Linamnam: Eating One's Way Around the Philippines by Claude Tayag and Mary Ann Quioc

I guess I should start off with asking, how would you define “linamnam”? 😊

You could describe is as ‘taste’, but it isn’t a straight definition for either sweet, salty, sour, or bitter. Perhaps, it’s a little closer to umami - but with a stronger associated feeling. Like, it can mean ‘incredibly flavourful’ with an added layer of being soulfully satisfying. It isn’t a category of dishes, like soul food, but technically an adjective used to describe something whose tastiness has just far exceeded your desire to search for other words. In such a situation, the only thing to say would be “Mmm, malinamnam.” The cook will know what you mean.

This linguistic interplay between the etymology of words used to describe food, and how it is specific to Filipino people, is probably the biggest reason I really like this book. That, of course, and its existence as the most widely available culinary guidebook featuring contemporary Philippine cuisine.

I don’t remember exactly when I got this, but it was in the first couple batches of cookery books that I had ordered from the Philippines. I became obsessed with the variety of dishes Claude and Mary Ann featured in the book, compiled from their many years of travel across the Philippine islands. So many different styles of cooking with ingredients I had never heard of - much less tasted - growing up in Manila. It felt like there was so much to discover, particularly in Mindanao, a province many in the country grow up knowing very little about, beyond its longstanding conflicts and reputation as not a safe place to travel.

I dreamed about going to Davao and eating a freshly sliced durian, redolent with its pungent scent. I’d had durian candy lots of times, but that had none of the pleasure I imagined you’d get with spooning heaps of creamy, pulpy durian straight into your mouth.

In Cagayan de Oro, Claude and Mary Ann recommended a restaurant called “Cee’s” at the VIP Hotel for a dish called sinuglaw, made with grilled pork belly (the “sinug” in its name for “sinugba”, Cebuano for ‘to grill’) and kinilaw, freshly caught fish with citrus and chilies (“cooked by liquid fire”, as Doreen Fernandez says). This was soured with a fruit called suwa (a local lime-green citrus) and tabon-tabon, another endemic fruit that’s literally hard as a rock but looks like a brain split in half. The local tourism officers showed me nothing but extreme hospitality. 

This was the first time I travelled to the Philippines on my own, with the goal of tasting foods I’d never had. I wanted a connection that felt true, to the person I had become in Canada and the self that would always be the core of me, in all its mess and glory. This was going to be a story of my own, independent of my narrative growing up in a gated subdivision, cut off from realities beyond the fence.

My taste buds needed to uncover a version of the Philippines that held countless culinary treasures. I needed to eat my way around the country - realistically, in stages - just as Claude and Mary Ann have. 

I wanted that “linamnam”, and with every succeeding trip, I found that, and so much more.