'BOMB-SHELLS' OF LAPOG

I know you’ll agree that the sight, smell or taste of food evoke memories of 20, 30, 40 years ago clearer than a thousand old photographs. It could be that food memories bring back details of our mundane lives more powerfully than any artist's magnificent brush strokes!

And so, when I learned at Facebok that my cousin Alfonso Quilala, an engineer who now resides in the U.S. with his handsome family, gets to cook in foreign land my long-lost shellfish, my favorite "kallu-it" of old, memories came marching back. I salute my cousin for his patience in locating these shells; I haven’t eaten them myself for all of thirty years!

Elusive shells of my childhood, no. I was probaly not resourceful enough to try to hunt them down in wet markets in Manila, if ever they’re available here.True to nature, what my cousin wants, my cousin gets, in the U.S. or anywhere in the world. So reflective of how enterprising our overseas Ilocano ‘kababayans’ are and how fiercely loyal they are to their roots especially on matters of their native food favorites. ‘Kallu-it’ in America, wow!

This shell delicacy is actually common in Ilocos. The picture above is not the local variety but the ‘stateside’ version which is moss green and gray with pinkish shades found in the wet markets of San Gabriel, California where my cousin resides . I wish I knew its English name! Well, what does it matter? This shellfish by any other name – and color - tastes as sweet!

And what taste does it offer, really, that keeps me longing for it all those years?

I requested my good friend, Mang Corazon Tabag to provide me the method of preparing the shellish delicacy and she gladly obliged (thanks!) with a rambling, nostalgic description that parallels the simple straightforward way we Ilocanos prepare our food in the old days: remember the saying “no pain, no gain?” Exactly, to eat kallu-it you go through a tedious process. Here’s Mang Corazon’s version:

“You clean the kallu-it shells thoroughly, then you boil them briefly (blanch), then you crush the shells , then you pick out the bits and pieces of the crushed shells from the flesh then you put back the de-shelled shellfish to the pot, then you put in a little water, then you put in onions and tomatoes, then season it with patis, then you let it boil awhile, then, if you desire a slightly sour taste, put in tamarind –--”

And then… haha, you eat it, that’s it. No fuzz, no frills. Every ingredient thrown into the recipe in quickfire, sureshot estimates.

Actually, the kallu-it shell is hard as rock you have to smash the shell covering to get to the flesh (You can choose your style of weaponry -- a stone, a hammer, a bolo handle, the butt of a .38 caliber…just imagine yourself punching the skull of your gossipy neighbor, or the butt of your husband’s mistress---ooppps, sorry, these are my words, not Mang Corazon’s); cleaning the shellfish from the crushed shells is the hard part ( it could take years! But you have to be patient if you don't wish to get yourself choked with all the shrapnels, tsk tsk).

All done, the result is a taste of heaven, soft and fleshy and a bit sweet. Or, shall we say…an unpolluted, pure natural taste , refreshing as the sea breeze.

I think this is the Ilocano kitchen secret: it’s the simplicity, the backyard plainness of the ingredients that preserve natural flavors of food, without the artificial embellishments, that gives our cooking a charm all its own.

I remember my mother’s way: she prepared it salad style, so plain and yet so adorable:

She roasts the cleaned shells until they come out smelling of roast beef…I mean, smelling ‘nabang-i’ (the characteristic shellfish aroma that wafts into your neighbor’s nose to declare you’re roasting or broiling something grand in your kitchen…), then she adds tomatoes and onions, with patis to taste . Did she tease the kallu-it’s flavor somehow by seasoning it with a few drops of bagoong monamon (anchovies), as we are always tempted to do? Most likely she used the patis that naturally rises to the top of the perfectly fermented bagoong .We rarely bought patis in bottles then (if ever, it’s Tentay patis , remember the sing-song ?)

And, a tip from my undisputed authority, my cousin: it’s the slimy “saliva” of the shellfish that gives it its exceptional flavor. Also, add lemon grass for added aroma.

I agree. It’s what I remember most about ‘kallu-it:’ all the crushing and the bashing that bring out your repressed sadistic instincts. It’s the only shellfish I know that you pound into smitterens before you eat it. Yes, the secret of its tangy delectable taste is in the fresh slimy juices after the cruel shell bashing.

Of course, we have other edible snails that invade our kitchens: the "soso" and the "bisukol" that we cook into "inabraw"--boiled in water with tomatoes, a strip of ginger and "lasona' (native onions) and of course, with bagoong to taste. In my childhood kitchen, fats and oils are kept to minimum: I don't remember my mother ever sauteing (quick frying), reason perhaps why my grandmother lived past 100 years old!

Back to snails,eating these shellfish is not for the finicky; you can't use fork on them, maybe toothpicks to coax the flesh out, otherwise, you have to suck what's inside till your lungs collapse, I mean, if you are an expert in mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, then you'll survive. Not exactly a glamorous way to enjoy your shellfish, but what the heck? It's delicious! And we Ilocanos are cowboys; we suck our shellfish without artifice.

