When their safe houses in Manila were no longer safe, the rebels took shelter at the airy bungalow of Doreen Gamboa Fernandez, a sugar planter’s daughter turned literature professor and food writer. It was the 1980s, and the Philippines was still in the grip of the strongman Ferdinand Marcos . In a later interview, Ms. Fernandez recalled how her university colleagues had chided her for writing restaurant reviews in such precarious times: “How can you sit there and do the burgis” — Tagalog for bourgeois — “things you do?” But the leaders of the National Democratic Front knew Ms. Fernandez as an ally. She dressed their bullet wounds and fed them elaborate meals in a dining room hung with art by the Cubist painter Vicente Manansala and the Neorealist Cesar Legaspi . Then, while her guests recuperated by the pool in the cool shadow of a great acacia, she retreated to her desk and resumed the task of documenting the indigenous cooking traditions — scorned and ignored during … [Read more...] about She Was Filipino Food’s Greatest Champion. Now Her Work Is Finding New Fans.
Food
Filipino Food Finds a Place in the American Mainstream
In 1883, José Rizal , the future hero and martyr of the Philippine Revolution, was a homesick medical student abroad in Madrid. His longing for bagoong, a paste of seafood salted and left to ferment until it exudes a fathomless funk, grew so great that his worried family in Manila dispatched a jar. But it broke on the ship, releasing its pungent scent and, reportedly, terrifying the passengers. Today, bagoong and other Filipino foods are finally entering the American mainstream, more than a century after the United States Navy sailed into Manila Bay, sank the Spanish Armada and took control of the archipelago, a restive colony of around 7,100 islands and 180 languages. Americans of Filipino heritage now make up one in five of all Asian-Americans, second only to Chinese in number, and the largest percentage of immigrants serving in the United States military were born in the Philippines. Other Asian cuisines have been part of the American landscape for decades. But only in recent … [Read more...] about Filipino Food Finds a Place in the American Mainstream
Charred, Browned, Blackened: The Dark Lure of Burned Food
Smoke is shorthand for culinary catastrophe, setting off alarms in the kitchen and jitters in nervous cooks. But some foods will reward you for pushing them right over the edge, past done and headed toward burned. “My burning method of choice is the broiler,” said the chef Gerardo Gonzalez, who draws inspiration from traditional Mexican moles to make his own at Lalo , the restaurant he opened last fall in Chinatown in Manhattan. Mr. Gonzalez starts his mole with almonds, cashews, peanuts and pumpkinseeds, which are all toasted zealously, to the darkest possible shade of brown. “Just before they go black,” he said. From the blackened avocados at Nix to the lamb heart ashes at Aska , burned and charred foods may seem like just another fad sweeping through pyrotechnically inclined restaurants. But burning, a technique that can involve a surprising amount of shading and subtlety, has deep roots in many cuisines. A great kazandibi, the Turkish milk pudding, … [Read more...] about Charred, Browned, Blackened: The Dark Lure of Burned Food
At the Food Sermon, Keeping the Faith in Crown Heights
The cross-shape sign says, “Jesus Saves,” or almost: The first S has fallen away. All along this stretch of Rogers Avenue in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, battered-looking storefronts speak of miracles and end times. So the Food Sermon , standing on a corner with its windows shining and its name in letters as yellow as the noon sun, may be mistaken at first for a sleeker, more modern place of worship. Perhaps that’s no mistake, if you consider food a matter urgent for the soul. And Rawlston Williams, the chef here, will make you believe it is. A theology-school dropout who found salvation in the kitchen, Mr. Williams, 38, grew up in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Caribbean food is a mainstay of Crown Heights; what elevates the Food Sermon, which opened in February, is the extraordinary brightness of the flavors, as if a veil has dropped. Oxtail comes not collapsed in a stew but in hunks still whole, half-hidden under broad leaves of watercress and garlanded in chickpeas. … [Read more...] about At the Food Sermon, Keeping the Faith in Crown Heights
Xi’an Famous Foods
88 East Broadway No. 106, (entrance on Forsyth Street), Chinatown; no phone; xianfoods.com. The devotees made the trek to Flushing, to Xi’an Famous Foods in the Golden Mall, for lamb face. They rode subways or buses, parked old Volvos on Prince Street or Bud Place and walked in for liang pi, starchy wheat noodles and soft croutons of gluten, slick with chili oil and sesame sauce, crunchy with sprouts, softened by cilantro. They swooned over cumin-scented lamb packed into Silk Road flatbread, English muffins for terra cotta soldiers, burgers for the Chinese-food obsessed. Perhaps you were one of them. Perhaps you wished you were. Perhaps you are on the fence. Whichever, a new outpost of Xi’an Famous Foods — named for the capital of the Shaanxi province in central China and serving its food — has recently opened in Chinatown in Manhattan. It is among the few non-Cantonese, non-Fujianese purveyors of Chinese food in the neighborhood. It is just a few minutes’ walk from the … [Read more...] about Xi’an Famous Foods
Imagining a New Filipino American Neighborhood Into Being, Starting With Food
On a recent Saturday, mellow ’90s R&B pumped from a tiny strip of a parking lot off Seventh Street in downtown Los Angeles. Cooks in sleeveless T-shirts danced as they worked, flipping mushroom skewers and longganisa patties on long charcoal grills. As I made my way through the crowd at Filled Market — maneuvering around aunties in oversize sun hats, couples with babies and a pair of dogs in fat gold chains — a scoop of mango and sticky rice ice cream started to drip down my arm. There are plenty of excellent outdoor markets in Southern California, but the crowd was gathered at this one for the piles of garlic noodles with grilled shrimp from Taste of the Pacific and the chewy, mango and peach bibingka from San & Wolves Bakeshop . Marketgoers debated which shiny houseplants to buy from FlyPlant , and sniffed the candles on display from Rikki’s Wickies , with scents like calamansi, leche flan and strawberry milk. The Manila … [Read more...] about Imagining a New Filipino American Neighborhood Into Being, Starting With Food
