Celebrating freshness

The Good Life with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit

Come to think of it, one priceless blessing we enjoy hereabouts is the fact that we live near our food sources, the sea to the west, the plains to the center, and the mountains further east.

This means we all have the luxury half of the world does not have, or can only have at a severe cost: freshness on our everyday dining table. Indeed, since we grew up with this, we seem to have taken it for granted that our fishes taste sweeter, our grains have a more distinct aroma, our meats are juicier in ways they cannot be for the urbanites who live in the big cities, who must rely on ice and storage for their food.

I learned this very early, back in grade school, when we went to the deep south of the province: at the dining table in one of the beaches there, I noticed the grilled fish had a noticeable sweetness to it. This was the same kind of fish we ate here and all that the folks did there was wash and salt it before throwing it to the fire. There was only one difference in this fish from the ones I ordinarily eat: this one came straight from the sea, brought in by fishermen in motorboats at daybreak, and haggled over and bought right there, with the sea kissing our feet.

That was an early, unforgettable lesson in good eating, one that has left in me a strong bias for the joys of freshness and simple cooking. Of course, the cuisines in other parts of the world offer their own unique fascinations with their heavy use of spices, condiments and other whatnots in the sauces that they use to smoother their meat. Don’t get me wrong, I love the way the French butter almost everything, but it will always be sutokil for me, sugba, tola, kilaw – grill, boil, marinate – every time I want to reunite with the true tastes of fish.

Nothing like putting the fish, or any meat for that matter, straight from where they live to the pan or coals, with little else but salt to highlight its flavors. Nothing tastes like grilled pork that just came from slaughter, an advantage that our roadside carinderias in the towns should play up; freshness has a taste no resto in the city can offer, unless we pay a steep price for it.

The crabs of Madalag, EB Magalona are simply incomparable, not even with the most fanciful of ways with which city folks prepare these crustaceans. I think the Madalag crabs, freshly caught and steamed right away, is a truly gastronomic experience, and we can have it as often as the seas continue to yield them, at a price that wouldn’t impoverish us.

Good Friend C once cooked fresh steaks on live, volcanic rocks and they had a distinct taste to them; I said maybe this was the taste of the meat to the caveman, who had first discovered fire and cooking. But the point here is fresh meat or fish will always have taste and texture that their iced versions can never have and they should come as a premium.

Good Friend L once treated me to this seafood meal in Hong Kong where the oysters – “fresh!” bragged the chef, “just flown in this morning!” – tasted exactly as the oysters just harvested in Hinigaran, which I could have anytime we wanted to when I was growing up. I smiled through it all, and when the chef asked us how it was, I could only blurt an honest: “Great! They taste like childhood.”

It isn’t just about sentimentalism, of course. Freshness, as we are learning now, go a long way, way beyond our taste buds. They offer us a way to good health; because relying simply on freshness to give our food flavor, we can eliminate the use of synthetic and artificial spices and condiments, the use of which is getting alarmingly popular as we embrace modern conveniences.

Who knows what those synthetic flavor boosters do to our  bodies in the long term, when we don’t really need them if we only consciously celebrate freshness in all our meals.*

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