Seriously my friends, it is all worth it, I assure you. Although basically it depends on the exotic predisposition of our Ilocano tongue, a Lapogeno and I suspect other genuine Ilocanos, too, would have beads of sweat rolling down their forehead as they savor the shellfish. Otherwise, why should we, cousin Junior in the US and I in the Philippines, be doing a duet bragging about it here?

Local ‘bombshells’ of distinctive flavor, the familiar shellfish of my childhood. Enjoy it!

(picture courtesy of Cousin Alfonso Q.)

WAR IN MY KITCHEN

There is a struggle on my kitchen table.

I grew up in Ilocos Sur. In the 70s, I came to Manila, studied, worked, married and raised three boys. As kids, my children were wedged between interesting flavor mixes of Tagalog and Ilocano cooking – I come from the north, their father from the south. I cook pork knuckels in vinegar, throw in a head of cabbage and call it “lauya” to die-for; my husband is at a loss how to categorize it – paksiw or nilaga? I cook chicken tinola with ampalaya tendrils, with sotanghon to boot. You imagine his expression because he wouldn’t settle for a tinola without papaya and dahon ng sili. Tagalogs apparently are very meticulous about ingredients; I have no qualms substituting whatever is available. He calls it adventurism in the kitchen; I call it Ilocano built-in resourcefulness and resilience, much like the bamboo of my youth always ready to bend with the winds as the need arises.

Luckily, when it comes to food, the gap is not so wide between me and my kids. It helped that my father stayed with us while the kids were growing. For a while, about two years, my mother came over from Ilocos and took care of my youngest son until mother died of cancer. But it was enough to reinforce the Ilocano culture into their psyches. My second son, about 4 years old then, readily like a sponge picked up the Ilocano dialect of his lola ( a retired teacher who wouldn’t speak a single syllable of Tagalog!) which he now speaks like a G.I. (genuine Ilocano).

Soon, they imbibed the taste for Ilocano cuisine. Their lolo was an avid cook who whipped up day after day his staple ‘dinengdeng’, a generic dish that takes a different twist only as the vegetables vary ---eggplants, ampalaya, squash, saluyot, malunggay, kamote, you name it, lumped together in various combinations into a catch-all broth flavored with ‘bagoong isda’ and topped with fried or broiled fish.

As first, they winced as slippery ‘saluyot’ rolled down their throats like race cars without brakes; they growled in distaste with the strong flavor (‘napas-eng’) of malunggay when overcooked. They absolutely refused to eat the fibrous and equally slippery okra that I boiled and dipped in...again, bagoong. They squirmed at the caterpillar-looking ‘alokon’ and the fern-like ‘balbalulang’ that went with the ‘buridibod’ which they mistook as mashed potato with queer veggie toppings. They stared in disbelief how on earth we eat those dainty white flowers by the roadside (katuray) as if we were flower people from another planet!They complained of the ‘stink’ of bagoong and grinned mischievously (later when they were teen-agers) over the racy names “otong’ (stringbeans), poqui-poqui (eggplant omelette) and ‘kabatiti’ (patola).

They were in awe as the kitchen transformed daily into an chameleon of colors with the thousand and - one ‘dinengdeng’ combinations of vegetables in season: greens and orange and purple and yellow – in strips, in cubes, stewed, raw. My father, like a mad witch doctor stirring his steaming pot of mushy concoctions, knew exactly the vegetable pairings: saluyot with sitaw, kalabasa with okra. No, not squash with tomatoes or chicken because it will drive you crazy, etc

Naturally, my old man, finding an ally in me, was not to be bullied by the squeamishness of the boys. He won’t have none of their food tantrums. He was bent on following his Ilocano instincts: eat ye children what was on the dining table, or starve.

In time, the ‘weird vegetable stuff’ and the much-maligned bagoong were finally accepted as the stars of this Ilocano kitchen, Gradually, the 50-50 Ilocano/Tagalog kids became acculturated to the familiar flavors, smells and textures of Ilocano delicacies. Even after their grandfather died, the second son savors squash flowers like it was Cesar’s salad and the eldest eats his lolo’s colorful dinengdeng as easily as he slurps chicken ramen.

Of course, my kids gobble up on fastfood diets of hamburgers, french fries, spaghetti and meatballs, macaroni, etc. Not that I’m complaining. It's the times. I rush to burger joints at the first pang of hunger, mea culpa.

But we never leave our roots behind, wherever we maybe. The kind of food I loved as a kid have not completely disappeared from my kitchen, There are certain ones, however, that may remain just hometown cravings for now. Delicious childhood food memories I could only write about, elusive as a dream.

I will write about those food memories in the next entries.

