Maria Y. Orosa: Food hero

Unlike Sen. Cynthia Villar, I cannot live without onions, a staple in our daily cooking. My cook complained the other day about the price of onions at P380 a kilo. It is an increase from P200 a kilo some weeks ago when no white onions could be found. Today, P380 will buy you white or red onions or a mix of red and white. She paid P87 yesterday for seven small red onions or one-fourth kilo.

When I asked if it was possible to do “noche buena” for five for P500, she laughed. A simple spaghetti with tomato sauce and hot dogs will indeed cost less than P500, but that doesn’t factor in other condiments like onion, salt, pepper, seasoning, and cooking gas. She said the grocery packs sold cheaply can give you an unsatisfying noche buena for P500 or less because they don’t taste good. She added that charcoal at P20 per bag was cheaper than gas or electricity, but you will need at least four handfuls to cook your spaghetti. I asked how much it would cost if she fried one whole chicken; her reply: It’s less trouble to buy from Andok’s. One does get what one pays for.

The conversation with my cook led me to the recipes of Maria Y. Orosa, collected and published posthumously, 25 years after she was killed by shrapnel during the 1945 Battle for Manila. Today, she is best remembered for the Ermita street leading to Robinson’s mall, which was renamed “Florida” in her honor. She may not have made a fortune or claimed the patent on banana ketchup, but it was her research and popularization of food preserves that gave birth to the sweet red sauce that is the ingredient that defines “Filipino spaghetti” from the Italian original.

During World War II, Orosa championed the use of local over imported ingredients for cooking. She recommended one-dish meals from cheap, common, easily grown foods that, taken with rice, met basic nutritional requirements. She recommended substituting soybeans for meat, fish, and eggs. For utensils, she recommended “natural” containers like bamboo tubes, banana leaves, and banana sheaths (saha). Take note, all these are biodegradable. She even redesigned the generic clay pot just used for boiling into the “Orosa palayok oven” that could be used for baking.

Writing in 1941, she noted that of the P22,256,272 spent on imported canned and preserved food the year before, P9,692,054 was spent on wheat flour alone. She wrote:

“After a few years of scientific investigations, it was discovered that cassava, corn, rice, and gabi flour could substitute for wheat flour. That the popular grape juice could be replaced by duhat juice. That canned mangoes could fill in for canned peaches, and mango jam for peach jam. And that many other little-appreciated local foods could attain more prominence and glamour by substituting for fancy imported products.”

Last weekend, I went to the stalls of fruit vendors in Tabaco, Albay, and was floored to find nothing but imported (mostly from China) grapes, oranges, and apples. No bayabas or sweet sampaloc in sight. There were a few overripe mangoes in the bargain bins. Nobody was selling any local fruit juices or preserves, but all stores had pili in either sweet or savory form. When I was invited to dinner, I was offered Norwegian salmon instead of locally sourced fish. It has always been a puzzle to me why an archipelagic nation like the Philippines has to import fish. This must be the case because we have the money to pay for imports, but when the crunch comes it will be good to look back on Maria Orosa’s recipes.

It took a Maria Orosa to find use for coconut “sapal” that was just fed to pigs. Sapal is the coconut after the milk had been extracted from it. Orosa turned it into flour to be used for cakes and cookies. Coconut oil was formerly used as floor polish. Orosa used it as shortening as a substitute for butter, margarine, or salad oil. She also found use for rice bran (darak) or the outer portion of the grain after the rice husk has been removed during polishing. This was usually thrown away or, if collected, used as animal feed. Orosa added fresh darak to wheat flour not just as an extender, but as a source of Vitamin B against beri-beri. Extract from rice bran as a Vitamin B supplement is better known as “tiki-tiki.”

Let’s hope the economy stays afloat in the coming year, but if it does not, it’s time to look back on Maria Orosa and the saying that necessity is the mother of invention.

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Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu