(First of two parts)

“I realized very early the power of food to evoke memory, to bring people together, to transport you to other places, and I wanted to be a part of that.” — Chef José Andrés Puerta

There has been a spate of newly opened restaurants serving new variations of our Filipino food. Who really started these now modern recipes?

Let me bring you back to my childhood in our hometown, Barugo in Leyte, when many of these recipes were served by our grandmother, who we called Lita Kikay, and aunt, Tia Lola, two terrific cooks.

Growing up, I stayed with my Lita Kikay, another aunt, Tia Icing, and, of course, my own Mama in the old ancestral house. Tia Lola lived further down the road but she cooked meals for us.

Since our hometown is beside the sea, we grew up eating fish the whole week. We had fish tinola cooked with iba (kamias) which we grew in our backyard. We also had escabeche (cooked in vinegar with slices of turmeric) or paksiw (vinegar stewed) which I always ate with tsokolate or tinu-om which is fish broiled in banana leaves. Sometimes, we had shrimps, (pasayan) either boiled or parbroiled (pinamara), grilled squid (sinugba nga nu-os), or cooked shell (pang-ti-on).

Sunday was “meat” day, and we went to the market called tabo where vendors from barrios or neighboring municipalities would sell. It was usually after the Sunday mass where we bought carabao meat or beef. Chicken, however, was usually from our backyard poultry. Pork was brought to us by vendors, usually tenants of my grandmother’s small coconut farm and which my Mother barters with rice.

An uncle, Tatay Tecio would cook lumo (stewed carabao) our Sunday breakfast. Then we children go off to play and wait for a call to have Sunday lunch.

Many times, we had visitors for lunch so we had a lot of dishes cooked by Tia Lola and Lita Kikay. My favorite was the hinatukan nga manok (chicken cooked in coconut milk with unripe papaya & lots of malunggay), chicken/pork adobo, adobo han dila han baka (beef tongue adobo) plus, of course, inasal lechon (spit-roasted whole pork).

I looked forward to the dessert (dulce) of the day: ginat-an (root crops cooked in coconut milk) and ira-id (cassava and gabi or yam cooked in coconut milk inside a bamboo), moron espesyal (glutinous rice cooked with condensed milk, margarine & cocoa powder), pitsi-pitsi (grated cassava with white sugar & lye poured into molders & when cooked placed on top of banana leaf) and baduya (fried ripe banana sprinkled with brown sugar. Of course, for the visitors, Tia Lola made cookies, roscas or de caña or Lita Kikay served her pastillas de leche (milk candies) which we had fun helping to make with her. My task was to cut fancy paper wrappings for the milk candy which we dried under the sun.

I recently travelled to my hometown in the Visayas and went to all the familiar places. On my first day, I picked up my eldest cousin, Mana Pat, a retired Biology teacher of UP. But on our way, we passed by Carigara town where we decided to have lunch at a famous carinderia called Newtown.

This is where the humba is the best-selling delicacy. Humba is a pork dish cooked with salted black beans, dried banana flower, peanuts, lots of garlic, laurel leaves, oregano. The pork is almost overcooked so that it melts in your mouth when you eat it.  This is my favorite dish and when my Tia Lola passed on, only one cousin, a boy, Vito, inherited that special “ability” to cook humba. But, sadly, that cousin migrated to Canada.

That homecoming brought me back to my childhood in Barugo where these delicacies fed not only my body but my soul and heart as well. My only regret is that I did not inherit any of these special abilities of my Lita Kikay & Tia Lola.

My late husband, Chito, was such an excellent cook, his piece de resistance was the callos (stew made of ox tripe, chorizo de Bilbao, beans, bell pepper slow cooked in tomato sauce & spices) which was the favorite of everyone. He would just assign me to washing the dishes because he was particular about the way the onions are cut or the vegetables are cooked and every time I was reprimanded, I would always say: “but it’s the same, whether it is cut horizontally or vertically, it ends up in our stomach.” And he would scold me and just asks me to wait till we were done eating so I can wash the used dishes.

I was rewarded, however, with a son who inherited this cooking ability that he became a sous chef aboard a Norwegian Cruise Lines.  Al least one in the family got the genes of Tia Lola & Lita Kikay.

I asked a friend, Micky Fenix, a known food writer to describe her favorite childhood food too just like mine which are made into these modern concoctions. So in Part 2 of this column, she shares her favorite childhood food.

Younger generations who did not learn how to prepare these delicacies need not worry as these delicacies are now available in restaurants and food stalls in supermarkets and from street hawkers, aside from the public market stalls. In some areas in the country, a “veteran” cook is hired to do the preparation days before the special occasion.

Life is a spiral, at the end of my spiral, a new one begins his or her own spiral.