Kitchen Kwento

‘Āinatarian: A Conversation with Gigi Miranda

 

Getting back to the source. Photo credit: Gigi Miranda

I am lucky to have come of age where "local" was a way of life. In Hawai'i, ʻāina is land. Nurturing the land is to mālama ʻāina. I remember those who continued traditional practices - from pounding poi, to gathering limu, to fishing - as practicing daily acts of resistance. It seemed to challenge the privatization of land, the toxic industries destroying aquifers, the influx of imported foods. Witnessing the struggles of people in their own homeland humbled and inspired me to understand my Filipino roots. I wondered, what is our way to mālama ʻāina? What is that relationship when in another's homeland?

So when I heard of Gigi Miranda's workshops on healing through food and land-based practice, I couldn't wait to hear more. Based in O'ahu, this Pinay sister generously shared stories from her path and on choosing to go "ʻāinatarian" (note: coined by Faith Pascua, a young Ilokana poet/student and her ipo (sweetheart) Noa Helelā, a young Kānaka Maoli poet/student).

Yes, that is a sweet poi creation. Photo credit: Gigi Miranda

KK: What inspired you to connect to food and healing? Do you relate your Pin@y roots to your food work and if so, how?

GM: Itʻs who I am, how I was raised and how I live. I reconnected to my roots and continued my ancestral traditions. Seeing my father die at 59 years old from heart disease, diabetes and a host of other conditions as well as my own healing journey, it was not only food but a healing from the disconnection from our ancestral lands, in our practice and way of life.

The drastic changes, demands, and stress of trying to raise our family of seven kids, incorporation into a Western diet and lifestyle, and a loss of our culture, was detrimental to his and our family life. So many of us have loved ones suffering from heart disease, diabetes, cancer, hypertension and other conditions.

Connecting to Pin@y roots is in my culture, language and traditions. I was raised growing our own food, fishing from the ocean and preparing our own meats as my ancestors have done for thousands of years.

KK: What's a dish or ingredient you identify with?

GM: Munggo guisa and fried fish, my Nanayʻs roots. Pinakbet, my Tatayʻs roots. Fresh pounded paiʻai by my Kānaka sista farmer friends. Fresh niyog/niu/coconut (my maternal ancestors roots) that I love making into healing ʻĀinatarian foods! 

Breadfruit, or `ulu. Photo credit: Gigi Miranda

 KK: What do you see as crucial issues - and opportunities - around food facing Pin@ys, Asian/Americans, Pacific Islanders, and all communities today?

There is just one, food relationships. It is in our relationships in our food and how we make our food choices and practices in our familial understanding and relationship to the land that affect ours, our communityʻs and ʻāinaʻs health, no matter who or we are. It is not only about food. itʻs about our culture and way of life.

In Hawaiʻi, Hawaiians and Filipinos have some of the highest health rates of chronic illnesses. The traditional belief and practice of mālama ʻāina (taking care of the land) that sustained Kānaka Maoli for 2,000 years has changed over foreign contact and with current U.S. occupation to a Military Industrial Complex.

Land rights and access for Kānaka Maoli and sustainable land practices for Hawai‘i’s settler population remain a determining factor of health girded in historical struggles and colonial relationships. It is the direct impact on the health and livelihoods of the indigenous and settler populations. The main economic unit of the ʻohana that cared for their ili in their ahupuaʻa and okana has changed. It is now the main economies of militarism, tourism and GMO companies that are the toxic landscape in the health, livelihood and culture of the people, ʻāina and our food.

Tasty roots. Photo credit: Gigi Miranda

The State of Hawaiʻi imports 80-90% of its food. There is less than 3,000 acres of certified organic farmland, while the military occupies an estimated 245,000 acres, GMO companies own or lease an estimated 40-60,000 acres spraying over 70 different chemicals daily with development always a threat to our ʻāina. 

Certain ethnic groups with noted health disparities are employed in service jobs and supporting the State of Hawaiiʻs infrastructure. The price of a median home is $450,000, average rent has doubled in the last 20 years while 37% of the homeless are of Kānaka Maoli ethnicity and 39% of the prison population.

Yet slowly but surely communities are reconnecting, healing the land and themselves. The sovereignty movement grows in our food, our land, our communities and consciousness. Shifts to more sustainable, local living economies and efforts to mālama ʻāina in preventing further “health” impacting development or expansion happens in every thought, every moment and every day as kupaʻāina.

Learn more:

Visit Gigi's Facebook page: Whole Plant Based Cooking and Living

Classes at The Green House

Journey of a Coconut Kabayo

The coconut kabayo (horse). Photo by Heidi Leung

Panic. My kabayo was missing. In just one week, I was to lead a workshop on coconut cookery and this tool was essential. Sure, we would cook with canned and frozen coconut milk. Yet I wanted the kabayo to be there as a silent teacher, to bring something real and solid and nearly lost to our microwave generation. 

