Picadillo (Giniling) and Turon

Ingredients
Picadillo
Beef, Garlic, Patis (Fish Sauce), Chayote

Turon
Saba (banana native to the Philippines), Langka (Jackfruit), Brown Sugar, Spring Roll Wrapper

Last night was my first official night cooking for my summer project. Per request of my mom - who probably thought I couldn't handle anything harder - I made some Picadillo (Filipino Style) and some Turon.

Picadillo, as I learned from Wikipedia and as you can probably tell from its name, is a Latin American dish. Like for many things in the Philippines - from the very architecture of the buildings in Intramuros, Manila to some of our traditional dances, to many of the words we use everyday - the impact of 300 years of Spanish colonial rule is obvious. This is something that I've always grappled with in terms of defining my identity as Filipino. Many times I would get defensive when people would emphasize the "Spanish"ness of Filipino culture or ask if Tagalog - the country's national language - was anything like Spanish. I think I would get defensive because I wanted to argue that Filipino culture was unique and original and I thought that in some way, being so heavily influenced by another culture somehow diminished the value of what it was to be Filipino. So, I'd always ask my mom (sometimes to her annoyance because she couldn't think of the words) how to say something in Tagalog that we often uses the Spanish to describe. For instance, we often use the Spanish silia for chair instead of upuan (literally sitting place> or salung-puet (literally butt-catcher).

However, the very fact that the Spanish word for many things is more common and that the influence of the Spanish is so deeply embedded even in our staple foods shows how inseparable Spanish influence is from Filipino culture. Come to think about it, that's what makes Filipino culture so unique and original. It's a melting-pot of so many different cultures, Asian and European, East and West, and often times it's difficult to discern where one influence ends and another begins. Even my dessert dish turon is the product of influences from China. Though the saba is a banana native to the Philippines, the spring roll (lumpia as it is called in the Philippines and Indonesia) aspect of it originated from immigrants that came to the Philippines from the Fujian province of China.

Almost everything in the Philippines has been influenced by two or more other cultures. One could say that the Philippines invented fusion food bringing together in one small place so many elements from around the world. Taking religions such as Islam from the Malaysian nations and Catholicism from the Spanish, systems of laws and governance from the Americans, beliefs such as Feng Shui and astrology from China, and dances and foods from all of these places, the Filipino culture is truly a syncretic culture and I'm a product of all of these different cultures and influences. And I think I've grown to appreciate this multi-faceted identity more and more.

Anyway, tonight's post was sort of a big tangent and definitely turned out longer than I thought it would. If you're still reading this far, thanks for your patience! I'll try to make other posts shorter. Tonight, since we had so much food left over from my graduation party and last night's cooking experiment, my mom asked me to not cook, but just to make sinangag from our left over rice. Basically, it's frying the rice with garlic and salt helping to preserve it and to make old rice still tasty.

Also, listed below are my other summer goals, so to help keep me honest in attaining them, I'm posting updated of how far I get with them so you can all judge me if I seem to be faltering in any one of them.

That's it for tonight. Hope you enjoyed this lengthy post. Till next time.

Other Summer Projects
Books Read: 0
Current Book: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Progress with Mandarin: Rosetta Stone Ordered
Weekdays Missed Jogging: 0