Southeast Asia is known for consistently having some of the best food in the world. In light of this, it’s easy for Filipino food to be overshadowed by exquisite and immensely popular Thai food or Malaysia and Singapore’s rich fusion of Indian, Chinese and Malay flavors. A friend of mine,who’s training to be a chef, told me that one of the reasons why Filipino food isn’t as popular as other southeast Asian cuisines is that it isn’t aesthetically pleasing. If you go to a food stand anywhere in Luzon, you will see bowl after bowl of what looks like brown glop, accompanied by some rather bony fried fish. The flavors are another reason why Filipino food is considered to be the poor step-child of Southeast Asian cuisines. As my friend said, Filipino food is essentially comfort food. While Malaysian and Thai foods are flavored with curries and spices, the food here is flavored with mainly salt and more salt. It’s a lot like southern cooking: It may not be good for you, and outsiders would never want to eat it on a daily basis, but I tell ya, when you are feeling down, nothing picks you up like your lola’s chicken adobo! :P
There are a number of Filipino dishes that I have absolutely fallen in love with during my time here. The dishes that have won my heart are not things you can find in Filipino restaurants abroad. You can’t even find them in restaurants in the Philippines! That’s because my favorite dishes are typical of the mountain people in northern Luzon. I have only ever seen this food being cooked in people’s houses. Another thing that will probably come as a shock to most Filipinos is that none of my favorite dishes have meat in them. Most Filipinos don’t eat vegetables at all, let alone vegetables without meat. So what is my favorite Filipino dish of all time? Ferns! Who knew they were edible, let alone delicious?! When cooked, they’re a little like spinach, but better tasting! Ate Jean cooks hers with tomato, vinegar, ginger and I think maybe garlic. She also makes them in the morning, so I love making a sandwich out of bread, a sunny-side up egg, and ferns. It has become my favorite breakfast food.
There was another fern dish I tried when I was visiting a community in the mountains in Rizal province. I don’t know what it was called. The host kept apologizing for there being no meat, and I kept assuring him I was more than alright with not having to eat pork for every meal. This particular dish was a sort of fern-lentil stew. I was a huge fan.
My favorite snack foods here are green mango (people usually eat this with salt, I don’t) and boiled camote (a type of root plant a little bit like a yam and most commonly eaten by indigenous peoples). They may be merely unflavored vegetables, but their simplicity is a large part of their deliciousness. Ironically, these are things you eat when you don’t want to spend money on more expensive, highly processed snacks. Yet they’re better for you and, in my opinion, better tasting!
Because the Philippines is such an epicenter for globalization, and the country’s culture changes constantly, most things people tell you about Filipino culture you will see contradicted the very next day. One thing that does not change, however, is the fact that Filipinos have to eat rice with every meal, no matter what they are eating. I’ve been served rice with chili, oatmeal, spaghetti, and a long list of foods that one would never dream of needing to eat rice with. And wow, Filipinos eat a lot of rice! My Canadian friends keep asking, how is it that people can eat so much, so often and are not the size of houses?! We talked about this for a while, and eventually decided it had to do with biology. People whose ancestors came from northern climates have bodies that are evolved to deal with a long period of scarcity during winter. For this reason, they have “highly-efficient metabolisms.” This fact causes a lot of anguish with Western women, who sometimes wonder how they can eat so little and still gain weight. On the other hand, people who live in warm climates, where the land is fertile, are used to having food all year round. Their bodies naturally process food faster.
Unfortunately, the same cultural pattern that happened in Midwestern US in the 20th century is now happening here. If you come from a culture where food availability is inconsistent on a daily basis (thanks to market forces allocating food away from the poor) you feel compelled to eat as much as you can when food is available. Also, if you come from a farming culture (ahem, Midwest), the idea is that you need to eat as much as you can because you will burn all of those calories by the end of a hard day’s work on the farm. If you’re going to be burning thousands of calories a day, you don’t want to fill your stomach up with vegetables, either. Meat is fatty and caloric, and will keep you fuller longer and be harder for your body to burn.
Another note on rice: I’m discovering more and more how much food is an indicator of socio-economic status. When I was in Malaysia, I was surprised that we didn’t eat rice with most of our meals. Rice was sort of an optional thing. Malaysia, while a developing country, is a far more affluent country than the Philippines. Malaysia also has the highest obesity rate in southeast Asia.
Filipinos often ask me, “What is the staple of people in the US?” I tell them that there isn’t really anything that the typical American family eats at every meal. Once upon a time, bread, beans or potatoes were probably the staple of many, but nowadays no one really eats those at every meal, else they’ll gain a ton of weight. We have the resources that we don’t have to fill up on a staple. That’s why I always feel a little guilty when people ask me what my staple is. It has made me complain less about eating rice at every meal. Whenever I do, I feel a little bit like I’m showing solidarity, even if its through eating the same foods.
