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Bacolod City, Philippines Monday, May 21, 2012
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The Good Life
with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit
OPINIONS

A bowl of Antique

The Good Life
with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit

Peripatetic Good Friend R brought me a bowl of Antique during the weekend, actually laing – taro slices, stalks and leaves simmered in thick coconut milk – that he painstakingly hand carried from that faraway land to Bacolod.

You’d think edible Antique meant only tablea chocolate and muscovado, perhaps kutsinta and ibus. To most of us, laing is more of Bicol, where most dishes seem to play with coconut milk.

But here was laing from Antique – soft taro slices and properly mushy stalks swimming in thick coconut milk, the various textures melting in one’s mouth. The taro, or good old gabi in the dialect, was firm but full-bodied; the stalks were soft but fibrous. I read somewhere sometime back that taro was one of the richest sources of fiber, and with the world finally waking up the importance of fiber for health and wellness, it should become an important food and could be crowned super food in the years to come. With all of those health and medicinal virtues being appended to coconut these days, you can imagine how important laing could end up in the future.

Laing, R said, is really part of the Antique culinary culture, evident on how popular it is now; it is served in side street carinderias to its respectable restos. This particular laing R brought is an orchestra of textures and flavors; while the dominant taste is that of sweet and creamy coconut milk, the taro tastes hold their own. It is simmered, the ingredients allowed to mix well with each other over time.

Without the distracting bits of salted fish or tender pork cubes that are a feature of the pinangat, an iconic Bicolano dish that has invaded the rest of the country, laing relies solely on the powers of the taro plant and coco milk to create a whole flavorful dish. And it does not disappoint; in fact the absence of meats in the dish should boost its healthy character, it is vegetarian and it is good. Go, spread the word: laing is one nice exemption to the general belief about vegetarian dishes -- most of us hate vegetarian because they taste awfully of grass, plants, earth and little else.

The Antique laing was remarkable for one other thing: there was a whisper of smoke in the dishes, like it was cooked in wood fire and some of the smoke got into the pot. I don’t know, but this slight smoky edge to the dish evoked notes of Antique in my mind, its virgin mountains and seas, its unhurried life, where people have time to gather wood, cut them, cook with them in a process that respects time and allows the ingredients to come to their best character. Ka-hamtik guid -- it is soooo hamtik -- the word meaning the old name of Antique, after the ants which the early chroniclers had noted in their records.

When was the last time you tasted Tabok, the island across the straits, land of our forebears that has been largely untouched by the West as it did our place? Our neighbors and relatives there have surely kept their culinary culture well, as this laing told us.

It should be interesting keep the exchange between our provinces on a high level; after all, we all come from the same Malay and Negrito lines. A heightened interaction between our islands should boost trade and industry among us in this part of the planet; it wouldn’t cost so much but it will help stir the economic wheels when we start buying from each other.

But, of course, we need to do something to ease the transport of goods around. Bringing this laing from Antique to Negros for instance, required a production; it was first refrigerated and taken out of the icebox only when it was time to leave Antique. The container where it was placed was wrapped in newspaper to keep the cold in the almost four hours by van and boat that it took to reach my apartment here.*

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