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.