Did you know that the coconut nut is a giant nut, and if you eat too much, you’ll get very fat? But whilst it is a big, big nut, it is in fact not a nut…!
We have Filipino National Artist, Ryan Cayabyab, and his band Smokey Mountain, to thank for this wisdom regarding the coconut, which they recorded in the famed 1991 song Da Coconut Nut. I’ve heard this song, and different versions of it, quite a lot over the years, but it was only recently that I found out that it was actually written and performed by a Filipino group, and is considered one of the more comedic classics of the OPM (Original Pinoy Music) genre.
Rather, I’m talking about the coconut’s culinary importance - a topic more in keeping with this Substack of course!
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There are a lot of different culinary uses of coconut in the Philippines, each of which probably deserves it own little essay, but today I’d like to focus on coconut milk, and one of the ways it’s primarily used: ginataan.
Ginataan essentially means a preparation with coconut milk - gata in Tagalog (tuno in Cebuano, which gives us tinuno-an, which has the same meaning). You can see that ginataan is a conjugation of gata; likewise, cooking with bagoong gives us binagoongan, sampalok gives sinampalukan, gisa ginisa etc. etc.
As a cooking technique, ginataan really is as simple as it sounds: things are simmered in coconut milk. And aside from the coconut milk, none of the other ingredients are set in stone. You can have as many, or as few, things as you want in it. It can be sweet, it can be savoury.
The most common ginataan I do is with kalabasa/squash and sitaw/long beans. I fry up some sliced onions, add minced garlic, ginger and chilli, let it get aromatic, throw in some bagoong/fermented shrimp paste, add the coconut milk, then the cubed kalabasa and later on chopped sitaw, letting it simmer until everything is cooked through. It’s seasoned with patis/fish sauces and black pepper as desired. For my vegan diners, I swap out the bagoong and patis for miso or tausi/fermented soy beans. Extremely simple, no frills. But in the end, it transforms into a wonderfully delicious and rich dish: the sweetness of the squash and onion, the heat of the ginger and chilli, the garlickyness, the crunch of the beans, the funk of the bagoong, the salty umaminess of the patis, all rounded out by creamy coconuttiness. Spooned over rice by itself or alongside some meat, it’s brilliant.
But because of its relative simplicity, I think that we often overlook ginataan when it comes to identifying important markers of Filipino cookery. I remember being asked to put together an online Filipino cookery demonstration for a company, and pitching ginataang kalabasa at sitaw as a quick, simple yet evocative dish; my contact, who was Filipina, was worried that it didn’t seem as exciting or as Filipino as adobo or kare kare.
But its flexibility, its ability to be adapted to use all manner of produce and ingredients… surely that’s truly Filipino? So many of our dishes are techniques rather than recipes, just like ginataan. As long as you can cook something in coconut milk, you can make ginataan.
Edgie Polistico’s Philippine Food, Cooking, & Dining Dictionary, a veritable tome of culinary terminology from across the country, lists nearly 100 (!) entries relating to ginataan (Tagalog) / ginat-an (Ilonggo and Kiniray-a) / ginettaan (Ilocano) / giyatan (Tausug) / hinatokan (Waray) / tinun-an (Boholano) / tinuno-an (Cebuano), and of course countless more relating to dishes that go under different names. They cover everything from vegetables, meats, seafoods to fruits, and include both savoury and sweet options.
Evidently, cooking in coconut milk is embedded deeply in the various Filipino cuisines. It’s almost certain that Filipinos have been making ginataan for centuries, if not millenia - after all, the coconut is considered to have originated in maritime southeast Asia, whence it spread around the world as part of the great Austronesian expansion. I think we should therefore be a bit more confident in, and proud of, asserting ginataan as a hallmark of Filipino cookery or, as Nicole Ponseca calls it in her cookbook I am a Filipino: And This is How we Cook: “one of the linchpins of the cuisine”.
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When my wife and I got married a few years back, her family came to stay with us for a few months. On the day that they arrived, despite having flown into Heathrow that very afternoon, my mother-in-law made halang halang for dinner - a Visayan stew of chicken, vegetables, aromats and chillies cooked down in coconut milk. A classic ginataan dish, though called halang halang (spicy spicy in Cebuano) in honour of the elevated levels of spice achieved through the use of both the hot siling labuyo/wild chilli and the mild siling haba/long chilli. I was so touched by the gesture - it had been a difficult day at work, and a bit of a chilly one too, so to come home to see family and have a fragrant and delicious pot of food waiting for me on the stove was heartwarming. It was the first time I tried it, and I was a big fan; nothing like a creamy and spicy dish full of flavour to dollop all over rice!
