The Pindang Revisited

I was among the more fortunate to have had the opportunity to sample a sinfully diverse selection from the cornucopia of festive culinary delights traditionally offered by most Filipinos to family members, relatives and friends for copious, if not gluttonous, consumption during the recent Christmas and New Year celebrations. That meant mouthfuls of the ever ubiquitous ham (of several kinds), repeated generous servings of pasta thick with sauces of both the red and white varieties including one or two others of an indeterminate shade in between these two extremes, countless portions of chicken thighs and wings both roasted or fried in batter and slices of fish either grilled, steamed or stewed with fresh veggies in the traditional way.

I have not even included in the first list list the obligatory chocolate and cheese cakes, whole wheat bread loaves with raisins, chocolate doughnuts, bibingkang kanin (rice cakes topped with caramelized coconut cream), empanadas (pastry stuffed with meat, vegetables and egg slices) and a multitude of other desserts and side dishes. The often excessive enthusiasm and unusual profligacy even normally frugal Filipino families put into preparing for the orgies of feasting during the Yuletide and year-ender festivities never ceases to amaze me.

Christmas Tree

It has been reported in the American news media the past week or so that an elementary school in Frisco, Texas in the United States has banned the use of Christmas trees within its premises and has also forbidden students to use the colors red and green in its annual winter party.  The principal of the school explained that the the local Board of Education is enforcing the policy that "no religious belief or non-belief shall be promoted by the district and its employees" and that the school "didn't want to offend any families and since each family donates money (to the party), (it) feels that this is the best policy."

The ban surprisingly came just after Texas Governor Rick Perry signed recently into law the so called Merry Christmas Bill which essentially allows students and school staff to freely discuss and celebrate holidays as they please. Many parents and concerned Texas residents have been outraged and have angrily spoken up to condemn what they felt was political correctness carried to the extreme by the administrative staff of the Nichols Elementary School .

In Lianga like everywhere else in the Philippines and in most Christian nations all over the world, nothing else epitomizes and symbolizes the Yuletide season than the ubiquitous Christmas tree. In this town, it is even a more common component of the traditional Christmas dressing-up of homes than the more indigenous Filipino parol (Christmas star) or belen (nativity crèche or tableau), a fact that quickly is obvious to someone who takes the time to go around and visit the houses of relatives, friends and acquaintances here this Yuletide season.

De Pugon

I first heard about this baked treat from my younger sister, Adette, a year or so ago.  When going to Tandag City, the capital of the province of Surigao del Sur which is some 90 kilometers north of Lianga, be sure to stop by the town of Marihatag, she suggested, to buy and try some of the local pan de pugon.  I, of course, had no idea what she was talking about.  For me, bread is bread yet on my next trip north I did exactly as she advised me to do and since then that is exactly what I have been doing every time I get the chance.

Pan de pugon, for the uninitiated, can be loosely translated from the original Spanish as "bread of the hearth oven" and refers originally to home-baked bread using the old fashioned brick oven but now is often used to lump together many types of home-style bread products using all or some of the traditional dough making and baking techniques dating back to the Spanish colonial period until the early years of the last century.

I had lived much of my pre-school years in Lianga but even in the 1970's, bread was something you bought from the neighborhood bakery which happened to be just located conveniently beside our house..  I never had the opportunity to sample  homemade bread although my mother was fond of baking cakes and other pastries.  Bread was mostly thought to be too ordinary, too time consuming and uneconomical to produce in any quantity at home.

Let Down

The term fiesta, I am told, is the Spanish derivative of the Latin word festa which is the plural for festum which means festival or feast.  In many Spanish speaking countries and those like the Philippines which had once been Spanish colonies, it usually refers to a religious festival commemorating a particular Catholic saint who is revered to be the protector or patron of a particular town or city.

Yet even in the Philippine setting, a fiesta is more than a just a religious holiday. It has also cultural and socio-economic overtones and is often connected in the past to the culmination of the local harvest season for rice, corn and other vital agricultural crops.  It is also a celebration of community solidarity and in the more mundane sense, an occasion for people to get together, to feast on good food for a change and an opportunity take a break from the hard work and humdrum that often defines the ordinary in the day to day business of living.

In the truest sense, a fiesta comes out and evolves from the shared cultural and often historical experiences of a paticular people.  It draws its reason for being from a community's desire to highlight that which unifies and binds it together, the collective qualities that makes it unique among its neighbors and peers.  It seeks to recall and glorify the struggles and achievements of the past yet also expresses the hope and prayers for a more bountiful, more prosperous future.

