American Filipina

One must always have a fruit tray at a Filipino Party  The word Merienda means "afternoon snack."  I should have known better that my family is incapable of bringing together anything small much less a light snack.  The mere size of my family does not lend to little afternoon parties with nibbles.  When my mother  and aunties arrived to my "Merienda" they quickly corrected my marketing of the event and what the word Merienda was meant to mean.  The party was immediately renamed "The Little Big Party". Everyone proudly displayed their dishes as they walked in and posed in a photographs with their dishes.  This was an exhilarating feeling to see and hear their own stories and journeys of trying to cook their own recipes.  Some instructed their children to make the dish, some made what they wanted to eat.  Now, the point was to share the recipes, but nobody brought a copy on paper, they were all chattering away in the kitchen on their appro...

Andre made Ilocano Pulpog a derivative of Sisig So, I am trying to wrap my head around the differences between the provincial culture my parents grew up in and that of a Filipino city slicker from Manila.  The reason why I am puzzled is because of a perplexed response I got from a Filipina girlfriend at work.  Note, I do not have many close Filipina girlfriends.  Period.  Unless we are relatives, distantly related or our parents knew each other, and you are Filipino, and you are not connected somehow within two degrees of separation, we may not know each other.  Now, that may leave only five people in Houston, given those statistics, but the point is - I did not seek out to make Filipino friends exclusively growing up.  I was already surrounded by them.  I did not see the differences in people that way.  For me the silo of uni-cultural just felt unnatural, which is a complete 360 to the way my parents operated. Thus, my youth angst of not real...

Garlic rice photo by Hamilton from Evart Michigan Simplicity sometimes makes things so much better.  I have been describing simple recipes with complicated nuances of in between twists and turns.  The truth of cooking as well as anything in life is that less is more.  I can not think of anything more basic and simple than rice. Rice is the fundamental staple of Filipino food.  It is the foundation upon which we pour our soups over.  It is the centerpiece of our sweets to make our gelatinous desserts.  My grandmother even made her own libation, saki, out of fermented rice.   I confess that I am probably the only Filipino who does not own a rice cooker. You can imagine how panicked I was when I decided to have a Filipino party.  I could not make enough rice to feed twenty-five people in a little pot, in my tiny kitchen, on my limited counter space stove top.  So I put a text out to family members who owned a rice cooker.  I text messa...

Fables of Agoo: Food and Oral History: Fried Fish, Daing : "Dad showing off his catch and cooking skills. My dad was referred to as 'Old Man of the Sea' when I booked him on one of those corporat..."

Dad showing off his catch and  cooking skills. My dad was referred to as "Old Man of the Sea" when I booked him on one of those corporate employee club deep sea fishing trips as a gift once.  Co-workers came back with stars in their eyes saying, "I met your dad.  He taught me how to fish."  I would look at them perplexed and matter-of-factly at the same time with that, "You mean you don't know how?" look.  They acted as if he had shared some sort of buried ancient secrets that caused them to now see the light.  My dad claimed to have never revealed his best tricks in the art of fishing.  I think my siblings and I have somehow inherited this "fish whisperer" talent.  We are not as skilled as father, but our endless weekends of childhood fishing should not be frowned upon.  We have the scars on our knees from walking the broken down jetties of Galveston to prove it. I recall a story of not really even trying and catching a very long rainb...

My sister shows off her contribution to the Merienda.      This edible surprise will scare you if you are not familiar with this Filipino appetizer.  I know of many Filipinos who dare not touch this unless they are drunk.  It is exotic and it is strange.  It even looks a little disgusting.  My father said something to me growing up about the etiquette of eating this culinary freak of nature.  He said "you must eat it in a movie theatre so you do not have to look at it."             The mysterious delicacy I build up here is the legendary balut.  According to Wikipedia, a  balut  is a fertilized  duck  (or chicken) egg with a nearly-developed  embryo  inside that is boiled alive and eaten in the shell.      Popularly believed to be an  aphrodisiac  and considered a high-protein, hearty snack, balut are mostly sold by street vendors in ...

This recipe blog entry is dedicated to my Tito Filimar Blanco  who passed away on Tuesday, April 12, 2011.  May he rest in peace. My cousin Frances shows off the dish his dad, my Uncle Leo, cooked      On your birthday, you must have someone make this dish for you.  The dish is called pancit or pansit, which is the term for noodles in Filipino cuisine. Noodles were introduced into the Philippines by the Chinese and have since been adopted into local cuisine. The term pancit is derived from the Hokkien pian i sit (Chinese: 便ê食) which means "something conveniently cooked fast".      If you have ever been to a Filipino party anywhere in the world, this dish will be there 99% of the time.  If it is not on the table, the host ran out of time to prepare it.  I think this dish best appeals to Americans because it is not too strange and exotic looking on the table.  The taste also does not have a distinct single s...