I love fruits and my love for it would always drew the ire of my grandfather. I don't have the patience to wait for the harvest time. I would always sneak and climb every fruit bearing tree in our backyard namely, santol, dalandan, avocado, jackfruit, balimbing (starfruit) kaimito, guava, kalamansi, papaya, banana, lanzones, tambis (in our local dialect)and yes, even the thorny kalamansi tree( ours had very big, orange colored fruits when ripe). I was given my own santol tree when my lolo saw me climb the big santol tree beside our house which had a bee colony at the time. I've never seen my lolo so terrified and mad at me at the same time. So he gave me the Santol tree beside the creek for my disposal. I am allowed to climb and pick all the santol i want anytime as long as i will not climb again at the big santol tree beside the house. I like to pick the fruit there because the whole santol fruit was very sweet. My lola would make preserved santol . She would sometimes make salted camias and santol candies. They were so delicious.
My grandmother on my father side was a great cook and an expert in making home-made native delicacies: suman, puto, mamon, bibingka, ube-haleya, arasip, moron, binagol, sagmani, turon, banana cue, kamote cue and a whole lot more. Up to now, the taste of her home-made bibingka lingers in my memory and I haven't tasted any that taste better than the one that my lola served. She made the best tasting pickle I've ever tasted and also the best dulce de leche ever.
Lola, as i fondly call her, also made the best tsokolate. Our ancestral home was surrounded with cacao trees. I would always look forward to the day my lola would toast the dried cacao beans in a big carajay. I would sneak and scoop some toasted cacao beans and eat them like peanuts. How i love its creamy-nutty-bitter taste melt in my mouth. I would wait patiently beside my lola and watch her pound the toasted cacao beans with her mortar and pestle and then tranfer them to a wooden board to be rolled with a big shell until the beans turned into a very fine- -creamy-shiny paste. How I love to scoop some of the cocoa paste we called tablea with my bare hands and ate it with much gusto like a peanut butter. I love the bitter taste of the freshly ground cacao beans. My lola would laboriously roll the paste into small balls while it is still warm and air dry to let the "tablea" harden. The word "refrigerator" was still very alien to us during those days. I couldn't wait for my lola to finish cooking the tsokolate while she let me beat the tsokolate with her famous batirol to a very creamy consistency. I like my tsokolate bitter-sweet. I can finish three big cups of tsokolate anytime.
While the cacao were grown in our backyard, my lolo had coffee planted under the coconut trees in our farm. I love to tag along with my grandfather to the farm during harvest time. I love to pick the tiny red beans and sometimes peel some and put them in my mouth until the sweet taste vanish from the coffee beans. My grandparents would dry them under the sun after removing the skin. When the beans are thoroughly dried (the husk would crack and expose the beans) we would manually remove them. My lola would toast them in a very big carajay until golden brown. When the beans have been cooled, that is the time my lola will grind them in her stone grinder. How I love the smell of freshly ground coffee. We always have boiled barako coffee in a big kettle, so I am able to drink coffee anytime of the day unlike the tsokolate which is usually served mostly on special occasions. It came to a point that I had to stop drinking coffee because I became nervous and had a difficulty sleeping. I would squeeze myself between my lola and lolo during midnight.
When my family moved from San Miguel to Surigao, I missed terribly all the home-made stuff my lola made for us. Unconsciously, I would scour the stores that sell native delicacies for treats I used to eat hoping to find something that tastes like what my lola used to gave me, but failed. As I grew up, I sometimes caught myself feeling sorry for not having the passion to learn from my lola her trade secrets in making those very delicious native delicacies she used to serve us. Up to now, I'm still trying to achieve the flavors I used to have and loved. But I guess, lola's biggest secret was not really in the ingredients but her great love and passion for excellent, home-made, delicious food. Or was it because all the ingredients she used were all home-grown, very fresh and free from pesticides. Maybe that's what made the difference. She also cooked the best tasting "laing" and "ginataang minatamis na bayabas".
My grandfather was a great cook too. Maybe that was why my late father, my late uncle and my auntie were great cooks. My father's specialty was "humba", "adobo", "kinilaw", "afritada" and "pancit". One of my aunt's specialty is her "pork tenderloin asado" which I like very much while my late uncle's favorite dish was "escabeche" "lechon kawali", "kinilaw", "mechado", barbecue".
As I learn to cook, I learn to develop my own version of "ginataang langka" and "laing". But I like making my own version of the native delicacies my lola used to make hoping to duplicate the taste
but I miserably failed. Maybe, It is the reason why i kept on experimenting in the kitchen because subconsciously I was hoping to make them the way my lola did.
sinigang na boneless na bangus
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