Characteristic products
Populated by a spectacular number of ethnic groups, the Philippines have a rich and complex history. Even before the Spanish presence, the various states that made up the archipelago were already trading with their neighbors: the empire of China, Japan, Siam, the sultanate of Brunei and others. With the Spanish takeover, the country retained its status as a trading power in Asia, with Manila as its nerve center. The capital was one of the departure points for the Manila-Acapulco trade route, which connected the two continents. In addition to precious metals, spices and rare objects, the Spanish galleons brought many agricultural plants from the New World to Asia: potatoes, tomatoes, cocoa, chillies, squash, corn and more.
A mainstay of Filipino cuisine, rice is eaten at every meal and is served almost automatically with every dish. It is steamed, usually plain, but can sometimes be sautéed in oil with various condiments. Noodles - known as " pancit " - come in many varieties, such as canton (egg noodles), bihon (rice noodles), sotanghon (mung bean noodles), odong (thick wheat flour noodles) and so on. Sweet potato, taro (tuber), cassava and purple yam(ube) are among the most popular starches.
The most common vegetables include leafy greens such as water spinach and Chinese cabbage(pak choi and pe-tsai), as well as eggplant, kidney beans, okra, carrots, squash and tomatoes. Coconut is used for its milk, water, flesh and oil. Tart green mangoes and papayas are grated and preserved in a spicy vinegar brine(atchara). The fruit of the jackfruit tree(langka) has a stringy flesh reminiscent of the texture of shredded meat.
The three most popular meats are chicken, pork and beef. Goat, water buffalo(carabao), duck and game (notably venison) are rarer. The Spanish influence has favored the preparation of certain cured meats such as longganisa (sausage), pinuneg (black pudding), tocino (bacon) and Cebu chorizo, shaped like little balls and finely spiced. Dairy products are particularly popular, including fresh cheeses such as Kesong Puti made from buffalo milk.
With over 35,000 km of coastline, Philippine cuisine is inextricably linked with seafood: grouper, mackerel, swordfish, tuna, cod, marlin, not forgetting shrimp, crabs, cuttlefish, squid, mussels, clams, oysters and abalone. Seaweed(damong dagat) is also highly prized. Tilapia and catfish are caught in the rivers. Bangus(milkfish), considered the national fish, is often salted, dried and smoked, taking the name tinapa.
Local cuisine makes use of a vast assortment of spices and condiments: onion, shallot, garlic, ginger, lemongrass, turmeric, pepper, bay leaf, star anise, etc. Tamarind is prized for its brown, sour pulp, while the long leaves of pandan have a delicate taste somewhere between coconut and vanilla. Roucou seeds, with their slight nutmeg taste, are used for their orange color. While locals eat less hot than some of their neighbors, siling haba (a long, moderately hot green pepper) and siling labuyo (a tiny, hot red or green pepper, usually less than 1 cm long) are used extensively.
The sour flavor is prized, and sugarcane vinegar is used sparingly. The calamansi is a natural hybrid between the mandarin and the kumquat. This small citrus fruit, about the size of a large cherry, can be found everywhere, both as a garnish for meat dishes and to give a little pep to a cold beer. Soy sauce, or toyò, is widely used, often mixed with calamansi juice and a dash of chopped shallot and chilli, to make the famous toyomansi sauce. Patis (fermented fish sauce) is very common, as is fermented fish paste(bagoóng isdâ) or krill paste (bagoóng alamáng), with a powerful taste. The surprising banana ketchup - made from banana pulp, sugar, vinegar and spices - appeared in the 1940s. Some dishes are sweetened with muscovado sugar, a pure, unrefined cane sugar with a high molasses content.
Everyday meals are usually taken in turo-turo (an accumulation of pots on small street stalls) or in small, inexpensive canteens. We eat three times a day: breakfast(almusál), lunch(tanghalían) and dinner(hapúnan). In the afternoon, we enjoy the merienda (snack), as in Spain or Latin America. As a result of the American occupation, fast-food outlets are very common throughout the country, and very popular with the population.
