A Short Background on Filipino Cuisine

Asian foods have clear distinguishing features. Thai food is chili-pepper hot with a dominant lemon grass, galangal, and cilantro flavor. Chinese foods has the five-spice powder and sangke taste, while South Asian dishes tend to be heavily spiced with curries.

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.

Filipino Eating Habits

There is more to eating than the ingestion of food; it is not only a biological function, but it has strong social and cultural components that must be highlighted when considering food culture in the Philippines. All the more so, if one considers that this is a country where eating is conceived of as a social act, as an activity that must be shared with others.

Filipinos highly value eating with their family, friends, and colleagues. Sharing food fosters social relationships and it is not uncommon for meetings to be articulated around a dining table. it is unusual to see a person eating alone in a restaurant or drinking alone in a bar. As a matter of fact, such situations are avoided, which shows how socially important meals are in the Philippines. It the Philippines, eating alone is like not eating at all. Another feature of Philippine society that is worth highlighting in this respect is that people like eating and drinking out. The climate, with its mild temperature is never extreme, and it allows outdoor celebrations and meals almost all year long (except, perhaps, in the monsoon months). Eating out includes popular feasts, communal meals, or simple visit to restaurants, establishments with outdoor tables, bars, cafés, and so forth.

Coconut

The Philippine tree of life

The coconut tree (Cocos nucifera) is a palm. From the swollen base, a slender, ringed trunk often grows to a height of thirty-two meters. The trunk is topped by a crown of large, featherlike leaves and the compound flower stalks from which the nuts develop. Flowering starts when the tree is five to seven years old and continues thereafter.

And annual yields of 100 nuts per tree can be attained, with fifty considered as good. The current annual yield in the Philippines, however, averages less the fifty, with yields of twenty-five to thirty nuts being common, perhaps because most of the coconut trees are very old. Hence, experiments are being conducted to develop early-maturing, high-yielding varieties from hybrids that bear fruit after three years to replace the old, less productive trees.

In countries where the coconut tree is a native, it is considered das “tree of life.” In addition to the edible meat and the water obtained from the still-green nut, and the oil from the mature nut, the coconut husk yields coir. Coir is a fiber that is highly resistant to salt water and is therefore the preferred raw material for ropes, mats, baskets, brushes, and brooms. Even coir dust finds usefulness as a peat substitute in agriculture. The coconut shell is used in the manufacture of charcoal. In construction, the sturdy, fibrous trunk serves as posts and beams; mature leaves are used for thatching and are also woven into baskets.

The young inflorescence yields a sweet sap when wounded or cut. The toddy produced from this, tuba, is both a beverage and a source of sugar as well as alcohol, because it may be fermented and distilled. The pith found in the core near the top of the tree, the ubod, is eaten as a salad vegetable, or more popularly in egg roll, of lumpia.

The coconut, however, attains great commercial value first as copra – the dried extracted meat from mature nuts; then as coconut oil – the result of chemical processing of the oil. It is estimated that 60 percent of the world’s coconut oil is destined for industrial use. The remaining 4- percent is used as cooking oil, margarine, and vegetable shortening. The coconut provides the world its most popular vegetable oil. From coconut oil, fatty alcohols and acids are extracted. These, in turn are utilized in many chemical products, such as soaps and shampoos, detergents, synthetic rubber, glycerin, hydraulic brake fluid, and plasticizers. Copra meal and cake, which are left over when the oil is extracted, serve as livestock feed and fertilizer. Shredded coconut is used as an ingredient in confectionery.

In the Philippines, the area planted to coconuts has expanded over the years. Visayas and Mindanao were planted with coconuts on a large scale when the plant disease called cadang-cadang hit Luzon, especially Bicol. Today, Southwestern Luzon Eastern Visayas, and Southern and Western Mindanao are the main coconut producing regions of the country. In Southern Tagalog, Quezon and Laguna are the leading producers, while Samar and Leyte are the principal coconut producers in Eastern Visayas. Davao is the coconut center in Mindanao.

The Philippines supplied about one-third of the world’s demand fro copra and coconut oil. The principal importers of copra and coconut oil are the U.S., Japan, and Europe. Current industrialization plans center around the setting up of a cocochemical industry to process coconut oil into higher value chemical preparations, for export and for the domestic chemical industry. Another prospect being discussed is the production of diesel fuel mix using coconut oil. The mixture has some potential as supplementary fuel that will reduce the dependency on crude oil.

The History of Pineapple in the Philippines

Pineapples are bromeliads, i.e, herbaceous plants that are native to tropical and subtropical America. The earliest written account about the pineapple is by Christopher Columbus. But it was Gonzalo de Oviedo y Valdes, the Spanish chronicler of the Indies, who first described the plant and its fruit in detail.

The European took an immediate delight in the pineapple and introduced it to the rest of the world. It is not known when it was brought to the Philippines by the Spaniards. During the galleon trade, ships from Mexico carried many plants and products from America; among them was the pineapple. It quickly grew all over the Philippines due to the country’s fertile soil and suitable climate.

In Brazil, the pineapple is called nana, or “excellent fruit” in an Indian dialect. The Spaniards named it piña because its fruit resembles the pine cone. In the Philippines piña became pinya.

The variety first cultivated in the Philippines is the Bromelia Pigna, better known as Red Spanish. It is a tough plant, with leaves naturally adept in retaining water, making it easy to transport. The fruits were brought along and eaten on long voyages to prevent scurvy. Crowns of these fruits were probably the first plants grown in the country.

