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When we set out to produce an episode all about Filipino food, we knew we’d need a general overview of the cuisine of the Philippines: what it’s like, what influenced its past, and how it’s evolved to become the hottest new thing in the food world. We couldn’t think of anyone better to turn to for this important lesson than Amy Besa; she’s the award-winner author of\u00a0Memories of Philippine Kitchens<\/em><\/a>, and lovingly known as the “godmother of Filipino food in America.” Besa and her chef-husband Romy Dorotan also own the\u00a0Purple Yam<\/a>\u00a0restaurant in New York. Bring a taste of the Philippines to your table with her recipe for\u00a0Ukoy<\/a>, Filipino crispy shrimp and vegetable fritters.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Francis Lam:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0 To help people understand the wide world of Filipino food, you’ve come up with a clear framework. You divide the food into two sections. One you call \u201cfood that was always ours,\u201d and the other you call \u201cfood we borrowed and made our own\u201d \u2013 which I love. Let\u2019s start with the first category. Can you tell us what are some of the original Filipino dishes, and how we can still see their mark on Filipino cuisine today?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Amy Besa:<\/strong>\u00a0There are three dishes that are actually cooking methods; they are\u00a0adobo<\/em>,\u00a0sinigang<\/em>, and\u00a0kinilaw<\/em>. Kinilaw is like our version of ceviche. The sinigang is a sour broth, soured by citrus and sour fruit. And adobo has a Spanish name, but as the American food scholar Ray Sokolov said, he looked up all the adobos in the Latin hemisphere, and we’re the only ones that braise our adobos with vinegar. When I traveled all over the Philippines I found these three dishes were cooked universally. What is great is that they are eaten from the richest to the poorest people. That’s why I call them foods that were always ours. They are united by sourness; that’s why I know they belong to us.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n (Photo: Jar Concengco)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n FL:<\/strong>\u00a0In a place that’s as hot, sunny, and tropical as the Philippines you have lots of native citruses. But anything with sugar \u2013 fruit or anything like that \u2013 will ferment pretty quickly, so you have all these vinegars that are natural to the place.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n AB:<\/strong>\u00a0You can make vinegar out of anything.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n I define Filipino food as everything that grows in our environment, and what people do to it to eat and survive. That’s the food that was always ours.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the food that was borrowed. You cannot escape the fact that outside food will always come in. When I was doing my research, one of my go-to books is K.T. Achaya\u2019s handbook of Indian food. Because one of our Filipino historians told me we were Hinduites first before anything. That\u2019s why we have a lot of Sanskrit in all our languages. I was going through the book and saw the word\u00a0ashoka<\/em>, which in our language \u2013 in Tagalog \u2013\u00a0suk\u00e0<\/em>\u00a0means vinegar. Any word or name that can go back to Sanskrit is a very old ingredient. We have a lot of coconuts in the Philippines and the sap, once you draw that out, within minutes it will ferment; it’s spontaneous fermentation. What a lot of our food is right now is pre-refrigeration, so we do eat a lot of dried meats, dried fish, salted fish, fish sauce, bagoong. A lot of fermented things.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n FL:<\/strong>\u00a0In a dish like adobo, which is meat \u2013 I often see it as chicken \u2013 but it can be pork, it can be fish. When I see recipes for adobo with a mixture of soy sauce and vinegar, sometimes it’s almost one-to-one and I think, \u201cMan, that’s a lot of vinegar!\u201d But every time I’ve had it, you can taste the sourness, but it’s always balanced.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n AB:<\/strong>\u00a0Soy sauce is not the original ingredient for adobo; that’s a Chinese influence. It\u2019s really about balance and harmony between salt, vinegar, and the protein. The soy sauce came later.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Adobo is a cooking method that plays with sourness and saltiness.\u00a0 The saltiness can come from different sources as well as the sourness can come from different vinegars.\u00a0 There are many types of adobo that do not use soy sauce all over the Philippines.\u00a0 There is\u00a0adobo sa dilaw<\/em>\u00a0(yellow) which uses turmeric and many Visayans use\u00a0achuete<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0annatto<\/em>\u00a0to give it color.\u00a0 Soy sauce is primarily used for color as well as a source of salt.\u00a0 The Philippines is an archipelago of more than 7000 islands so the primary source of flavor is salt coming from the seas surrounding our islands.\u00a0 The Chinese came very early on.\u00a0 The first recorded transaction between Chinese and Filipino natives was in the 10th century hence the influence of soy sauce came at around that time.\u00a0 The history of soy sauce is also interesting as I have read that soy sauce came as a result of vegetarianism.\u00a0 Fish sauce came from Southeast Asia and as it reached China, soy sauce came about as a vegetarian alternative to fermented fish sauce.