Something delicious
is happening

The Good Life with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit

A few weeks back, I had a long conversation with a town sorbetero and among the many things he told me, was how the range of flavors for the ice cream he makes has expanded.He makes homemade ice-cream for special occasions in the town, and one time, he said, he did one with blueberries.

Sometime not too long ago, I saw a pile of mint leaves being sold at the Burgos market here in Bacolod, and remembering how,about 15 years ago I had to go all the way to an upland farm to get them,my interest was definitely piqued. Who buys these? I asked the vendor. Many people, she said, adding these leaves are usedin tea, ice cream and other drinks.

I thought these two disparate instancesare harbingers of things to come in the local culinary front. Homemade blueberry ice cream in a town 50 kilometers away from the capital and a certain popularity for fresh mint leaves are an indication of how trends and products travel these days. They tell of how our interaction with other cultureshas accelerated, and how all these have impacted on the food that get to our tables in particular and in our lifestyles in general.

It tells us something delicious is happening in our kitchens, brought there by the speed of Internet and abetted by the heightened Pinoy Diaspora. Don’t look now, but even in the humble homes, we find pancakes for breakfast, clam chowder for lunch, bratwurst and maybe ramen for dinner, and oh, yes, some of us now have pre-dinner cocktails – all courtesy of the returning OFWs, who have tucked a can or two of these foreign goodies in their balikbayan boxes for the family in the hinterlands to try.

In many cases of cross-cultural marriages, the effect on the dinner plate can be even lasting: fresh red snapper, or gingaw, sliced and served as sashimi, white fish or aso-os done as tempura, eggplants sliced and grilled like zucchini.

Our dinner plate in other words is changing, evolving as it does with the influences and ingredients that come out way courtesy of media and migration.This is not the first time it is happening, of course; it has always been happening all these years, bringing us delicious dishes. How else did the chorizos and pancit molo and piaya and lumpia come to our dining tables, after all, but from the boats and ships and people who got to our land and brought their eating habits and traditions to us.

Of course, along the way, we put our stamp on these dishes, so that the valenciana that we serve is truly ours, distinct from it forerunners in Europe. Plenty are the stories we have of Spaniards who come and could no longer recognize the paella that we serve. Orhow the spaghetti and pizza as we know them now are not exactly the same as they are in Italy.

Among the provinces in the Philippines, it was ours that had absorbed and assimilated foreign values and turned them into delicious foods that have made our cuisine one of the richest if not the richest of all. Where, after all, can one have such exquisite desserts as napoleones and piaya? Our turrones, in fact, can rival even those from the places where turrones originated.

Such cultural adaptation and assimilation continue in our time and age, and are happening even faster, especially because we are now dealing with more cultures than in the past. We interact as much with the Middle East as we do with Europe, and all the cultures in between.

That assures us that more flavors and tastes will continue to land on our dinner plates, and keep our cuisine as varied and as exciting as it already is now.*

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