A Chef’s Lesson’s Learned in the Philippines

As a chef who has traveled the world in search of great food and unique flavors, I was told not to expect much from the Filipino food scene. I later realized, quite often, there is a truth to that warning – but when it was proven wrong, my mind was blown.

The stunning archipelago of 7,000 islands has a long history of occupation and colonialism-from the Spanish, for over 500 years, to the French, American, and Chinese. They are a rather poor country. But more acutely, they struggle with an identity crisis. For generations, they’ve been told they weren’t good enough. They’ve been taught they could be better if they accept Christ as their savior, cook with a European accent, and even cosmetically lighten their skin tone.

To my surprise, these people of ancient traditions born from fisherman descendents have fallen for these lies – hook, line, and sinker – and appear to love it. Most have not had the fortune of a decent education nor the means to travel from their birthplace. The reality is that most don’t have a decent source of water or even all their teeth. While witnessing all this, I also saw that Filipinos are extremely resourceful, and despite their circumstances, the most genuine and kindhearted people on Earth.

Who’s the best cook?

If you ask any Filipino who makes the best adobo, you will undoubtedly get the same answer – “Mom does”. This deceivingly simple dish, usually made of skin-on/bone-in chicken (also commonly found with pork or squid) is seared and simmered in a mix of coconut vinegar, soy sauce, onion, garlic, and balanced with a touch of sweet banana ketchup and oyster sauce. It is in the national repertoire of foods to eat while there, but seemed to be different with every opportunity we had to taste.

Recipes are passed from generation to generation, and most cooks I met don’t have a technical foundation in the kitchen. This leads to a wide range of possibilities for flavor and texture. If there’s one thing that every culture can relate to, it’s “mom’s” secret ingredient of love. Witnessing a culture that is so happy with almost nothing, it is painfully obvious that the act of sustenance can be greatly enhanced with the energy of a mother’s love.

It seems as though the Philippines hasn’t had the opportunity to embrace their culture as anything special. Food is more for sustenance and not for pleasure, as we know it in the Western societies. Try to imagine rice for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert ¬– for your entire life. Beginning only in the last 20 years, with their first taste of geo-political freedom, they have been given a new opportunity to explore their own internal possibilities. Now is the time they are redefining who they are, what their resources are, and how to show them off to the world. This is a very exciting time for Filipinos, and I hope it continues in the direction of eco-sustainability, local flavor improvisation, and maintaining family traditions.

Another thing to keep in mind, when imagining food culture in the Philippines, is the lack of a constant power source. Generators may be used in fancy hotels, but usually there is little to no refrigeration and most cooking is done on a gas stove — or more commonly, over wood coals. It may come as a shock for Western travelers to walk through a local air market and see shopkeepers constantly fanning flies away from hanging cuts of butchered pork. As it was explained to me, there is no need for refrigeration because all parts from that morning’s butchered animal will be sold, cooked, and digested before the day is over. If you desire certain cuts of meat, you better be one of the first ones there.

The same goes for fish ¬– fishermen deliver their catch at the crack of dawn, and any seafood that isn’t sold by the afternoon is sundried or fermented for preservation. One of my favorite Filipino breakfasts consisted of dried fish head (unknown variety), deep-fried, served with rice and a sunny side up egg. Don’t knock it until you try it – ¬the entire head is like a crispy fishy chip with no undesirable or off flavors (as one would expect seafood to be without refrigeration).

The spice of life

One does not need to stretch the imagination to think of all the fruits in a tropical, temperate climate – which are readily available and almost everywhere. There are more varieties of bananas than I can recall. Pineapple, coconut, papaya, and mangoes are plentiful. They have tons of root vegetables like taro, ube (a purple yam), sweet potato, lemongrass, onion, garlic, ginger, and turmeric. They also grow a few varieties of bush beans (one of which is similar to a lentil) and fields of corn – although I didn’t see much corn on any menu or in any market, leaving me to wonder where it goes. One of the many superfoods on the planet is moringa, which is one of their more prevalent and easily accessible greens. They use it in smoothies, soups, salads, stuffings, and the tree also provides much needed shade in a very hot climate. Being surrounded by water, it was usually easy to find fresh snapper, tuna, varieties of grouper, parrotfish, giant trevally, squid, prawns, and lobster. This was obviously more of the tourist-style fare, but the varieties of seafood that the locals eat tend to be smaller and, even to them, sometimes unidentifiable (where soup is often made).