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n FL:\u00a0<\/strong>The Philippines was colonized by the Spanish in the 1500s. At the same time, there was a big rise in the Chinese traders who were moving there. What are some of the dishes we still see today that show the influence of the Chinese traders and the Spanish colonists?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n AB:<\/strong>\u00a0We have\u00a0pancit luglug<\/em>,\u00a0lumia Shanghai<\/em>, and\u00a0pancit canton<\/em>. Those are all noodles and spring rolls. And yet, even though it’s called lumpia Shanghai, if you go to Shanghai, you will never see that. Pancit Canton is not from Canton \u2013 it\u2019s not Cantonese \u2013 it\u2019s Filipino.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n FL:\u00a0<\/strong>What are in those dishes?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n AB:<\/strong>\u00a0They\u2019re all like cabbage and shrimp, and all kinds of toppings, which they call\u00a0sahog<\/em>. They they mix it with different types of noodles. We have\u00a0bihon<\/em>\u00a0which is rice noodle and egg noodle.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n FL:<\/strong>\u00a0And what are some of the dishes that show the Spanish influence?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n AB:<\/strong>\u00a0We have the\u00a0afritada<\/em>,\u00a0morcon<\/em>, and\u00a0embutidos<\/em>. All the stuffed dishes like\u00a0rellanong manok<\/em>, which is stuffed chicken. There are a lot of dishes that have tomato sauce and olive oil; that’s very Spanish. But those are expensive ingredients, so they’re considered\u00a0fiesta\u00a0<\/em>fare \u2013 like the food of the rich and the elite.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n FL:<\/strong>\u00a0And even your use of the word \u2013 fiesta. That’s the Spanish word for party, which has been taken by Filipinos. In your book, you mention that when the Philippines was a Spanish colony, it was run out of the Spanish colony in Mexico.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n AB:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n by Amy Besa<\/p>\n <\/p>\n FL:<\/strong>\u00a0That means there\u2019s a huge Mexican influence in Filipino food. You mentioned dishes like chicken\u00a0pipian<\/em>, which is a Mexican dish, a stew of pumpkin seed sauce. You say there’s a Filipino version of that and tamales. Can you describe some of those Filipino dishes?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n AB:<\/strong>\u00a0Tamales are a dish that came over, but Filipinos have indigenized it. Instead of corn meal wrapped in corn husk, we usually use ground rice and wrap in banana leaves. But the Mexican aspect of our culture is quite hidden. Most of the Mexican influences that I knew were from the fruits and vegetable that came in through the galleon trade. When the Spanish started to colonize the Philippines, the first settlers were Mexican \u2013 actually Spanish who were already settled in Mexico. When the Spanish came, they spoke Mexican Spanish. We have a lot of Nahuatl words in our language like\u00a0nanay<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0tatay<\/em>, which means mother and father. The Nahuatl terms are\u00a0nana<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0tata<\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n FL:\u00a0<\/strong>Let\u2019s move forward in history to the early 20th century, where the United States colonized the Philippines for almost 50 years, right up until around the time of World War II. How do you see that influence in the food today?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n AB:\u00a0<\/strong>The first thing the Americans did was to prove to Filipinos that our diet of rice and fish was inadequate. We were a good market for American products, if you look at what was happening in the United States at that time: canned goods, evaporated milk, skim milk.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n FL:<\/strong>\u00a0Canned meat and corned beef in a can.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n AB:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes. All of those were brought to the Philippines because there’s something about what the Americans produce \u2013 they do know how to capture your taste buds. I remember the first time I tasted Spam; I thought, \u201cThis is heaven! How could anyone invent something like this?\u201d I got so addicted to it. I would look forward to that for breakfast.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n For me, one of the most obvious indigenized American products is the\u00a0buko<\/em>\u00a0pie, the young coconut pie. Americans are all about the double-crusted pie, right? But then we filled it with young coconut, and it is such a classic. People think of it as Filipino. There are also a lot of chiffon cakes everywhere. Even the Chinese stores make chiffon cakes. So, that’s the influence of the United States.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Whenever people say our food is getting lost \u2013 with all the influence from fast food \u2013 I never get worried, because we are a people who know how to preserve our food and embrace foreign foods at the same time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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\nAmy Besa<\/strong><\/p>\n
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<\/a>Amy Besa and her chef-husband Romy Dorotan (right) own Purple Yam in New York City. The menu includes Lechon Pork Belly and Ube Tar with Blueberries.\u00a0[Photos: Neal Oshima]<\/em><\/p>\n
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<\/a>Memories of Philippine Kitchens<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n
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