Celebrating rice

The Good Life with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit

They mixed it with minced meats and chopped fruits and veggies, fused it with herbs and aromatic leaves, sautéed it, boiled it, steamed it, even fried it They formed it into balls and squares, served it wrapped and served it loose and  served it tight, with sweet, salty and spicy condiments.

These were the million and one ways with rice, done by the cooks of Bago city, rice granary of Negros Occidental, freshness capital of the province. This city where people have the enviable luxury of buying, daily, fresh food for their meals yesterday celebrated that one other blessing they enjoy: the profusion of rice varieties from its plains and upland fields, grains which range from the ordinary to the special to the rare, from market rice to  special white, to aromatic varieties, and even specialty ones like red, brown, black and wild rice.

Blessed with these natural resources, it is small wonder why this city has such a robust culinary tradition, one that seems to have overridden even the colonial past of this province. While the famous foods of Silay, for example, has a distinctly Castillian character to them, Bago serves what  foodies today classify as “virgin” foods, the dishes that were developed out of the reources of one particular place, untouched by foreign influences yet, foods like la-uya – boiled beef innards; paksiw, meats simmered in vinegar and souring leaves, and kinilaw, meats like shrimps and fish marinated in sour vinegar and maybe flavored by a dollop or two of pure coconut milk.

To examine Bago’s cuisine closely is to look at a proud people who’s always had sufficient resources, they took in foreign influences but did not surrender their own tastes and flavors to them. And so they may have kwakoy or rice cake, by all indications influenced by the Chinese,  but one that is distincty flat and thin, designed I think for the more luxurious lifestyles of the people of Bago. In many parts of Asia, this rice cake is thick and is oftentimes shaped like a cookie and even a cupcake, the better I think for their harried people to gobble. There is panarra , another food that have Chinese, Spanish and maybe even Mexian touches to it, but here wrapped in a pastry made from rice flour, colored by atsuete orange, in a size dainty enough for people with long hours to spend in entertaining.

And so here they were, celebrating the abundance of rice and its myriad possibilities, proud in their unfailing taste buds, and prouder still of their natural resources.  “Cooking Showdown,” they called it, a cookfest sponsored by the city’s Soroptimist chapter and the local government, and aptly, centered on rice.

It was part of the weeklong charter anniversary celebrations that end on Sunday.

All  but one of its 24 barangays participated, and so in the end, there were 23 rice-based entries – dishes that turned old favorites like chicken pesa into rice-stuffed chicken served with veggies and soup flavored by their juices. And black rice paella, or paella with rice blackened by squid ink.

There were thoroughly new ones like black rice and vegetables wrapped in lumpia wrappers and then deep-fried.  Or seafood rice with coconut milk served with crispy kangkong leaves and fried anchovies.

There were interestingly inventive numbers, like rice-based embutido and steamed rice balls.

It was an interesting array of preparations, one that has definitely raised the Pinoy staple from being a co-equal of a viand on our plates to one stand-alone dish. And that is something to celebrate about.* To be continued

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