Got this article and found it very interesting...just had my lunch and already hungry this early!
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By Gilda Cordero-Fernando in Manila/Philippine Daily Inquirer | ANN – 21 hours ago
Manila (Philippine Daily Inquirer/ANN) -
PANSIT. Cooked noodle dish.
PANSIT LUGLOG. Fresh or dried bihon (thin noodles) cooked in a thick
reddish sauce. Luglog means to cook by immersing in boiling water or
broth with the use of (originally) a woven rattan ladle with a long
handle. The noodles are immersed in the liquid (linuluglog). When
lifted, the broth or water simply drips through. Also known as pansit
palabok. Eaten with patis and kalamansi.
PALABOK is its thick red sauce that is poured on the noodles and
garnished with hard boiled eggs and halved, boiled shrimps. (Palabok
also means flowery flattering speech, meant to entice).
PANSIT MALABON. Same as above but uses fat miki noodles. Poured on
top, the palabok is topped with boiled (preferably duck) egg slices,
halved shrimps, (originally) slices of kamias, kinchay and maybe a
sprinkling of ground chicharon.
The best pansit Malabon is allegedly that of Rosy's. The eatery is
located in the part of Malabon that floods during high tide, so that you
have to sit on a stool with your feet in the water (last time I went
there). Today it has many Manila branches.
PANSIT LANGLANG is a soup consisting of sotanghon or glass noodles
with bits of chicken and tasty tengang daga (rats' ears) mushrooms. May
also be served dry.
]
PANSIT BIHON OR PANSIT MIKI GISADO. Normal pansit known to anyone who has sworn allegiance to the Philippine flag.
PANSIT HABHAB. Unadorned miki and sayote noodles sauteed in pork fat.
It is served up on a small square of banana leaf to fit one's palm and
is directly brought to the mouth (hence habhab). A Lukban snack.
PORK FAT and CHICHARON. Pork fat is revered by "wa-care" Filipino
gourmands who insist that anything fried in it tastes better. These
heathens are also adorers of pork chicharon (with a slab of fat) and
chicharong bulaklak made of the intestines of the pig pulled inside-out
to resemble wood roses. The inferior tito or small intestine are also
made into just-as-deadly cracklings. All dipped in vinegar with garlic
or sili (sarap!)
LECHON or LITSON. A good lechon should have meat that is evenly and
fully cooked, tender and dry. The skin should be crisp from ears to tail
(but is often not). The lechon preferred by party givers is lechon de
leche, the month-old piglet mercilessly plucked from its mother's breast
which socialites feast on without mercy.
The best weight for a good party lechon is allegedly 30 pounds. Its
best diet is vegetarian-bran, kangkong or kamote leaves-not kitchen
scraps or store-brought feeds with antibiotic. The simplest lechon
stuffing is banana leaves, which keeps the inside moist so that the pig
cooks thoroughly. Young sampalok or alibangbang leaves are also popular
stuffing as they impart their sourness to the meat and neutralize the
greasiness.
Some prefer to stuff the stomach cavity with brown upland rice or
even malagkit rice, which swims in lard as the pig roasts. Others insist
on a kind of turkey or chicken stuffing, therefore bread dough. The
truly perverse fill their lechon with paella or stuff it with a whole
chicken.
Warning: One of two people who split a baby lechon between them for dinner, died of high blood the same night.
LECHON SAUCE. The Batangas type is the most popular Tagalog version.
It is pork liver boiled and pounded to a paste, mixed with vinegar,
sugar and herbs and thickened with biscocho bread crumbs. Mang Tomas has
grown rich from bottling this lechon sauce.
The Pampanga lechon sauce tends to be sweeter, the Bicol, sourer.
The Cebu-Leyte lechon has no sauce. Its stuffing is a lot of pepper,
shallots, leeks and lemongrass, a stuffing that makes the animal tasty
by itself. The Cebu lechon has made its presence felt in Manila where it
is flown upon order.
RELYENO AND GALANTINA must not be confused. Both are deboned stuffed
chickens. Relyeno is the whole chicken, drumsticks and wings showing,
galantina is rolled, with deboned wings tucked inside. Relyeno is
brown-roasted in the oven, galantina is boiled and more bland. Galantina
filling includes, aside from ground pork and chicken, hard-boiled eggs,
Vienna sausage, maybe ham, green olives stuffed with pimiento, and
carrots. The basic filling of relyeno is spicier, with ham, pork
sausage, chorizo de Bilbao and raisins (no eggs).
DINENGDENG or INABRAW, a salubrious soupy vegetable dish of Ilocos
Norte made from fresh veggies picked from the backyard (one's own or the
neighbor's). It may include any of the following: bamboo shoots,
malunggay, himbabao, lima beans, patola, mashed kamote, squash leaves,
string beans, eggplants and saluyot with broiled fish or shrimps put
into the kettle before the greens.
An Ilocano teacher said: The Lord ascended into heaven in order to scatter the seeds of saluyot for the poor Ilocanos to eat.
