Last Thursday I went to La Union and unexpectedly met and had dinner with a Filipino friend who had studied in Taiwan for two years. This friend told me that he missed mutton soup in Taiwan, and we started talking about food.
He said ginger duck stew in Taiwan is very similar to a dish in Baguio where he was from. I was quite surprised by that because ginger duck stew is considered to be a very Taiwanese dish which is rarely found in the Philippines.
Some other Taiwanese food like stinky tofu and three-cup frogs, that are cooked with sesame oil, rice wine and soy sauce, are also dishes very unlikely to be found here. But another Filipino friend told me that there are actually frog dishes in Pampanga which I have been wondering how they taste and want to try them one day if I get a chance to visit Pampanga.
Talking about exotic food in the Philippines, balut may be the food that immediately comes into people’s mind. However, not only Filipinos, Vietnamese eat balut as well, but it is called trung vit lon or hot vit lon there.
I always wonder why some people find balut unacceptable and are afraid of trying them. For me, while I was afraid of eating ducks when I was little, it seems to me that if people are not afraid of eating ducks, ducklings in balut are just ducks in another form so there is no reason why people do not dare to eat them.
Not to mention dinuguan, which reminds me of pig blood rice pudding and spicy duck blood curd in Taiwan, is also a dish I found very tasty after trying it. As Taiwan and the Philippines were both agricultural and rice-eating societies, it was all too natural to eat everything which was within people’s reach and nutritious at the same time.
Because of this tradition of cherishing food in agricultural societies, people tended to finish food in their plates and if they could not finish it, they would keep it until the next meal.
When I was little and my grandmother was still healthy, each time when my mom brought me back to her hometown, the next morning my grandmother would fry the leftover rice from last night with fried shallot and there is even a term “tshin-pñg” to call the fried shallot rice.
That is why after I came to the Philippines, I found it so familiar and recalled the sweet memories with my grandmother each time when I saw garlic rice.
My grandmother passed away last July. I was in Manila and wasn’t able to say goodbye to her.
I still remember the taste of the fried shallot rice and my grandmother always prepared freshly cooked rice for everybody but kept the leftover for herself, but I always asked her to give me the leftover because I liked it more than the rice which was just cooked in the morning.
Since it was Chinese New Year last Sunday, my Filipino friends recommended that I eat tikoy and said it is perfect to be fried with eggs. Actually, my grandmother from my father’s side always cooked tikoy that way and it was heavenly delicious. It was another surprise to me that in the Philippines people also eat tikoy exactly the same way as we do in Taiwan.
Last but not least, I tried tupig when coming back to Manila from La Union, and it reminded me of mochi which is a favorite sweet for many Taiwanese, and the buko flakes inside made the taste really special and tasty.