The Cuisine of my Ancestors

Or maybe it should be…our ancestors. If you are Filipino, chances are one of your distant relatives had some Chinese blood. The Chinese people have been around long before the Spanish came. In fact, “presence of people from the Chinese mainland in the Philippines has been evident since during the Ice Age.” Walk lang sila using the land bridges.

Centuries later, they came as traders and Magellan met them when he landed in Cebu in 1521. Chinese migration increased during the Spanish rule and majority came from Fujian province (former name was Fukien, capital is Fuzhou) including some from Guangdong. When your lineage is known to be very prolific, cultures intertwine and the Chinese Filipino was born. By 1849, 66,000 Chinese were listed and the majority, 90 percent, lived in Parian.

My ancestors came from the Tan family, my wife traces her roots to the Yap family and every year I join the annual reunion of the Yap (No invitations from Tan family!). If your surname is Tuazon (eldest grandson), Dizon (2nd) or Singson (4th grandson), Chinese gyud ka since these are “examples of Hokkien words with Spanish translations used as surnames for some Chinese Filipinos.” If Lacson, Chinese pud because it means sixth grandson!

Your favorite food columnist is a disciple of Chinese cooking and desires to taste food in its original form. With Fujian cuisine, I was able to do so because I was part of an official delegation of Cebu City to visit Xiamen (also known as Amoy), our Sister City. I ate, excuse me, in the more expensive restaurants, vegetarian food in Nanputuo Temple and street food around the city.

The second best thing is to be invited to the Fuzhou Food Festival at the Tea of Spring, Shangri-La’s Mactan Island Resort & Spa where two Chefs from Shangri-La Hotel Fuzhou, Yang Jiaxi and Tacky Zheng, showed their mastery in preparing the cuisine of the province. To learn more about its intricacies, I brought a friend, Nina Go, another culinary enthusiast, to act as an interpreter so nothing is lost in translation.

And my beloved followers already know that Fukienese cuisine is characterized as relatively delicate but flavorful, usually retaining the natural flavors instead of masking them. There is strong emphasis on the use of quality broth/soups as flavoring agents, fermented fish sauce (shrimp oil), lots of peanuts, red yeast rice including the use of wine dregs (byproducts of wine production). The latter is one ingredient I have never used, hence the intense curiosity. Mee sua (thin white wheat noodles) and Yen-Pi (lean pork with starch and pressed paper thin, sun-dried) are Fujian specialties.

Pei Mei (Best Selection Chinese Cuisine, Part 1) said that there are four styles of Fukienese cuisine: Western (slightly saltier and spicy), Southern (spicy and sweet taste), Quanzhou (least oily but strongly flavored) and Fuzhou (lightly seasoned, sweet and sour taste).

Some of the dishes served during the Fuzhou feast were:

1. Smoked Grass Carp

2. Fo T’iao Ch’iang (Buddha Jumps over the Wall)

3. T’ang Ts’u Li Chi Jou (Sweet and Sour Li-Chi Pork)

4. Steamed Lobster Meat with Strings of Potato

5. Double-boiled Stuffed Fish Balls Soup

6. Double-boiled bird’s nest soup with fruit and almond

Since Cebu has its share of the recipes of Fujian, your favorite food columnist has tasted three of the six dishes listed above. Fo T’iao Ch’iang (Buddha Jumps over the Wall) is the most famous of these dishes because of its fancy ingredients (shark’s fin, abalone, scallop, etc and unique way of cooking, very low heat, 4 hours). It was once part of a luxurious banquet dinner of Lumpia House Fine Dining restaurant.

Stuffed Fish Balls with Minced Meat brings back memories to a supplier near Taboan Market where such type of fish ball was sold; although much smaller, you add superior soup stock and you have one delicious soup. I have cooked Sweet and Sour Li-Chi Pork (Pei Mei version) with fresh Li-chi.

Enjoy gyud your favorite food columnist with the dishes during the Fuzhou Food Festival. Added to this was the satisfaction of seeing the ingredient called wine less or dregs for the first time and true to Cebuano fashion, dunay pakapin nga food since Chefs Yang Jiaxi and Tacky Zheng prepared something special, the Fried Peanuts with Red Wine Dregs Sauce.