- HubPages»
- Food and Cooking»
- World Cuisines»
- Southeast Asian Cuisine
The Filipino Cuisine -The Melting Pot Of Asia
June 25 (Friday) World Cuisines - Southeast Asian
If you happen to visit the Philippines, my beloved country, you’ll be amazed of the food dishes that you’ll eat here. Boasting aside, the archipelago is considered the “melting pot” in Asia because of the countless world cuisines you’ll encounter at posh restaurants in many key cities in the country. Countless influences contribute to this kind of wonders in the Food World here in my place.
If you like Asian food, from Japan, South Korea, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam among others, you can choose many available fast food and restaurants frolicking many cities’ thoroughfares. It’s the same with American, African and European cuisines. Name it, order it…you’ll have it here.
Rice is the main staple food and corn is the second most planted crop aside from the former the whole year round. You can still see carabaos or water buffalos being used in cultivating farmlands.
Filipino streetfoods are always the attraction at the main thoroughfares of the cities. You just have to be careful in choosing what to eat.
Bringing You A Taste Of The Philippines c/o dcefilmsusa
Travel Man's Filipino Food Diary
1. 1971-1978 - The first seven years of my life...There were workers sleeping in our homestead (my father was the assistant or caretaker of the hacienda). Everyday there were sumptous meals being prepared in the kitchen by several household help. I first tasted pork adobo, chicken in coconut milk, pork sinigang, chopsuey, even exotic foods like cooked non-poisonous snake and monitor lizards.
Every time I woke up in the morning, fried rice with tuyo or dried fish with estrellado or sunny side-up egg and carabao's fresh milk tickled my palate. I was a child full of curiosity, that even accidentally eaten the siling labuyo (hot small peppers) anticipating the it's red coloring means sweet flavor.Tomato enchiladas always accompany every Filipino breakfast. Longganisa and beef tapa were also an enticing morning treat to me.
Most of our dishes in Bicol, Philippines is normally cooked with coconut milk. During fiestas, my relatives will always come and help prepare festive dishes like kare-kare or beef oxtail in peanut sauce, mechado, menudo, afritada, igado, and of course, dinuguan.
Being a child, then, lured you to eat most of the sweets, like cassava rock n'roll, leche flan, buko salad, maja blanca, bukayo or sweetened young coconut meat.
2. 1979-1988 - I was introduced to other Filipino dishes in school cafeterias and restaurants. I became acquainted with many kinds of noodle delicacies. Rice cakes or puto with pork blood or dinuguan compliments with each other. I was appreciating the influence of Chinese cuisine in our cooking. Pancit bihon, pancit lomi, miswa, canton are still my favorites. I learn to use chopstick when my friends frequent the local Chinese restaurant fusing Chinese cooking into Filipino dishes.
I will not forget my favorite snack in high school, banana cake or nilupak and of course, halo-halo!
3 1988-1999 - College and Radio days... Pancit loglog and beef bulalo or kinalas were among my usual dish for breakfast and lunch. I balanced it with chopsuey or Chinese vegetable platter. Lechon or roasted pork, lumpia and other regional dishes were my next discovery then. I began tasting other Filipino dishes due to some parties and social functions I attended as a mediaman.
4. 2000 - onwards - Working in a Filipino-Chinese fastfood chain gave me an inspiration of pursuing my other interest, in cooking. I've trained and worked as food service crew and cook trainee in Chowking (Edsa-Taft, Pasay City, Manila). After three months, I was called to be the resident cook at the seaman's center of my first shipping company (UNLAD Ship Manning & Management, Inc.). I continued learning about food purchasing, food preparation and victualling. Almost all the recipes we cooked were Filipino dishes. Until my first contract as a seafarer in 2001. I still cook Filipino dishes onboard ship. They prefer Lutong Bahay or Filipino Country Cooking because it helps most of the Filipino seafarers to be at home inside the ship and eases the burden of homesickness.
Filipino Businesses promoting Filipino Cuisine Worldwide
Gaining international attention, wherever there are Filipino community is the food businesses promoting Filipino cuisine at the foreign land where they're working or living.
