By Micky Fenix
Inquirer

MANILA, Philippines–So what’s Filipino food like?

The question was begging to be answered in Iowa. Not with words but by cooking.

Thank goodness we had with us Myrna Segismundo (shown in photo with Virgith Buena and Ramona Singian), a chef who could decide on the menu and, of course, take the helm in the kitchen.

Myrna and I were actually glad because we could test if some of the recipes in the “Kulinarya” book we are part of (still ongoing) could be done in this neck of the woods.

It was great to discover that even in Iowa there were Asian stores. The first one we went to in the capital city of Des Moines was more grocery than store.

We were delighted that we could buy Filipino brands of vinegar, soy sauce and instant sinigang mix, very basic things we needed to give our Iowa hosts their first taste of Filipino cooking.

Owned by a Thai, the store carried whatever the Asian community needed, including native brooms, bilao, alugbati (Ceylon spinach), pancit canton and international phone cards that were so cheap.

We bought according to the menu Myrna prepared. We were going to do sinigang na baboy because Iowa is pork country. Chicken and pork adobo had to be there. Pancit had to be included.

We urged Myrna to do her now famous turon for dessert. But if turon was there, should we also have fried lumpia as our vegetable dish?

‘Lumpia’ on the menu

What made up our minds was the sight of three people wrapping some vegetable lumpia in one corner of the grocery. We guessed that the trio was the owner’s mother and children.

The lumpia contents were very much like our own — julienne vegetables of carrots and cabbage and what looked like chopped shrimps.

Myrna said it would be less work if we bought some and so we did. We froze the lumpia in the hotel room’s refrigerator until D-day.

On cooking day, we needed to go once more to the grocery, this time in Ames where we were staying. Our young guide Lorilee Shultz brought us to another Asian store where we got the sinigang vegetables of eggplant, pechay and labanos and small sour tomatoes.

Rice was also bought there. The store had so many varieties stacked at the front from Indian basmati, California rice to the milagrosa, our fragrant variety that the Thais have appropriated for their own.

We had to settle, though, for a different kind of banana because saba was not available.

Lorilee brought us to another grocery where she said the best meat could be had and you could ask the butchers to cut according to specification. So pork spareribs were cut into sinigang sizes and, for the adobo, the pork belly into cubes and chicken cut at the joints.

First time

It took some time for our butcher to finish. It must have been the first time he was asked to do those cuts.

We used the kitchen in the hundred-year-old house of Dan Burden and his wife Terry, our hosts. It was a nice, cool and sunny day so we could open the windows to let out the smell of vinegar and soy sauce stewing.

The couple, however, loved the aroma because they had been to Asia and liked the food.

We distributed the tasks among the group that also included Virgith Buena and Ramona Singian. Every now and then, each of us would comment on how differently we, our mothers and grandmothers, did some of the dishes.

My assignment was to cook the rice. Lorilee watched in amazement as I reserved the second rice washing (hugas bigas) for the sinigang broth. Then I measured how much water was needed to cook the rice the old way, placing my middle finger just above the washed grains and pouring water to just below the middle line of my finger.

I could see in her face the question asked by almost everyone who had seen me cook rice. So I told her even before she could say anything that it did not matter how big your hands were, the technique would always be correct.

Myrna seconded by saying that, when they had to cook rice in a huge vat for a Filipino food festival in Israel, she did exactly the same thing and it came out right.

I am talking here about white rice, though. Red and brown rice need more water.

But, as insurance, I placed salt on the cover of the pot because my grandmother said that assured the rice would be cooked.

Luckily, one reader, a chemical engineer who does not wish to be identified, e-mailed an answer to my query for a scientific explanation written months ago in a previous column:

“My theory… is that salt reacts or combines with steam or water vapor being emitted by the hot pot. Salt has the property of controlling or absorbing heat [making] the ambient temperature cooler than the temperature inside the pot [in spite of the heat from the stove].

“The effect then is for the cooler temperature around the pot to slow down somehow the evaporation of water from inside the pot thereby producing a well-cooked rice.”

Finally, the food was served on the Burdens’ beautiful antique china.

How wonderful to eat Filipino food again after weeks of deprivation. How good to know that the “Kulinarya” recipes work. How great that we could give a taste not only of our cooking but also of our culture to our friends in Iowa.

E-mail the author at pinoyfood04@yahoo.com

Photo courtesy of the Philippine Daily Inquirer