FILIPINO CULTURE
Interesting article about Filipino delicacies
elegantly written by an English man.
Here is an article written by a guy from England who lives in the
Philippines. He has written a number of different articles about
different aspects of life culture here, from a foreigner's perspective.
Thought you might enjoy it!
- A MATTER OF TASTE -
By Matthew Sutherland
"A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything
than he does of his dinner." -- Samuel Johnson.
I HAVE NOW BEEN in this country for over six years,
and consider myself in most respects well-assimilated.
However, there is one key step on the road to full
assimilation which I have yet to take, and that's to
eat balut. The day any of you sees me eating balut,
please call immigration and ask them to issue me a
Filipino passport, because at that point there will be
no turning back.
Balut, for those still blissfully ignorant non-Pinoys
out there, is a fertilized duck egg. It is commonly
sold with salt in a piece of newspaper, much like
English fish and chips, by street vendors-usually
after dark, presumably so you can't see how it is.
It's meant to be an aphrodisiac, although I can't
imagine anything more likely to dispel sexual desire
than crunching on a partially-formed baby duck,
swimming in noxious fluid. The embryo in the egg
comes in varying stages of development, but basically
it is not considered macho to eat one without fully
discernable feathers, beak, and claws. Some say these
crunchy bits are the best. Others prefer just to
drink the so-called 'soup', the vile, pungent liquid
that surrounds the aforementioned feathery fetus...
excuse me, I have to go and throw up now. I'll be
back in a minute.
Food dominates the life of the Filipino. People here
just love to eat. They eat at least eight times a
day. These eight official meals are called, in
order: breakfast, snacks, lunch, merienda, pica-pica,
pulutan, dinner, and
no-one-saw-me-take-that-cookie-from-the-fridge-so-it-doesn't-count.
The short gaps in between these mealtimes are spent
eating Sky Flakes from the open packet that sits on
every desktop. You're never far from food in the
Philippines. If you doubt this, next time you're
driving home from work, try this game. See how long
you can drive without seeing food-and I don't mean a
distant restaurant, or a picture of food. I mean a man
on the sidewalk frying fishballs, or a man walking
through the traffic selling nuts or candy. I bet it's
less than one minute.
Here are some other things I've noticed about food in
the Philippines. Firstly, a meal is not a meal
without rice - even breakfast. In the UK, I could go a
whole year without eating rice. Second, it's
impossible to drink without eating. A bottle of San
Miguel just isn't the same without gambas or beef
tapa. Third, no one ventures more than two paces from
their house without baon and a container of something
cold to drink. You might as well ask a Filipino to
leave home without his pants on. And lastly, where I
come from, you eat with a knife and fork. Here, you
eat with a spoon and fork. You try eating rice
swimming in sauce with a knife.
One really nice thing about Filipino food culture is
that people always ask you to share their food. In my
office, if you catch anyone attacking their baon,
they will always go: "Sir! Kain tayo!" ("Let's
eat!"). This confused me, until I realized that they
didn't actually expect me to sit down and start
munching on their boneless bangus. In fact, the polite
response is something like, "No thanks, I just ate."
But the principle is sound-if you have food on your
plate, you are expected to share it, however hungry
you are, with those who may be even hungrier. I think
that's great. In fact, this is frequently even taken
one step further. Many Filipinos use "Have you eaten
yet?" ("Kumain ka na?") as a general greeting,
irrespective of time of day or location.
Some foreigners think Filipino food is fairly dull
compared to other Asian cuisine. Actually lots of it
is very good: spicy dishes like Bicol Express
(strange, a dish named after a train); anything cooked
in coconut milk; anything kinilaw; and anything
adobo. And it's hard to beat the sheer wanton,
cholesterholic frenzy of a good old-fashioned lechon
de leche feast. Dig a pit, light a fire, add 50 pounds
of animal fat on a stick, and cook until crisp. Mmm,
mmm...you can actually feel your arteries constricting
with each successive mouthful.
I also share one key Pinoy trait-a sweet tooth. I am
thus the only foreigner I know who does not complain
about sweet bread, sweet burgers, sweet spaghetti,
sweet banana ketchup, and so on. I am a man who likes
to put jam on his pizza. Try it! It's the weird food
you want to avoid.
In addition to duck fetus in the half-shell, items to
avoid in the Philippines include pig's blood soup
(dinuguan); bull's testicle soup (the strangely-named
"soup number five"-I dread to think what numbers one
through four are); and the ubiquitous, stinky shrimp
paste bagoong, and its equally stinky sister patis.
Filipinos are so addicted to these latter items that
they will even risk arrest or deportation trying to
smuggle them into countries like Australia and the
USA, which wisely ban the importation of items you can
smell from more than 100 paces.
Then there's the small matter of the blue ice cream. I
have never been able to get my brain around eating
blue food; the ubiquitous ube leaves me cold.
And lastly on the subject of weird food, beware: that
kalderetang kambing could well be kalderetang aso...
The Filipino, of course, has a well-developed sense of
food humor. Here's a typical Pinoy food joke:
"I'm on a seafood diet."
"What's a seafood diet?"
"When I see food, I eat it!"
Filipinos also eat strange bits of animals--the feet,
the head, the guts, etc., usually barbecued on a
stick. These have been given witty names, like Adidas
(chickens' feet); kurbata (either just chicken's neck,
or "neck and thigh" as in "neck-tie") ; Walkman (pigs
ears); PAL (chicken wings); helmet(chicken heads); IUD
(chicken intestines), and Betamax (video-cassette-like
blocks of animal blood). Yum, yum.
