Historical Perspective of Philippine Cuisine

The Philippines, where its culinary culture starts with a tropical clime divided into rainy and dry seasons, and with numerous islands of various sizes that include the mountains of the Cordillera, the central plains of Luzon, the lakes of Laguna and Lanao, the reefs of Palawan, the seas, the innumerable rivers, springs and brooks. In other words, it is a varied land, which shaped the ethnic and folk cultures that in turn brought forth Philippine food and cooking, a culinary cultural tradition like no other. 

The strategies of survival required our peoples—among them Aeta nomads, Badjao water-dwellers, Manobo hills men, lfugao mountain tribes, T’bolis of the Cotabato rain forests, Tagalog / Ilocano / Pampangueno / Bikolano and Pangasinan farmers of the plains, Visayan boatmen and fishermen – to pay close attention to the surrounding waters, vegetation, animal life and weather. Here they gathered food; from these they devised and designed appropriate cooking methods; from all that a cuisine was born.

 

 

Philippine Cuisine is classified into two categories-Indigenous and Indigenized

The fact that the Philippines are an archipelago composed of some 7,100 islands is the first determinant of its food ways. Inevitably, the sea, on which people and their food were transported, was also a principal source of sustenance. Consequently, seafood – fish, mollusks, crustaceans, and other creatures of the sea – forms the bulk of the people’s diets.

Water creatures are further available from rivers, brooks, roadside canals and waterways, and from flooded rice fields. Many Filipinos are fishermen, and through the centuries developed boats, navigation methods and routes, and a technology that included fishing methods and implements of many kinds: nets, traps, lines, hooks, harpoons, basket receptacles. 

INDIGENOUS COOKING METHODS

• Kinilaw/Kilawin (Ceviche) – most ancient form of cooking
• Halabos (Steam or boiled)
• Inihaw (Grill)
• Sinigang (Sour broth)
• Paksiw (Vinegar base)

Kinilaw/Kilawin

Kinilaw/Kilawin is an example of the cuisine developed from sea-faring and water-knowledge. It is a dish of fish or other seafood dressed with palm vinegar and/or sometimes lime juice, flavored with onions, ginger, and perhaps chili peppers, and served without having passed through fire. The vinegar cooks” it (luto sa asim, or cooked in sourness), by transforming rawness into the next, non-raw stage, while allowing it to retain the translucence of freshness. The fish flesh must not be left marinated in the vinegar for the reason of over-cooking it to opaque toughness.

Different regions have developed their own variations on the making of kinilaw:

• In Mindanao cooks also squeeze tabon-tabon fruit (Hydrophytune orbiculatum) over it, to remove the fishy taste as well as to protect the diner from stomach upsets. 
• Other regions include sting ray, sea cucumber, crabs, shrimps, crayfish, mollusks, echinoderms and occasionally meat in their kinilaw variety.  
• San Fernando, La Union, “jumping shrimps” are offered, live, in a bowl covered with a saucer on which are sliced kalamansi (limes). One squeezes the lime juice on the shrimps, they feel the stinging and jump, and are eaten at that point, fresh, sweet and pristine. 

Archaeological evidence proclaims kinilaw to be about a thousand years old. In the 1987 balangay excavation in Butuan City, Agusan del Sur, in Mindanao, anthropologist Rita Sembrano reports, tabon-tabon halves were recovered in association with the bones of yellow fin tuna (Neothunnus macropterus). The fish bones were cut exactly the way the same fish is still cut today for kinilaw; and so were the tabon-tabon (which is cut differently if the sap is used for finishing baskets). Since the excavation has been carbon-dated to between the 10th and 13th centuries A.D., kinilaw may be one of the most ancient of Philippine foods and methods of preparation.

Since freshness is its prime quality, kinilaw is obviously the kind of food that is developed and enjoyed by those living close to the sea. It is an island specialty, as is ceviche, its analogue in Latin America and the South Pacific. The fish must be unquestionably fresh.

• kinilaw makers sometimes wash it in tuba liquor before dressing it in the tuba (coconut) vinegar, to ease the transition.

• Fishermen pluck the fish from the water, wash it in the salt water, and do not salt it further for eating. It is a cuisine of freshness, the result of the proximity of the sea, and the people’s intimacy with it.

This geographical location also decided other traditional cooking methods. A Spanish chronicler has commented that fresh fish are in such abundance that it is general practice to put the rice on the fire before going out to get the fish. This is very easy, since they live in areas near the sea, or near rivers and lakes.” Fish so fresh, native wisdom dictates, should be cooked as little as possible. Thus, next to kinilaw the favored cooking methods are:

• halabos or steaming
• inihaw or grilling on coal
• sinigang, or stewing in soured broth with vegetables
• and paksiw, cooking in vinegar

Halabos 

Shrimps, of which has many varieties in the country, both marine and freshwater, is most often cooked halabos, or simply steamed in the water they retain after washing. If the shrimp is fresh-caught, or bought from fisherman or market still jumping, the result is a dish beyond compare, the skin coming crisply off, and the flesh bouncy to the bite. It may be dipped in chili-flavored vinegar, and needs no sauces or other processes to make it both pulutan (food to go with drinks or bar chow) and ulam (viand for a meal). Even in these days of frozen food, housewives and restaurant cooks will expend great effort to find shrimps still jumping in the basket and bringing sea-freshness to the table, because that is a tradition, a habit and a value.

Inihaw

In Davao, for example, where the Davao Gulf yields yellow fin tuna in abundance, eateries right along the water specialize in charcoal-grilled fish. These are displayed half-cooked, standing skewered on banana trunks, ready to be thrown on the coals for final cooking when chosen by a customer. The tuna bodies are generally sent to canneries, but the heads and the tails have become regional specialties.

Inihaw na panga, or roasted jaw of tuna, is fleshy and juicy, with different textures in every part, the best of them those close to the bone.

Inihaw na barilis (bariIis being the local name for this tuna) usually means the tail, also fleshy and a favorite pulutan for drinking men. It may also be scored and deep-fried so skilfully that it is as crisp as roast pork.

Sinigang

Sinigang might be called the national stew or soup dish, because it is found in almost every region under different names, and in variations on the theme of sourness. It is a sour stew, of fish or meat or chicken, the broth flavored by various sour fruits and leaves.

 

Vegetables are added, making it a one-dish meal. The broth is sometimes thickened with rice washing, but in general it is a light stew, eaten as soup-meat/seafood-vegetable dish, the broth sipped or spooned over rice, the rest eaten with the moistened rice.

Paksiw

In the days before refrigeration became available, cooking in vinegar was another way of preserving food for journeys, or for another day. Paksiw is fish cooked in vinegar and garlic, and may be served hot or cold. Tagalogs sometimes add a few vegetables to it, such as eggplant and ampalaya (bittermelon) slice.

 

llonggos sometimes cook it dry, letting all the vinegar boil away, and call the dish pinamaihan from mala, meaning dry. Cebuanos are said to long for their inun-unan wherever they go, and so it is packed in cans and shipped to Mindanao, where so many Cebuano migrants have settled. This is another case in which the practical need for preservation brought about a flavor preference.