Eating in the Philippines at the Turn of the Century
After a brutally violent, protracted imperialist war against Filipina/o national- ists that began in 1898, the United States maintained the Philippines as a for- mal colony until 1946. The Philippine diet that American imperialists encoun- tered at the turn of the century was a Southeast Asian one, with influences from China, Spain, and Mexico. More than eighty dialect and language groups and seven thousand islands meant that countless regional and local methods, resources, recipes, and styles of food proliferated.8 For example, the rocky soil of the Ilocos region produced a cuisine based on vegetables, including pinakbet (vegetables with pork and bagoong, a fermented, salted fish paste). According to Doreen Fernandez, four flavors dominate in Philippine cooking: salty, sour, sweet, and bitter. Rice is central, she writes, and probably the most important food in the entire archipelago.
Before Spanish colonial rule began in 1565, people of the archipelago depended on staples such as seafood, goat, pork, chicken, carabao (water buf- falo) meat and milk, rice, and fruits and vegetables such as coconuts, bananas, and mangoes.9 Beginning in the eleventh century, Chinese traders brought noo- dles, bean curd, bean sprouts, soy sauce, and such dishes as lumpia, a roll of juli- enned vegetables and meats in a flour-based wrapper. Filipinas/os indigenized these Chinese dishes into such dishes as pansit (sautéed noodles).10 Spanish fri- ars and officials brought olive oil, wine, ham, tomatoes, and sausages. N. S. Fer- nandez notes that Spanish food became fiesta cuisine.11 Spain ruled its Southeast Asian colony by way of Mexico, for the center of Spanish colonial rule was the galleons trade linking Mexico and the Philippines. Filipinas/os who jumped ship
Dawn Bohulano Mabalon
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from the galleons in Acapulco as early as the 1500s and 1600s and made their way to Louisiana began shrimping in the bayous.12 From Mexico came dozens of new terms, foods, dishes, and techniques: cacao, guava, avocados, camote (sweet potatoes), singkamas (jicama), and tamales. From Mexico came the term adobo, for an indigenous pickled dish in which vegetables and/or protein are stewed in vinegar, salt, garlic and spices, a method that flavors, tenderizes, and preserves, historian Felice Prudente Sta. Maria pointed out.13 Fernandez explains that in the Philippines, adobo came to mean anything—pork, chicken, seafood, vegetables cooked in the adobo style.14
By the time Americans arrived, elite Filipinas/os were enjoying imported cheeses, Spanish sausages, and paté. The sugar barons in the province of Pam- panga, considered the culinary capital of the Philippines, Filipinized Spanish recipes such as arroz a la Valenciana (sweet rice and meats cooked in coco- nut milk and olives), menudo (diced liver, pork, and vegetables), afritadang manok, and chicken braised in a rich tomato broth. These dishes became fiesta food and Sunday fare for elites. Fiesta desserts included leche flan, or crème caramel, and a variety of desserts, including biko and suman, that were made of newly harvested sweet rice, sugar, and coconut milk, called kakanin.15