To Die For

It caters probably to the basest, most primitive and animalistic of of our appetites and hearkens back to the time when man before he learned to cultivate and harvest plants, when he was first and foremost a hunter and predator.  I am, of course, alluding to here to our craving and taste for roasted or broiled meat and in the case of most people in this country, our predilection for that requisite centerpiece of Pinoy party fare and the epitome of Filipino gastronomic delights - the lechon de leche or the roasted suckling pig.

For most Filipinos the term lechon may be the colloquial and generic term for all manner of roasted pig irregardless of the size and I have seen them come in all sizes from small piglets barely half a dozen kilos in weight to real heavyweights that would put a baby carabao or water buffalo to shame.  But the word is actually derived from leche which is Spanish for milk. Thus the term lechon de leche is actually a redundancy yet, in local parlance, it is used to distinguish piglets prepared for roasting which should be ideally between two to six weeks of age from their larger or older kin.

Real lechon, to be the culinary delight it is meant to be, must cooked to perfection, its skin dark and crisp, the meat tenderly moist and juicy.  This is something that is actually easier to do with the real suckling pig than with the full grown variety of the same animal since a young piglet has plenty of collagen in its meat which makes it juicily tender and it has still to develop the robust muscle fibers that, in an adult pig, can toughen the flesh.

Magkono

Mention the name Xanthostemon verdugonianus Naves to avid collectors of fine wood decorative pieces and top quality wooden furniture and you are certainly going to get more than your fair share of interest. The latter, of course, is simply the scientific name for the Magkono tree and the source of the extremely dense, heavy, dark-hued and now very rare species of Philippine hardwood that only a few places in the Philippines, Lianga included, is known to produce.

Wood from the Magkono tree is often called "ironwood" for its reputation as the hardest of the Philippine hardwoods. It is so hard that cutting down a mature tree of the species can take two or three days when a similar sized tree of another type can take just two to three hours. Most modern loggers use diamond-point saws to slice through Magkono trunks to speed up the process but copious amounts of water are often needed to aid lubrication and prevent excessive heat generation during the cutting.

In the past, this hardwood species was highly valued for its extreme durability and density. Old steamships used Magkono wood bushings for their propeller shafts. It was made into tool handles, rollers, shears, poles and piles for wharfs and bridges, and,not surprisngly, for bowling balls before the advent of modern plastics and resins.

Street Market

Fresh, still wriggling, scrumptious and exotic seafood. That is what Lianga, as a coastal town, has always been known for in this remote part of Mindanao.

Even nowadays when the local fish catch is dwindling due to overfishing and the persistent use of environmentally unsound fishing practices, the town is still a mecca for fish and seafood lovers from within and outside the Caraga region. Local beach resorts, for example, always make sure they have ample stocks of fresh fish, squid and lobsters for their out of town clientele.

Araw Ng Lianga

If there is one thing Filipinos are good at, it is finding a variety of seemingly legitimate reasons for hosting an impromptu celebration at the drop of a hat. It is not just because they are a fun-loving and extremely sociable people with a hyper-developed sense of hospitality, they also believe as a nation that life is too short and hard enough and, therefore, would simply be intolerable without them taking the time out, once in a while, to just hang loose, feast on good food, drink a little and simply have a bit of fun with family and friends.

That is why fiestas in the Philippines are so wonderfully revealing of facets of the Filipino character. They speak most eloquently about the fatalistic optimism with which the average Filipino views life and living in this world and the great value he places on his relationship with his family, friends and the body of people he interacts with on a daily basis that comprises his immediate community.

Last January 15, as the civic parade marking the town's annual Araw Ng Lianga (Lianga Day) celebration snaked its way through Lianga's main streets, I sat on the sidelines and took the time to ponder on the more recent and contemporary origins of this festival.

As far as I can remember, Lianga always celebrated its annual town fiesta in honor of its patron saint, the Child Jesus or the Sto. Niño, on the 15th of August. This is contrary to the traditional schedule for festivals dedicated to the Sto. Niño in other parts of the country which, by Catholic tradition, usually fall in the middle of January like the world-famous Sinulog Festival in Cebu.

Dawn Mass

December 16 started out as a calm, clear morning yet the minute I got out of bed, still bleary eyed from sleep and opened the bedroom door, a merciless blast of frigid air gleefully caught and slammed me on my naked chest leaving me slight popeyed and breathless, instantly reminding me that I was not in Lianga but somewhere else. Early mornings in Lianga can be chilly but not this bitingly cold.