Meanwhile, thank God, all is quiet in my kitchen front.

MIKI MADNESS

Today, I got a delicious invitation from my sister: Come and stay the week-end for All Saints’ Day and we’ll cook ‘miki.’

Miki?! Instantly, my food memories of the noodle soup came rushing in. This genuine Ilocano comfort food was a staple in my childhood. I’ve been longing for a piping hot bowl of this super tasty soup - Ilocano style – of flat noodles, melting soft and cradled by fiery orange chicken broth, topped with pork strips or chicken shreds and lots of green spring onions – sliding oh, so-smoothly down my throat, whoa!

I just love the flavorful blend of the homemade flat noodles with chicken skin melting almost in my mouth,thick as any noodle soup to die for.

Ilocanos are not exactly avid pansit canton/bihon eaters, to mean we are not too keen wiping out tons of pansit bihon the way other regions do, at least in my family when I was growing up. During birthdays and other family occasions, my mother didn’t whip magnificent canton/bihon recipes---she cooked pots and pots of…well, miki, what else? In fact, pansit canton was almost alien to me; I grew up wading in a river of miki!

It was this atsuete-colored soup on my birthdays, my sister's birthday, my brother's birthday and my nephew Julius' birthday, year in and out until my hair turned beautiful orange and my skin smelled of miki soup. I wish I could post a picture of my nephew feeding a battalion of his playmates with...you guessed it, miki, halleluja!

I thought then that this Ilocano version of chicken noodle soup is unique only to us Lapogenos. In fact, I believed it was invented by our incredible town cooks (who took over the grand cooking for funerals, weddings and fiestas) and perfected by Anty Liling, the undisputed miki expert in the whole of miki-town. I was wrong, of course. Fresh homemade miki, dried or packed in plastic are now sold in wetmarkets in Ilocos; it is also now a street food, popular and relished everwhere in the region. The miki of my childhood has levelled up! Yet, when I started living in Manila, I never saw my comfort soup again. Not in any eatery anywhere in the city. For years my tongue was lost in its longing to slurp the velvety-soft noodles.

Ah, but what we do in crazy moments of food craving! One day, I rushed to the SM grocery, and---for want of the genuine thick flat noodles, settled for...errr, well, a pack of fettucine pasta! (a horrendous substitute, but fettucine is flat, isn't it?) And cooked it Ilocano miki-style! Somehow I remembered the basic recipe, this way:

I sauted in garlic and onions the shredded chicken and pork (back then, we preferred pork lard for sautéing, full of deadly cholesterol but the hell, as children, it was delicious! especially when mixed with bagoong, but that's another story), I added patis to taste, cooked it a few minutes, then added the broth, put in the miki (I mean my fettucini, haha!) noodles, colored it with annatto (atsuete, which also gives the noodle soup a distinctive flavor), let it cook slowly for 45 minutes or so, not too long as to dissolve the noodles! then I sprinkled it with chopped green onions.

That was it, that quick and simple. Comfort with pleasure doesn’t have to be expensive and full of ceremonies, does it?

Of course, nothing like the genuine. Our miki of old used only a kind of herb condiment akin to green onions called "kutsay" (we grew them in pots under the shade, near the kitchen, deep moss green in color, thinner and smoother in texture). Never did my mother use green onions as substitute because the ordinary green onions have weaker flavor while the "kutsay" has a more pungent powerful flavor and aroma. In those days, miki and kutsay are a love team in the noodles kitchen of my mother, tasteless each without the other.

Then, cooking miki with green onions as substitute is like wearing a high couture gown with sneakers or…dressing up without a brassiere: the analogy maybe preposterous to you but in fact, as I, the G.I. miki addict, was chopping the green onions as substitute, I felt like a fake, I swear. You could also imagine how privately embarrased I felt when I used Italian pasta for my beloved native soup. I was hoping my townmates won't crucify me. It was double murder.

And the preparation of the dough itself is a labor of endless love. I have fond memories of this, the kind that makes you smile on a dreary rainy day. Mother and I would prepare the dough the night before; it went like this, crudely in my memory:

We mixed flour with just enough water to form a dough, sprinkled it with salt to taste, then flattened it on the table using a bottle of Pepsi. We rolled and rolled the dough into thin sheets with the fire of warriors in a kitchen battle until our sweat began to fall on the flour and my nose began to water (ooopss!) and the dough was ready to be cut into strips. And I would cut it into crazy animal shapes and my mother would slap my misbehaving hand, oh, but we had to make it uniform in width and length to be dried overnight and viola! Miki for the cooking!

Above is miki, photo courtesy of my childhood neighbor Digna Sy who tagged the picture especially for me at Facebook. My ‘kababata’ has maintained her love of cooking and she promised to cook this recipe for me and be comforted from my serious nostalgia when I go home for a visit one day. Thanks, Digna.