Rachel Laudan

I’ve just been reading Memories of Philippine Kitchens by Amy Besa and Romy Dorotan. It’s a simply wonderful book, heartfelt, informative and provocative.

Since I’ve been chatting with Amy on and off for years about the Acapulco-Manila connection, one of the things I was looking out for as I worked my way through the book were signs of this connection.

Three things leapt out at me.

(1) The sheer extent of the connection. Whether breads or bread-based dishes (pan de sal, ensaimada, empanadas), pork products (butifarras, chicharron, longaniza), sweets (leche flan, tocino del cielo, buñuelos de viento), or a miscellany of prepared main dishes (pochero or puchero, escabeche) the Spanish influence on Filipino cuisine is enormous.

(2) The transformation of many dishes to Filipino tastes (or sometimes the vestiges of earlier tastes from other parts of the Spanish-speaking world). The ensaimada more like a brioche than a contemporary Minorcan ensaimada, the chicharron of whole pig’s feet, the empanadas with new fillings.

(3) The near-total absence of specifically Mexican dishes. If we take two of the key Mexican techniques to be the nixtamalization of maize and the drying and rehydrating of chiles, we don’t seem to find either in the Philippines, at least not commonly. Food for thought.

This book is so full of hitherto-unavailable information, that I will be working through it in a number of posts.