I first met Doreen Gamboa Fernandez in the ‘70s when she was known as the wife of Wili Fernandez, the foremost interior designer then. Even then, she was already discussing cuisines and literature that showed she was widely read in those topics. After she became a literature professor, her writings on food eventually became a body of work called food literature. She once wrote: “Thus the land, the history and the society have been the determinants and its story is that of the country.”
The recent reissue last month of her classic work “Palayok: Philippine Food through Time, On Site, In the Pot” by Exploding Galaxies is evidence that her book is an important pioneering work on Filipino food as cultural artifacts embedded in our history, geography, memory and identity. First published in 2000 by Bookmark, Exploding Galaxies has reissued it in line with its crusade of rediscovering “lost classics of Philippine writing whose revival may illuminate new stories of our time.” Headed by young visionary Mara Coson, it is an aggressive independent publishing house that has reprinted Linda Ty-Casper, Wilfrido Nolledo, Erwin Castillo titles.
The book’s title and metaphor is deliberate – the palayok, a native earthenware cooking pot – sets the tone for this incredible food journey. Fernandez writes that the palayok “survives as witness to the beginning of life in the Philippines.” Through this vessel-image “she signals that food, cooking and communal meals are deep reservoirs of meaning, connecting past and present, land and people, pot and table.”
This ambitious scholarly book, made so readable and interesting with Fernandez’s elegant and graceful prose, takes us through chapters of indigenous cuisine, indigenization, lifeways and foodways, food and the Filipino. She writes as an avid foodie but always with a seeming smile and amusement at how we Filipinos savor our meals.
There are always interesting bits of information to be found, as these choice excerpts will show. One section on “The pleasures of sourness” talks about our temper for sour notes, one of our chief flavor principles, she calls it. Not only do we sour our soups, we cook dishes in vinegar and also use vinegars generously in dips and marinades.
Sinigang she considers the quintessential, the signature dish because it is found nationwide on tables of rich or poor because of its flexibility, made with any fish, meat or vegetable.
“Rice Stories” asks, what would we do without our most cherished comfort food? What can ever replace sinangag in tapsilog and tosilog? What about all our favorite rice delicacies like bibingka, puto, suman, palitao, etc.?
The section on “Gulay ng Buhay” is dedicated to all who hold Philippine vegetables in low esteem and in answer to the expatriate’s query why we don’t eat salads or why our veggies are just always sautéed. We do have Filipino salads, but not called that. Aside from sautéed, they are steamed and served with buro, bagoong, vinegar and garlic, patis, taba ng talangka, gata. Salted eggs and tomatoes are a complete salad in itself, not needing any dressing.
The chapter on Food and History speaks about foreign influences on our cuisine. Pansit, the dish of noodles flavored with seafood and vegetables did not originally refer to noodles, but in our usage, has come to mean that. And as adapted, indigenized pansit, we have pansit Malabon with has oysters, shrimps, squid. Lucban, Quezon has pancit habhab which is so called because it is market food eaten off the leaf.
While the Chinese influence was considered “ground level,” the food introduced by the Spanish colonizers were considered fiesta cuisine and desirable and high class, associated with the friars’ kitchen.
The American influence on our cuisine spelled speed and convenience. There is “Spam culture” in the province, meaning canned foods (Spam, corned beef, sardines) are valued over fresh food, because American food was considered “modern” and desirable.
The section on “Sawsawan” or dipping sauce is so Filipino, for the diner becomes the final cook, fine-tuning the dish to his individual palate. Our meals are accompanied by an array of sauces, most common are patis (fish sauce) and bagoong (fermented fish or shrimp).
There are more must-read sections on Filipino breakfasts, century-old recipes from a Paris Exile, the Filipino Fiesta and Food in Philippine literature.
Designed by Miguel Mari with photographs by Jilson Tiu, Palayok’s narrative is interspersed with many colorful photographs evocative of a particular time and place, and even fruit riddles in Masbate, Visayan, Tagalog, Hiligaynon, Filipino, Cebuano, Ibanag, Pampango. A more complete list is found at the end of the book. Riddles are, after all, our earliest form of oral literature.
Reviewers have discussed the book’s ambition to cover wide ground as leaving wanting a deeper analysis of particular dishes or regions. “The essays are short and episodic rather than sustained monographs.”
The book is said to presume a certain familiarity with Filipino food culture, though I believe the glossary should be of help.
The welcome comment is that the reader wants more. “The author tends toward celebration rather than critique: she writes lovingly of Filipino food, and while that is one of the book’s pleasures, some readers may prefer a more critical or disruptive angle on heritage cuisine.”
Despite all these, Palayok still succeeds brilliantly as a landmark work of cultural memory for the Filipino reader, proudly remembering our identity and heritage.
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