FILIPINO CUISINE

Philippine cuisine has evolved over several centuries from its Malayo-Polynesian origins to a cuisine of predominantly Hispanic base, due to the many Latin American and Spanish dishes brought to the Philippines during the Spanish colonial period.

It has also received varying degrees of influence from Chinese, American, and other Asian cuisine.

Filipinos traditionally eat three main meals a day - agahan (breakfast), tanghalían (lunch), and hapúnan (dinner) plus an afternoon snack called meriénda (another variant is minandál or minindál).

Dishes range from a simple meal of fried fish and rice to rich paellas and cocidos.

Popular dishes include:

Lechón (whole roasted pig)

Longganisa (Philippine sausage)

Tapa (cured beef)

Torta (omelette)

Adobo (chicken and/or pork braised in garlic, soy sauce, and vinegar or cooked until dry).

Kaldereta (goat in tomato stew)

Mechado (beef or pork cooked in tomato sauce)

Pochero (beef in bananas and tomato sauce)

Afritada (pork or beef simmered in a tomato sauce with vegetables)

Kare-kare (oxtail and vegetables cooked in peanut sauce)

Crispy pata (deep-fried pig's leg)

Hamonado (pork sweetened in pineapple sauce)

Sinigang (pork, fish, or shrimp in tamarind stew)

Pancit (stir-fried noodles), and lumpia (fresh or fried spring rolls).

INFLUENCES AND HISTORY

The American chef and television personality Anthony Bourdain has hailed Filipino pork cuisine and named the Philippines at the top of his "Hierarchy of Pork".

Malayo-Polynesians during the pre-Hispanic era in the Philippines prepared food by boiling, steaming, or roasting.

This ranged from the usual livestock such as kalabaw (water buffaloes), baka (cows), chickens and pigs to seafood from different kinds of fish, shrimps, prawns, crustaceans and shellfish.

There are a few places in the Philippines where the broad range in their diet extended to monitor lizards, snakes and locusts.

Filipinos have been cultivating rice, and corn, since 3200 BC from their arrival of the Austronesian people from Southern China Yunnan Plateau and Taiwan, when they settled in what is now the Philippines.

They brought with them rice cultivation and a lot of other various traditions that are used in forms today.

Pre-Hispanic trade with other Asian nations introduced a number of staples into Philippine cuisine, most notably toyo (soy sauce) and patis (fish sauce), as well as the method of stir-frying and making savory soup bases.

STAPLES

As with most Asian countries, the staple food in the Philippines is rice.

It is most often steamed and served during meals.

Leftover rice is often fried with garlic and onions to make sinangag (fried rice), which is usually served at breakfast together with fried eggs and tapa (beef), tocino (sweetened cured meat), longanisa (sausages), or fried hotdogs.

Rice is often enjoyed with sauces or soup from the main dishes.

In some regions, rice is mixed with salt, condensed milk, cocoa, or coffee.

Rice flour is used in making sweets, cakes and other pastries.

Other staples derived from crops include corn and bread.

Fruits are often used in cooking as well. Coconuts, coconut milk, coconut meat, tomatoes, tomato sauce, and bananas are usually added to meals.

Abundant harvests of root crops occur all year round.

Potatoes, carrots, taro (gabi), cassava (kamoteng kahoy), purple yam (ube), and sweet potato (kamote) are examples.

Kamote and a certain type of plantain called saba can be chopped, dusted with brown sugar, fried and skewered, yielding kamote-cue and banana-cue which are popular caramelized snacks.

Meat staples include chicken, pork, beef, and fish.

Seafood is popular as a result of the bodies of water surrounding the archipelago.

Popular catches include tilapia, catfish (hito), milkfish (bangus), grouper (lapu-lapu), shrimp (hipon), prawns (sugpo), mackerel (galunggong), swordfish, oysters (talaba), mussels (tahong), clams (tulya), large and small crabs (alimango and alimasag respectively), game fish, gindara or sablefish, tuna, cod, blue marlin, and squid/cuttlefish (both called pusit). Equally popular catches include seaweeds, abalone and eel.

The most common way of serving fish is having it salted, pan fried or deep fried, and eaten as a simple meal with rice and vegetables.

It may also be cooked in a sour broth of tomatoes or tamarind, prepared with vegetables to make sinigang, simmered in vinegar and peppers to make paksiw, or roasted over hot charcoal or wood.

Other preparations include escabeche (sweet and sour) or relleno (deboned and stuffed).

Fish can be preserved by being smoked (tinapa) or sundried (daing).

Food is sometimes served with various dipping sauces.

Fried food is often dipped in vinegar, soy sauce, juice squeezed from kalamansi (Philippine lime), or a combination of all.

Patis (fish sauce) may be mixed with kalamansi as dipping sauce for most seafood.

Fish sauce, fish paste (bagoong), shrimp paste (alamang) and crushed ginger root (luya) are condiments that are often added to dishes during the cooking process or when served.