The Purple Sweet and Sour Fish

We owe much our culinary knowledge to the people who have taught us in our growing years how to cook in line with tradition. Before we innovated our cooking, we followed the recipes our grandmas have loved for ages.

I grew up in a family where everyone cooks. We are not schooled in culinary nor exposed to any chef or cooking masters, we just needed to feed ourselves well. And it shows. ha ha ha. We helped in the family business at home in Sipocot and studied in the neighboring town of Libmanan during the weekdays. Living in a different place five days a week taught us to be independent even in our early years. Just like my older siblings, at the age of seven, I was already trained to cook rice. At ten, I can cook a dozen of dishes on my own. Our teacher in cooking is our Tiya Edad, my father's stepsister who took care of us since we were babies. She dedicated her life caring for us.

Under Tiya Edad's instruction, I learned to cook dishes with gata (coconut milk) and some pork dishes. Her Pikadilyo - tilapia or talusog (mud fish) cooked with tomatoes, petchay, eggplant and spices (garlic, onion, ginger and of course, siling labuyo) in gata still haunts my tongue. We wanted it "naglalana-lana" or when the gata slowly turns into oil, just like the way we cook natong (taro leaves) and Bikol Express. To achieve this we have to squeeze the grated coconut meat twice. In our times, we do not have the electric grater in the supermarkets. We have to sit down on the kudkuran to manually grate the coconut. After that, we extract the milk by adding water and squeezing. The milk coming from the first squeeze is the kakang gata or the thick coconut milk. Then the thin coconut milk from the second squeeze goes directly to the cooking pan along with the spices.  We'll bring the milk to a boil before adding the main ingredients. When the thin milk is almost drained, kakang gata is added as the fire is lowered. You have to wait for the gata to turn into an oily cream. Sometimes, Tiya would also recommend cooking the dish "palusag" where all the ingredients are placed in a cauldron and slowly cook them in gata. There is no need for the thin coconut milk. This manner of cooking is best in preparing langka (jackfruit, not the ripe ones) and ogob (breadfruit). Tiya Edad loved cooking talusog though my sister was afraid of the fish because it really looks like a snake. She would either fry them or make a pikadilyo, and my sister could not help but just enjoy it.

It was a happy feast for us when Tiya Edad would cook egado (pork liver stew), kandingga (sauteed pork lungs and liver with finely chopped kangkong), caldereta and mechado (pork stew in tomato sauce). She also had this pork adobo in salt and vinegar, and stored in a jar. She would preserve it for future cooking purposes, but we would always manage to steal some pork cuts like candies in a cookie jar.

Of all the recipe Tiya had taught us, it was the kusido I love the most. It's fish in hot sour soup of tomatoes, camote tops and calamansi. I would usually ask for this soup whenever I have colds.

Tiya also admitted she had limitations in cooking. She was not exposed to some recipes we know today. One time, when my cousin Cathy and I were about to eat the lunch Tiya Edad had prepared for us. What was served was a fish with an alien-like purplish sauce. We exchanged confused looks and asked Tiya Edad, what the name of the dish is. She said sweet and sour followed by an explanation that our house tenant Ate Bebot helped her cooking the dish with the suggestion of adding some food coloring. It was just unfortunate that the food coloring they added was not cherry red but purple. Though the dish was not appetizing to look at, it was really tasty. I just ate it with my eyes closed. And when we had finished the dish what was left was an anecdote.

Now that Tiya Edad is gone, we cannot help but savor the happy stories of her cooking and how she successfully passed down to us her kitchen knowledge.