People who see my waistline are not surprised that my undergraduate thesis was on food, published decades later as…

People who see my waistline are not surprised that my undergraduate thesis was on food, published decades later as “Manyaman: Food in Pampango Culture.” Unfortunately, I was overwhelmed by so much data and scholarship unavailable to me four decades ago that I could not rework the thesis into something definitive. It was published as a reference for historians and young chefs today, who, after their Western culinary training, revisited home kitchens, traditional foodways, and heritage recipes in search of the soul of our cuisine. Perhaps even that elusive thing we call national identity.

My palate was formed in my aunt’s home in San Fernando, Pampanga, where I had to jostle with 65 first cousins to get a first crack at choice parts of chicken in the soup or the crunchy skin off a lechon. All of that is a memory now, after our elders passed on. I cannot guess how my spinster aunt ran a tight household that braced to serve lunch for close to 150 people every Sunday, from the time I was a toddler till I had finished postgraduate studies. At my aunt’s table, I learned to appreciate Pampango food, and to tell what was good, middling, or inedible.

My mother taught me how to market and cook, but I only cook abroad, when homesickness is alleviated by adobo and sinigang. When I went off for postgraduate studies, my mother sent a sheaf of kitchen-tested recipes, a survival cookbook. In the age before Lucky Me, Magic Sarap, or sinigang bouillon cubes, I learned to substitute trout for bangus, smoked mackerel for tinapa, and mashed blood sausages for dinuguan. Without sampaloc, I made sinigang from scratch, using tomatoes and lemon juice as a souring agent.

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Knowing how to cook made it easy to slide into food history. Like Doreen Fernandez and Felice Sta. Maria, I read through recipe books older than those compiled and kitchen-tested by Nora Daza and Enriqueta David-Perez. The oldest cookbook in my file is the recipe collection of Juliana Gorricho, Juan Luna’s ill-fated mother-in-law, who cooked Filipino dishes in Paris in the 1880s and an undated manuscript cookbook from the Augustinian Archives in Valladolid that I believe hints at the Filipino food world in the 17th or 18th centuries. The oldest 20th-century cookbooks I have on file are “La Cocina Filipina” [The Filipino Kitchen: A collection of recipes and methods to eat well in the Philippines], (Manila, 1913) and “Condimentos Indigenas” by Pura Villanueva Kalaw (Manila, 1918).

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“Condimentos Indigenas” is worth a column if only for the author and her introduction that includes a Decalogue or “Ten Commandments for Cooks.” Translated from the Spanish, it says:

“First Commandment. You shall love the kitchen above all other places in the home, because it is the foundation of the family’s health and source of savings.” Today we draw water from the tap, or have purified water delivered, but in 1918, water was sourced from artesian wells or delivered by water carriers referenced as far back as 1887 in Rizal’s “Noli Me Tangere.” Kalaw advised boiling water to make it safe, keeping a kitchen well-lighted, well-ventilated, and clean. Utensils required extra care, particularly metal objects, “as rust gives a bad taste and bad appearance to stews … dirt breeds germs and disease.

“Second. You shall not serve meals that lack nutrients for the development of the body. Don’t throw away broth, keep fruit and dessert in stock. Banana helps regulate digestion, the humble ‘panocha’ contains calories.

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“Third. Sanctify food like manna from heaven. Set times for meals, present dishes in an appealing way and avoid wastage. Small amounts add up. Leaves from tubers are nutritious and should be added to food. Beef and pork bones; chicken blood, giblets, head, and feet make good broth.

“Fourth. Honor Philippine [native] stews above all. Most appropriate for our climate, sourced from our land.

“Fifth. Soak vegetables in salt water before cooking to remove insects and refresh these for better taste.

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“Sixth. Cut meat across the grain. Remove tendons and tenderize by pounding on the meat. Good broth results from stews left to simmer on live coals, after boiling.” Today we have: electric, gas, microwave, and induction stoves. “Seventh. Boil broth before putting in leafy vegetables. Cabbage, bamboo shoots, radish, onion, etc. should be cooked in an uncovered pot till odor evaporates. This preserves color.

“Eighth. Clean fish head and belly before cooking. When grilled, do not remove the scales. Native dishes are simple and do not hide filth. [?!?] Ninth. Remove tendons of chicken legs before cooking, remove feathers by passing it over an open flame, clean giblets without bile spilling over them. Tenth. Do not waste leftovers. Adding vegetables to leftover chicken, fish, or meat makes for other dishes for another meal.”

Pura Villanueva Kalaw (1886-1954) was not just Mrs. Teodoro M. Kalaw; she was the first Filipina beauty queen (1908 Queen of the Manila Carnival), feminist, suffragist, journalist, and businesswoman for whom Tierra Pura Subdivision in Quezon City is named. No wonder her small compilation of recipes comes with practical advice, still relevant over a century later.

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