So here is a culture with almost no refrigeration, lacking luxuries such as an oven, usually cooking on a small gas burner or more often grilling whole fish or skewers of animal products over coals, and always having rice as a component to a meal.

Why the hoopla? Imagine local rice wrapped in palm leaves and steamed in batches like small coin purses, marinated squid stuffed with onion, tomatoes, garlic, and ginger then grilled over hot coals, vegetable coconut curries with lemongrass, banana flower salads with hearts of palm and green papaya dressed with turmeric oil and mango vinegar, and a dessert of caramelized banana in a reduction of sweetened condensed milk mixed with coconut cream and topped with graham cookie crumbs and a touch of coffee.

Or we can go even more decadent with the cuisine of the North – with fresh fern tips and salted whole egg salad, rice steamed inside of a piece of sealed bamboo and roasted over coals, head on prawns stewed in back fat of baby crab, cubed beef tongue long braised with wood ear mushrooms and turned into pot pie (which shows the obvious reference to western style cooking but is nonetheless way better than most high-end steaks) and halo halo [mix mix], which is a combination of shaved ice, ube jam, ube ice cream, jellies, sweetened beans, and a combination of seemingly anything else they can get their hands on, is a very welcomed and refreshing textural party for the taste buds.

Ready for the weird yet delicious street fare? Kwik Kwik, what the locals call the very cheap options on the side of the road, can be a daring act for westerners but must not be avoided if one wants a true Filipino experience.

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Most of these vendors did not speak English, so a lot of what I tasted is still unknown. That being said, a few of my favorites were oval disc shaped shrimp and onion fritters, fried quail egg in batter, extremely tender calamari, stuffed grilled crab, chicken intestine skewers, grilled chicken head (best to know the proper way to eat this prior to just chomping in through the center), plenty of pork skewers, fried chicken wings, and if you’re lucky, fried smelt fish. Side note – my girlfriend is still a bit traumatized after biting into the chicken head after I mistakenly told her it was local sweet pork sausage. I promise, it was not intentional.

Another local oddity to note is Balut, which is a boiled egg that has been fertilized. When you crack it open, you are basically eating chicken embryo with the bones, beak and all, and nothing even close to resembling an egg. That one I did not try. Everything in the aforementioned section is served with accompaniments of chili vinegar, variations on soy glazes, and sweet chili sauces.

A time for good cheer

Christmas is a major holiday in the Philippines, and we were fortunate enough to be there around the holiday festivities. They don’t have pine trees, but they do make the shape of Christmas trees out of anything from tires to disposable plates to sea shells, and basically anything one can imagine.

A special dish saved only for major holidays is the famous Lechon – a whole roasted pig usually around 2-3 years, sometimes stuffed with a mix of onion, garlic, lemongrass, ginger, moringa, and tamarind, then spit-roasted or hearth-oven roasted. I’ve never had pork that tasted this good – the best part being deep red crispy skin covering the ever so tender and flavorful meat that falls away from the bone at first touch. Surely we can learn something from caring for an animal for 3 years, then personally butchering it, and preparing it for your community with that secret ingredient mother always uses – love. The meat I’m used to in the states is farm factory raised, thrown into processing facilities, and sits wrapped in plastic on a supermarket shelf for sometimes weeks before I, a proud and creative chef, ever have the chance to get my hands on it. The difference is appalling as well as inspiring.

The major lesson I learned, which I will continue to try and convey to family and friends, is rather simple. The Philippines is a country of major poverty, mistaken identity, and a necessity to do anything for survival. Yet what comes out of that is an extraordinarily happy and resourceful people who are willing to share all their local treasures – and do it with a sometimes toothless but always grand smile. As an American, is it possible that we have the [mis]fortune of coming from the land of opportunity? Most of us in the USA have never had the experience of having nothing, thus our perspective on gratitude and a necessity to be creative outside of our learned foundation, may be a bit skewed from the greater reality. Let me ask you something – like “mom’s famous” adobo in the Philippines, what legacy-invoking recipe have you learned from your mother?

About Corey Jay

I love to eat well, talk about food, and share my experiential knowledge with anyone interested in self-nourishment and the art of enjoying it.