Having it All
Through time, different factors blessed Philippine cuisine with a regionalistic diversity, making it one of the richest food cultures in the world
Vladislav Doronin, Aman junkie-turned-Aman owner, talks about his brand, the latest addition and his next holiday—guess where
When Asia Society proposed a book on Philippine cooking in 2008, the initial plan was to follow the model of Thailand where some dishes were chosen to promote the cuisine. But talks with Filipino chefs (especially those involved in the project), some food writers, plus many in the food industry were averse to the idea. The questions mostly asked were: who will say this dish is better than the other or why that region and not my region?
Kulinarya: A Guidebook to Philippine Cuisine (Anvil Publishing, 2008) chose instead to identify dishes cooked all over the country. Its purpose was to show the proper way to cook those dishes.
When it comes to food, Filipinos are regionalistic. It was only by chance that the chefs involved in the book came from different provinces so at least that showed some representation of the whole country in terms of dishes and preferences and ways of cooking.
Because the Philippines is an archipelago, one can conclude that interaction between islands must have been limited before the Spaniards arrived in the 16th century. And then during the Spanish occupation, travel by land and water to other areas was restricted, each person carrying a cedula (identification paper) and requiring not only a travel permit from the local government but from the friar of the local Church.
With limited interaction, it is no wonder then that different languages, customs and cuisines developed in each Philippine region. The kind of cuisine, as well, depended on many factors—the lay of the land (if the place was landlocked and had no or limited access to the sea); what plants were grown and animals found in the region; and later, Spanish influence on the cooking.
It isn’t surprising, therefore, that any discussion on regional cuisine focuses on the differences.
The northern area of the big island of Luzon, where the Ilocos provinces (Norte, Sur, La Union, Pangasinan) are situated, is known for mostly vegetable dishes. The reason being, the limited arable land is mostly grown to cash crops like tobacco and sugar with the remaining areas for vegetables and root crops.
Limited arable land in the Cordilleras in the middle of northern Luzon did not, however, deter the ancient peoples known collectively as Igorots who live in the Mountain provinces to create a space to grow rice on the mountain side. The rice terraces, until today, yield traditional rice varieties. Their food, however, consists mainly of root crops. There are no pasture lands, so meat was limited and the big bovine, the carabao, was only slaughtered for special rites.
The eastern part of Luzon faces the Pacific Ocean. Big fish such as blue marlin and swordfish are landed especially in that longish strip of province called Quezon (named after its distinguished son and first Commonwealth president).
In the Cagayan Valley region in the northeast, the big river called Rio Grande de Cagayan is where the most prized fish in the country, the ludong (lobed river mullet), can be found, its eggs favoured as its most delectable part. It is a protected species and catching it during its spawning season is prohibited. Belonging to the region is Batanes. The group of islands at the northernmost part of the country is home to the Ivatans, its ethnolinguistic group, whose food is mostly for survival, like the salted dried arayu (golden dorado), because most of the typhoons that hit the country pass through there.
The Central Plains of Luzon, the provinces facing the West Philippine Sea, and many provinces in Southern Luzon are dominated by the Tagalogs whose dialect form the bulk of the national language, Filipino. In the old days, travel by land in the area was supplemented by travel through rivers and lakes using the casco, a flat barge with masts and rigs that transported goods from farms of one province to the markets of nearby provinces and from ships to other markets. Culinary influences travelled with those cascos, making the cooking in these places— Bulacan, Bataan, Nueva Ecija, Tarlac, Zambales—almost similar.