Traditionally, Filipinos ate with their hands, but the Spanish and then American presence reinforced the use of cutlery, and today we eat with forks and spoons as in other Southeast Asian countries. Knives are rarely found outside international restaurants. However, large banquets called kamayan or salu-salo are still held, where a multitude of dishes are laid out on banana leaves. Diners serve themselves with one hand and place the food in the other before bringing it to the mouth.
Classics of Philippine cuisine
Markets, street stalls and, of course, restaurants offer a wide range of appetizers. The most typical is the lumpia or lumpiang, of Chinese origin, the local equivalent of an egg roll. There are several variations, such as the famous lumpiang shanghai, deep-fried and filled with minced pork and vegetables, but there are also meatless versions(lumpiang gulay) and fresh versions, consisting of a pancake filled with vegetable and meat sticks or pre-cooked shrimp, like a spring roll(lumpiang sariwa). Also fresh, lumpiang ubod contains palm heart. Dynamita is a variety of lumpiang containing a whole chili pepper stuffed with cheese or minced meat. Others include rellenong alimango (stuffed crab) and camaro rebosado (shrimp fritters). Theempanada ilocos is an orange pastry-based turnover - coloured with roucou - filled with sausage and hard-boiled egg.
While rice is present at every meal as a side dish, it can also be prepared as a main course. A classic breakfast dish is silog, made with sinangag (fried rice with garlic) anditlog (fried egg). The whole thing is garnished with meat, giving the dish its name: tapsilog (with tapa: minced marinated meat), longsilog (with longganisa), hamsilog (with ham), chiksilog (with fried chicken), and so on.Arroz caldo is a creamy rice porridge topped with chicken, fried onion and hard-boiled egg.
Another classic directly influenced by Spain: paelya is a general term for dishes based on yellow rice (dyed with roucou and not saffron, which is not used in the Philippines), garnished with meat, vegetables and seafood. The main difference comes from the use of glutinous rice, giving a denser, stickier preparation than the bomba rice used for traditional paella. Hard-boiled eggs are also added as a garnish. The most classic recipe is called " arroz a la valenciana ". Bringhe also contains coconut milk, while paella negra is tinted with cuttlefish ink.
The Chinese Hokkien influence, which comes from southeast China, can be seen in a variety of noodle-based recipes. These are generally made up of a mixture of vegetables, meat and/or seafood, with the name of the variety used: pancit canton (a dish of wheat noodles with eggs), pancit bihon (a dish of rice vermicelli) and so on. There's also pancit palabok, with vermicelli coated in a spicy sauce and garnished with shrimp, hard-boiled egg and minced pork, or pancit habhab, garnished with carrots, cabbage, chayote (a variety of squash) and chunks of meat. Also worth mentioning are siopao asado, steamed buns filled with caramelized pork.
An essential festive dish, lechon, or suckling pig, is very popular. It is eaten on special occasions, such as birthdays, weddings and festivals. The young pig is stuffed with lemongrass and sometimes garlic, onions and chillies, then cooked for several hours on a spit. The skin - which has become very crispy - is particularly prized. Lechon kawali refers to slices of fried pork belly, eaten as is or, as in the case of pinakbet, cooked with vegetables and bagoong (shrimp paste). There are a multitude of pork recipes, such as crispy pata (fried pork shank flavored with soy sauce, chili and vinegar) or bicol express (pork belly in a spicy coconut milk sauce). Often served at Christmas,hamonado is a recipe for pork confit with pineapple juice, black pepper, bay leaf, soy sauce, garlic and vinegar. A variation on the Spanish puchero, pochera is a kind of stew with pork belly, chickpeas, tomato, corn, potato, cabbage and more.
