MPKGD Which food, when you eat it, instantly transports you to childhood?
This is the perfect weekend to reminisce about the food that makes me feel like I was a kid again. Food always had a great significance for me. Whenever I eat food, I take great care in knowing who made it, how it was made, and if we are eating outside, where it was made. I really do think that upon knowing this I connect more with the food and the people who made it. That is why food always has a story and will always have a special connection with me.
There are four that come to mind: Menudo, Corned Beef, Fried Tilapia, and Adobo. These are all Filipino food (as far as I know) and I do still look for these and try to cook these with my mother as much as I can. The thing is even though I get close enough to knowing how to cook these, my grandmother or my Lola still had a way of making these taste extraordinary.
I hate raisins in food that are meant to be savoury. I love them in deserts and on their own BUT in savoury food, I really don’t like it. But for some reason if it’s the Menudo that my Lola made I would gobble it all up, raisins and all. When I think of menudo, I always remember her dining table after Mass on Sundays where we would be having this for brunch. Right after going to Church, we would go straight to our Lola’s house and my cousins and I would help her set the table for a good 12 people. She would bring out the pot of menudo with a gigantic bowl of fried rice. Very simple brunch but it always feels extraordinary because everyone was there: my aunts were there, my uncles were there, all my cousins were there, my grandmother’s siblings were also there and then we would just squeeze ourselves in her tiny house and we would just eat! And we were happy!
On an everyday basis, Lola would also cook corned beef. At first, I thought corned beef was a western thing because it was canned goods but when I moved to Canada, I realized that the corned beef as I know it is more of a Filipino thing (yes! This is a lot different than the corned beef that the Scottish and/or Irish have in their pub fares). Anyway, the corned beef brand that my Lola bought is probably the most unhealthy-looking thing: it was unhealthily red with tons of food colouring and it definitely tasted like food shortening and MSG but! I absolutely love it! She also put julienned potatoes with tons of onions and garlic stir-fried into the canned corned beef with tons of oil. Then she paired it with fried rice and scrambled egg. If I have this for breakfast, I know that I will have a good day. I don’t think anything can go wrong when I have this corned beef for breakfast (except for that one time that my lunch container opened in my bag and spilled its contents all over my school books).
Speaking of school, adobo. The Adobo – the Filipino Adobo, to be exact – is the first dish that I learned how to cook when I was 11 years old. Usually, kids at that age learned how to cook by cooking eggs, I didn’t (I actually still don’t know how to properly and deliciously cook egg). But this dish, I can proudly say that I have perfected it! I think there is a video out there where I had to cook it and do an interview. It is really not easy to cook. It technically only has two or three main ingredients: pork or chicken with soy sauce and vinegar (in my recipe I put garlic and onions). Now, if the ratio is off between the soy sauce and the vinegar you would either get kidney stones OR acid reflux; either way not good! So, with this one I am simply proud of learning how to cook.
Last but not least, my favorite comfort food: Fried Tilapia. This one trumps all the food that I have listed here. Deep fried Tilapia with all its bones, the head, and the tail, nothing more nothing less. I eat it when I am happy. I eat it when I am sad. I eat it to bond with my Lolo (grandfather) since I always saw him eating this. Looking back, I think I did get this from him. The best way to eat this is with crushed tomatoes over steaming hot white rice and you eat with your hands. Ahhhh so lovely! It’s just little hard to bring an entire fish to school for lunch, so this one is just eaten at home. It feels like a prize at the end of the day after finishing all your work.
This is the most salivating post that I have done! Food always brings me home. There are emotional attachments to food. I remember people, places, and events even through the whiff of food. My Lola and Lolo said that our family has a gift of cooking; we are so gifted that we can tell the ingredients and the chemical composition of food even just through smell. I really love believing in them; they really haven’t failed me yet.
By the way, if anyone gets interested in cooking Filipino Food, everyone can head to my Dad’s Youtube Channel or his website which I will both link below. Have fun cooking!
He is more active on his website!
