ELIZABETH ANN QUIRINO CURATES A FEAST
FOR THE BALIKBAYAN ARTIST
In Chapter 8 of The Balikbayan Artist (Penguin Random House, 2024), I feature a meal among protagonists featuring the bounty from a wedding celebration that didn’t happen because the bride was a “runaway bride.” With the wedding aborted, one of the novel’s characters was able to take home some of the food, which she then fed to the novel’s protagonist, Vance Igorta, and friends. For this purpose, I presented a list of dishes as:
Lumpiang Sariwa with pork and slivers of vegetables.
Embutido Beef Rolls with pickled relish and raisins
Classic Filipino Pork Sisig with kalamansi wrap with baby bibb lettuce
Pampanga style BBQ Meat with Beef and Shrimp—marinated in kalamansi, soy and palm vinegar
Rellenong Pusit (Stuffed Squid) with ground pork and green peppers
Classic Filipino Adobo Pork with dark vinegar with soy and pearl onions
Filpino Lechon with Roast Crackling Suckling Pig
Garlic Fried Rice with slivers of Spring Onion
Pinakbet-Ratatouille with eggplant, okra, tomato with calabash
Pancit Bihon with thin rice stick noodle with roast Pork BBQ.
I have zero culinary skills, not learning within my family to cook and then excelling for 20 years as a former New Yorker in dialing for take-out from the massive cornucopia of offerings from the cosmopolitan city’s eateries. To write Chapter 8, therefore, I relied on internet research.
It wasn’t until after The Balikbayan Artist was published that I thought of what would have been a better way to write this section of Chapter 8. I should have asked master chef Elizabeth Ann Quirino, author of award-winning books such as Every Ounce of Courage: A Daughter's Reflections On Her Mother's Acts of Bravery, to contribute a menu of what she might have prepared for a wedding feast in the Ilocos (I didn’t differentiate between Ilocos Sur and Ilocos Norte in the novel).
Ms. Quirino was very generous with my request and responded with a possible list for a wedding feast as well as her thoughts as to how she compiled the list. I wish I could have had a chance to feature her offerings particularly as the book was also written through collage. Let this article be a note to myself to try to do so if there’s a second edition of my novel. For now, I thank Betty Ann for her generosity and educational suggestion.
—Eileen R. Tabios
*
From Elizabeth Ann Quirino
I have compiled a list of Ilocano dishes which we personally enjoyed during various family events in Vigan, Ilocos Sur. My source for the names and ingredients of these dishes were our matriarch aunt Atty. Aleli Quirino, who in turn checked with the family cook at the Syquia House in Vigan. I always want to make sure to ask the cook about the ingredients and the process of cooking.
For context, during the 125th birthday anniversary of the late President Elpidio Quirino, our entire clan drove to Vigan, Ilocos Sur for a weeklong of festivities. Upon arrival, we were treated by the town of Caoayan (next to Vigan) to a sumptuous kamayan dinner and most of these dishes listed here were on the menu. The townsfolk CLOSED an entire bridge in the barrio and laid out the long tables with banana leaves, then arranged all these food, for us to eat kamayan style. Our hosts insisted we eat kamayan style!
We had family who flew in from the USA (aside from us), from Europe (Spain), and from Manila, and the neighboring provinces. The American and European guests were game and ate kamayan style. There were some relatives from Manila (I won't mention who) who were "too sosyal" and brought their own spoons for the dinner. My sons noticed that and whispered to me. I don't know if the fact that some guests brought spoons offended our hosts or not. Family can be complex!
Anyway, the next day, there were more parties, and this time the daytime/lunchtime event, though not kamayan, was held outdoors, on the grounds of the Museum. There were long speeches, lots of people and it was sweltering hot. The food was on smaller tables, but the tables were laid out in clusters around the grounds—so that the guests didn't crowd in one buffet table.
