ANGELES CITY – The kamaru (mole crickets) and indigenous fishes like apap, biya and liwalu are vanishing, two chefs-cum-food historians noted during their presentations on Pampanga and Bulacan culinary arts at the start of the three-day national conference here.
Eugenio Ramon “Gene” Gonzales of Café Ysabel said he has been buying his stocks of kamaru from Thailand in recent years.
“We don’t have the kamaru anymore because farmlands have been converted into [residential] subdivisions,” he told some 200 participants in the First National Conference on Bulacan and Pampanga History, Arts and Culture at the Holy Angel University here.
Kamaru breeds on rice paddies. Usually surfacing after harvest time, they also come out when hunters stomp on the ground. Traditionally, kamaru are prepared as adobo.
Gonzales segued his discussion on the vanishing species as he tackled the food prepared in feasts held by his ancestors in the Arnedo clan in Apalit, Pampanga during the 19th century. Those feasts drew royals from Europe.
“We’re losing a lot of things. We need to take a second look at what’s happening to our cooking,” Gonzales said.
Nicanora Teresa Hernandez, niece of the late chef Mila Enriquez, confirmed Gonzales’ observations.
Also gone are the tawilis, which Enriquez listed as among the survival foods during the Japanese occupation in the Philippines.
“During cooking demonstrations, my aunt replaced the fried tawilis with tuyo (dried fish) because we could not find any tawilis anymore,” Hernandez related.
She feared that the pastillas de leche might be gone in time because carabao milk, the main ingredient, has been very rate to come by now.
Hernandez noted a “slow death of traditional food” in Bulacan because old folks guard the recipes like secrets. Enriquez documented quite a volume in her 1995 cook book “Kasaysayan ng Kaluto ng Ating Bayan.”
Most recipes in Pampanga, on the other hand, are out, said Gonzales.
Because nobody makes traditional kitchen implements like gilingan (a stone used to grind rice) now, Gonzales said he resorted to using a blender to produce the flour for the tamales. The native snack is topped with peanuts, shreds of chicken meat or slices of eggs and ham before it is wrapped in banana leaves and boiled.
Tamales is still made in the old way in Barangay Cabalantian, a village buried by Mt. Pinatubo’s lahar in Bacolor, Pampanga in 1995.
Eugenio Ramon “Gene” Gonzales of Café Ysabel said he has been buying his stocks of kamaru from Thailand in recent years.
“We don’t have the kamaru anymore because farmlands have been converted into [residential] subdivisions,” he told some 200 participants in the First National Conference on Bulacan and Pampanga History, Arts and Culture at the Holy Angel University here.
Kamaru breeds on rice paddies. Usually surfacing after harvest time, they also come out when hunters stomp on the ground. Traditionally, kamaru are prepared as adobo.
Gonzales segued his discussion on the vanishing species as he tackled the food prepared in feasts held by his ancestors in the Arnedo clan in Apalit, Pampanga during the 19th century. Those feasts drew royals from Europe.
“We’re losing a lot of things. We need to take a second look at what’s happening to our cooking,” Gonzales said.
Nicanora Teresa Hernandez, niece of the late chef Mila Enriquez, confirmed Gonzales’ observations.
Also gone are the tawilis, which Enriquez listed as among the survival foods during the Japanese occupation in the Philippines.
“During cooking demonstrations, my aunt replaced the fried tawilis with tuyo (dried fish) because we could not find any tawilis anymore,” Hernandez related.
She feared that the pastillas de leche might be gone in time because carabao milk, the main ingredient, has been very rate to come by now.
Hernandez noted a “slow death of traditional food” in Bulacan because old folks guard the recipes like secrets. Enriquez documented quite a volume in her 1995 cook book “Kasaysayan ng Kaluto ng Ating Bayan.”
Most recipes in Pampanga, on the other hand, are out, said Gonzales.
Because nobody makes traditional kitchen implements like gilingan (a stone used to grind rice) now, Gonzales said he resorted to using a blender to produce the flour for the tamales. The native snack is topped with peanuts, shreds of chicken meat or slices of eggs and ham before it is wrapped in banana leaves and boiled.
Tamales is still made in the old way in Barangay Cabalantian, a village buried by Mt. Pinatubo’s lahar in Bacolor, Pampanga in 1995.
