Food Choices for the Holy Week

CEBU, Philippines - The statement "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are," written by Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (The Physiology of Taste, 1825), enumerates food choices, including those for the observance of the Holy Week. For many Roman Catholics, Lent is period of fast, abstinence, meditation, prayers, and a feast at the end.

The Catholic Lent traditions include the Way of the Cross, "Visita Iglesias" (Church Visits), commemorations of "Siete Palabras" (Jesus' Seven Last Words), street processions like the "Santo Entierro" (Holy Interment); and on Easter Sunday, the "Sugat Kabanhawan" (Christ's Resurrection) and the festive Easter Mass.

There was a time when meat consumption - including by-products like eggs,  cheese and milk - were prohibited on Fridays throughout the year. The Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) reduced the prohibition to only during Fridays of Lent and allowed meat by-products. Other exemptions were also made; for instance, mammals that live most of their time on water like the beaver, capybara and muskrat were permitted as "fish." We wonder: What about "balut"… was it prohibited or permitted by Vatican II during Fridays of  Lent?

For nearly two decades, we always travel to the north of Cebu, to Baranggay Agujo in Daanbantayan town, during the Holy Week for a four-day retreat/vacation. Rarely do we attempt to cross the sea to Bantayan Island to observe the "Santo Entierro" and view the Stations of the Cross mounted on "carros" (floats), with scenes of the Passion depicted by life-size images. Accommodation and transportation are very difficult in Bantayan during the Holy Week, unless reservations are made six months in advance.

In the Philippines, it is in only Bantayan where meat consumption is allowed during the Holy Week, by virtue of an "Indult," a special dispensation issued by Pope Leo XII in 1840. It was handed to the parish priest of Bantayan at the time, Fray Andrada Doroteo del Rosario.

During Holy Week in those days, the deeply religious Catholics of the island refused to go fishing - their main source of food - and would rather starve than work during the solemn observance. Hence consumption of meat was allowed. In recompense, the residents did penance and works of charity, like feeding the famished. In 1975, your favorite food reviewer was one in the hungry hordes, and followed faithfully the instructions of the Papal Indult, prayed very hard, excuse me, before eating lechon on Good Friday.

The rest of Cebu eat "kinilaw" (vinegary raw fish), "ginamos" (salted fish) paired with boiled bananas, dried fish, sardines, "bakasi" (eel) sa Cordova, "escabeche" (sweet and sour fish) and "linarang nga isda" (Cebuano hot and sour soup). If available, also favorites are blue crabs, "labtingaw danggit" (dried fish, seasoned with sea water), Pacific lobster sashimi or my dream dish this Lent - fresh Fin de Clair oysters topped with sea urchin roe and caviar, shallot and red wine vinegar, or oysters from Liloan with plain "lemoncito."

The quintessential food of Lent is the "binignit," classified as a vegetable soup made with "kamote" (sweet potato), "ube" (purple yam), "gabi" (taro), "sabá" (banana), "landang" (palm flour) and "nangka" (jackfruit). It is cooked in a mixture of water, coconut milk and muscovado (brown) sugar and thickened with "pilit" (milled glutinous rice).  My Cebuano culinary guide, "Lagda sa Pagpangluto" calls this dish "guinatan."

About eight years ago, we were southbound for the Holy Week and we dropped by Ginatilan in Cebu southwest, on our way to Dumaguete, to search for indigenous foods like the "buli puto" or "sinakol." It is made with the "salisi" (dough) of the "buli" (buri) palm, "binlod" (corn grits #16), coco milk and sugar, and then steamed. You have to cut a "buli" tree and exert a lot of effort to produce this Cebuano delicacy. Colossally laborious, and yet it was sold at that time at a ridiculously low price of only five pesos per piece.

With body metabolism sufficiently lowered to lethargy by all that clean, unpolluted air and by consumption of all those delicious seafood, I needed to go back to my miserable diet, and began searching for the best restaurant in Dumaguete City. It was at the Don Atilano (La Residencia Alamar, Rizal Boulevard: phone 035-225-4724, 035-257100-01) where I found Spanish family heirlooms of culinary delights like gambas, lingua, and callos. Usually the beef tongue is cut cross section but this version at Don Atilano was cut diagonally as a gentle reminder that it was a tongue. Nice dinner!