With its distinctly serrated blade and bulky wooden body, a kabayo feels made to last and should be hard to misplace. And after scouring stores in Oakland's Chinatown and making calls to Ranch 99 and Seafood City, I found that they were surprisingly hard to find brand new. "No one does it like that anymore," the shopkeepers told me, laughing. "Too old-fashioned. Who has time for that?" 

Cindy shows how its done on the fly, at a farmstand in Pescadero

Maybe it was senseless and stubborn, but I just couldn't let go of the idea of grating coconut by hand, of making that visceral connection to a food. It was time to ask for help.

"Help," I posted on Facebook. "Girl in need of a coconut kabayo this week. Who has one collecting dust in the basement?" Within an hour, answers came in. "Have a kabayo looking for a coconut," wrote Cindy, an SF-based friend and real food advocate. She even happened to be passing by the coastal farm where I work and sweetly dropped it off. It was a surpring mix of 21st century technology enabling a Luddite's coconut dreams to come true. 

Heidi grates coconut in the Oakland Asian Cultural Center's kitchen

I took this as a good omen for the coconut dishes to come. A week later, in the kitchens of the Oakland Asian Cultural Center, our class convened around food memories, geeky coconut trivia (did you know the coconut is technically a fruit, a nut, and a seed?!), and the slippery slope of using locally grown ingredients with ones like coconut that are hard to replace without losing the soul of the dish. And of course, we did actual cooking. Dubbed "the tree of life" in the Philippines, coconut is abundant in places like my father's province of Bicol, and I tapped on memories of his hometown to guide the menu.

Together we tackled chicken binakol (a soup made with young coconut, lemongrass, and oyster mushrooms), laing using local kale and collard greens simmered in coconut milk instead of the traditional (and hard-to-find) taro leaves, and finished off with bibingka, a sticky rice cake dripping with slowly simmered coco jam. 

Best feedback of the day? One student confessed she didn't even like coconut to begin with,. but had come to be with a friend. By the day's end she was scooping spoonfuls of young coconut with a smile on her face. "I didn't know coconut could be like this," she told me. Kabayo victory. 

Many hands scraping many shells.

"Its like its raining coconut!" Our youngest student Rocco tops the bibingka.

Chicken binakol and a kale laing

The Class of Cooking with Coconut

Filipino Soups for the Soul

Soup makes my soul sing. Sharing soup with company is, well, even better. As the winter has slowly crept in I have been dreaming of a time to bring together family stories, warming soups, and many cooks in the kitchen. Last Saturday was the chance to do just that. Thanks to support from the Oakland Asian Cultural Center, I organized a workshop with the theme of "Filipino Soups for the Soul" (The wonderful Jo Boston has a writeup here!)

All smiles with the lovely cooks of the day.

Ginger-inflected tinola is a soup so familiar to the tongue that I based our class recipe on taste. It belongs to that universal lineage of delicious chicken soups fit for bodies on the mend. And, its even a traditional nourishing food for post-partum mamas. Like many Filipino dishes, tinola is resilient in nature. The vegetables can be switched up depending on what's in season and what's on hand.  Folks in the class shared memories of tinola with green papayas, chayote, or even summer squash. We made ours with tender-fleshed upo and the tiniest bok choi.

Waiting for tinola. Lemongrass, green onions, ginger, tatsoi, upo, and bok choi.

The soul of sinigang is its sour broth, whether using sampaloc (tamarind), fruits like guava or green mango, or citrus. Variations include chicken, bangus, and pork, and Jo Boston even mentioned short ribs. I got some salmon inspiration after a trip to the Pacific Northwest and the piers where Filipino Alaskeros began their watery voyage to Alaska's salmon canneries. The legacy of the Alaskeros and its imprints on Filipino/American history led to a unique twist on an essential dish. What was once a "substitute" for tropical fish, and a byproduct of the industry, is now a delicacy in its own right. In fact, my father, who grew up in Bicol province, favors salmon heads to any other fish even though the fish does not even swim in Philippine waters. 

Salmon heads!

Keeping in the spirit of previous OACC culinary workshops, we aimed to blend seasonal produce into traditional recipes, and mix cooking with conversation on adapting foods into kitchens far from the homeland. I felt the question of "authenticity" bubble up as we took on two soups. Some of our soups used local ingredients, like kale and bok choi, but other, far-traveling ingredients such as tamarind pulp were chosen in favor of capturing a traditional flavor. With all the rapid changes that communities - and our environments - now face, how do we keep the soul of those foods alive? 

