Balot, betamax, raclette

The Good Life with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit

Good Friend P has one question he posed recently on Facebook: Why is it that when friends from abroad ask about Pinoy food, we always introduce them to balot, betamax, isaw, dinuguan, and the like?

These four, of course, are quintessential Pinoy street food: balot is boiled fertilized egg, an iconic food that is made of legend, myth and history; betamax, which is barbecued dried chicken blood is the ultimate survivor food, a belated addition to our lengthening list of nasty bits from livestock that we have developed into edibles;

Isaw is chicken butt, usually grilled but also deep fried, its play of crisp, crunch and softness inimitable, another recent proof of the diversity and innovativeness of our culinary culture. Dinuguan, well, is another iconic Pinoy dish of chopped meats and innards boiled in pork or chicken blood.

They certainly are truly Pinoy, and there couldn’t be food any more local than these. But P thinks we shouldn’t lay these dishes down immediately to foreigners, and I think he has a point. If we introduce these and the like as Pinoy food to the uninitiated, there is a strong possibility they will immediately get turned off and forget all about Filipino cuisine right off.

Serving these four as introduction to our cuisine, P said, will already evoke “yucky” reactions. “Let’s give them pleasurable food, let’s not turn them off [right away],” he said, adding, “And we ask why our food has not earned the status of Thai and Vietnamese food [on the global dining scene]”.

This is a point that we must seriously consider. The temptation to use shock value in engaging people is always strong, but it would be wiser if we do not use that in food.

Balot, betamax, isaw and dinuguan have their places in our culinary culture, and we should proudly serve them…at the right time and the right place, meaning, not especially to foreigners, who want to discover our flavors or who are just starting to get to know our food.

In the same manner that we might freak out when we are first served the blue stilton cheese, or the gooey raclette, foreigners who first encounter these four Pinoy street foods, are likely to freak out. Just as it takes time for us to like the blue cheese or even just pesto sauce, or coriander bits, it will also take time for foreigners to take in these four Pinoy dishes and their like.

Many of us who first encounter the blue cheese think it is cheese gone awfully spoiled, what with its smell and spores. I remember how one mother, visiting her son in Manila, cleaned his refrigerator and threw out “that foul-smelling thing” that must have been there for ages. She was referring to the stilton, of course, which the son, rising in the corporate latter, had already embraced as part of his chow.

Ditto the raclette that smells like, oh gosh, something I cannot write in a general readership paper like this. The first time I got into a room with raclette grilling, I wanted to flee but, unable to do that, endured it all as part of my education.

Sure, there are those who will immediately like balot, or maybe isaw, just as there are among us who take an immediate liking to these foreign foods that don’t smell the way we like our food to smell. But generally, it is better, and safer, to hold them first and introduce them slowly to foreign palates.

Besides, there is a whole range of choices of pleasurable foods around that we can use to “break in” foreigners into our cuisine. In fact, among the regional cuisines of the Philippines, it is the Negrense who has a whole book of recipes of local foods foreigners will immediately take to; as the most Europeanized province of the country, our cuisine, like the rest of our culture, had been influenced so much by the West we sometimes serve their food better than they can prepare them.*

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