That the deaf and we may hear

Next week will be The Week for the Deaf. Bulong Pulungan at Sofitel Hotel will mark that week by featuring in today’s forum personalities engaged in programs designed to help deaf persons realize their full potential and make them productive members of society.

Speakers will be Rosemary Vergara of STEAM (Special Training, Employment, Advocacy and Management for Deaf Persons) Foundation Inc.; Cromwel S. Umali, a deaf person working with the President’s Office, Malacañang; Leticia Buhay, who runs the Maria Lena Buhay Memorial Foundation’s center for deaf children, and Giselle Montero, head of St. Benilde’s College’s Partnership and Development Department program which offers a Bachelor of Arts in Applied Study designed to develop skills and prepare deaf students for employment and business opportunities.

Six deaf children from STEAM will perform musical instruments — living proofs that the deaf can hear in their own way — and better than many of us with supposed normal hearing.

Interested persons are invited to attend the forum, and pay only P350 for the buffet lunch. T-shirts and other items will be sold at special prices to help deaf beneficiaries.

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I’m sure many of us still remember and hanker for our mothers’ or grandmothers’ classic dishes that were yummy to the last bite. Our efforts to recreate them somehow always seem to fall short of the original.

Apart from the ingredients and the mixture, we may have missed out on ensuring the presence of the Umami taste. Umami? Yes, this, as I recently found out, is known as the fifth basic taste after sweet, salty, bitter and sour.

 A homemade meal, to the busy, up-and-about set, has become a luxury that very few can now afford to enjoy. In this day of instant cooking, fast food and processed meals, some of us may not even remember what a good home-cooked meal even looks and tastes like. I now find that adding Umami will give the taste of homemade meals that we fondly recall, without having to invest extra time and effort.

Umami is not a magic potion that turns instant noodles into a five-course dinner. As a basic taste, without you and me knowing it, Umami’s been in our food for ages.

Umami is a distinct taste in beef, tomatoes, cheese, soy sauce, and a range of other ingredients. Research tells us that Umami is the embodiment of the savory quality of food. It is often associated with the feeling of a perfection of taste, or it can even bring up fond memories which may or not be associated with food. Because of all the taste receptors in the tongue, and their reactions to monosodium glutamate, the brain releases, among other things, serotonin.

Umami, I am told, is not harmful to the body, contrary to what some people have been saying about monosodium glutamate. Doctors say that the neurotransmitter serotonin in Umami modulates anger, aggression, body temperature, moods, sleeping patterns, and appetites. Wow!

Umami was isolated from glutamate by Dr. Kikukae Ikeda of Tokyo Imperial University back in 1908. The name of the taste itself was coined by Dr. Ikeda in an effort to encapsulate the remarkable taste that seemed to elude description. Umami seems to be that element which balances the palette and creates harmony in an otherwise shocking explosion of flavors in our mouths. It is starting to revolutionize the way we regard cooked meals, whether we want to admit it or not.

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Why do we hardly ever see Filipino restaurants in the US and other countries? There are only five listed Filipino restaurants in New York, compared to the 578 Chinese restaurants, 57 Korean restaurants, 196 Thai restaurants, 184 Indian restaurants, 973 Italian restaurants, and 315 French restaurants. New York is the diverse taste center of the world, and we have five restaurants representing the Philippines and our palettes.  

How sad that only a few people have the opportunity to enjoy our cuisine in a sit-down restaurant setting. The strongest association with Filipino food that people abroad have is a fast-food chain. While that particular chain is a country-wide popular favorite, it just doesn’t do for us to be thought of as a fast-food nation when we have so much more to offer in terms of technique and expertise and out-of-this-world tastes.

Hopefully, Umami will help put Filipino cuisine on the map, the way it did for Japanese food. The tastiness of our food is highlighted by Umami, never overpowered by it. Our food is good, no doubt about it. If people the world over can come to embrace raw fish, soy sauce, and vinegary rice, then I don’t see how people can fail to fall in love with Filipino cuisine.

It’s time we showed the world the brilliance of Filipino food, enhanced further by Umami, and brought to greater heights by all the people who have expressed recent interest in food and cooking.

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The American Studies Association of the Philippines (ASAP) will hold its annual conference and general assembly on November 15 at the Philippine Social Science Council Building auditorium in Quezon City. ASAP is the oldest professional organization promoting American studies in the country.

 Dr. Pacita Gavino of UP Manila, who is president of ASAP, announces an impressive lineup of speakers: Dean Kotlovsky of Syracuse University, Jaime Galvez-Tan, former health secretary; Tim Harden and Danilo Reyes of Sitel Philippines, and Jose Y. Dalisay Jr. and Maria Rhodora G. Ancheta, UP Diliman.

 The conference will feature lectures and intellectual exchanges on the impact of American elections, politics, trans-national businesses migration, society and the arts, with a musical performance by broadcaster and baritone Bert Robledo of DZFE FM radio.

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My emal: [email protected]