By Judy Cariño
(This speech was delivered on November 17, 2018 at Teatro Amianan, UP Baguio as part of the Talastasan Lecture Series, UP Baguio’s contribution to the UNESCO Creative Baguio Initiative.)
Are the people of the Cordillera carnivorous? Many of us believe so, because often, our exposure to traditional food is during traditional feasts, weddings, rituals, where meat, lots of meat, is the main dish. Ibaloy ritual celebrations are occasions to taste watwat, or simply boiled pork meat, demshang or roasted pork skin, and pinuneg or blood sausages.
Ibaloy ritual food is simply cooked, boiled or roasted. What makes it extra special is the community, the ritual, the sharing that watwat is part of. Of course, the pig is freshly butchered which makes the meat extra delicious.
But is meat the main component of the traditional diet? No, it is not. Because for the rest of the days, outside of community feasts and special occasions, the food served depends on what is available in the fields, backyard, swidden farm, forest, and waters. So the traditional diet is as diverse as the biodiversity in their homeland.
Rice is the staple, supplemented by rootcrops. For many Cordillera communities, rice is planted once, maybe twice, in the narrow rice fields. And so rice is limited, and the harvest has to be stretched out to feed the family for the whole year. Because rice is so valuable, children are taught not to waste a single grain, and they are told that rice cries when it is wasted.
We gathered many recipes for rice. Many of these dishes have camote, or banana, or gabi added to the rice to stretch the rice supply. Each community has their own way of cooking rice for special occasions, like linapet (ground rice with peanuts wrapped in banana leaves) in Besao, or inandila (ground sticky rice shaped in tongues, wrapped and steamed in certain leaves, and served with coconut ladek) in Kalinga, or binakle (a combination of sticky rice and camote).
So what is eaten with the rice? Actually, the traditional diet is high in vegetables.
In Kalinga, binongor gathers together in one dish banana heart, langka, squash, beans, mushrooms, edible shells from the river or the ricefields, cooked with lots of sili. Sili is said to preserve this dish and can last for a week, getting hotter and spicier as the days go by.
Usually, this spicy dish is served along with a mild tasting dish like dinannaw (unsalted corn soup with vegetables) or binggaw (roasted mung bean and coconut cream soup), which are lightly seasoned or may not even have any salt at all.
The gabi plant is widely cooked all over the Cordillera, using all its parts from the root, stalk, leaves making up the dish. There are tips from many cooks on how to avoid producing an itchy dish, like letting it boil without disturbing it, or not washing it but merely wiping it with the outer skin of the stalk, choosing the right variety of gabi, etc.
Many greens are used like camote tops, sayote shoots, amti, tungsoy watercress, and masaplora shoots. Our informants from Sadanga said that a simple diet of rice with greens with occasional meat is the reason for many of their elders living until they reach one hundred years old.
Another favorite dish all over the Cordillera is boiled pulses or dried beans, which are boiled along with small pieces of smoked meats.
From the waters of the ricefields, creeks and rivers are gathered edible snails (round ones and long ones), insects, water plants, small and big fish, crabs, shrimps and water plants. Again, these are simply cooked, boiled in a little water, sometimes with coconut cream, or roasted, allowing the natural flavors to shine and are never covered with rich sauces.
Many recipes for food preservation have been developed to avoid waste and to cope with hard times. These recipes contriubute to the resilience of the Cordillera people.
When meat is plentiful, or when one attends a community feast and is given watwat or a share of the meat, this is simply salted and hung above the cooking fire in the traditional kitchen, to be used in the future to flavor a pot of pinikpikan, chicken soup or a pot of boiled pulses, such as black beans or white beans or mungbeans. In Ifugao, the meat is chopped finely, salted and made into sausages, which are smoked called pinunnog.
Tengba is a preserved gravy or sauce in Besao Mountain Province, made out of small river crabs, pounded rice, and salt. This is placed in jar and left to ferment for several months. When there is no other food, this can serve as the viand. Also, it is served to new mothers and is said to help them produce enough milk to nurse their infants. And wines are produced, from rice, from sugar cane, from camoteng kahoy, usually served during special occasions.
There are ways to keep kamote from getting wasted, such as buku or dried kamote chips. The chips are pounded to produce camote flour and cooked along with rice or into pancakes.
For the Cordillera people, food is gift of the land, and something to be thankful for. It is gift that is to be shared with family, community, and with the unseen, from whom these blessings come. Thus it is never to be wasted, but always to be valued and shared.
Food is the everyday expression of the deep relationship with the land, being rooted in the land, which is the source of food, and of life. Thus, planting and havest seasons are marked with holidays and community feasts where the animals and butchered and meat is shared with all.
The belongingness to community is manifested in the preparation of food. It takes a village of women to prepare the inandila in Kalinga for community feasts, from the pounding of the rice, mixing, forming and wrapping, steaming, unwrapping, cooking the coconut into the ladek, until the delicacy is ready to be served.
And in the traditional kitchen, the cooking is mindful. There is a food ethic that values the nutrients in the food and makes sure that nothing is wasted, and that food is healthy and clean, good enough for serving and sharing, and to be offered to the unseen spirits, and the dear departed ancestors.
All these heirloom recipes that we have gathered are products of the creativity and innovation of generations of women and men, who, working with simple ingredients, simple cooking implements, are able to produce delicious and healthy meals for their families, communities, and visitors, and not to forget, the unseen spirits who accompany the people in their daily lives.