On the Situation of Filipino Food
Recently, Gwyneth Paltrow made a Facebook post showing her making a tortang talong which is a kind of eggplant omelette. As a Filipino, I find it a bit odd that all of a sudden, this simple and homey dish is starting to be popular. Tortang talong is usually that kind of food that you cook when you can't think of anything else to eat or if you are on a tight budget. Now, some celebs are kinda making it as if it's a posh dish.
But it's not just tortang talong
Filipino dishes that are starting to be part of people's consciousness are chicken adobo and ube. It should make us happy, right? But there is a lot of problem when non-Filipinos start to make money out of our cuisine.
The maligned Asian cuisine
For decades, Filipino food has been tagged and called bad, uncreative, unappealing, boring, tasteless, tastes horrible, insert negative adjective here. It's been rubbed on to our faces that our cuisine is just an "acquired taste" and will never take off globally. We were told that our food is bland because it's not spicy and it's just "simple".
The case of Ube
Ube which is purple yam in English has been the rage the past few years. The big problem with the Ube trend is many products marketed as "ube" are not really ube nor do they have any ube in them. Oftentimes, purple sweet potato is used. Purple sweet potatoes and ube are different crops from entirely different families. Sweet potatoes (ipomoea batatas) are indigenous to the American continent while Ube/Purple Yam (dioscorea alata) are indigenous to Southeast Asia. Yet food manufacturers jumping into this trend often conflate these two different crops. Information on difference between these two is easy to find on the internet yet food companies fail in this basic research. If you get a packaged product labeled as "ube" and look into the ingredient list, you'll often see purple sweet potatoes listed instead of purple yam.
While ube is a crop that is not exclusive to the Philippines, what is unique is how it is utilized in Filipino cuisine. Ube is not just an ingredient added to food, it is a flavor on its own. And this is where Filipino cuisine is being erased. Lindt recently came up with a "Bali-style" Ube chocolate. This is so wrong in many levels:
- Ube is a Tagalog term, not Indonesian or Balinese. The Indonesian term for purple yam is ubi unggu. Not ubi, and not ube. In fact, in Indonesian, ubi refers to sweet potatoes. To refer to purple yam, it has to be ubi unggu. In Tagalog, sweet potatoes are called kamote.
- Lindt claimed that it was inspired by "Southeast Asian concept". Lindlt appears to still not understand it. While ube is a crop that is available in other countries, the utilization of the crop stems specifically from Filipino cuisine. So ube chocolate, ube this and that came from Filipino cuisine and not just a generic "Southeast Asian" food. It is also unclear if there even is a true Bali-style ube preparation that is distinct. Lindt's explanation is that they sourced the ube from Indonesia. They should have left it as just Ube chocolate and avoid adding embellished statements that they are clueless about.
- Before the Ube trend, most Southeast Asian treated Ube the same way Filipinos treat potatoes - an additional ingredient to staple food. Like how potatoes are added to adobo or nilaga.
- Ube as a flavor and main ingredient is not actually the crop itself. Ube actually also comes in white. Yes, there is "white ube". It happens that the most popular variant is the purple one, known as kinampay in the Philippines. With ube, the more purple it is, the less flavor it has (raw crop). The white ube has stronger flavor than the purple ones.
- Ube flavor does not refer to the taste of the crop itself but to the Ube halaya which is grated ube cooked in condensed milk and butter. This is why Filipinos have a very different perception of what Ube tastes like. The ube flavor is basically the taste of the ube halaya. That is why you see many Filipinos outside of the Philippines complain that the "ube" in other countries do not taste like ube at all. Well, most "ube" products outside the Philippines are not even ube at all but a different crop. Some are sweet potatoes, some are taro mislabeled as "ube". They're not even ube extracts that mimic the ube flavor.
If you want to really understand how the ube flavor should taste like, buy from a Filipino bakery or grocery store.
The case of Adobo
The case with adobo is less "drastic" than the case of ube but it still has its problems. At least, Chicken Adobo has been associated with Filipino cuisine. But the problem is, adobo has been misinterpreted especially by "celebrity chefs".
First, there exist many variants of adobo besides chicken. It seems that outside of the Philippines, adobo is only supposed to be chicken. In the Philippines, Pork adobo (adobong baboy) appears to be the most popular one. I get it that not all people eat pork. But if you eat bacon, there's no reason in sticking to just chicken adobo. Other variants that you will find in the Philippines are squid adobo (adobong pusit), snake bean adobo (adobong sitaw) and water spinach adobo (adobong kangkong).
Second, the base of adobo has been misinterpreted. The core ingredient of adobo is not soy sauce but vinegar. You can take out soy sauce from an adobo but not the vinegar. Squid adobo actually does not use soy sauce. It uses the squid ink with salt for the color. You can substitute soy sauce with salt or fish sauce but you cannot still call it adobo when you substitute vingear with lemon or any citrus. That becomes an entirely different dish! Adobo is not complicated to make and is pretty straightforward yet some celebrity chefs try to overembellish it and end up creating a very different dish. Geoffrey Zakarian's "authentic Filipino adobo" ended up becoming more like a Chicken Tagalog Bistek.
Third, you do not really have to marinate it overnight. What needs to be done is for the meat to be simmered in low heat until very tender. This will not only give you a melt-in-the-mouth meat but also a flavor bomb. It's even better if you eat the adobo next day after cooking it.
The future of Filipino cuisine
Filipino food is not going away. But my anxiety lies in its erasure and being misattributed to another culture as it gets adopted worldwide. Unlike the case of Ube, the Thai identity of "Mango Sticky Rice" is not erased despite not having a "Thai" description and with sticky rice in sweet coconut cream paired with mango not being an exclusive dish to Thailand but is rather truly common in Southeast Asia even without influence from Thailand. I think the Filipinos and the diaspora should start adding "Filipino" to the names of Filipino food to prevent it from being erased.