Filipino cuisine is an eclectic blend of Chinese, Spanish, American and of course native cooking. I’m suddenly starting to realize during this trip that I’m actually not that big a fan of Filipino food. There are some things I like of course but in general, I just don’t really care for most it. For one thing, it’s not the healthiest diet in the world. High blood pressure and heart disease is pretty common in this country and it’s easy to see why. I have high blood pressure myself and on one of our trips I remember Lola telling me “Riccardo, I am worried about you drinking beer with your high blood pressure” and all I could think was “Jesus, everything you serve me is deep fried and layered in salt and you’re worried about me drinking a beer?!”
I’ve always thought it was interesting to compare and contrast the Philippines with Japan: both island nations, both reliant on fish and rice as their main food source however the similarities end there. Japan, one of the healthiest countries in the world, eat their fish and seafood raw or grilled while Filipinos deep fry everything and add tons of salt and MSG to everything. Not only that, the fish they eat here are the more trashy kind like tilapia and bangus which are raised in muddy ponds, most of which are found on farms so the animal feces seeps into the water. This is the main reason I refuse to eat tilapia. Tilapia seems to have become a fad fish in the US these days probably because it has an exotic name and is so cheap but if most people knew the disgusting conditions they are raised in, nobody would be eating it.
Pork is king here in the PI and, true to their nature, they eat it in the most unhealthiest way they can think of. Popular pork dishes here are things like crispy pata which is basically a ham hock but of course it’s deep fried and usually served with a soy-vinegar sauce. Then there is lechon kawali which are deep fried slabs of pork belly. Another hugely popular pork dish here is sisig and is probably the worst sounding one of all – it’s made from the ‘throw away’ parts of the pig such as the face, the ears, snout, etc., they fry it all up together with onions, chilis and garlic and serve it on a sizzling plate and then crack an egg over it so that the egg sort of cooks into the dish. I’ve tried all the above and they are all very tasty (yes, even the sisig) but I have to avoid them here because they would send my cholesterol and blood pressure skyrocketing into orbit.
Lechon kawali; basically fried pork belly.
Chicken is probably right up there with pork in most of the PI as it’s cheap and easy to raise chickens. Of course the most popular way to cook and eat chicken here is…you guessed it, fried. Fried chicken most likely became popular here due to the presence of the American military; as the story goes, African American soldiers taught the Filipinos how to fry chicken the American way and the rest is history. Filipinos also love to eat the heads and feet of the chicken. I’ve never tried the heads but I have tried chicken feet and I don’t like it at all – there’s no meat, it’s just collagen and bones. Virginia eats it occasionally and has actually gotten Max hooked on it. Weird kid. Of course everybody knows about chicken adobo which is absolutely delicious but again, extremely high in salt/sodium so I mostly avoid it here. Back home Virginia makes it often and her recipe is phenomenal but she usually makes a version much lower in sodium so I can partake. For those who have never tried it, adobo is basically a dish of meat braised in a mixture who main ingredients are soy sauce and vinegar along with other herbs and spices. Chicken is the most popular meat to use but they do it with pretty much every meat you can think of here. The best is when they put the small potatoes in it because the potatoes suck up ll of the amazing sauce while it cooks. The other night Virginia’s brother Bobby made duck adobo and it was delicious. The Filipino chicken barbeque is one of my favorites; they marinade the chicken in a combination of banana ketchup, sweet chili sauce, soy sauce, brown sugar and either calamansi or some kind of lime soda (Bobby uses Sprite), then they grill it up on wooden skewers. The sauce isn’t the healthiest I’m sure but it’s so good that I eat it anyway. Hey, at least it’s chicken, right? I’m a big chicken guy and I love me some chicken but the issue I have with a lot of the dishes here (not just chicken but pretty much every other meat dish) is that they usually cut up the animal fresh which means the meat is all on bones. It’s difficult to eat like that because you have to pick up a piece with your hand and sort of gnaw at it to get the meat off. When I eat meat dishes, I like to just shovel a big forkful into my mouth and enjoy all the flavors together without having to try and pick the meat off the bone. First world problem, I know.
The ubiquitous chicken adobo
Then you have the old Filipino standbys – pancit and lumpia. Pancit is basically a dish of glass noodles cooked with some soy sauce with tons of vegetables and some kind of meat. It’s probably the second most popular staple here after white rice and if you ever go to a Filipino party, you will no doubt see a giant bowl of pancit. I am personally not a huge fan of pancit. I don’t hate it, I just find most pancit rather bland and lacking in flavor. Virginia makes it really good as she uses dark soy sauce which gives it a bit of complexity in the flavor (dark soy sauce is more intense and robust in flavor) but for the most part I don’t eat much pancit.
