Pinapaitan

Early in the Spanish times, the ship of the English navigator/freebooter Thomas Cavendish was moored off Fuga Island. He had captured some Ilocanos to help him on board. From the shore came natives rowing bancas with foodstuffs to sell, among which was a goat.

The sailors decided to buy the goat, and they slaughtered it on deck, throwing all the intestines into the sea. The Ilocano assistants were not about to let all that lovely laman loob go down and dived for the treasure. This is followed by a description of the natives cooking the innards, including its bile, into what the poor, ignorant chronicler could only describe as “a disgusting mess.” This is the first mention (Blair and Robertson) of pinapaitan in Philippine annals.

Pinapait is the bitter juice, the digested grass in the stomach of the goat (or cow, or carabao). Ilocanos relishes it, especially in hot weather, and put papait in dishes they call pinapaitan, such as the half-cooked kilawin and the almost raw imbaliktad (or one-turnover dish). With every purchase of meat specifically for pinapaitan, the vendor automatically throws in the attendant bile for free.

The goat or kalding from which these intestines come is the centerpiece of the Ilocano fiesta. Writes Leticia Evangelista (Pasig Papers, 1960): “They choose a kapon (castrated at birth) which is a year old, or a bomalasang, a year-old she-goat that has never given birth. Two or three days before slaughtering, the animal is fed nothing but young leaves of the tamarind. 

After its slaughter, the goat is hung over a high fire of dried coconut leaves, hay or cogon (in Manila, they recreate the process with a blow torch). The animal is burned black after which it is scrubbed and cleaned with water until ghostly white. Numberless goat recipes branch from this preliminary process.”

Culled from my research notes in graduate school.