DA gives world a taste of Filipino food

The Department of Agriculture aims to revive Filipino heritage food not just to preserve Filipino culture and diversity but to also promote the use of ingredients produced by local farmers.

The agency showcased native Filipino dishes at the Salone del Gusto and Terra Madre, an international culinary exhibit held recently (Oct. 23 to 27) in Turin, Italy.

Agriculture Undersecretary Bernadette Romulo-Puyat pointed out that much of every country’s heritage was rooted in its cuisine but native dishes were slowly disappearing. “We can help farmers preserve already-rare varieties of organically grown heirloom rice, Criollo cacao, Benguet’s black pig, barako coffee, and kadyos and batuan from Negros by re-popularizing these—by having people taste it in our cooking and making everyone aware that these food ingredients are still available,” she said.

Puyat invited top chef Margarita Forés to use these ingredients in her dishes and have visitors taste the country’s flavors at the Philippine stand called Savour 7107. Many people were drawn to the Philippine booth to taste kadyos, adobo, pancit guisado with patis, and siling labuyo, among others. Forés is a prominent Filipino executive chef, restaurateur, food enthusiast and Philippine cuisine advocate. She owns Cibo di M Signature Caterer and a known supporter of natural and organic products.

Fores was joined by Cibo d M Signature Catering chefs Anthony Sindaco and Mariel Bustamante. Chef Noel dela Rama, who flew all the way from New York, and Casa Artusi chef Carla Brigliadore, both volunteered to help in the Philippine booth. The chefs whipped up Filipino dishes everyday during the duration of the exhibit.

Puyat said she hoped that the activity could help farmers and Filipinos in general to save the country’s heritage, saying that this nontraditional approach drew crowds and generated a lot of interest in Filipino culture from the rest of the world.

“When people taste our food, they agree that these should not disappear from our planet,” Puyat said.

Stressing that food and agriculture were closely linked together, she emphasized that chefs and farmers should work together to achieve positive results. “What DA can do is to connect chefs or restaurants with farmers so the latter will know that there is a market for their traditional and cultural produce,” Puyat added.

Puyat credited chefs such as Fores for increasingly use ingredients that were no longer popular, among them batuan, a souring agent for kansi (bulalo from Negros), allowing these plant varieties to survive in the market with the renewed demand.

Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala has congratulated the team for the successful exhibit abroad and recommended that this be replicated in the country in observance of the International Year of Family Farming, one of the two themes of the exhibit. The other theme is the Ark of Taste, an international catalogue of endangered heritage foods. It is designed to preserve at-risk foods that are sustainably produced, unique in taste and part of a distinct region in the Philippines.

“Foreign nationalities were able to sample our locally grown organic ingredients. This could spur interest in importing these products from the Philippines, especially with the global trend of green living,” Alcala said. “But at the same time, we also need to let Filipinos here appreciate more our native produce to equally increase domestic demand and to honor our rich culinary tradition as [a] strong pillar of our national heritage.”

The food event was organized by Slow Food, a grassroots movement started in 1986 by Italian Carlo Petrini in answer to the slowly disappearing cultural traditions due to the increasing popularity of convenience foods and 24/7 lifestyle in the world.