Balút in an eggshell
I received this email from Fernando “Butch” Nakpil-Zialcita, PhD, a professor of Cultural Anthropology who heads the Cultural Heritage Studies Program at the Ateneo de Manila University. I’ve had the pleasure of dining and conversing with him many a time regarding Filipino cuisine and the Pinoy quirks at the dining table. As part of his “Culture and the Senses” class, he gives his students hands-on experience so they can better understand and appreciate the varied aspects of our cultural heritage. He makes his young wards look at the paintings of Amorsolo, listen to Filipino music and that of our Asian neighbors, try our hilot and other foreign massages, as well as dine out to better understand and appreciate our cuisine.
Hi, Claude. Some of the worst enemies of Filipino cuisine are really our own countrymen. Without knowing it, they downgrade it. As an example, I was asked to give a lecture on Filipino food and culture to a group of Northern European journalists at a restaurant in QC. After listening to my spiel extolling the Filipino’s culinary creativity, a Filipino participant stood up and asked the audience whether they had tasted balút. He dared them to do it. What for? We know that internationally, the country as a whole, including its cooking, suffers from bad publicity. Slums, killings, pollution, dog meat. Instead of extolling the glories of our cooking — and of our culture, for that matter — why do some of us want to shock foreigners? The case, unfortunately, is not isolated. In other similar sessions on food, invariably a Filipino will stand up and challenge the foreigners to try balút. This reinforces the perception that both our food and culture are yucky!
The problem springs from a deficit in knowledge, and in how our culture is taught in schools. We hear students saying that, as a people, we have only copied, and that colonialism erased our culture. To this, I would answer that, for us in anthropology, which is the study of culture, cultural fusions are the most normal everyday practice. Very few cultures are “pure.” Societies are in communication with each other. Inevitably ideas and practices will come from the outside, be integrated but will also be modified.
We think Japanese cooking to be wholly “pure” and “original” because Japan was not colonized. Yet at a two-day conference on Japanese cookery at the Ateneo de Manila in 2011, one of the experts said that Japanese cookery has three pillars: native Japanese, Chinese and Western! Eating beef (think Kobe beef), cooking sukiyaki and teppanyaki are practices the Japanese developed in response to Western infl uence ever since Commodore Perry opened Japan to world trade in 1852 to 1854. To this we should add tempura, or deep frying in oil, which was introduced by Portuguese traders in the 16th century. Why then should we be uneasy about having received much Western influence in our cooking? We invented nata de coco, mango pies and buko pies in response.
As for balút, it is not even unique to us. I had the pleasure of ordering it in a public market in Hue, Vietnam. It was served in high style: the egg was in an egg cup, together with a saucer, small sauce dish containing nuoc mam (fi sh sauce or patis) and mint. A small spoon was also included. What self-confi dence, what pride in their culture! And is ours the only culture with “yucky” food? In Iceland, they treasure rotting shark meat smelling of ammonia. In Scotland, they eat haggis, consisting of the sheep’s heart, lungs and liver encased in the animal’s stomach. Let us have more pride in our achievements as a people.
Fernando Zialcita
I couldn’t agree more with Butch about being our own worst enemies. Anthony Bourdain said basically the same thing during his visit here in October 2008. In an interview with Philippine STAR writer Therese Jamora-Garceau, when she asked why the Philippines was virtually his last stop in Southeast Asia, Bourdain replied: “Because I knew so little about it. It was a blank page to me, fl avor-wise. Unfortunately, your culinary ambassador is balút. It’s the first thing that knuckleheaded travel writers, travel TV guys, tend to do fi rst. Because it freaks out Americans who see it, it’s a good, easy visual, and even Filipinos I meet, I tell them
I’m going to the Philippines, they laugh and say, “Oh, you’re going to have balút?” But I had it fi rst Vietnam. It’s so last week, you know? I’ve had the Filipino version in Queens a number of times.”
Is it our way of getting back at our past colonial masters (both the Spaniards and Americans)? Having been subjugated for centuries, perhaps it is our way of turning the tables and putting them on the defensive. We seem to take great pleasure in seeing the guest (victim, is more like it) squirming in his seat, struggling to put up a brave front. It’s an unwritten rite of passage, as if one’s acceptance or rejection into an inner circle depended on it.
The omnipresence of balút is so ingrained in the Pinoy psyche that it can’t simply be ignored. As twilight approaches, loud cries of “baluuuut” are heard in the streets, made by hawkers plying their daily route carrying woven baskets lined with thick cloth inside to keep the eggs hot. They position themselves in high-pedestrian-traffi c areas, usually where roadside barbecue and fi sh-ball stands are. These street foods are our prelude to dinner, similar to what tapas are to the Spaniards.
But what exactly is balút? Unsightly appearance aside, it is a hearty, high-protein food. According to my duck meat and salted egg suki (regular source), Leo and Josephine Dator of Victoria, Laguna (Mr. Duck/ Tindahan ng Itlog ni Kuya stores), balút comes in three kinds: Penoy is the unfertilized egg, having no yolk in it, carefully segregated during the “candling” period when each one is held against a lighted candle or bulb to see through it. It is then covered or incubated in a heated rice husk (ipá in Tagalog) for 13 days. When cooked, it has cream cheese-like consistency that can be slurped directly from its shell (hinihigop, Leo calls it). A day or two longer and it would result in a fi rmer mass that can be bitten off or spooned out of its shell, much like hardboiled chicken egg.
The second type is balút sa puti, where a fertilized egg (with yolk) is incubated for 16 to 18 days, having a teenyweeny bit of embryo covered with the white egg part, hence its name “sa puti.” Within this three-day period, its yolk (called pulá) will change from creamy-soft to fi rm. Leo says the younger generation (below 30) favors this type.
Lastly, the 19- to 20-day-old egg has a more developed embryo where one will find an almost fully formed duckling, complete with tiny beak and feathers (hatching is on the 26th day). This is simply called balút, and it’s favored by the older generation. Besides the fact it is valued for its nutritional benefi ts, it is also believed to be an aphrodisiac (pampalakas ng tuhod or knee-strengthener) and is a favorite pulutan among men on a drinking spree.
When one fi nally makes a commitment to eating balút, there’s the ritualistic art of eating it. One cracks the rounder end of the egg by tapping it lightly on a hard surface, removing the shards to expose a thin white film, peeling this off and sprinkling a little rock salt into the hole, swirling it a bit (like in wine tasting), sipping its sweet amniotic fluid, then dousing it with spicy vinegar. One then removes the rest of the shell and bites off the egg, with some vinegar dripping from your hand.
Many attempts have been made to make the balút more palatable to the squeamish. It has been cooked adobo-style, made into paté, and the venerable Glenda Barretto of Via Mare Café has baked it in a ramekin covered with a puff pastry shell. No matter, it tastes just as good.
My advice to a prospective diner is, either you say an outright “no” (it’s absolutely okay to do so, no one will seriously take offense) or, if you’re brave enough to take on the challenge, go ahead and do it. You just might discover a magic potion to invigorate those wobbly knees. Welcome to the club!
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Fire away your questions at Facebook Claude Tayag or e-mail claudetayag@gmail.com.
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