Cooked with love

I just came from Bukidnon and I was pleasantly surprised with our accommodations. The hotel was clean and well-equipped and for the price of a business hotel, it was very good value. What also made me very happy was that this may be one of the best breakfasts I have had during our travels to coffee lands. You can tell if the cooks are happy because the food, as simple as scrambled eggs with tomatoes and onions, tastes good. I can be very happy when breakfast starts the day right. Our breakfast at this business hotel was very good even if it was simple fare.

Another surprise are the restaurants we went to for dinner. In faraway Valencia City you may think you can only find a mall restaurant or the usual grilled chicken along the highway. But we had two good dinners in a row. The first café has been around for 10 years already and is called Manna & Quail. To our surprise the owner, who studied in Manila’s Enderun, decided to come home to set up this café in Bukidnon. We had very good staples – dry adobo, pinakbet and monggo – all well prepared and cooked with love. The second restaurant we went to offered steaks and burgers that Bukidnon is quite famous for. But we chose to have chicken binakol (cooked with young coconut meat) and sinigang soup, both of which were enjoyed by our colleagues. The food is good and the staff is friendly.

Not to make this a restaurant review, I am just impressed as a local tourist to find good eating places in remote areas of the country. Time was when we could only find a carinderia that just serves pancit and rice. No viands, just rice and noodles. Carb on carb. That was in 1998 when I first visited Sumilao, Bukidnon. Now you have more choices other than the usual popular quick service restaurants or fast food joints along the highway.

The next weekend, we were up in Baguio to visit Benguet farms and again we were treated to food cooked with love and service like no other. I was very happy with my breakfast at Forest Lodge, but even happier with the good service from everyone – whether morning or evening staff, service was exceptionally good. I kind of miss this kind of personalized service in many places in Metro Manila, maybe also owing to high turnover of staff in most food and beverage establishments around here. I could be paying double of Baguio prices in Makati but service is a poor 1 compared to a 5 in Baguio.

In the hinterlands of Kibungan, Benguet, I thank the community who cooked our meal as a group – pinikpikan manok (chicken slowly roasted then boiled), grilled pork, with sayote tops as a side vegetable. This is a meal cooked with love, and I can still taste the soup as I write this. Yes, it was like a tinola soup, just nicer. I even had a second helping of rice smothered with the tasty broth.

In the evening for dinner, we went to a local favorite in Baguio where I have been ordering the same trio for many years now – salpicado, Caesar salad and lentejas soup. If you are familiar with Baguio, you can guess where I dined to have that trifecta. It also made Caesar salad popular way back in the 70s.

Have you ever thought about how “cooked with love” tastes like? It is when you can savor the natural flavors of the ingredients and taste the recipe as cooked by its creator, not from a standard manual or a commissary. If you give it enough thought, you can taste it. I recently revisited a favorite Japanese restaurant and I knew the flavors are still the original flavors of a wok used over and over. Check!

And this is how restaurants thrive and get a loyal clientele. The owner must see to it that cooks, chefs and food preparers do it because they love to cook, not just because it is a job.

In the metro, I tend to go where the service is good and the food is consistent in flavor. Service for me is the icing on the cake. You can have good food but good service is what nails it. This is why I have just a short list of favorites, if not at my brother’s kitchen where the family favorites are cooked consistently with the same taste and with love.

Am I a food critic? No. Am I a food reviewer? No. I just like to make a list of my favorites when it comes to good food and good service. Something that tastes like home. This is why the term “home cooking” has such a positive vibe to it.

In many families, children learn to come back home to taste the grandmother’s or mother’s cooking or special homemade dish. It is what makes a house a home – the smell of a good family recipe for adobo, inihaw or pochero. And it all starts with cooking with love.

This Christmas, think about the food you will serve or will partake of. Was it cooked with love?  Let us not just eat for the sake of filling our stomachs but to fill our hearts with good memories. This Christmas, let us gather with family and remember our family recipes, because traditions bring a family closer together. What is your favorite memory of home cooking?

This season let us also teach our next generation to preserve our family recipes, our methods of cooking family favorites, so that our culture will be preserved for many generations to come.

Merry Christmas to all and may you cook with love and eat with love this holiday season and remember why we are celebrating Christmas.