Filipino food is more subtly varied, a nuanced mix of culinary elements both domestic and foreign. Long before fusion cuisine became all the rage among food faddists, indigenous Filipinos were already into it.
Filipino cooking, therefore, is where East transforms West, where the country’s regional differences blend in delicious culinary combinations with foreign borrowings yet retain a uniquely Filipino taste – a bit on the salty/sour side, with a definite ginger, onions, garlic and patis flavor. The features that differentiate native Filipino cooking from other cuisines are: (a) it is mainly based on native food ingredients with variations accounting to regional preferences, (b) its preparation is simple although the ingredients are many, and (c) it is easily adaptable to foreign culinary influences.
Legend and history say that the original inhabitants of the 7000 or so islands of the Philippines came from Borneo or other parts of what are not Indonesia and Malaysia. These seafarers founded villages and small kingdoms headed by petty rulers. Chinese traders were common visitors to the settlements as were Hindu merchants and Japanese fishermen.
In 1521, Ferdinand Magellan reached the islands in his effort to circumnavigate the world. Spain colonized the country soon after that and gave it the name of Filipinas, after the Spanish King, Philip II. Spanish rule was held sway over the islands for more than three centuries. Filipino revolutionaries declared independence on June 12,1898 but Spain ceded the Philippines to the US six months later in the Treaty of Paris which ended the Spanish-American war. The Americans took over in January 1899 after quelling a bloody native rebellion. The country gained political independence from the United States on July 4, 1946 but continues to celebrate its Independence Day on June 12. Filipino cooking reflects this long history of the islands. On an Indonesian-Malaysian base, Chinese, Islamic, Hindu, Spanish, Japanese and American ingredients have been added through centuries of foreign interactions. Even when Filipino cooks borrowed cooking techniques from other cultures, they tended to adapt these local tastes and available native food items thus producing dishes that gradually became present day Filipino cooking.
