Rather
than the overworked adobo (so
identified as the Philippine stew in foreign cookbooks), sinigang seems to me the dish most representative of Filipino
taste. We like the lightly boiled, the slightly soured, the dish that includes
fish (or shrimp or meat) vegetables and broth. It is adaptable to all tastes (
if you don’t like shrimp, then bangus,
or pork), to all classes and budgets, (even ayungin,
in humble little piles, find their way into the pot), to seasons and availability
(walang talong, mahal ang gabi? kangkong na
lang!).
But why? Why does sinigang find its way to bare dulang,
to formica-topped restaurant booth, to gleaming ilustrado table? Why does one like anything at all? How is a people’s
taste shaped?
But still, why soured? Aside from the
fact that sour broths are cooling in hot weather, could it be perhaps because the
dish is meant to be eaten against the mild background of rice? Easy to plant
and harvest, and allowing more than one crop a year, rice is ubiquitous on the
landscape. One can picture our ancestors settling down beside their rivers and
finally tuning to the cultivation of fields, with rice as one of the first
steady crops.
RICE
Rice to us is more than basic cereal,
for as constant background, steady accompaniment; it is also the shaper of
other food, and of tastes. We not only sour, but also salt (daing, tuyo, bagoong) because the
blandness of rice suggests the desirability of sharp contrast. Rice can be
ground into flour and thus the proliferation of puto; the mildly sweet Putong
Polo, the banana leaf-encased Manapla variety; puto filled with meat or flavored with ube; puto in cakes or wedges, white or brown eaten with dinuguan or salabat.
THE
GREENERY
The landscape also offers the vines,
shrubs, fields, forest and tress from which comes the galaxy of gulay with which we are best all year
round. “Back home,” an American friend commented.” All we use from day to day
are peas, carrots, potatoes, cabbage, and very few others.”
The dietarily uninhibited Filipino, on the other hand, recognizes the succulence of roots (gabi, ube, kamote); the delicacy and flavor of leaves (pechay, dahong bawang, kintsay, pako, malunggay) and tendrils (talbos ng ampalaya, kalabasa, sayote); the bounty of fruits (not only upo and kalabasa, talong and ampalaya, but also desserts like langka and banana, which double as vegetables; and the excitement of flowers like katuray and kalabasa
About Doreen Fernandez