But there are many other recipes for meat in sauce, including the Philippine national dish:adobo. This specialty of pork or chicken (sometimes fish) is cooked in a highly aromatic mixture of soy sauce, vinegar, black pepper, bay leaf and a generous amount of garlic. Kare-kare is a meat stew (oxtail, pork shank, calf's trotters and sometimes offal) with a variety of vegetables, cooked in a sauce made with peanut butter, onion, garlic and shrimp paste. Afritada, mechado, caldereta and menudo are four fairly similar meat dishes in sauce, topped with potatoes, carrots, tomato and soy sauce. Note thatafritada often contains chicken and menudo is generally prepared with pork meat and liver, while calderata is more spicy.
Sinigang is made from an acidic broth flavored with tamarind, and contains a variety of meats and/or fish, as well as a number of vegetables, and is served with rice. It is one of the most popular dishes in the archipelago, where it is found in almost every region. In contrast, tiyula itum comes only from the Tausug ethnic group in the Sulu archipelago. It's a finely spiced beef or goat soup that owes its almost black color to the use of toasted coconut. Finally, bulalo is a beef shank and marrow bone soup with corn and cabbage.
Filipinos are big fans of barbecues, so grilled meats and skewered offal are a classic feature of local street food. One example is chicken inasal, marinated for a long time in a mixture of calamansi juice, pepper, vinegar and annatto seeds, then grilled to perfection over coals. This is a variant of lechon manok. This dish consists of a whole chicken flavored with garlic, bay leaf, onion, black pepper, soy sauce and patis (fish sauce), sometimes with a little brown sugar. It is stuffed with lemongrass and roasted over charcoal. This is a very popular dish in the Philippines and is readily available in roadside restaurants. Another classic, Tagalog bistek, consists of strips of beef slow-cooked in soy sauce, calamansi juice and lots of onions. Finally, sisig is a mixture of pork head and belly and chicken liver, all minced and sautéed with calamansi juice, onion and chillies.
Coconut milk is widely used in a multitude of dishes such as ginataan. In fact, this term encompasses a variety of recipes based on vegetables cooked in coconut milk and garnished with meat, fish or seafood. The best known is ginataan manok with chicken. But there are other variations too: kuhol (water snail and leafy vegetables), labong (bamboo shoots sometimes with meat or seafood), isda (with fish and leafy vegetables), langka (jackfruit and seafood), ampalaya (bitter melon or margosa, and fish), and so on. Piaparan consists of meat (usually chicken) or seafood in a thick coconut milk and turmeric sauce, topped with grated coconut. Also very popular, pininyahang manok is a chicken stew with pineapple, mixed vegetables and coconut milk.
Of course, there's no shortage of fish and seafood recipes. These include sinugno (tilapia grilled in coconut milk) and sinanglay (stuffed fish wrapped in leafy vegetables, lemongrass and pandan, then cooked in a spicy coconut milk sauce). Fishballs are a common sight on market stalls. A Mindanao specialty, kinilaw is made with raw tuna or blue marlin, marinated in coconut vinegar, mixed with calamansi juice and ginger, and garnished with cucumber, tomato or bell pepper. It's a very fresh dish, not unlike South American ceviche.Inihaw na panga ng tuna is a tuna jaw lacquered with soy sauce, vinegar, chili and calamansi. Paksiw is a preparation generally based on fish (sometimes pork) poached in a very vinegary broth with onion, garlic and ginger. Finally, halabos na hipon consists of shrimp cooked with garlic and a dash of lemon soda, sometimes with a knob of butter.
As in many Asian countries, some dishes may disconcert our Western palates. Some specialties include dinuguan at puto, a soup of pork meat and offal cooked with pig's blood, onion, garlic and more. Betute is a recipe for whole, fried frogs stuffed with a minced pork-based mixture. Unusual, but pleasantly fresh,ensaladang lato - sometimes called kinilaw na guso - is a salad made from seaweed of the genus Caulerpa lentillifera, better known as green caviar or umibudō. Kamaro is a dish of courtilières (a species of cricket) sautéed with garlic and vinegar. Dog meat was traditionally consumed in the Philippines, but its sale has been banned since 1998, although the law is not always respected, particularly in the Cordillera Central provinces north of Luzon. Balut is probably the country's most destabilizing specialty. This fertilized cane egg is incubated until a foetus forms. The egg is then steamed and eaten with a little salt or a dash of spiced vinegar. The fetus and the watery yolk are very much appreciated with beer, as is the broth naturally formed inside the shell during cooking.