Successful stories on Goldilocks and Jollibee Food Corporation became the word of mouth for the past decades. These Filipino-owned businesses are open to franchising, where you can buy the business name and even sell their products with your own food outlet bearing their popular names.
In the United States of America, Filipino enterpreneurs put up food business catered to Filipinos, mostly, just like other minority groups in the nation.
Transient Filipino workers, like seafarers, are most happy to see that Filipino businessmen thrive in the key cities in the US, in Canada, even in Latin Americas, Africa and Asia, to mention a few. You do not only drop by and enjoy Filipino food but also mingle with Filipino immigrants and migrant workers.
American Adobo by Travis Kraft c/o poolboyinla
Methods on Filipino cooking
These are the most common terms in Filipino cooking that you should get familiar with. It is written in Tagalog/Filipino terms with corresponding explanation in English words. So, read on, fellow hubbers and interested readers.
- "Adobo/Inadobo" − cooked in soy sauce . It could also refer to just roasting on a wok, with light oil, garlic and salt, as in adobong mani (peanut) done more for snacks, while the former is more associated with viands.
- "Babad/Binabad/Ibinabad" − to marinate.
- "Banli/Binanlian/Pabanli" − blanched.
- "Bagoong/Binagoongan/ – sa Bagoong" − cooked with fermented fish paste bagoong.
- "Binalot" – literally "wrapped." This generally refers to dishes wrapped in banana leaves or even aluminum foil. The wrapper is generally inedible (in contrast to lumpia — see below).
- "Binuro" − fermented.
- "Busa/Pabusa" – toasted with garlic and a small quantity of cooking oil, as in adobong mani.
- "Daing/Dinaing/Padaing" − marinated with garlic, vinegar, and black peppers. Sometimes dried and usually fried before eating.
- "Guinataan/sa Gata" − cooked with coconut milk.
- "Guisa/Guisado/Ginisa" or "Gisado" − sautéed with garlic, onions and/or tomatoes.
- "Halabos/Hinalabos" – mostly for shellfish. Steamed in their own juices and sometimes carbonated soda.
- "Hilaw/Sariwa" – unripe (for fruits and vegetables), raw (for meats). Also used for uncooked food in general (as in lumpiang sariwa).
- "Hinurno" – baked in an oven or roasted.
- "Ihaw/Inihaw" − grilled over coals.
- "Kinilaw" or "Kilawin" − marinated in vinegar or calamansi,along with garlic onions,ginger, tomato and pepper.
- "Laga/Nilaga/Palaga" − boiled, sometimes with onions and black peppercorns.
- "Nilasing" − cooked with an alcoholic beverage.
- "Lechon/Nilechon" − roasted over a spit.
- "Lumpia" – wrapped with an edible wrapper.
- "Minatamis" − cooked with sugar, or with other sweeteners such as panucha (panela).
- "Pinakbet" − to cook with vegetables usually with sitaw (yardlong beans), calabaza, talong (eggplant), and ampalaya (bitter gourd) among others and bagoong
- "Paksiw/Pinaksiw" − cooked in vinegar.
- "Pangat/Pinangat" − boiled in salted water with tomatoes.
- "Palaman/Pinalaman" − "filled" as in siopao, though "palaman" also refers to the filling in a sandwich.
- "Pinakuluan" – boiled.
- "Piniato" – peanut brittle.
- "Prito/Pinirito" − fried or deep fried. From the Spanish frito.
- "Pasingaw" – steamed, usually with a banana leaf.
- "Relleno/Relyeno" – stuffed.
- " Tapa refers to meat treated in this manner, mostly marinated and then dried and fried afterwards. Tinapa meanwhile is almost exclusively associated with smoked fish.
- "Sarza/Sarciado" – cooked with a thick sauce.
- "Sinangag" – fried rice.
- "Sigang/Sinigang" − boiled, usually with a tamarind base. Variant bases are: guava, raw mangoes, calamansi also known as calamondin, and almost any other sour fruit abundant in the locality.
- "Tosta/Tinosta/Tostado" – toasted, as in polvoron or Mamon Tostado.
- "Torta/Tinorta/Patorta" – to cook with eggs in the manner of an omelette.
- "Totso/Totcho" – cooked with fermented black beans. The name of both a cooking method and dish.