Sangkap: Five Years of Winning Stories from the Doreen Gamboa Fernandez Food Writing Award
“The writing done about food must be worthy of its subject,” writes Doreen G. Fernandez in Tikim, her seminal book of essays on Filipino food. “It should be not just utilitarian reportage, but writing that depends heavily on the unsaid, on the assumed, on the subtext of culture. It should require full participation from the reader.”
Talk about lines that grab you! This particular quote opens Sangkap, a collection of winning entries from the Doreen Gamboa Fernandez Food Writing Award covering 2013 to 2017, published by the Food Writers Association of the Philippines. Sangkap, in Tagalog, refers to basic ingredients.
I’d like to dive straight into the reasons why I think this book needs to be on your bookshelf.
1) Be the audience for writers who tell stories about Filipino food and culture
Regardless of where you live, you’ll learn something new about Filipino culture through its food. For those in the diaspora, what an incredible resource it is - there is so much great writing on the culinary riches of the Philippines that we simply don’t get to read online! Finding and buying a copy of this book - then telling your friends and family about the stories you read in it - is a simple, actionable, totally rewarding step towards increasing the scope and much-needed audience for Philippine literature. Money talks, and the number of copies purchased should eventually increase demand for the book - in turn gaining global visibility for the awards and the profile of Philippine food writing as a legitimate powerhouse. And that’s something I truly believe.
2) Immerse yourself in the worlds of rice, coconuts, herbs, vinegar and bagoong
These ingredients aren’t singular to the Philippines, but what makes them Filipino? The writers in this book own them, much as I do - as I hope it becomes the same for you, if you aren’t comfortable with “owning” these food products as a distinct part of your Filipino identity already.
Of these, bagoong (fermented fish or shrimp paste) is likely the only semi-polarizing ingredient from a western/diaspora perspective - though to be honest, not everyone who lives in the Philippines actually loves the pungency of native bagoong (aka not the highly processed Barrio Fiesta kind you get in jars). Setting preferences aside, the sheer amount of variety and preparations for various types of bagoong is mind-boggling. I just want to eat a bunch of different kinds while travelling across the country. Can we please make that happen?
3) Solidify your reasons to cook
Sure, most of us think very little of rinsing rice and chucking it in a rice cooker to complete a Filipino meal. But that doesn’t mean the act, nor the significance, of preparing what’s arguably an essential part of enjoying Filipino food diminishes with the push of button. In his essay “The Ritual of Cooking Rice”, Bay Area-based Jun Belen brings us into his kitchen to collectively experience what he remembers best about rice as a Filipino staple - how it’s measured, its malleable textures, its “flaws” for those who seek nothing but a pearly white complexion (frankly, burnt tutong is no flaw for me either) and importantly, the bliss associated with whiffs of freshly cooked rice seeping out the tiny little hole from the glass lid on basic electric cookers.
In “Wanting Ginatan”, Palanca award-winning author Noelle de Jesus writes about a longing for the foods of her childhood - specifically, for the tropical allure of coconuts. Living in a small, midwest U.S. town in the early 90s, coconut in any form beyond ‘sweetened and dessicated’ was difficult to find, and reconciling what you crave and what you can actually procure (and afford) became, as she describes, “a memory of myself at my most self-reliant”.
In an essay called “Tanglad as Identity and Context for the Filipino”, Lolita Lacuesta ponders upon her discovery that lemongrass isn’t a universal ingredient in tinolang manok (chicken stewed with ginger). Her mother used tanglad, she says, “to strengthen the broth and imbue it with the herb’s fragrance and flavor, as she prepared it to soothe sore throats…while nourishing the family as well”. This aromatic herb finds its place, she continues, “securely in the connections it provides between Philippine and Southeast Asian cooking, where it is an important component in the Indonesian beef rendang, Malaysian laksa, Thai tom yum goong and the Vietnamese lemongrass chicken”. Definitely images to work up an appetite!
In the chapter on vinegar, Elmer Nochesda writes about “The Suka in Us” and how “my mother has a term for it: buhay ang suka”. I especially love this line for its manifestation of Tagalog’s quirky complexities. Buhay can mean both “live” and “alive”, and while both are adjectives describing the noun suka (the generic term for vinegar) its meaning shifts slightly, but wholly, depending on how the word buhay is pronounced.
“Bu-HAY” with the emphasis on “hay” pronounced quickly means “the vinegar is alive”, undoubtedly referring to the way vinegar continues its life after the sugars are eaten away from a natural ingredient that begins as fruit or palm wine.
“BU-hay” with a hard emphasis on the first syllable directly translates to “vinegar is life” - a sentiment that I (and many Filipinos I presume) definitely agree with.
Nochesda talks about the three most common types of vinegar in the Philippines and in all honesty, I understand that many of us have a long ways to go with truly appreciating their distinct tastes and virtues: sukang tuba (coconut vinegar), sukang tubo (cane vinegar) and sukang sasa (palm vinegar). He lists numerous dishes across the archipelago that feature and indeed require a generous splash of native Philippine vinegar, long in use before any form of colonization took over the country’s lands and people. I may never do it, but I’ve thought about getting a bottle of vinegar tattooed on me….perhaps with homemade sinamak in those characteristic lapad bottles (a clever widespread use for old Tanduay rum bottles), speckled with bright chilies, peppercorns and garlic cloves crowding the narrow bottleneck. Reminds me of breakfast every time.
Finally, on bagoong, my favourite is an essay titled “The Taste of Resurrection: Pamarawan Bagoong” by Giney Villar. Here we meet Remegio de la Fuente, who lives in the coastal town of Pamarawan, Bulacan, where “the saltwater of Manila Bay meets the freshwater from the mighty Pampanga River, forming walls that press each other - nagbabanluwagan - giving and yielding in rhythmic undulations”.
Remegio has been fermenting bagoong alamang (fermented krill) for over 40 years. As Villar describes: “He recognizes the maturity of the bagoong by the redolent scent of an ocean unfolding. He feels the length of time the salt takes to dissolve, and can predict a good batch by gut - abilities honed by experience and mindfulness.”
What would it take for more of us to enjoy this incredible sangkap, I wonder?