I was just outside of Metro Manila, on the outskirts of Antipolo City and that early morning was the start of the traditional Simbang Gabi. Originally known as the Misa de Gallo or Rooster's Mass, the series of nine day dawn masses culminating in the Christmas midnight mass on Christmas Eve is an important part of Filipino Yuletide tradition.

I have never been much of a Simbang Gabi devotee and even in Lianga I would still be huddled in bed and deep in the comforting arms of Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep, totally oblivious to the church bells calling the faithful to church and the insistent noises of the rest of the household hastily preparing and rushing about to answer their call. But this particular morning, the host of the house I was staying in had asked me to join him and his family go to church and it would have been churlish and ungracious of me to refuse his request.

The Antipolo Cathedral is, by day, already an imposing structure befitting one of the most important pilgrimage centers in the country for the Catholic faithful. As a national shrine housing the image of the Lady of Peace and Good Voyage or the Nuestra Señora de la Paz y Buen Viaje also known as the Virgin of Antipolo, it inspires awe and intense veneration especially among devotees of the Virgin Mary.

Reality Check

My niece, three nephews and I had a healthy and spirited discussion a week or so ago about.... well .... Santa Claus. Not that anyone among us had anything against that red suited, white-bearded, rolly-poly, globetrotting and sleigh-riding icon of the Yuletide season afflicted with the insatiable obsession with gift giving. It is just that, we could not agree among ourselves, God help us, whether he really exists or not.

To my niece and one nephew, both just about ready to enter into their teens, Santa remains an unquestionably real albeit unseen presence in their young lives every Christmas. They regularly write every November to the guy at the North Pole to tell him exactly what they want to receive as a present on Christmas Eve and, so far, they have not been really disappointed. Either both of them have been really well behaved the past few years or Santa has been extra generous with them for one reason or another.

The two older boys, both already growing wispy tufts of downy hair on their upper lips and thus already thinking of themselves as wiser in the ways of the world, have vehemently declared, to the tearful consternation of their younger companions, that Santa Claus is a myth. The gifts come from their own parents, they say, giggling all the while at the folly of all the deluded children who were still too young and foolishly naive to believe in the illusion and the lie.

As they all squabbled and bickered among themselves, I tried to remember when I exactly started not to believe in Santa and the Santa Claus myth myself. After a few minutes of pondering, I realized that, for the life of me, I never actually believed in the man and the myth even as a child.

Not Like Us

I did not know much about Halloween until I was about 10 years of age. When I was an elementary school student in the 1970's, All Hallows' Even (as it was originally known in Europe) was still a distinctly American event, something seen more on foreign T.V. programs and the Hollywood movies of that day rather than a real, honest to goodness festivity actually taking place all over the country.

Trick or treating, the practice of donning Halloween costumes, and the imagery and symbolism of the macabre, dark magic and mythical monsters that are all part of the Halloween experience were not yet a part of the cultural milieu then and even today I am bemused, if not a bit surprised, at the speed and openness with which we Filipinos, as a people, have accepted, assimilated and even capitalized on this piece of largely American pop culture.

In the Lianga of my childhood, both the young and the old did not need the Halloween myth to enliven the celebration of All Soul's Day and the festivities for the dead. The area's rich, rural and provincial culture abounded in stories and legends dealing with death and the supernatural. In fact, the blending of many old, animistic, pagan beliefs with traditional Roman Catholicism provided a rich fount of myth and folklore that conjured up worlds, including our own, peopled by spirits, monsters, dwarfs, enchanted beings and other otherworldly creatures far more scarier and believable than the classical and often "cartoonish" witches, ghosts, goblins and Frankenstein's monsters of the Halloween myth.

Pindang

During each of the many sojourns I had in many places outside of Mindanao, I am always caught by surprise not so much by the many obvious differences but more so often by the subtle similarities between the lifestyles and culinary tastes of the people elsewhere in this country and those of Lianga where I have lived most of my life.

In one recent instance, one resident of Antipolo City in Rizal province just outside of Metro Manila dragged me to his kitchen and and made me watch as he started tossing what looked like large chunks of dark, dried meat into a pan of hot oil. As the oil hissed, popped and splattered unto the sides of his gas range, he told me that he was treating me to a dinner of Kapampangan-style pindang damulag or cured carabao meat. "A new taste treat for you," he promised me.

I did not have the heart to tell him that I was not only familiar with pindang in Lianga but also the fact that pork or carabao meat prepared pindang or tapa style happens to be one of my perennial, favorite food treats.