In 1911, the smooth Cayenne pineapple from Hawaii was introduced by the Bureau of Agriculture. Because the pineapple is primarily priced from its fruits, which can be eaten in slices or crushed for its juice, this variety with big fruits became popular. Today, it continues in the plantations of Del Monte Corporation and Dole Philippines in Mindanao.

But the Red Spanish is still planted in many places because of its long leaves which are sourced for fiber. Weaving of piña cloth is a traditional industry in the Philippines. There was a time when weaving piña cloth was done mostly in the country. During the Spanish Period, embroidered piña handkerchiefs and pañuelos, together with the elegant camisas for women and the barong tagalog, were regarded fashionable wear for the rich. Iloilo then was the center of piña weaving.

At present, Taiwan and other pineapple-producing countries compete with the country’s acknowledged center and last stronghold of piña cloth, Aklan, but its production is limited.

The History of Sugar in the Philippines

Cane (Saccharum officinarum) is a tall perennial grass that is widely grown in warm climates as a source of sugar. Cane grows to a height of two to five meters and has narrow, corn-like leaves and stalks that are from two to four centimeters thick. The stalks (yellow, green, purple, or striped, depending of the variety) are composed of short, jointed sections that contain the sweet, juicy pith. The plant is usually propagated by planting sections of the stalk in shallow furrows. Most sugarcane varieties mature within a period of twelve to twenty-four months.

In the Philippines, the ideal physical conditions for growing sugarcane are found in Negros Occidental, Negros Oriental, Pampanga, Batangas, Laguna, Tarlac, and Iloilo. Thus, these are the leading sugar producing provinces of the country. Early Spanish chronicles contain details of cane propagation. After the settlement of Manila by the Spaniards in 1572, sugarcanes was planted increasingly in Bulacan, Cebu, Iloilo, Laguna, and Pampanga. Negros and Pampanga have, since then, dominated the country's sugar industry.

The primitive system f extracting juice from cane consisted of exerting pressure on a hand or foot-lever against a fixed wooden surface. This technique was later improved by crushing cane between two upright wooden rollers using human power. With the arrival of Chinese immigrants in the Philippines during the early decades of the Spanish Occupation, stone cylinders replaced the wooden rollers, and carabaos were used to operate these crude extractors. Muscovado, or unrefined sugar, and molasses because important commercial trade items, but sugarcane juice was also fermented into wine, as in the famous basi of northern Luzon provinces. Steam power, from imported machinery and equipment, later replaced human and animal power in the milling processes . Centrifugal mills were eventually installed.

Shortly after Manila was opened to foreign commerce, the first shipment of sugar to the United States was made in 1796. By the turn of the nineteenth century, the landowner and trader classes began diversifying sugar production. When the galleon trade ended in 1815, those who were formerly engaged in it began investing in large sugarcane plantations in the provinces. Negros became the country’s principal main sugar producer, and the Ilongo planters, the wealthiest among the regional elite.

Sugar production increased steadily from then on, interrupted only by the Philippine Revolution that did considerable damage to the industry. By the first decade of the twentieth century and the start of American colonial rule, however, the sugar industry had recovered and, in fact, had started modernizing.

Foreign and domestic investors started constructing modern centrifugal sugar mills in response to a guaranteed U.S market fro the Philippine sugar after successful lobbying. First, the U.S. Congress passed the Payne-Aldrich Act, guarantying a quota of 300,000 tons of duty-free sugar to the Philippines, and shortly after, free trade was established between the U.S. and the colony. The latter development assured the producers unlimited access to the large U.S. sugar market. To assist in financing the increased requirements of the sugar industry, the colonial government organized the Philippine National Bank in 1916.

When the Philippines was granted commonwealth status in 1934, sugar exports became subject to limited quota instead of unlimited free market trade. The quota was later extended under the Laurel-Langley Agreement to last beyond the date of Philippine independence in 1946, and to expire in 1974. The agreement provided for a progressive reduction in the Philippine duty-free quota, and a gradual shift of sugar exports to the competitive world market. World events in the 1960s, however, shook the sugar market.

The United States severed relations with Cuba, and to abort a sugar shortage, granted the Philippines an increase in the sugar quota despite the provisions of the Laurel-Langley Agreement. The Philippines, in response to an expanded market, launched a crash program to meet the demand. Cultivation was extended to marginal forest lands, and even lands planted to rice were converted to sugarcane. After 1974, however, the Laurel-Langley Agreement expired, and the U.S. abandoned its sugar quota system. After sixty years of enjoying the protected American market, the Philippines entered into the highly competitive world market.

Up to 1974, however, despite the considerable expansion of both hectares and milling capacity, the Philippines was generally incapable of meeting its expanded quota due to production inefficiencies. Trade policies implemented during the martial law years were, from the start, fraught with controversy.

When world sugar prices peaked in 1974, shortages were felt in the domestic sector. Because domestic sugar was sold at a low price due to price control, amounts intended for local consumption were diverted to the world market. This led to a decision of the Marcos government to take over sugar trading under the Philippine Exchange Company. Sugar trading for domestic and export markets had always been a private sector concern prior to 1974.

When the prices in the world market proved to be volatile, a new sugar body with the authority to decide on policy matters affecting the sugar industry – including the power to determine the trading agency for both the export and domestic markets – was organized. Thus, the Philippine Sugar Commission was created in 1978. The PHILSUCOM, in its turn, decided to set up the National Sugar Trading Corporation, or NASUTRA. This was a subsidiary trading company to handle domestic and international sugar trading.

The NASUTRA purchased the output of all sugar producers after harvest; and all buyers or sugar had to deal with this body. This policy was justified according to the single trading agency or a public monopoly concept. The concept, which was applied to more than just the sugar industry, proved to be highly offensive and contributed to the undoing of the Marcos presidency.