Saluyot is a weed (slimy when cooked) which is never cultivated but
grows wantonly when it rains. Its consumption was once regarded with
amazement by botanists and other ethnic groups like Manilans.
Ampalaya. Why is the ampalaya wrinkled? Says artist Romeo Lee,
because it is the only vegetable that was not included in Bahay Kubo! It
is the signature vegetable of pinakbet. The miniature ampalaya is
probably the best symbol for how the Ilocano turns a disadvantage into
an advantage. Originally eaten by the farmer because it is a reject, the
small aborted ampalaya is now the sought-after size, ideal for
pinakbet.
PINAPAITAN. Early in the Spanish times, the ship of the English
freebooter Thomas Cavendish was moored off Fuga Island. He had captured
some Ilocanos to help him on board. From the shore came natives rowing
bancas with foodstuffs to sell, including a goat.
The sailors decided to buy the goat and they slaughtered it on deck,
throwing all the intestines into the sea. The Ilocano assistants were
not about to let all that lovely laman-loob go down and dived for the
treasure. This is followed by a description of the natives cooking the
innards, including its bile, into what the poor chronicler could only
describe as "a disgusting mess." This is the first mention in Blair and
Robertson of pinapaitan.
Pinapaitan is a bitter dish of goat meat and offals or chopped
intestines, mixed with papait which comes from digested grass in the
stomach of the goat. Pinapaitan dishes include the half-cooked Ilocano
kilawen and the almost-raw imbaliktad. With every purchase of meat
specifically for pinapaitan, the vendor throws in the attendant bile for
free.
KALDERETA is a goat stew with a rich red sauce consisting of canned
tomato sauce, ground liver, red hot chilis, bell peppers, a grated ball
of cheese and green olives simmered in the caldron for over an hour.
ITLOG NA PULA (red egg) or ITLOG NA MAALAT. We're probably the only
nation that colors its salted egg red. When I sent the proofs of my
first book on food ("Culinary Culture of the Philippines" 1977) to Hong
Kong for color correction, it was returned with the red egg colored
black. They thought we had made a mistake and so made it a century egg!
BIBINGKANG LALAKI. In the province, I stood in line behind a little
girl who had ordered a "bibingkang lalaki." I soon find out that it was
simply bibingka with eggs. (Logical.)
QUEK QUEK is a hard-boiled chicken egg dipped in bright-orange batter and fried. Sold on busy sidewalks.
BIKO; KALAMAY-HATI; SINUKMANI (Laguna) all refer to the same sticky rice delicacy.
KESONG PUTI; KESONG LAGUNA. Same-same
HOPIANG MONGO and HOPIANG BABOY. Hopiang mongo has black or yellow
mung bean filling, sometimes mixed with kamote. Hopiang baboy has no
baboy filling, only kundol, but it is fried in pork fat. Hopiang mongo
hyped up with lots of nuts and salted egg becomes mooncake that has a
box and sometimes costs as much as P500 each.
TURO-TURO, CARINDERIA, CAFETERIA, FAST FOOD are all the same.
FAST FOOD CHABACANO. The Chabacano of Zamboanga is a Visayan-Spanish
patois, the Davao Chabacano is Spanish-Tagalog-Visayan-Bagobo. The
Tagalog-Spanish Chabacano of Cavite City, where the galleons stopped to
be repaired, is the same as Ermita Chabacano (now dead).
Historically, the Ternate (Cavite) Chabacano was first. The original
kingdom of Ternate in the Moluccas was a small island rich in spices and
there was a tussle for the control of it among the Dutch, English and
Portuguese. At one point, to avoid persecution from the Muslims, 200
Christians, already speaking a Portuguese-Malay patois in 1674, were
evacuated to Manila from the original Ternate of the Moluccas. They
first settled in Ermita but were soon embroiled in endless quarrels with
the Tagalogs and so the community was bodily evacuated to Cavite-Tanza,
San Roque or Cavite Puerto and the new Ternate. (Keith Wtrirnon, 1954)
Ternate Chabacano is known for its florid metaphors, to wit: patis is
"lava mano" (hand wash). For "the rice pot is boiling over," they say
"ta sali ya el prusisyon" (the procession has emerged from the church).
The tira-tira or pulled sugar confection is "haligi del campanaryo"
(posts of the belfry). The bi-valve halaan is "cumi uno, buta dos" (eat
one, throw two away).
BULAKAN SPECIALTIES are appended to the town they are known for, such
as Litsong Bocaue (pan-fried lechon or lechong kawali); sukang Paombong
(a very sour nipa vinegar); ensaymadang Malolos (a sweet fancy bread
with salted egg on top); pan de sal Baliwag (buns with a hard crust);
pansit Marilao (a kind of pansit palabok); putong pulo (round, bite-size
rice cake); pastillas San Miguel (a rolled sweet made of fresh
carabao's milk.
An item becomes a "town specialty" when the talented cook who
invented it makes an outstanding product that is sought after by both
its inhabitants and outsiders. Today you can hardly tell these apart
from the products of copycats of other towns (from Judge Lorenzo
Veneracion).
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