Filipino food as experienced in one dinner and concocted by three women chefs

“In preserving and promoting Filipino food culture, we also celebrate diversity, sustainability, and empowerment. We recognize the need to support and uplift local communities, particularly the women farmers and fisherfolks whose contributions are invaluable. By ensuring good, clean, fair and sustainable practices, we can guarantee that future generations will continue to enjoy the rich flavors of the Philippines,” he further said. “As we enjoy this exquisite dinner tonight, let us not only indulge in the culinary delights but also reflect on the importance of preserving and promoting Filipino food culture from a local to a global perspective. Let us celebrate the extraordinary talent of our Filipina chefs and express our gratitude to the women farmers and fisherfolks whose hard work has made this evening possible.”

The dinner, which highlighted the chefs’ modern innovations on traditional dishes, started with Araos-Wijangco’s appetizer, Pinikpikan Rillette. The pinikpikan is a traditional chicken dish among several ethnic groups in the Cordillera region, which became famous for the controversial way of preparing it—by battering or striking a chicken until it slowly dies. The bruises, the coagulated blood under the skin, are said to give the soup dish similar to the Tagalog tinola its distinctive flavor. I feel ambivalent about pinikpikan, but have recently been leaning towards not promoting it. While we should uphold tradition as well as diversity and sustainability in food making, we should also strive to be humane and the ethical.

In this dish, the chicken meat was prepared in the French way of slow cooking and preservation and served with bignay wine gelee, tapuey (rice wine) and strawberry compote, cherry tomato, red radish and shishito.

“Cordilleran cuisine has always felt brash and bold to me. It speaks of a very macho culture, and I have always said that one of the main ingredients of Cordi cuisine is testosterone. The pinikpikan rillete is my take on making Cordi staple and giving it a woman’s touch. It’s more refined and feminine. It is given a chance to be served and eaten prettily,” Araos-Wijangco commented. “All the main ingredients are there and cooked as a real pinikpikan. The difference is that we reduce the soup into an aspic, and we shred and mold the meat into a loaf. Serving it with bignay wine, widely produced in the Cordillera, cuts through the richness of the rillette.”

The pinikpikan was followed by Salonga-Datu’s take on the kulawo, which is a salad dish in the provinces of Laguna and Quezon, whose main ingredient is shredded banana heart or blossoms or grilled eggplant. I have encountered this dish in San Pablo, Laguna, and then in Tiaong, Quezon, using banana blossoms. What struck me was its dressing of coconut milk and the way it is prepared. Live coals or uling are thrown into a heap grated coconut meat, and the cook tosses the heap repeatedly. After taking out the coals, milk is extracted from the burnt coconut meat. This lends a smoky flavor to the kulawo.

Salonga-Datu used grilled eggplant together with mustard greens and foraged alugbati or Malabar spinach and pako or fern fiddleheads. The dressing was made of coconut vinegar and burnt coconut meat milk.

The Banguingui-Sulu Marlin and the kaldetetang pato were served as main dishes.

For the marlin dish, Araos-Wijangco took inspiration from the cuisine of the different Moro ethnic groups in Mindanao. Banguingui refers to the Sama Banguinguih people, part of the large grouping of the maritime Sama peoples, and Sulu refers to the archipelago and sea in southern Philippines. However, she used ingredients and flavors that are frequently associated with the Meranaw people, together with Indo-Pacific blue marlin caught around the island of Bucutua, part of the town called Banguingui in Sulu. The fish was said to be “harvested-to-order, line-caught and packed in ice from Sulu and air-flown from Zamboanga” with a total length of 5.9 feet and total live weight of 41.4 kilograms.

“How often can you get details like this about the food we eat? How often do we know the people who grew, caught, produced our food?” the chef asked.

“Since the fish came from Sulu, I went for a Southern Philippines-inspired interpretation. It has a spiced turmeric, coconut and tamarind sauce, and pickled sakurab,” Araos-Wijangco revealed.

Sakurab is Meranaw for scallion, which is the main ingredient for their condiment, palapa.

She added: “We feel really successful in our menu development process when we know most of the people who had something to do with the stuff we have on the plate. All our veggies are from women growers in Bauko and Mount Yangbew in Benguet, micro greens from Luntian Farms in Quezon City, salt from Dasol, Pangasinan, pepper grown by my mother in Antipolo and edible flowers and gotu kola from my own garden.”

On the other hand, Castro-SyCip presented her version of the kaldereta, a classic Filipino meat stew commonly using beef, using pan-seared duck breast meat and preparation for the French magret de canard. The meat was accompanied with kalderata sauce made mainly with tomato and liver, piperade, green pea mousse, fondant potatoes and glazed carrots. She said she partnered with the cooperative Progressive Farmers of Zambales for many of the ingredients.

The bibingka cheesecake and binaki finished the interesting dinner. The bibingka cheesecake, for which Salonga-Datu is acclaimed, combines a favorite Filipino fare and an international dessert — bibingka, a flat rice cake with coconut milk cooked over live coals and topped with grated coconut meat and slices of salted eggs, and the cheesecake. Salty, sweet and creamy, the dessert was served sprinkled with toasted coconut meat, caramel Sauce and coconut ganache.

The binaki is the local, sweet version of tamale, made from corn and wrapped in corn husks. Other parts of the Philippines have other versions of the tamale but using rice and are savory. Binaki is made in the province of Bukidnon in Mindanao. A similar version, called pintos, is made in Bogo, a city in northern Cebu.

Castro-SyCip’s version deconstructed, like several items during the dinner, binaki, and transforming it on the plate as a symphony of corn cake on small boats of corn husks, coconut panna cotta, white chocolate popcorn mousse, corn gelee, burnt corn husk meringue and tinigib (a Visayan white corn variety) dust.

The dinner affirmed the roles of women in the culinary landscape and afforded glimpses on the possibilities and potentials of some Filipino dishes.