Why Sinigang?
Doreen G. Fernandez
Rather than the overworked adobo (so identified as the Philippine stew in foreign
cookbooks), sinigang seems to me the dish most representative of Filipino taste. We
like the lightly boiled, the slightly soured, the dish that includes fish (or shrimp or meat)
vegetables and broth. It is adaptable to all tastes ( if you don’t like shrimp, then bangus,
or pork), to all classes and budgets, (even ayungin, in humble little piles, find their way
into the pot), to seasons and availability (walang talong, mahal ang gabi? kangkong na
lang!).
But why? Why does sinigang find its way to bare dulang, to formica-topped
restaurant booth, to gleaming ilustrado table? Why does one like anything at all? How is
a people’s taste shaped?
But still, why soured? Aside from the fact that sour broths are cooling in hot
weather, could it be perhaps because the dish is meant to be eaten against the mild
background of rice? Easy to plant and harvest, and allowing more than one crop a year,
rice is ubiquitous on the landscape. One can picture our ancestors settling down beside
their rivers and finally tuning to the cultivation of fields, with rice as one of the first
steady crops.
RICE
Rice to us is more than basic cereal, for as constant background, steady
accompaniment; it is also the shaper of other food, and of tastes. We not only sour, but
also salt (daing, tuyo, bagoong) because the blandness of rice suggests the desirability
of sharp contrast. Rice can be ground into flour and thus the proliferation of puto; the
mildly sweet Putong Polo, the banana leaf-encased Manapla variety; puto filled with
meat or flavored with ube; puto in cakes or wedges, white or brown eaten with dinuguan
or salabat.
THE GREENERY
The landscape also offers the vines, shrubs, fields, forest and tress from which
comes the galaxy of gulay with which we are best all year round. “Back home,” an
American friend commented.” All we use from day to day are peas, carrots, potatoes,
cabbage, and very few others.”
The dietarily uninhibited Filipino, on the other hand, recognizes the succulence of
roots (gabi, ube, kamote); the delicacy and flavor of leaves (pechay, dahong bawang,
kintsay, pako, malunggay) and tendrils (talbos ng ampalaya, kalabasa, sayote); the
bounty of fruits (not only upo and kalabasa, talong and ampalaya, but also desserts like
langka and banana, which double as vegetables; and the excitement of flowers like
karutay and kalabasa
