Sigarilyas, alugbati took center stage in APEC dinner
In the Philippines, alugbati and sigarilyas are just “weeds.” But at last night’s welcome dinner for Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders at MOA Arena in Pasay City, alugbati and sigarilyas were the stars of the show, along with pink heirloom rice from the Cordillera, tiger prawns, and the Davao blue cheese.
Conceptualized by two of
the country’s most respected chefs – Glenda Barretto, founder of Via Mare; and Gaita Forés of Cibo – last night’s menu featured dishes that showcase the country’s diverse regional flavors and indigenous ingredients from our country’s rich agricultural lands and oceans.
Though the chefs showed off distinct local flavors of adobo, tinola, kesong puti, itlog na maalat, the dishes – Ensalada Tagala, Yamang Dagat Tinola, Bistek Manilenya, Inasal na Apahap, and Maja Blanca Moderna – were plated in a more modern, even edgy manner. One example was the traditional kakanin maja blanca, which was served with smoked coconut merengue and lambanog-poached mango. The seafood tinola soup, on the other hand, consisted of grounded lapu-lapu meat and prawns turned into quenelle, a French technique where creamed seafood meat is mixed with egg then cooked and shaped like an egg. For the beef dish, they used the sous-vide method to keep the meat juicy and tender.
The ingredients, according to Barretto and Fores, were sourced from all over the Philippines because they wanted to show APEC leaders and the world what the Philippines had to offer. “All these microgreens and herbs that we’ve taken for granted are things that very important restaurants abroad have highlighted,” they said.
The use of local ingredients, it seems, is a prevailing trend among local chefs, something which the Department of Tourism and the Department of Agriculture had picked, having started to promote Filipino flavors and ingredients to international markets and to highlight the diverse regional flavors of the country. Filipino food has been showcased at Philippine exhibitions at the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris, Slow Food Turin, International Green Week in Berlin, and Madrid Fusion.