More than 300 years ago, long before Spanish conquistadores staggered down their ships to kiss the shores of the islands, Filipinos were rowing out to sea in their little bancas, wading knee-deep in rice paddies, planting in their backyards and hunting in the woods. Whatever they gathered and caught they simply roasted, boiled or broiled over an open fire. The forests were abundant and the surrounding waters teeming with life; the Filipinos' idea of food included everything nature had to offer. Preferably seafood. Preferably fresh. Squirming, leaping, crawling-out-of-the-cooking-pot fresh.
Foreign trade during those times was healthy and a good deal less complicated than today. The Malaysians, Indonesians, Arabians, Indians, and Chinese brought all sorts of spices and food plants to the islands. Some of them stayed and raised families here, and handed down cooking methods which the natives used to improve their own methods.
Filipino cuisine is much like the Filipino himself: a mixture of different cultures, Eastern and Western, that forms one unique culture that is like yet unlike those that preceded it. Throughout the centuries foreigners came, as traders or conquerors, and brought with them their tastes and cooking styles, which the Filipinos adapted to their own essentially Malayan cuisine.
The Chinese Influence
From the Chinese we have the whole noodle business: pancit miki, pancit bihon, pancit Canton, pancit sotanghon. But the Filipinos have completely imbued the dishes with their own flair, and now there is a different kind of pancit for almost every region on the Philippines. Other Chinese-inspired dishes, such as lumpia, kikiam, siopao, and siomai, have been absorbed into the Filipino way of life. They are part of Filipino diet, even today.
The Spanish Influence
Three hundred years of preparing dinner for Mother Spain gave us a flair for rich food, the way Europeans prepare it. Stews such as the cocido and puchero, rice-meat dishes and elaborate desserts such as brazos, and tortas imperiales are generally considered fiesta food, and most often found on the dining tables of the upper classes.
The American influence
Sure, they brought us kitchen conveniences like the refrigerator, the pressure cooker, the oven toaster and the microwave. They also gave us burgers, salads, and pies which we baked with native fruits. But though we absorbed so much of their culture in their 50-year colonization, American cooking is only now becoming part of Philippine cuisine. Through their fastfood joints, we indirectly tasted spaghetti and pizza. But somehow we wanted these to taste sweet, not sour as the Italians intended them to be.
The American contribution to Filipino kitchen particularly became heavy following WW II when surplus canned foods became widely available because of the shortages of fresh produce. The Filipinos embraced these 'new foods' and turned them into dishes that taste nothing like canned food. For example, by sauteing canned corned beef with onions and garlic, they created a dish uniquely their own.
All-in-all, Philippine cooking is the familiar blended with the exotic...just as the Filipinos are part Malay, Chinese and Spanish, so is the cuisine of the seven-thousand-island Philippine nation.
This information can be found at Katutubong Pinoy and Manong Ken's Carinderia
------- Recipes -------
click food item for recipe
| Appetizers | |
| Balut | fertilized duck egg |
| Embutido | sweet sausage |
| sweet roll topped with butter, cheese, & sugar | |
| Lumpia | beef and/or vegetables wrapped in a spring roll and fried |
| Pan de sal | the Philippine sweet bread roll |
| Puto | steamed rice muffins |
| Siopao | steamed bread stuffed with seasoned pork or chicken |
| sliced planteens with jackfruit rolled in a spring roll and fried | |
| Entrees | |
| Adobong Pusit | squid stir-fry |
| boiled rice mixed with chicken in a ginger flavored soup | |
| Beef with Broccoli | thinly sliced beef with broccoli stir-fried in soy sauce |
| Beef in Oyster Sauce | thinly sliced beef stir-fried in oyster sauce |
| Chicken Adobo | seasoned chicken in soy/vinegar flavored sauce |
| corned beef fried with potatoes and onions | |
| Dinuguan | "the chocolate meat" ... blood stew |
| Kaldereta | beef cubes and potatoes mixed in a tomato flavored stew with tastes of spicy chilis |
| Kanin | cooked rice |
| Kare-Kare | ox-tails served with long beans in a peanut flavored stew |
| roasted pig | |
| Menudo | |
| Pancit | thin rice noodles with vegetables and chicken, pork, or shrimp |
| vegetables & hard-boiled eggs served in shrimp flavored sauce over Philippine noodles | |
| Pork Adobo | seasoned pork in soy/vinegar flavored sauce |
| Sinigang na Baboy | pork in sour broth with vegetables(kang kong, sitaw) | Sinigang na Bangus | milkfish in sour broth with vegetables(mustard greens, radish) | Sinigang na Manok | chicken in sour broth with vegetables(cabbage, radish) |
| meat sauce with hotdogs served over spaghetti noodles | |
| Desserts | |
| Bibingka | coconut rice dessert |
| crushed ice mixed with uncondensed milk, jackfruit, mongo beans, coconut strips, corn, sugar, & ube | |
| Leche Flan | egg custard |
| Macaroni Fruit Salad | cooked macaroni mixed with fruit, cheese, & raisins |
| specialty rice steamed in banana leaves | |
| sweet purple yam |
...more to come!