Both in and outside of the Philippines the country’s unique food is both celebrated and seen as a curiosity. The influences for Filipino dishes include Spanish, Mexican, Chinese, and Malayo-Polynesian.
Filipinos tend to have a sharing attitude toward food, regarding family and friends, neighbors, and also among strangers visiting the country. “Food gets a high priority at all times of the day,” Alfredo and Grace Roces wrote in their book CultureShock! A Survival Guide to Customs and Etiquette Philippines. “Major social rituals--baptisms, weddings, funerals and fiestas--revolve around food. Social gatherings always centre on eating.”
Lighter Alternatives to Heavier Filipino Dishes
“Indigenous (or Pinoy) food is normally laid out on the table like a buffet, allowing the diners to partake of the dishes one at a time or all at the same time,” as the Lonely Planet guidebook Philippines described it. “Western palates might find the everyday food a bit too rich and heavy (the Spanish influence), but you can always request something light and healthy like sinigang na sugpo (prawns and vegetables cooked in tamarind-flavoured soup).”
Most Filipino foods though are not heavily spiced. Among the most popular dishes are chicken or pork adobo, both cooked in vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, peppercorns, and bay leaf, and lechon, whole roast suckling pig, which is prominently part of many festivities. Chicken and pig are native to Southeast Asia.
Fish is a major element of the diet in the Philippines and among the most popular seafood is grilled tanqique (a local species of Spanish mackerel), blue marlin, bangus (milkfish), tilapia, lapu-lapu (grouper), swordfish, oysters, mussels, clams, shrimp, crabs (in addition to tatus, coconut crab), lobster, tuna, cod, pusit (squid), and seaweed. Fish can be preserved by being smoked or sundried.
"Seven thousand and more islands are surrounded by seas, threaded by rivers and brooks, edged by swamps and dotted with lakes, canals, ponds and lagoons, providing a multitude of fish and other water creatures that comprise the basic food of Filipinos," Doreen Fernandez wrote in the book The Food of the Philippines. “Because the island geography makes food easily accessible to hunters, fishermen, food gatherers and fathers, indigenous food is simply cooked: grilled (inihaw), steamed (pinasingawan) or boiled (nilaga). Or it may be untouched by fire, as is kinilaw, fish briefly marinated in vinegar or lime juice to transform it from rawness, while retaining freshness and translucence.”
Rice Remains Staple of Country’s Diet
Rice is a staple of Filipino food and can be served at every meal (instead of bread or potatoes), along with fish, meat, or vegetables. In some rural areas of the country, rice is consumed by hand. Unlike other Asians, Filipinos do not usually eat with chopsticks and instead use a fork and spoon together more so than a knife with fork.
Another frequent dish is the multi-varied pancit, the best known probably being pancit canton, the Filipino version of Chinese noodles, mixed with meat and vegetables. Favorite snacks are lumpia (egg or spring rolls in edible wrappers), miki, a homemade noodle soup, and hi-bol, which is a combination of pancit and paksiw (boiled pickled fish and vegetables). Tinola is a soup consisting of chicken and green papaya.
Found at many outdoor eateries are longganisa (sausage) and empanadas that come in various forms, including those that contain longganisa. Some empanadas have papaya and egg as a filling and a crust of rice flour. Crusts vary in their thickness, crispiness, and color. Empanadas can be eaten with vinegar.
Pinakbet Transformed into Pizza Creation
In the province of Ilocos Norte in Northern Luzon, pinakbet is a popular native vegetable medley combining tomatoes, eggplant and bitter melon, lima beans, okra, and squash--served together with bagoong, a salty sauce made from fermented fish or shrimp. Pinakbet, which can also be found elsewhere in the country, is flavored with pork and shrimp paste and sometimes coconut milk.
"The bad news for lovers of animals and vitamins is that Filipino dishes tend to be long on meat and short on greens," said the book Philippines, but which cites pinakbet as “one of the few vegetable dishes to make a regular appearance.”
Perhaps owing to more popular tastes, Herencia Café, a restaurant in the town of Paoay in the Ilocos province, famous for the Paoay Church, has added a variation to the Ilocano dish by creating the country’s first-ever pinakbet pizza. It substitutes anchovies for bagoong as a topping and combines an unusually thin pizza crust of local rice, all-purpose flour, and shortening with mozzarella cheese and such local ingredients used for pinakbet as eggplant, ampalaya, okra, sitaw, and meat like bagnet or longganisa.
One item even some Filipinos shy away from is balut--a boiled incubated half-formed duck or chicken embryo in an egg which is usually eaten whole, and can include the beak and features. However, American chef Andrew Zimmern, host of Bizarre Foods on the Travel Channel, sampled balut along with crickets, stuffed frogs, and live worms while in the Philippines for one of his programs that first aired in 2007.
Local fruits include mango, melon, papaya, pomelos, jackfruit, plaintain bananas, and coconuts on which natives often use a machete, much to the delight of guests, in order to open the green husk for enjoying the sweet water inside and tender soft white flesh.
The highly favored desert treat halo-halo consists of layers of preserved or sweetened beans, yams, and fruit, as well as gelatin, custard, and crushed ice with sweetened condensed milk, served in a tall glass and sometimes with ice cream. Other enjoyed sweets are sticky rice cooked with coconut milk, leche flan (caramel custard), cassava boiled and grated into small cakes, and hopia, lightly sweetened pastries filled with lotus or mashed bean paste.
Food in the Philippines reflects the different influences of the nation and the uncommon blend still is not as widely recognized as some who have traveled there think it should be.
John Seidenberg - John Seidenberg has worked on newspapers, newsletters, radio news, and produced specialized news publications as well as freelance ...