Vigan was hospitable and served us Pancit bihon guisado, the purple rice biko, and the sweet barquillos filled with coconut (the latter 2 are in photos I enclosed) + bottled water, juices and soda. The sweet-filled barquillos have an Ilocano name: “apa-apa.” The purple rice biko was unbelievable. It was soft and tasted buttery. The purple rice cooks different from the white rice we are used to seeing in ordinary biko. I tried to pry the recipe out of the hands of the "manangs" who cooked the biko, but they were all so secretive. The only info they gave was that they stirred the biko for a long time on the stove. My guess as to why the biko was so divine, is that the ingredients were fresh, the coconut milk was freshly squeezed from newly harvested young coconuts, and even stovetop cooking was probably done over kindled firewood as is done in the provinces because cooking gas in the Phil. is very expensive. I grew up in those kitchen circumstances in the province. It makes a difference in the flavors of the dish.
Hope this list is helpful. Let me know if you need anything else. I am honored you asked. These dishes are family favorites from the Ilocano side of my husband.
Ilocano Dishes – During Parties or Large Events
1. Pork Bagnet – the Ilocano version of lechon kawali. This is served with fish bagoong (also called Bagoong Monamon, made of salted anchovies, or bagoong balayan) seasoned with calamansi on the side.
2. Buridibod – a vegetable side dish; Malunggay (moringa) stems with native gourd (upo) sauteed in fish bagoong.
3. Sinanglaw – beef innards, tendons, ox face and bile simmered in sour flavors from green, unripe tamarinds. This dish will make you pucker your face in extreme tightness because of the ‘sobrang asim’ (too tart) flavors.
4. Ilocano Biko – rice kakanin dessert made with dark purple rice, with coconut latik sprinkled on top.
5. Barquillos sweets with coconut filling – which are wrapped in delicate Japanese tissue paper, and artistic paper cut-outs in delicate designs.
6. Vigan empanada (Ilocos Sur) – half-moon shaped empanadas using homemade thin dough (the consistency of a lumpia wrapper), encasing the filling of julienned vegetables, ground pork and eggs. The empanada is deep fried in a wok of hot oil, till it is crisp.
*NOTE: The Ilocos Norte province has its own version of Ilocano empanada.
7. Ar-arosep + agar-agar – fresh seaweed served with fresh tomatoes. This is a salad and side dish. We ate this kamayan-style when served to us. The Ilocano hosts insisted we eat it kamayan.
8. Diningding (a.k.a. dinengdeng) – a vegetable medley of sitaw (long beans), talbos ng kalabasa (squash flowers), pechay, sigarilyas (winged beans), and talong.
9. Pancit Musiko – a noodle soup meal served to visiting music bands (musico) during fiestas or large gatherings in town: The soup is simmered with chicken, pork, Spanish chorizos, Chinese ham (very salty), shrimps, kinchay (Chinese parsley)
10. Fried Fish like hito (catfish) served with the proverbial KBL (kamatis, bagoong, isda lanson – tomato with patis relish).
11. Dinaldalam – pork dish higado consisting of parts of the pig innards like pork liver and lampay (innards). The liver is marinated first in vinegar before cooking. *Note: This was a favorite of the late Philippine President Elpidio Quirino, according to our matriarch aunt Attorney Aleli Quirino.
12..Pipian – a chicken stew which is cooked with pasotes (the Mexican epasotes), a herb that only grows in Vigan. It has flavors similar to oregano, but milder. The pasotes goes back to the galleon trade in the 16th century when colonizers brought the herb to Ilocos Sur.
Pipian consists of chicken and sometimes pork, cooked in tomato sauce, with achuete (annatto seeds ), ground rice, ground peanuts, herbs and seasonings. This is a special-occasion kind of entrée because of its ingredients and long process to cook.
*****
Elizabeth Ann Quirino, is a New Jersey-based award-winning journalist, food writer, cookbook author and memoirist. She recently published a Filipino food and history memoir Every Ounce of Courage: A Daughter’s Reflections On Her Mother’s Bravery. She is a recipe developer and contributor for food publications like The Kitchn, Simply Recipes, and Taste of Home. Quirino is also a correspondent for Positively Filipino online magazine. She is a member of the International Association of Culinary Professionals and is on the Board of Advisers of the President Elpidio Quirino Foundation. Find more of her Filipino and Asian home cooking recipes on TheQuirinoKitchen.com.
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