Not everyone cooks. But those who don’t cook and take pride in the inability should be ashamed of themselves.
Not being able to cook is surprising, given how popular culinary courses are now and even just how dime-a-dozen cooking shows are crowding television and the internet. In fact, the food and beverage industry is among the fastest growing sectors of the economy.
More than my mother, it was her mother Victorina Tubiano viuda de Lim, my Lola Mameng, who taught me the basics of cooking. But now that I think about it, it wasn’t really cooking. It was more of kitchen chores or cooking prep: a lot of tasks related to cooking but not cooking itself.
My childhood kitchen prep way back in 1960s Cagayan de Oro was extensive, and that’s where the secret lay, I now realize. You have to be steeped in prep to eventually love cooking and not find it a chore. It began from splitting and drying tree bark for firewood (obtained from the logging trucks that regularly passed in front of the house), to carrying the basket while in Cogon market (with bountiful fresh fish, even baby sharks, for sale), to pounding and winnowing rice, catching and slaughtering the chicken for lunch or dinner, and starting and banking a wood or charcoal cooking fire.
Lola Mameng even made me descale and clean the fish, a task that I found tedious and messy and could not do well, the fish being slippery and often still alive and with sharp pointy parts. I was not happy with it, being a boy of 10 who would rather just play and read comic strips and go on imaginary adventures with The Phantom or The Lone Ranger (character favorites which, in retrospect already showed my preference to work in the background or to do things by myself).
My dislike of the task also stemmed from my apprehension that, while gutting the fish, I’d inadvertently burst the gallbladder and make the rest of the fish bitter. Lola Mameng warned me of this. I need not have feared so much, of course, knowing now that I could have extracted the innards in their entirety without bursting anything, or that I could have rinsed off any bile and whatever else needed to be washed out. But such were my childhood fears, not the least of which was the fear of making a mistake and being blamed for making the fish bitter. (But it was fair warning from Lola Mameng, as fish gallbladder has been shown as highly toxic.)
Well, Lola Mameng did teach me how to use my fingers to estimate the correct amount of water to cook rice in (depth to slightly beyond first joint of middle finger; I never saw her use a measuring cup) although come to think of it again, I had child fingers and she had adult fingers. She also taught me a boiled egg hack just before I went to Boy Scout camp: Put the egg in the rice pot along with the rice, and when your rice is cooked, so will your egg be, and you can have your meal.
Lola Mameng was a fish person, and her favorite way of cooking fish was inun-unan (or paksiw na isda), soured with vinegar and ginger. Eating, she liked to suck the fish head. I preferred the fleshy parts but she told me that if I did the same and ingested those fish brains, I would become brighter. It was not an old fish story, I learned later. Fish heads are a good source of vitamin A and omega-3 fatty acids that help maintain good eyesight and boost memory and cognitive function.
Almost everything at our table was fresh; there was hardly any processed food. Our rice was brown or red. On nonmarket and no-leftover days, Lola Mameng relied on buwad (or dried fish) of all sorts or a newly slaughtered chicken from the backyard or her tins of salted pork encased in solidified lard. Also among her staples was ginamos (or bagoong, which was made of goby fish fry when it was still plentiful in Macajalar Bay) mixed with fresh sliced ripe tomatoes. Simple, tasty, inexpensive and easy to do.
This dish I make until now, except that in addition to the tomatoes, the bulk is made of cucumber, with thinly sliced onions and bell pepper, flavored with either fresh or pickled mango and bagoong alamang. It can be eaten by itself or with canned tuna or chicken or other meats. Less carbs, less sugar, less processed food. Somewhat salty, though.
We even had fresh goat’s milk brought to us every morning. The delivery completely stopped after some time. Maybe the goat or the goatherd died? I never found out.
There were no culinary schools and courses during my student days; the closest was home economics, and it was the girls who took that. At the University of the Philippines in Diliman, it was a treat to have a meal at “H.E.” because the food was good, the girls were pretty, and the tables were covered with white tablecloths all the more making us unsophisticated students accustomed to a UP cafeteria with bare tables feel “special.”
Now culinary training is accessible to everyone, and it is one occupation or preoccupation where age does not matter. Even skill does not matter. As long as one doesn’t burn the food, there is almost infinite leeway for error and experimentation. Only interest and persistence matter. So, get cooking!
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