How ingredients are made
TNot being able to go around has been good for food writers. We have searched through our books instead, and the writings of others
he good thing about this pandemic is that there is more time to think about, talk about and love our food.
I’ve attended so many webinars, seen so many features on YouTube, have witnessed many books that have been produced during lockdown and many times have been a part of those.
Not being able to go around has been good for food writers. We have searched through our books instead, and the writings of others, have digested ideas from them. At last, people have learned the value of writing and researching rather than just cooking.
One of the recent webinars was an invitation to attend Claude Tayag’s talk on “Unboxing the Galleon Trade.” If you were wondering as I did what was there to “unbox,” it seems that lecture attendees were to be sent a box containing food items contained in the discussion.
And so there was champorado because of the cacao from Mexico, lambanog for mixing a prepared drink with, tequila which the lecture said was because Filipinos taught Mexicans how to distill and which Mexicans later applied to their agave.
The “unboxing” makes for an interactive and probably more interesting session for many. You get to taste what is being talked about. That’s been done in other webinars, where the wines or beers and the featured cheese are discussed— the provenance, the applications, the pairings. I had written about those in this column.
However, the tasting can sometimes get in the way of the information. You will ask yourself, is the tasting more important than the information? Maybe it’s because I have already tasted what was in the box and have mixed my drinks before. So for me, what Tayag had to say was the reason I attended.
Understanding ingredients
Have you ever wondered about the ingredients that you use in cooking? Many of those are already prepared in cans or bottles. But if you took the time to find out how these were made, it will help you to understand what those contribute to the food you are cooking and where they came from.
Hoisin sauce. A dark, thick sauce made from fermented soybeans mixed with ingredients like garlic, chili and sugar. It is used to glaze meat. Its name can be confusing, because “hoisin” means “seafood,” but it doesn’t contain any seafood in its list of ingredients.
White pepper and black pepper. The pepper plant produces both, but the color and flavor are determined by when the berries are picked. White pepper is processed from fully ripe berries, then soaked in water to ferment the berries, and when the skin is removed it produces the white pepper. The black pepper is picked while still unripe and are dried which blackens the skin.
Sea cucumber. A marine animal found worldwide on the seafloor. Considered a healthy food because it cleanses the kidneys and revives the blood. But it is also healthy for the environment because it breaks down organic matter in the sea and recycles nutrients. It is known as trepang in Mindanao, and its earliest traders were the Indonesians of Makassar.
Bean curd skin. When boiling soy milk, the film that forms on top is what constitutes bean curd skin. When collected and dried, it turns into yellow sheets. Also called tofu skin, it is used to roll ground meat and vegetables in doing kikiam, a roll made with ground pork and vegetables.
Black bean paste. Black beans are fermented and mixed with chopped garlic cloves, then the mixture is dry-roasted in a wok, and stored to develop a deeper flavor. We know it as
tausi.
Light and dark soy sauce.
Light soy sauce is made of fermented soy beans with water and barley or wheat added. Dark soy sauce is made from light soy sauce with caramel to add color and flavor to the dish.
Sotanghon. Made from mung bean starch, its other English names are bean thread noodles, glass noodles or cellophane noodles. While that’s the Filipino name, it is called
tanghon in other provinces and
tunghon in Malaysia.
Worcestershire sauce. The funniest comment about this condiment is that it’s hard to pronounce. It has at least 11 ingredients that include quite a big range of flavors such as tamarind, anchovies, vinegar, molasses and unspecified spices. Said to have been first concocted by the company Lea and Perrins in England, the name could not be theirs exclusively because a judge ruled that Worcestershire is a generic name for the sauce.