No Reservations and My Family Lechon
Pigs of My Family. If I met Bourdain and I had to show him my philippines then he would be mostly dissapointed except for one thing: the lechon. Lechon is that one thing that strongly figures Filipino.
One would wonder, what about Lola's food? Sorry, but it was lolo who was the cook of the family and it was he who had that very perfectionist temperment when it came to cooking. If Bourdain ate with my family and I was in Augusto's place I would take him to the Macapagal side and let my cousins Leonard and Raymond deliver the key strokes about Tagalog food.
I just know my dad so well and can imagine him trying to talk to Bourdain and explain his ideas and dreams for Philppine cuisine. It would not be a bad thing, infact I bet they will find my dad funny in a goofy kind of way and quite endearing.
What is Filipino Cuisine? To me: It is Comfort and Adaptability. There is one tradition in cooking filipinos are strongly in favor of, and it is their Family and their Friends. Filipinos bend and sway to the taste of the times and that of loved ones. Our dishes are not signature in the use of spices, like the way jajampong, tom yum, kimchi, curry, etc.. tastes like. It is about adapting to the hardships we faced and loving the by product with it.
When rice was short, Cebuanos ate a lot of corn. When the Spanish and Americans made us produce Sugar, we put it in all our food. We make Sushi "Pulutan" (food to be eaten with alchohol). We cooked a lot of adobo, not because it was our favorite dish in the early days, but because it allowed food to keep for very much longer. Filipino Cuisine is the taste of hardships gone by and better days.
The One Flavor that is prevelant in Philippine Cuisine is Simplicity. Honestly, we have to be a little bit more self critical about our range of flavors: we are not as sophisticated as our neighbors in the Asia but this is because of the long history of economic hardship we had. We have the simplest taste, when compared to the variety of spices, aromatics and herbs. Although in contrast we have the greatest appreciation of food and the adaptibility to live off any culture's cuisine for very long time.
If you wondered what the Foremost Culinary Cultures had in common, it was their motivation to innovate. Those cultures had the greatest and widest of civil liberties and most open of upward mobility in their times. They hadthe ability to reward innovation. Unfortunately, if you look at the strains even the lowliest entrepeneure faces because of corruption and the many social inquities we are so able to accept and ignore it would be no wonder why the ability to innovate is severely limited.
I cannot help make it a social thing, because IT IS a very strong element in Phlippine Culture that cannot be denied. One cannot dismiss the nature of our social system as an unimportant factor. People cannot be so sore with this truth when we have one of the worst conditions against free speech in the world (a point below North Korea!). No one can argue it is slander because, we have one of the most corrupt goverment (as the opinion and experience of every filipino ). What is this its all talk about upliftment and the goverment skims in practice 80% if all spending (check the GDP against the standard practice of "fundraising"; basically we are very productive, but Terribly Corrupt).
Poverty is not a Flavor people!
One would wonder, what about Lola's food? Sorry, but it was lolo who was the cook of the family and it was he who had that very perfectionist temperment when it came to cooking. If Bourdain ate with my family and I was in Augusto's place I would take him to the Macapagal side and let my cousins Leonard and Raymond deliver the key strokes about Tagalog food.
I just know my dad so well and can imagine him trying to talk to Bourdain and explain his ideas and dreams for Philppine cuisine. It would not be a bad thing, infact I bet they will find my dad funny in a goofy kind of way and quite endearing.
What is Filipino Cuisine? To me: It is Comfort and Adaptability. There is one tradition in cooking filipinos are strongly in favor of, and it is their Family and their Friends. Filipinos bend and sway to the taste of the times and that of loved ones. Our dishes are not signature in the use of spices, like the way jajampong, tom yum, kimchi, curry, etc.. tastes like. It is about adapting to the hardships we faced and loving the by product with it.
When rice was short, Cebuanos ate a lot of corn. When the Spanish and Americans made us produce Sugar, we put it in all our food. We make Sushi "Pulutan" (food to be eaten with alchohol). We cooked a lot of adobo, not because it was our favorite dish in the early days, but because it allowed food to keep for very much longer. Filipino Cuisine is the taste of hardships gone by and better days.
The One Flavor that is prevelant in Philippine Cuisine is Simplicity. Honestly, we have to be a little bit more self critical about our range of flavors: we are not as sophisticated as our neighbors in the Asia but this is because of the long history of economic hardship we had. We have the simplest taste, when compared to the variety of spices, aromatics and herbs. Although in contrast we have the greatest appreciation of food and the adaptibility to live off any culture's cuisine for very long time.
If you wondered what the Foremost Culinary Cultures had in common, it was their motivation to innovate. Those cultures had the greatest and widest of civil liberties and most open of upward mobility in their times. They hadthe ability to reward innovation. Unfortunately, if you look at the strains even the lowliest entrepeneure faces because of corruption and the many social inquities we are so able to accept and ignore it would be no wonder why the ability to innovate is severely limited.
I cannot help make it a social thing, because IT IS a very strong element in Phlippine Culture that cannot be denied. One cannot dismiss the nature of our social system as an unimportant factor. People cannot be so sore with this truth when we have one of the worst conditions against free speech in the world (a point below North Korea!). No one can argue it is slander because, we have one of the most corrupt goverment (as the opinion and experience of every filipino ). What is this its all talk about upliftment and the goverment skims in practice 80% if all spending (check the GDP against the standard practice of "fundraising"; basically we are very productive, but Terribly Corrupt).
Poverty is not a Flavor people!
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