Preparing onions, tamarind, and garlic

Maybe sinigang captures that question most clearly. For those familiar with this soup, Mama Sita's instant soup base packet is so common that its mention draws a familiar laugh. I shared a story about a balikbayan reality check. A few years back, I visited my mother's province in Pangasinan and trailed the home cooks around hoping to witness real down-home sinigang. We woke in the dark to trek to the market and buy still-flopping fish and the crispest vegetables. But at the moment of truth, when vegetables and fish were to meet broth, it was to my dismay - and laugh - that the familiar package was whipped out and sprinkled in. Here we were, in the heart of the province, and The Packet still made an appearance! I thought we'd be laborously shelling tamarind by hand, but no. (Still, I had to admit the result was delicious).

This is not to say the soup is no longer made in traditional ways - far from it. But it goes to show that the push and pull of instant and processed with slow and homegrown isn't just a question we're facing in the US. We live in a faster-paced time, where globalization and corporations are reshaping relationships to food. As a generation, as individuals, families, and community, though, how do we want to define that relationship? We can all be thankful for folks like Dominic Ainza in SF, whose culinary repertoire includes outside-the-packet sinigang, and Amy Besa and Romy Dorotan, whose Memories of Philippine Kitchens captures and documents living food traditions.

Maybe we can't all take the time to shell tamarinds or have a yard to plant fresh sitaw. But there must be some ways to honor the soul of our foods, no matter where and how we live. I'm thinking of the future, something bigger than any bowl of soup. Because if food traditions become all but disappeared, when those who plant and sow and harvest our foods are displaced, and when the keepers of culinary knowledge are finally lost, we will never know the foods that are at the soul of culture. And with it we will lose those delicious textures - a language, really - telling a story of who we are and who we can be. 

More On Tinola:

Belen, Jun. “On Slaughtering Chickens and Making Tinola”
Chang, Momo. “Asian American Mothers and Post-Partum Traditions: A Recipe for Chicken Tinola” 
Chang, Momo. “Motherhood Rooted.” 

More On Sinigang:
Salaysay, Cynthia. “Singing the Praises of Sinigang”
Fernandez, Doreen. “Culture Ingested: Notes on the Indigenization of Filipino Food”
Gapultos, Marvin. “An Interview with Claude Tayag.”

E is for Eggplant

Like bell peppers, tomatoes, and peppers, eggplants ("talong" in Tagalog) are a member of the deadly nightshade family. Some sources site its ancestral roots as Africa, others say India and Pakistan. Similar to tofu, eggplants are a virtual food chameleon, able to take on a hundred different flavors.

 

California-grown Filipino eggplants at Berkeley Bowl!

Perhaps the most unforgettable eggplant I have tasted was from my mother's province of Pangasinan, where the eggplants were roasted over wood that had been burned down to glowing coals in an outdoor clay oven. The skin was charred and peeled away. The tender flesh within was infused with a smoky flavor that later mingled with a rich coconut sauce.

 

   

Got purple? Even more varieties of eggplant: Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Indian...

While best known for their deep, glossy purple skin, you can look for eggplants in light jade to mottled white, and a variety of shapes and sizes, and with subtle differences in taste, texture and adaptability to recipes.

Pinakbet - one of my favorites, a marriage of color and flavor with kabocha squash, bittermelon (ampalaya), eggplant, tomatoes, onions, garlic, and whatever fresh vegetables are at hand. Some add pork, but I make it vegetarian. Eating a good pinakbet feels like good medicine.

More on Eggplant:

Following Day 4's post on controversies around food security, biopiracy and DNA, a recent article on genetically modified eggplant in Asia

Burnt Lumpia's excellent blog on making the delicious egg-and-eggplant dish, Tortang Talong

Market Manila's eggplant blog

C is for Collards and Coconut

Eat those leafy veggies!

Collards aren't a typical Filipino ingredient, and are better known as a deep part of African diasporic cuisines. I fell in love with them at first bite. And I was reminded of that other emerald heaven known as laing (LAH-ing), made from taro, or gabi, leaves stewed until tender with coconut milk. Borrowing from this venerable and nutritious green cousin I tried my hand with a localized laing dish, with coconut milk, coconut oil, shallots, ginger, and garlic. A similar texture to the shredded taro leaves was made by cutting the leaves into a chiffonade. Chiffon-what you say? Here's a quick how-to.

Tear out the stems and stack them up.

Roll it (like a lumpia).

The most satisfying part! You're ready to cook.

More With Collards:

http://www.theroot.com/views/vegan-soul-food-tasty-read

The Challenge - 26 Days, 26 Letters, 26 Kwentos

Abundance.

Its the middle of the summer in Oakland, with ripe red strawberries, shiny blackberries, and early tomatoes bursting out of boxes at the market. So it seems only right to bring some of that abundance to writing!

Inspired by the' "poem-a-day" challenge, I've embarked on a challenge over the next 26 days of July to write a kwento-a-day, one for every letter of the English alphabet (yes, there's 26 letters and I counted).

Some kwentos will be pretty, others scrawny, but they will BE THERE, so stay tuned! Got ideas? Looking for recipes? Love it or hate it? Send your kwento over!