Cooking ‘ng ina ko!’

When I was interviewing cooks in Pampanga for my undergraduate thesis, culinary secrets and shortcuts that I could not understand were shared. For example, old folks would tell me things like “Nung buri meng palambutan ing carni dinan meng platu.” (Literal translation: If you want the meat you are cooking to become tender, put in a plate.) Another was “Nung buri meng masanting a color ing lulutuan mung matamis dinan meng pera.” (If you want the color of the fruit preserves you are cooking to look good, put in money.) Something was definitely lost in translation, and when I asked the cooks to explain, I realized what my modern urban cooking lacked.

Traditionally, women in Pampanga are taught how to cook early in life because the Kapampangan man is supposed to be served the best. Things are not the way they were these days, and women have been liberated from the kitchen by fast food and modern appliances. Many people have forgotten the days when sinigang had to be cooked from scratch, with fresh tamarind. Today you can order sinigang for take-out or have broth instantly from a sachet or a bouillon cube. And many people do not know how it was to prepare and cook rice before the coming of the rice cooker.

All these things have given women more time for themselves. Instead of staying in the kitchen all afternoon to cook dinner, they can now do other chores, play Candy Crush, or catch the latest telenovela.

But putting a plate in meat or money in fruit preserves is not so strange when you learn that broken pieces of china hasten the boiling of the water and the softening of the meat, or that someone stewing kamias in sugar, for example, would see its green skin discolor into an unsightly brown unless it is cooked in a tatso or copper pan. In the absence of the copper pan, old folks used to mix copper coins with the fruit being cooked. The coins were taken out when the cooking was over. This was the “pera” that old cooks were talking about, and the trick was just as effective as using a tatso. But then I don’t think the Bangko Sentral mints copper coins like it used to before and shortly after World War II.

The modern cook has no use or appreciation for these old tips because we have meat tenderizers and other sophisticated equipment to help soften tough meat. Artificial food coloring is readily available, and why bother with cooking your own fruit preserves and sweets when it is more convenient or even cheaper to buy these from the supermarket? When I look back on the cooks I interviewed for my thesis in the early 1980s, I realize they are a vanishing breed indeed, obsolete in a fast-food culture. But today we see a growing awareness for healthy eating and organic ingredients. We now see an appreciation for traditional culinary ways, in what is known as the Slow Food Movement to counter fast food.

Slow cooking is more convenient with a gas or electric range. No more trouble to gather wood and chop this into firewood, as they did in the old days—and if you live in a condo, as I do, the smoke from a wood fire will set off the alarm. Old cooks will say that the smoke adds to the flavor of a dish, in a way that roasting barbecue over wood or coal tastes different from cooking it in a turbo broiler. Hearty soups and stews are conveniently made in a crock pot, a complicated rice cooker, or in heavy cast iron Le Creuset pots and pans. But if my mother were still around and cooking, she would insist that the taste of nilaga or sinigang cooked in a clay pot over a wood fire is way better. My mother always waxed nostalgic about rice before the entry of the rice cooker simply because she liked the bangi or burned rice scraped from the bottom or sides of a cooking pot that her in-laws would never touch. I used to tell her that burned rice was possible in a rice cooker if one defied the instructions.

Two years in Tokyo with a very big freezer meant that I always kept fresh soup stock for days when I was too lazy to eat out. This meant browning the beef, chicken or pork bones in the oven before boiling them with leeks, onions, sea salt and fresh pepper. Sometimes I asked myself if making my own stock was worth the trouble because one could buy soup stock in cans or tetrapaks from the grocery. Or if I was really desperate for a quick substitute, wasn’t it simpler to make instant broth with a bouillon cube or a sachet of Magic Sarap?

I have never used instant Alsa Flan to make leche flan because it is quite easy to make a richer, better-tasting one with six egg yolks, a can of evaporated milk and a can of condensed milk. The only trouble was separating the egg white from the yolk (but you can use the whole egg if you want a different texture), and caramelizing the sugar in the llanera (or, as my Spanish-speaking friends would always correct me, the flanera).

In more health-conscious times, a leche flan with 36 egg yolks in a small flanera would raise eyebrows—and one’s cholesterol count. If I could, I would follow my mother’s leche flan recipe that called for duck eggs, carabao milk, and nipa or fresh nipa sugar. In my own lifetime I have seen how cooking and tastes have changed, and I hope that heritage preservation will go beyond protecting historic buildings, sites and sights and also cover the history that is contained in our palate, in our tastes, in our world.

A book I hope to write someday will be on recipes and memories called “Cooking ng Ina Ko.”

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Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu