on food

Fried porkchop, raw tomatoes, and plain rice. This the only meal I know how to prepare - this and ginisang talong, fried fish, and well plain rice again. I suck in the kitchen. Growing-up I was the all-around maid in our house, I wipe the floors (think Sarah Crew and Becky), apply wax, scrub to death, do the dishes, clean the kitchen, sweep the backyard, iron our clothes, wash my entire family's clothes (full-time na katulong). But I never learned how to cook. My parents were great cooks, so I'm supposed to learn from them or they were enough cooks in the kitchen I couldn't be bothered to cook. I do almost everything around the house except cook. 

Not sure if it was on purpose, but my mother probably did not trust me in the kitchen, or I was just not interested in cooking. I did watch her turn the kitchen upside down with all the baking experiments she did while I was growing-up. Again, I was just a spectator and the clean-up master. One time she asked me to sauté the eggplants and I ended up making a whole bowl of eggplant soup. She was so mad she made me eat all of it. I never attempted to cook again except for the rice. During the holidays, I was the designated chopper: lamas, vegetables, fruits, pork, cheese etc. I cleaned-up the mess, and let me tell you I clean-up really good. And finally, I'm assigned to prepare mango float. Now I realize this was the epitome of my skill in the kitchen. I make the most no-brainer dessert of all time; it makes me laugh just thinking about it. I mean how hard is it to pile things on a tupperware? 

On the eating side, I'm the most picky child you'll ever come across. I can now imagine how hard it must have been for my parents to make me and my sisters eat vegetables. My mother used to promise me whiter skin just so I'd eat my veggies. Her idea was that if I ate my veggies, I'll be fatter and therefore my skin will expand a bit, making me a bit whiter. Fantastic right? Well, it worked for quite sometime, but my father was a big enabler - enabler of all things we wanted. If he sees that we're not liking the fish or the vegetables, he's more than happy to cook fried pork and hotdogs. On hindsight, that was not really good parenting on his part, but we were more than happy to indulge.

I became used to eating only my favorite food. If it's fried, pork, and crunchy; I'm in. I also enjoyed seafood, dried fish, raw fish (kinilaw), variations of adobo (humba, pork steak), bulalo, and almost anything grilled. I despise vegetables, slimy seaweeds (lato, guso), paksiw, and well...paksiw. All things I despised were my mother's favorites; so imagine the fights we'd have over not eating what's on the table.

When I left the province for college in Manila, I was introduced to the sourness of sinigang. I remember vividly the horror I felt when I first ate its soup. I was expecting it to be just salty like all other tinolas we have back home. I remember thinking to myself, "What the f is going on with this sour stuff?" I never finished the soup. Over the next few years, I met someone who was a hardcore fan of sinigang. He always boasted how he makes the best sinigang in town. True enough, I became a convert; and it's probably one of the best food revelations I've had here in Manila. I realized it's a Luzon thing, that and adobo with too much sauce. I still can't get over the fact that people in Manila don't cook dried adobo. It's my comfort food back home, and I will always crave for the dry, oily, peppery kind of adobo.

I'm also a dessert person. I don't think I have a sweet tooth but I will always have a spot for dessert after each meal. My mother used to bake the most moist chocolate cake ever. She also made cassava, chiffon, cookies, and leche flan. Thing is, I was a witness to her baking progress. I ate rock-hard cookies at one point, desert-dry chocolate cake (or something that resembled a chocolate cake) and also extremely fluffy lechen flan - one that looked liked a scrambled egg - because she wasn't meticulous enough in separating the egg whites. But lo and behold, I dare say she was able to perfect every single dessert she attempted to bake. That's probably the reason why I love eating cakes. 

Today, I find myself interested in the finer things in life. Although I still have bouts of childhood food nostalgia every so often, I long to try gourmet eating, the likes of five-course meals, wine tasting and pairing extravaganzas, cheese indulgences, and French haute cuisine. Maybe there's a sense of pretentiousness, yes, but most of the time it's pure curiosity. I'm still not into "making food" but who knows. In the future, I wish to throw intimate dinner parties for my friends where me and my husband would cook the food together. Then there'll be conversations about wine or food or gossip. I wish to taste food abroad, experience different cuisines, take pictures of food, and learn more about food. I love reading food literature. Suffice it to say, I'm extremely interested in becoming a foodie - there goes the pretentiousness. Hahaha. Maybe I'm getting old and all I want to do is experience food the way I wasn't used to, or just like most things in my life, I've just watched way too many European movies for my own good.