I Am a Filipino: And This Is How We Cook

353 Pages·2018·58.09 MB·English

by  Nicole Ponseca

NEW IMAGE
(if not using image on page 145)
I
AM
A
FILIPINO
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NICOLE PONSECA
& MIGUEL TRINIDAD
I
AM
AND THIS IS HOW WE COOK
With Rachel Wharton
A
Foreword by Jose Antonio Vargas
Photographs by Justin Walker
ARTISAN | NEW YORK
artisan | new york
FILIPINO
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To the life and legacy of Anthony Bourdain
Copyright © 2018 by Nicole Ponseca and Miguel Trinidad
Photographs copyright © 2018 by Justin Walker
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced—mechanically, electronically,
or by any other means, including photocopying—without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ponseca, Nicole, author. |
Trinidad, Miguel, author.
Title: I am a Filipino / Nicole Ponseca and
Miguel Trinidad ; foreword by Jose Antonio Vargas.
Description: New York : Artisan, a division of
Workman Publishing Co., Inc., [2018] |
Includes index.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2018014210 | ISBN 9781579657673
(hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Cooking, Philippine. |
LCGFT: Cookbooks.
Classifi cation: LCC TX724.5.P5 P66 2018 |
DDC 641.59599—dc23
LC record available at 
https://lccn.loc.gov/2018014210
Art direction by Michelle Ishay-Cohen
Design by Toni Tajima
Map by Josh Cochran
Artisan books are available at special discounts when
purchased in bulk for premiums and sales promotions
as well as for fund-raising or educational use. Special
editions or book excerpts also can be created to
specifi cation. For details, contact the Special Sales
Director at the address below, or send an e-mail to
[email protected].
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[email protected].
Published by Artisan
A division of Workman Publishing Co., Inc.
225 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014-4381
artisanbooks.com
Artisan is a registered trademark of
Workman Publishing Co., Inc.
Published simultaneously in Canada by
Thomas Allen & Son, Limited
Printed in China
First printing, October 2018
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I am a Filipino—inheritor of a glorious
past, hostage to the uncertain future.
As such I must prove equal to a two-
fold task—the task of meeting my
responsibility to the past, and the task of
performing my obligation to the future.
— “I Am a Filipino,”
General Carlos P. Romulo, 1941
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CONTENTS
Foreword
by Jose Antonio Vargas
8
Introduction:
Why Not Filipino Food?
10
Filipino Food 101
25
Oh My, Gulay 113
ADOBO SALADS AND
Cooking with Vinegar 45
AND VEGETABLES
KINILAW
A Taste of Home 77 The Chinese Connection 147
NOODLES AND
SOUPS DUMPLINGS
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Snacks and Street Food 241
SPICE AND FATTY, FRIED,
The Food of the Muslim South 187
BURNT AND SALTY
Merry Meryenda 269
COCONUT
SWEETS
The Spanish-Mexican Infl uence 213 We Salute You 311
TOMATOES
Resources 342
Acknowledgments 343
AND TAMALES AMERICANA
Index 346
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JOSE ANTONIO VARGAS
Foreword
In March 2018, the New York Times, I met Nicole on New Year’s Eve 2011. Like
America’s newspaper of record, declared, all Filipino professionals in New York
as if by decree: “Filipino Food Finds a Place City, I had heard about Maharlika. There
in the American Mainstream.” was a joke going around that when you
met someone Filipino, or someone who
Three years prior, in April 2015, the knew someone who was Filipino, the fi rst
Washington Post had proclaimed: “At long question you asked them was “Have you
last, Filipino food arrives.” been to Maharlika?” To kick off 2012, I
wanted to introduce my friend Jehmu
You cannot discuss Filipino food and Greene, an African American woman
its arrival in the American mainstream from Texas and the former president of
without mentioning Nicole Ponseca, the Rock the Vote and the Women’s Media
owner of Maharlika, Jeepney, and Tita Center, to Filipino food, which she hadn’t
Baby’s, all operating within New York tried before. I fi gured it was time to see if
City’s highly competitive restaurant world, Maharlika lived up to all the hype.
and chef Miguel Trinidad. Together, they
celebrate and centralize Filipino culture Upon entering the restaurant, walking past
like no other restaurateur and entrepreneur. a chalkboard featuring the “Tagalog Word
of the Day,” I was struck immediately by
Filipino food is the original fusion food, the crowd. There were some Filipinos, but
an idiosyncratic mélange of cultures and there were more non-Filipinos. Up to that
tastes, from Malay and Arab to Chinese, point, I’d never seen non-Filipinos eat at
Spanish, and American. All that mixing a Filipino restaurant without a Filipino
makes Filipino food wholly original, much friend serving as the culinary translator,
like the Filipino people, who are scattered explaining what bagoong is (a paste of
all over the world, a diaspora numbering in salted seafood) and the necessity of suka
the millions, almost four million of whom (vinegar). The bigger shock, however, was
are in the United States. We are our food, the menu, fi lled with all the dishes I grew
with a special kind of pride that permeates up eating in the Philippines. Dinuguan
the preparation and presentation of every was listed as dinuguan, not as “chocolate
delicacy. Nicole embodies that Filipino meat” or some other whitewashed name
pride, which seeps through every page and to make it more palatable and accessible
every recipe in this book. to Americans. It was as if my culture—
8
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and food strikes at the very heart of every touched every corner and every nook of
culture—were being exposed, not out what makes up Filipino culture. Instead
of shame but out of love. Unabashed, of merely criticizing and deconstructing
unapologetic, fearless love. how Filipino food was being framed—and
who was doing the framing—Nicole and
When I realized that the woman with the Miguel got to work, constructing an idea
big, warm smile who was busy serving from scratch and executing a different
tables was one of the owners, I couldn’t vision. What’s more, they’ve done all of this
help but pepper her with questions. in a food industry where very few people
of color thrive, in the process leading a
“Why did you open this restaurant?” seismic shift in how the global Filipino
I asked. community thinks about food, identity,
entrepreneurship, and what it means to
This is what Nicole replied to me, and to claim ourselves. We all, Filipinos and non-
anyone who’s ever asked that question: “I Filipinos alike, are the benefi ciaries of what
wanted to change the conversation about they’ve built.
Filipino food.”
Maraming salamat talaga, Nicole and
Nicole has more than changed the Miguel. Thank you very much.
conversation about Filipino food. Part
cultural ambassador, part epicurean
Jose Antonio Vargas, the founder and CEO of Define
anthropologist, part pioneering
American, is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and the
entrepreneur, she has led the Filipino author of Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented
food movement, which, over time, has Citizen.
FOREWORD 9
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