My Pinoy Palate

My fondest food memories as a child did not consist of fast food burgers, spaghetti and fries. Far from it. At the tender age of six or thereabouts, I recall being seduced by the heady taste of Kalderetang Kambing and Batangas Bulalo.

You see, my father was a transplant from Batangas, and my mother, from Iloilo. How they hooked up sure beats me, considering the sheer geographic challenge behind an encounter. They were newly minted city folk who ate simply, as they were accustomed in the provinces. In fact, they ate very well. Everything was fresh, nothing processed. Their eating habits, they imparted to us kids.

Sundays did not mean a trip to mall. Sundays were reserved for the long trek to my father’s hometown, Santo Tomas Batangas. To visit our lolo and lola and partake of lunch, Batangueno style. And what high style lunch was!

To this day I still remember vividly when they tied a live goat by its hindquarters, upside down on a sturdy tree branch. I watched in a mixture of horror and fascination as my uncle slashed the bleating goat’s neck with a clean swipe of the sharp bolo. The goat bled to its death with a basin catching the dripping blood. And then the goat was skinned and the flesh cut up into sizeable chunks of meat, poured into a deep vat where it simmered for hours in a mix of tomatoes, liver, bell peppers, olives. I sat on my father’s lap, completely riveted as the men drank while waiting for the Kaldereta to be cooked. Another uncle casually sauntered by and poured the contents of a whole bottle of beer in the vat in a display of freestyle cooking. By noontime it was transformed into the best Kalderetang Kambing ever.


**Visiting Farmer’s Market in Cubao, I was pleasantly surprised to see a stall selling goat meat. I bought two kilos and made my own Kalderetang Kambing. A far cry from my dad’s version but it was a valiant attempt just the same. Farmer’s Market is one of the few markets selling goat meat in the metro. It's also the cleanest and the only market I'll consider going to.

Fresh meat in Batangas meant “bagong katay” or freshly slaughtered. There were no shortcuts. Chicken Tinola came from native chickens caught by slingshot. Inihaw na baboy came from formerly treasured pet pigs. My mother consoled me by saying that the pig died for a good cause. Whatever. And after a while I stopped naming them pigs. Or maybe I should’ve named them Liempo or Lechon, so there would be no pretensions as to their lot in life.

My other favorite would be authentic Batangas Bulalo. Somehow it is just so different from all the rest I have tried since. Certainly much better than Rose and Grace or Sosing’s. The meat would have a sweet, smoky flavor – owing to the fact that it is cooked in real wood fire. My father would collect all the bone marrow from big chunks of bone and evenly divide it among us four siblings (my youngest brother Mike was not yet born). We were instructed to eat it immediately before it gets “sebo” or cold. I never really figured why it was called “utak” – maybe because it resembled how brains would probably look like when laid in front of you? For such an unappetizing name, I relished the delicious taste of utak. It was slippery soft, ethereal. I love fois gras but I would say that I prefer utak more.

Nowadays kids are weaned on a steady diet of junkfood. Where bliss means some greasy, uninspired hotdog on a stick. Such a pity because they will never know the rich taste and tradition of Filipino food. As a child I used to hate Sunday farm days with all the slaughtering going on. I hated it that my parents did not bring us kids to normal places, like McDonald’s.

In retrospect, I am glad they did not.