Filipino
Sapin-Sapin (Layered Steamed Glutinous Rice Cake)
A Filipino steamed cake: a batter of glutinous rice flour, coconut milk and sugar split three ways, coloured purple, white and yellow, and steamed one layer at a time, each set before the next is poured on. The Tagalog name means "layered". It is topped with latik, the toasted curds of coconut milk.
Champorado (Chocolate Sticky Rice Porridge)
A Filipino chocolate porridge: sticky rice boiled with tablea, tablets of pure ground roasted cocoa, until thick. Milk or coconut milk goes over the top and sugar goes in to taste. Eaten for breakfast or merienda, and commonly paired with tuyo, small salted dried fish.
Kutsinta (Steamed Brown Sugar Rice Cakes Set with Lye Water)
A Filipino steamed rice cake: rice or tapioca flour mixed with brown sugar and lye water (lihiya), coloured orange with annatto and steamed in small moulds. Where puto is doughy, kutsinta is jelly-like and chewy, and only mildly sweet. Eaten with freshly grated coconut.
Inun-unan (Visayan Fish Simmered in Vinegar and Ginger)
A Visayan fish dish from the Philippines: whole fish in a pot with ginger, onion and garlic, covered with vinegar and almost no water, and simmered. No vegetables go in. It is sometimes called "boiled pickled fish" in English.
Kaldereta (Goat Stew Finished with Liver Paste)
A Filipino goat stew. Bone-in goat simmers with tomato for the better part of two hours, then potato, carrot, pepper and olives go in, and last of all a liver paste is stirred through to thicken it. The liver is what gives the sauce its body and its deep, dark savour — and since liver turns chalky with long heat, in a dish that simmers for two hours it goes in last.
Suman (Glutinous Rice and Coconut Milk Boiled in Banana Leaf)
A Filipino snack: soaked glutinous rice tossed with coconut milk and salt, rolled in banana leaf and boiled an hour. Fat slows water into raw rice, which is why mango sticky rice adds its coconut milk after steaming. Suman mixes it in first and loses nothing: the soak has already put the water in the grain.
Pancit Bihon (Stir-Fried Rice Vermicelli)
A Filipino stir-fried noodle in which fine rice vermicelli is softened in cold water and then finished in a measured amount of fully seasoned stock that it drinks to the last spoonful. There is no pot of boiling water anywhere in it, so that stock is the noodle’s only chance at seasoning — which makes its quantity and its salt the whole recipe.
Nata de Coco (Fermented Coconut Jelly)
The Filipino sweet in which coconut water is fermented into a jelly. Kimchi is still cabbage after fermenting; nata de coco is no longer coconut water at all. Bacteria eat its sugar and excrete cellulose, which builds up at the surface as a mat. What you eat is that cellulose; the coconut water was fuel.
Sisig (Chopped Pork on a Sizzling Plate)
One of the Philippines' national dishes: pig's head boiled, then grilled, then chopped fine and served on a cast-iron plate heated until it smokes. Three applications of heat, each doing something the others cannot. Boiling turns the collagen to gelatine, which is the only thing that makes this cut chewable. Grilling does what boiling never can — dry the surface and brown it. And the plate fries only the underside, so one dish arrives with two textures. The plate is a piece of cooking equipment, not a serving dish; the egg cooks on it too.
Halo-halo (Shaved Ice with Preserves)
The Filipino summer dessert: a dozen sweetened components in the bottom of a glass, finely shaved ice heaped over them, evaporated milk poured on top. There is almost nothing to cook, so the order is the whole technique — the heavy things go in first and the ice last, or the spoon never reaches them. The name means "mix", which makes those neat layers an instruction rather than a finished state.
Sinigang (Sour Soup)
Pork simmered with radish, tomato, and vegetables in a broth soured with tamarind — the Philippines' beloved sour soup. Bright, clean, and tangy, it's the comforting bowl that makes rice disappear in Filipino homes.
Chicken Adobo
One of the Philippines' national dishes: chicken braised in soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, and bay leaves. Everything goes in one pot — a tangy, savory rice-stealer that's even better the next day.