My take on Halang Halang Manok, a spicy Visayan stew of chicken and vegetables cooked with aromats and chillies in coconut milk
When I posted this on social media, someone asked whether it had been influenced by, or was linked to, Thai green chicken curry which aesthetically-speaking seems similar. My response?
it seems more in keeping with other coconut-based dishes in the Philippines (like ginataang manok), than Thai green curry - so I think any commonalities are probably just a result of both countries being rich in coconuts!
It’s good to be reminded of the Philippines’ links with other southeast Asian nations, and the proliferation of coconuts as a common ingredient is a great example of this. Because, given its history, it sometimes feels like the Philippines is somewhat separated from its neighbours. This disconnection is no accident. The Spanish colonial regime devoted much effort to Christianising the Filipinos under its rule, turning them against the new Muslim enemy in the form of the Moros of Mindanao, Sulu and Brunei - the Reconquista continued in a new setting. After the American conquest of the Philippines, the colonial authorities sought to re-fashion Filipinos as ‘little brown brothers’, to borrow the infamous term coined by US President Willian Howard Taft - to become more like the industrious Anglo-Saxon, as opposed to the savage Asian or the lazy Hispanic. One legacy of this is that to this day, many Filipino-Americans debate whether they can be classified as Asians or as Pacific Islanders.
Colonialism may have changed many things about the Philippines and Filipino society, but there are things that still call back to our shared heritage with our Asian neighbours, particularly in the culinary realm. The esteemed food writer, Doreen G Fernandez, observed glimpses of this during her extensive field research, noting that “the majority of Filipinos do not eat Hispanic or Americanized food. They eat the native, indigenous, Malay food of their ancestors”.
(Side note:Fernandez uses Malay in the sense that pre-colonial Philippines was a firm part of the varied ethnic, political, cultural, economic and linguistic spheres of maritime southeast Asia, alongside the areas that would become Malaysia and Indonesia. Nowadays, people tend to talk more about these linkages under the term of Austronesian, to avoid confusion with the modern state of Malaysia)
The idea of native and indigenous dishes is something I want to explore a bit more. Because the various Filipino cuisines have received and absorbed a lot of influences over the years, we can often get a bit too preoccupied with talking about what is Spanish-influenced, what is Chinese-influenced, what is American-influenced etc. etc., to the extent that it almost seems like the Philippines had nothing indigenous worth eating. Sometimes it feels like we are constantly searching for those foreign roots, as a way of making a dish sound more interesting; kinilaw, despite being an ancient culinary technique, has been linked to the similar but more well-known ceviche. Even adobo, the other great indigenous dish, is always talked of in relation to how the Spanish perceived it and gave it its current moniker. Part of this, I suppose, is a legacy of the colonial mentality long-instilled that asserts that the foreign is better and more desirable than the inferior and uncultured native.
But the other part is perhaps that Filipinos have long been very accepting of, and very good at adapting, various different things that have come to their shores. Antonio Pigafetta, the chronicler of Ferdinand Magellan’s ill-fated expedition in 1521, documented the well-established trade routes already existing by the time he arrived. In my last essay, I highlighted the work of Stephen Acabado on the folk song Bahay Kubo; he argues that the song, in incorporating a lot of non-native vegetables in a manner that makes them feel that they belong, demonstrates how globalised Filipinos have been for centuries, and how quick they are to adapt and adopt. I am also constantly drawn to this quote from Fernandez, in discussing what is Filipino food:
What then is Filipino food? One must answer: all of the above [the different sources and influences that Fernandez writes about]. The assimilation of these foods has not, however, been slavish. Always, it has involved indigenization, in which the tastes are adjusted to the Filipino palate… Foreign food is adjusted to the local state, and not vice-versa.
But, linking back to her observations about how Filipinos eat, Fernandez also says:
It is the indigenous cuisine that has stood steadfast and unchanged even in the onslaught of foreign tastes. It has been the guardian and the standard of local gastronomy, the food of tradition and memory.
Should ginataan be seen in this context? I reckon so. It’s a cooking technique that stems directly from the produce of the land, namely the coconut. It’s a result of the skills and knowledge that ancient Filipinos learnt in order to make the most of what is often called the tree of life. It is likely unchanged much from its original form, even if variants of it have evolved with other influences. It exists in some form everywhere in the Philippines. And for many, it imparts a flavour that is comfortable, familiar and steeped in memory. It is truly a dish of the Philippines.
