Squash flowers on your pizza

The Good Life with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit

It is an Italian restaurant alright, but Cibo, in Metopolitan Manila, showcases some of our most common ingredients, it gives us reason to be proud of what we have, aside from a cosmopolitan culinary outlook.

There is pizza, oblong-shaped, topped with anchovy and squash flowers, a melange of tsstes and textures that not only bring together East and West but most importantly, something that adorns our backyard gardens – the flower of good old kalabasa.  I know most of the squash flowers are made to kiss each other to help in the production of the fruit, which is the main produce that we use, and I don’t intend to disrupt the process.  You can harvest the flowers that cannot be used in the process of coaxing it to produce the fruits. My point here, as often as I have been pointing out, is the fact that many of what we think are ordinary matters in our backyards and gardens can in fact  be used prominently in many dishes served around the world. I know squash flowers can also be served as tempura, dipped in butter and deep-fried. I also heard some folks in our barrios use them in sautéed mongo, to add texture to the dish.  The added feature of using squash flowers is the fact that they also look good; locally, it should also make for good conversation starters, or ice-breaker.   Squash flowers are indeed, a culinary star, for its taste and texture as well as for its appearance. It is one of the materials that chef Margarita Fores, whose roots go all the way to Ma-ao in Bago city, has brilliantly used in this restaurant that is the most successful Italian food restos of the country now; successful, especially in terms of attracting a wide section of the Filipino foodie market and making them love Italian.

Aside from the flowers, Cibo also serves squash as soup – pureed fruit mixed with pancetta, the Italian bacon, and topped with a dollop of cream. Here is creaminess in several levels – the down-to-earth cream of  smoothened squash and the dairy taste of the softened cream, made more interesting   the slight saltiness and aged goodness of the pancetta.

Like the squash soup, the tomato soup tastes of home – fresh red tomatoes cooked with several herbs. You take this with images of the street side stalls in Dolid, selling freshly-harvested tomatoes of the Bisaya breed which has a tangy, even citrusy edge to them.

There is also black linguine, using squid ink – thick, textured, and tasty.  Fores’ take on the quid ink is making it hot, literally, with a hint of chili in the sauce. The result is an Italian dish redolent of the seas, but tempered by the slight hotness courtesy of the chilis. You can add more chili flakes for stronger punch.

Another ingredient that Fores has globalized in Cibo is the herring, tabagak in our  dialect, that she has bottled as pepperoncini sardines, slightly hot, slightly salty and slightly smoked. These sardines,  by the way, dress Cibo’s spaghetti romana.

Of course as far as using local ingredients is concerned, Fores’ showcase should be her Café Bola restaurant, which serves Filipino comfort food like dried fish and fried rice  and homely shakes like camias, chico and langka.

But Cibo, because it is Italian, concretely showcases the possibilities of our local ingredients side-by-side ingredients from around the world, proving that our cuilinary materials are, without doubt, at par with the rest of those from the other parts of the planet.*

For feedback, go to The Good Life on Facebook. Or log on to www.lifestylesbacolod.com

back to top