Desserts and drinks
As in most Southeast Asian countries, desserts and pastries in the Philippines are made with the essential rice-coconut-banana trio. These include galapóng, a fermented rice paste used as a base for many desserts, such as the famous bibinka, a dense, moist cake made with rice and coconut milk. There are many variations with manioc flour or even topped with banana or fromage frais. Puto are other steamed rice cakes flavored with pandan leaves ( puto pandan), for example, which give them a green color. Others, such as puto bumbong, are made with purple glutinous rice and cooked in bamboo tubes. Kutsinta is a steamed rice cake - a little gelatinous - colored with roucou. It is sometimes topped with latik (coconut milk caramel). Sapin-sapin is a steamed flan made with glutinous rice flour and coconut milk, layered in different colors.
Another classic is the refreshing halo-halo, which can be found everywhere, at any time of day. It contains crushed ice, sweetened condensed milk, purple yam ice cream(ube ice cream), sweetened red beans, various jellies, fruit and coconut, all served in a tall glass. Also noteworthy is champorado, a rice porridge with cocoa and condensed milk, served - strangely enough - with dried fish. Turon - nothing to do with Spanish nougat - is a kind of banana-fried spring roll, whileensaymada is Spanish in origin and takes the form of a sugar brioche filled with vanilla cream. Leche flan is a rich egg custard, also from Spain. Pastillas de leche are sweets made from powdered milk and condensed milk. Buko pie is a pie filled with fresh coconut, sugar and milk.
Tropical fruits are delicious and juicy, abundant and varied. Papayas, pineapples, citrus fruits and sweet mangoes are all delicious, while green mangoes can be eaten raw with salt. There are twenty varieties of banana: plantain(saging), dwarf, red, green, as a vegetable or dessert. You should also try the mangostan with its very sweet pulp, the caimito or star apple, the marang with its delicate flesh or the durian, with its creamy yellow pulp that locals adore. Foreigners generally find its taste somewhere between an overdone Camembert and onion, with the smell to match. Taste for yourself. Strawberries are popular in the mountains.
All these fruits are used in the composition of many fresh drinks, such as calamansi juice, which has a tangy taste reminiscent of tangerine and lime. Buko is coconut water sipped directly from the fruit - still green - split in half with a machete. Sodas are extremely popular. A long Spanish and then American presence has made Filipinos major coffee consumers. The quality of the coffee varies greatly, although more and more coffee shops are opening in the big cities, and good local coffees are available, for example in Luzon and in the mountains near Sagada and Baguio. The most popular variety comes from the Batangas mountains, known as kapeng barako. Tea consumption is a more recent phenomenon. Salabat is a ginger infusion said to cure sore throats. Tanglad iced tea with lemongrass is also popular. Tsokolate is a hot chocolate, popular during the Christmas season.
Alcohol consumption is high in the Philippines, especially as the price of alcoholic beverages is generally very affordable. The most popular local beer is the classic San Miguel, very light and found absolutely everywhere. But you should also try the dark Cerveza Negra and the strong Red Horse, also made by the San Miguel company. And let's not forget Beer Na Beer. The country has a large rum production, including the famous Tanduay. The local gin (Ginebra San Miguel) is also noteworthy.
There are a multitude of palm wines known generically as tubâ, made from various species of palm. Lambanog (coconut) and laksoy (nipa palm) are distilled, white in color - milky or clear - with a high alcohol content (between 40 and 50°). Bahalina gets its amber color from the use of mangrove bark. Kinutil, a blend of palm wine, condensed milk, egg yolk and cocoa, is the local equivalent of eggnog. Also worth mentioning are tapuey, the glutinous rice wine produced in the Visayas, and basi, the sugarcane wine flavored with berries and bark from the Ilocanos.