Pancit: a Filipino staple
Lumpia are right up there as a Filipino staple and quite possibly the most recognizable Filipino food, along with adobo. As an added bonus, it’s also fun to say – “loom-pia”. Lumpia are basically the Philippines answer to the Chinese egg roll. Now, full disclosure; I personally don’t care for the way most Filipinos make their lumpia. They normally use too little filling and too much wrapping so when they deep fry them, they end up tasting like a glorified wanton. When you get a good lumpia however, they are delicious and, as usual, Virginia’s are the gold standard as far as I’m concerned. I am obviously biased as she’s my wife but people who have tried her lumpia would agree with me that they are the best they’ve tried. It’s not just by accident though, she has spent literally hours upon hours working on her lumpia recipe over the years. She works on every little detail – the marinade for the meats and vegetables, how thick to make the wrappers, etc., she leaves no stone unturned. She also makes hers a bit bigger than average so each one is a mouthful (that’s what she said). She started selling them at a few of our previous duty stations and was completely inundated with orders, so much so that she couldn’t even keep up with the demand. She makes them with pork, beef or chicken but I often find her vegetable ones the tastiest (she uses bean sprouts which I love). Lumpia are usually served with a sweet chili sauce but the absolute best dipping sauce we have found for her lumpia is the La Choy brand of sweet and sour sauce. We’ve tried other brands but not even close, it HAS to be the La Choy brand sweet and sour sauce. I remember our first year on the beach here, there was an old Filipina woman walking the beach selling homemade lumpia. I just HAD to buy some, thinking they must be great if you buy them here in the Philippines, but they were awful, almost no filling at all, just fried wrappings with shreds of carrot and the occasional speck of meat. Lesson learned. I tend to not eat a lot of fried food so I tried cooking Virginia’s lumpia in my air fryer due to my buddy Ramsey’s suggestion and they actually came out fantastic. And much healthier!
Virginia's lumpia; she has spent hours perfecting her recipe and people go crazy for them. One trick is to stand them up after frying so the oil drains and they remain crispy.
One of the best things about this country are the fruits and vegetables. The vegetables are mostly what we have back home but the fruits are off the chain. They have fruits here that I’d never even heard of such as rambutan (my favorite) and lanzones. Vegetable dishes are very popular here but in true Filipino fashion, they make them as unhealthy as they possibly can. For example. the other night they brought home some kind of green leafy vegetable which are some of the healthiest foods on the planet and I eat them as much as I can so I was eager to try them and told Lola as much. A little while later she came out to the bungalow with a plate of the greens but she had sauteèd the greens in a huge amount of oyster sauce which is loaded with sodium (are you sensing a trend here?). I took one bite and declined the rest. My favorite vegetable dish here is called Pinakbet and it’s a specialty of this region (Ilocano). The most popular ingredients are bitter melon (empalaya), eggplant, green beans, okra and pumpkin or squash, then they spice it up with garlic, ginger and onions. The Filipinos then ruin it by adding ‘bagoong’ which is a fermented shrimp paste. The Filipinos LOVE bagoong and put it on everything so one time I asked to try it and sweet fancy Moses did I regret it. It was like taking the top off of a salt shaker and pouring it down your throat. There was not enough water in the world to get that taste out of my mouth. Virginia makes pinakbet all the time back home but she leaves the bagoong out so it’s actually an extremely healthy dish and I eat the hell out of it. My favorite is to eat with some sardines. Another huge favorite that Virginia turned me onto is called Laing (La-ing). Laing is basically the leaves of the taro plant (though you can use most any green, she uses collards back in Germany since we can’t get taro leaves) which are very slowly simmered in coconut milk. They add garlic, chilis, lemongrass (a personal favorite), shallots, ginger and some kind of meat such as little bits of pork for flavoring. Locals use the bagoong but of course Virginia leaves it out. Laing is one of my absolute favorite Filipino dishes, it’s like a flavor explosion in your mouth (that’s what she said).
The Ugly (these are the worst dishes, most I won’t even touch):
Filipino Sweet Spaghetti. Filipinos LOVE sweet stuff. The love all kinds of desserts, they love sodas, they put sugar in everything…including their spaghetti sauce. They will do a red sauce with ground beef or pork but then they will add sweet banana ketchup to the sauce and they put hot dogs – yes, HOT DOGS – in the sauce. Then they will put some shredded cheddar on top. It is disgusting however, it does make pretty good drunk food after too many Red Horses.
Sweet spaghetti with banana ketchup and hot dogs, a Filipino tradition I just cannot get into...unless I am really drunk.
Dinuguan. Simply put, this is a stew made of pigs blood and pig offal (intestines and other internal organs). I’m pretty adventurous and there’s not much I won’t try at least once – I have even tried balut twice – but I draw the line at blood. The Filipinos love it though, it is extremely popular here.
Chicken heads. These are basically marinated chicken heads with the comb and beaks removed (sometimes). My wife’s family cooks these on the grill all the time and I just don’t get it. Seriously…how the hell do you even eat a chicken head? I remember my first trip here when we were staying at the wife’s family place in the provinces. I decided to go for a walk one afternoon and I came upon some young Filipinos cooking on the grill. The guy cooking asked me if I wanted to share some barbeque with them, I looked at the grill and it was two chicken heads on a wooden skewer and a few chicken feet. Needless to say, I passed.
Barbequed chicken heads: WTF.
Balut. Perhaps the most famous ‘bizarre food’ in the Philippines, balut is a fertilized duck egg that is incubated somewhere around 14-20 days and then steamed. The longer they are incubated, the more chance you have of getting an egg with features of the duckling starting to show and it’s not uncommon to eat balut that has feathers or a bit of beak starting to form. What they do here is crack open the top, sprinkle a little bit of salt and vinegar, then drink the juice that was formed by the cooking and then just eat the duck embryo whole. As I said earlier, I have actually eaten balut twice, if only to show Virginia’s family that I’m not a wuss, and it was surprisingly not as bad as you would think. Tasted mostly like a hard boiled egg, just with more crunchy bits. I have no desire to eat it again unless of course Virginia’s family throws down the gauntlet, in which case…it’s on.
Obviously the food in the Philippines is much more diverse than just the handful of dishes I’ve listed here and, like most countries, tends to be regional. Just thought I’d give people who have never been here an idea of what some of the cuisine is like…
2 comments:
Just one…..no two. This food sucks. WTF are Red Horses??
Red Horse is a strong beer (6.9 abv) popular here in the PI.
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