Food for thought and comfort

There’s not a book whose release this season has been as tinged with serendipity as Comfort Food (Anvil Publishing), where writers, artists, and other plain members of both civil and uncivil society gather together to put out their essays, art works, perambulations and assorted percolations on the food or drink that most touches their respective weary souls.

Edited by Erlinda Enriquez Panlilio, herself no stranger to food nor to the thought such eating provokes, Comfort Food indeed could be mandatory reading for the season, whether one is preparing for noche buena tables groaning with an overkill of dishes, or simpler repasts for the most perfunctory budgetary tastes. All that matters here is the right digestion, and the essays are arranged in a way where can one partake of them in savory, piecemeal bites. No rush in reading this, or else baka hindi tayo matunawan.

There are the usual suspects assembled and perhaps cajoled by Enriquez to contribute to this volume, which has the aroma of another potential national book award. Clinton Palanca, Susan Lara, Alfred Yuson, Ramon Sunico, Carla Pacis, Luisa Igloria, Anthony Tan, the Tiempos Torrevillas and Edith, Zeneida Amador.

Well okay, maybe not so usual but suspects just the same.

In lieu of plain rhapsodizing which may seem tempting enough given the circumstances, the writers and essayists give vent to something beyond nostalgia and a few are able to muster enough postprandial inspiration to list down some recipes that could well be handed down through generations, a veritable menu as memorabilia.

Two who list down their recipes, which the patient reader may try, are Tan and Igloria.

Tan, the Siasi poet who vividly relates incidents while growing up in a large Fil-Chinese family in that Sulu town, details the making of a chicken dish spiked by shark fins. Tan admits that the dish is easier prepared if one has access to fresh shark fin, though this doesn’t prevent the reader from getting a whiff of the sea while reading the essay.

Igloria leaps the various chasms of sentimientos de patatas in her essay "Edible Hours," which includes the recipe for her father’s favorite molo soup. Here geography becomes merely incidental, as a Baguio lass lets loose on a dish distinctly Ilonggo.

No surprise then that quite a number of writers choose a soup-based dish as their comfort food, herein informally defined as a food that really hits the spot, whether far from home or while nursing a hangover the morning after.

Butch Dalisay makes no chicken bones about his fondness for mami, specifically the Ma Mon Luk of old. Now that is one restaurant with ambience and character, and we recall having come across a drink listed as "Suicide" in its branch off Banawe St. But Dalisay and the rest of us need little convincing that a taste of that mami would lay waste any thoughts of self-immolation, meow!

Another confirmed soup addict, rather lugao aficionado, is Sunico of the Cacho Publishing House. Sunico, for good measure, quotes the French poet Verlaine, those lines about rain falling on the town while the persona’s heart weeps, as an apt epigram for "Rainfood." Regulars of Goto King, or even of those rolling sidewalk fast food joints that seem like invitations to hepatitis, would empathize with Sunico, especially when he serves up the image of the raw egg in the soupy comestible coming out like the sun.

At least two mention ice cream as the piece de resistance of memory – Lara and the widow Ongpin, Isabel.

Lara says the cold cool stuff helps lift her up on blue days, which dish is synonymous with celebrations and other hurly burly blowouts.

Ongpin recalls having walked blocks from the Assumption to an ice cream parlor in front of the Philippine Women’s University, and where each scoop becomes a recollection of time past melting away in the palate.

The poet lawyer Simeon Dumdum engages us in a bit of family history and how his father met his mother, while singing unlegalistic paeans to his mom’s chicken dinuguan, a dish that sounds thick and rich and maybe a trifle more humanitarian than the preparation of pinikpikan. It is not merely coincidental that a number of soul food recipes can be traced to the matriarchal branch of the family, as the home and hearth archetype is not easy to outgrow.

The children’s book writer Pacis reminisces on the bagoong of her childhood during vacations in Vigan, as well other noteworthy Ilocano foodstuff sure to whet the appetite, from bagnet to pinakbet.

Yuson explains the ligament dynamics of corned beef as faithful gustatory companion, while Amador pays tribute to that humble vegetable often found wrapped in plastic on refrigerated grocery shelves, lentils or lentejas.

Enriquez herself swears by bangus, and confirms that between her parents – who founded the landmark D&E restaurant, itself a symbol of our own childhood days while growing up in Quezon City – it is her father who is the cook. She says one can seldom go wrong with the sinigang na bangus sa bayabas, and even as we write this, we can already smell something cooking in the kitchen of memory, especially for those of us who had native guava trees in the garden.

On the whole, Comfort Food should offer more than just food for thought, indeed the accompanying illustrations by the likes of Pandy Aviado, Beng Dalisay, Elmer Borlongan, Manny Baldemor only reinforce the notion that food preparation is also visual. And we don’t mean takaw-tingin. In this season of indulgence, the book is a welcome reminder to be gentle on the digestive tract, lest we spend too much time in the comfort room in the aftermath of bacchanalias.