RELYENONG ALIMASAG
STUFFED CRAB

Prevalent in the area is the influence from Chinese food culture, easily understood since the Chinese minority in each country’s population is just as visible. In the Philippines, trade with China started in the 11th century, as documents show, but it is conjectured that undocumented trade may have started even two centuries earlier. Trade Ceramic pointed to the early period of trade between the Philippines and China. These relations have now been traced to as early as the ninth century during the later years of the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-906). 

The Chinese traders supplied the silks sent to Mexico and Spain in the galleon trade through the Silk Route. In return they took back products of field, forest—beeswax, rattan, birds’ nests, medicinal plants—and sea, such as beche-de-mer. While they waited for goods and for payment, they lived here and some settled and took Filipino wives, a development that resulted in many Filipinos having Chinese origins, bloodlines, and the culture now called Chinoy” (Chinese-Pinoy). It was also a development that resulted in major Chinese inputs into Philippine cuisine.

In the Spanish colonial period, when public eating in enclosed spaces began (as against the indigenous outdoor markets and community feasting), the first restaurants were called pansiterias, a Spanish formulation of the Chinese name for noodles to indicate eating place.” In these eateries, the dishes had Spanish names, for the sake of the Spanish-speaking patrons.

• batter-fried shrimps became camaron rebozado
• fish in sweet-sour sauce became pescado en salsa agrio-dulce  
• fried rice was morisqueta tostada 
• shark fin soup aletas de Tiburon con caldo
• pansit was named after its different guises, sotanghon guisado (mungbean noodles), pansit Canton (egg noodles), pansit bihon (rice noodles), etc. 

 The whole phenomenon was called Comida China (Chinese food).
 
Today these dishes are to be found as well in homes, on the streets, in the markets, in school cafeterias. The Spanish names are slowly being replaced by English (“beef with broccoli”; “fried rice”) and Tagalog (rellenong alimasag for torta de cangrejo) photo below.

The Chinese influence goes deep into Philippine cooking, and way beyond food names and restaurant fare. The use of soy sauce and other soybean products (tokwa, tahuri, miso, tawsi, taho) is Chinese, as is the use of such vegetables as petsay, toge (mung bean sprouts), and pickled mustard greens (mustasa). Many cooking implements still bear their Chinese names, like the sianse or turner. The Filipino carajay, spelled the Spanish way, is actually a Chinese wok.

Cooking processes also derive from Chinese methods. Pesa in Hokkien simply means ‘plain boiled’ and it is used only in reference to the cooking of fish, the complete term... being peq+sa+hi, the last morpheme meaning fish’.” In Tagalog, it can mean both fish and chicken (pesang dalag, pesang manok). 

Indigenized cuisine Philippine cuisine is easily traceable to Chinese cuisine, and is now obviously well entrenched in the native diet and lifestyle, and yet it bears a Spanish name because it “went public” during the Spanish regime.

Chinese influence on Philippine food entered at “ground level,” and is thus found in all social classes, on all occasions from street to feast, home to de luxe restaurant. 

Chef's Notes: Culled from my term papers in graduate school.