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Before I share a couple of ginataan recipes, I thought it’d be fun to share some of the coconut-based products that Filipinos have pioneered, and exported around the world:
Nata de coco, the gelatinous chewy cubes made from fermented coconut water, that you can find in desserts and drinks like Mogu Mogu (that seems to be in all of the Asian stores here in the UK). It was first developed in the Philippines by the Filipina chemist, Teódula Kalaw África. It was developed as a more accessible alternative to the much older nata de piña, made from pineapple juice that was a waste by-product of the seasonal pineapple fibre industry
Macapuno, also known as coconut sport, a type of rare ‘mutant’ coconut that has no coconut water, the cavity instead being filled with a soft, sweet and gelatinous meat that is much-prized for its texture and taste. Filipina plant physiologist, Emerita V. De Guzman, developed a technique to mass propagate macapuno coconuts, vastly increasing production; other southeast Asian countries that treasured macapuno soon followed suit
Tuba, the fermented coconut sap that can either be drunk as ‘coconut wine’, used a raising agent or distilled into spirits like lambanog. Tuba found its way to Mexico as a result of the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade; aside from introducing coconut palms to this part of the New World, Filipino sailors also taught their Mexican counterparts all about how to get drunk on coconut wine and spirits. The distilling methods and stills that they also brought with them would later go on to be used to make tequila and mezcal. Mexicans still drink non-alcoholic tuba fresca to this day. Tuba was also introduced in the late 1800s to the Torres Strait Islands in Australia by Filipinos moving to work in the local pearling industry
And last but not least, ginataan. There is a guinatan dish in Mexico, of seafood like shrimp or dried fish cooked down in coconut milk. Sound familiar?
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Halang Halang, adapted from a family recipe
I’ve adapted this from the instructions given by my mother-in-law; please continue adapting according to your tastes. This should make enough for four people
4x chicken legs
2x tbsp patis/fish sauce
2x tbsp soy sauce
1x white onion
1x head of garlic
1x inch of ginger
2x Thai birdseye chillies
2x lemongrass stalks
1x sayote (N.B. also known as chayote or chow chow, this could be replaced by cucumber)
1x bell pepper
400ml coconut milk
2x mild chillies
Salt and pepper to taste
Rub the chicken legs with the patis and soy sauce, and marinate for at least 2 hours, longer if you can
Slice the onion, mince the garlic, ginger and birdseye chillies. Crush the lemongrass stalks
Peel and cube the sayote (cutting out the seed), and slice the bell pepper (discarding the pith and seeds)
Take the chicken legs out of the marinade, reserving it for later
In a pot, brown the chicken legs in some vegetable oil
Add the onions; once they start to soften, add the garlic, ginger, birdseye chilli and lemongrass. Stir and fry until everything is very aromatic
Add the marinade to the pot and mix it in
Add the coconut milk to the pot; bring to a boil and then turn down the heat to a simmer with the lid on
After 15 minutes, add the sayote and the bell pepper to the pot
Cook everything for at least another 30 minutes, or until the chicken legs are cooked through and tender. Add salt and pepper as desired
Add the mild chillies as a garnish, chopped or whole
Serve with copious amounts of steamed jasmine rice
There is a warm sweet soup, of various tubers, fruits and other nice bits simmered in coconut milk, that has become widely known as Ginataan (a little confusing, I know). Binignit is the Visayan version, and although enjoyed throughout the year, is strongly associated with Good Friday snacking.
I’ve adapted this recipe from Panlasang Pinoy to make it a bit lighter and less sweet, but feel free to adjust as you wish. This should roughly serve four people
1x sweet potato
1x ube (N.B. you can buy these frozen in some Asian shops, and sometimes fresh in Sri Lankan shops. Otherwise, you can replace with regular or purple sweet potato)
1x taro
1x ripe plantain (N.B. if you can find saba banana or latundan/apple banana, then use those instead)
2x ripe jackfruit bulbs
400ml coconut milk
0.5x cup light muscovado/brown sugar
0.5x cup tapioca pearls
Up to 200ml Water
Peel and cut into 1cm cubes the sweet potato, ube and taro
Peel and cut the plantain into half moon slices. Thinly slice the jackfruit bulbs
In a pot, add the coconut milk and the sugar. Heat until the sugar is dissolved, stirring the coconut milk constantly
Add the sweet potato, ube, taro, plantain and jackfruit to the mix, and simmer until soft - about 10 minutes. Stir every now and then, to ensure that the coconut milk doesn’t catch and burn (this can be a problem if your heat is too high and the coconut milk very thick)
Top up with water as desired - add more if you prefer a thinner and less coconutty soup
Add the tapioca pearls to the pot, and continue simmering until they’re cooked through
Great and informative article and so well written!