine that roasting the squash in an oven at 180c would achieve the same effect)
Scrape off the flesh into a pot and mash. Whisk in the coconut cream and cook for 2-3 minutes. Season with salt
Candied Kundol/Winter Melon
1x kundol, peeled, small-diced (N.B. kundol is also known as wax gourd or ash gourd, and can be found online or in South Asian shops)
1x tsp alum powder/tawas (N.B. food grade alum powder is available online. It looks like it’s called fatakdi in South Asian shops. Its job is to maintain crispness)
1.5x cup white sugar
1x cup water
Place kundol in a pot. Cover with water and add alum powder. Boil for 10 minutes. Strain and place under running water, rinsing thoroughly
In a separate pot, combine water and 1 cup sugar and bring to a boil. Add in the kundol and boil until the liquid turns into a thick syrupy consistency and the kundol is slightly tender
Place the kundol pieces onto a tray lined with parchment paper. Make sure each piece is spread out to prevent it from sticking to one another. Let them cool
Place the rest of the sugar into a bowl, and roll the kundol pieces in it until coated
Patani/Lima Beans
1x cup patani (N.B. in the UK, lima beans are called butter beans, and can be found cooked and canned in most supermarkets. This recipe calls for what I presume are raw beans, which you can find online in many health food stores. If you are buying canned, you may not need to follow these steps)
Air dry patani in a warm place for 2 days
Rehydrate patani for 10 minutes in water
Bring a pot of salted water to a boil
Add the patani and cook for 10 minutes or more until tender. Transfer to an ice water bath, and drain once cool
Peel the skin off and store in a container
Singkamas/Jicama
1x singkamas, aged at room temperature for a few days (N.B. I’d imagine most jicama we get here is already aged. It is also known as Mexican turnip and yam bean. It is super expensive in the UK right now, so I usually swap in daikon or water chestnuts, both of which are widely available in Asian stores. One site suggests Jerusalem artichoke, which sounds like a great idea)
Peel the skin, trimming off the hard ends
Slice into thin sheets and then cut into strips (N.B. or use a mandoline). Keep chilled until ready to use
Sesame Dressing
0.5x cup sesame oil
0.5x cup vinegar (N.B. I’d probably use Datu Puti cane vinegar, which is available online or in Filipino/Southeast Asian stores, but failing that cider vinegar would do)
1x tbsp raw washed sugar (N.B. a light brown demerera sugar can work)
Salt to taste
In a small bowl, whisk together oil, vinegar, salt and sugar
Transfer to a squeeze bottle or any other container and set aside
Peanut and Aubergine Soil
1x tbsp coconut/vegetable oil
5x medium aubergine, small-diced (N.B. this refers to the long and thin Asian aubergines, which you can buy in some supermarkets but more commonly in Asian stores. If using the bigger and fatter European aubergines, I would say maybe three larges ones)
3x cups peanuts, pan-roasted
Salt and sugar to taste
In a pan, heat oil over a medium heat and sauté the aubergines until caramelised. Season with salt, and trasnfer to a bowl to cool
Grind the peanuts in a mortar and pestle (or food processor) until you have a fine crumbly texture. Season with sugar and mix in with the aubergines
ASSEMBLY
Radish sprouts (N.B. where would you get radish sprouts? Who knows. Maybe some other microgreens, or maybe watercress, might do as substitutes)
Cherry tomatoes, sliced (N.B. how many? who knows. Some? perhaps)
Place the burnt kalabasa on the bottom of your serving plate
Add the candied kundol, patani and cherry tomato slices on top
Add the pickled vegetables (mustas, patola, labanos) and singkamas on top
Add the sigarilyas and sitaw mix
Drizzle over the sesame dressing
Spoon over a thin layer of peanut and aubergine soil, and add some upo chips
Completely cover with more peanut and aubergine soil, placing the radish sprouts as if they were plants growing out of the soil
