A Soulmate of Flavors by Ian Ocampo Flora : Mga Kuwentong Pagkain
Written By: Mama Sita Foundation’s Sorpresang Sangkap Winner, Ian Ocampo Flora
My granduncle, a consummate Kapampangan cook, and food critic of our family believed that there are cardinal flavors and ingredients ordained by God and nature to be forever fated with one another. Much like the processes involved in cooking traditional Kapampangan dishes, these ingredients are the core essentials of the dish’s identity.
Born out of many years of gastronomic evolution and practical sense, these ingredients have been paired to bring the best flavors possible to a particular dish. These ingredients may never be removed though occasional alteration may be permitted in the form of additional complimentary ingredients that enhance the main ingredient’s flavor.
This concept is very alive among Kapampangans who go up in arms and foaming in the mouth over social media when they see some uninitiated chef or cook put raw egg or mayonnaise into a sizzling plate of sisig, not really because it deviates from the traditional way of cooking sisig but because they find no reasonable gastronomic sense in adding ingredients that add an alien flavor to what a dish is supposed to taste like. Understanding the flavor is one thing, enhancing a dish’s flavor palate is another entirely different discipline. Adding non-complimentary ingredients only proves that one has yet to taste real sisig in all its tangy-porky-greasy goodness.
A case in point is my granduncle’s favorite holiday dish Tausing Ema (mud crabs cooked in black bean sauce). The dish is simple, with mud crabs serving as the base ingredient; tausi (tochi) as a complementary ingredient, and vinegar as a binder.
My granduncle learned the dish when he worked at the Consignacion of the fish market in Guagua in the 50’s where it was a peasant dish among pond and river fishermen. Back then mud carb propagation was in its infancy as an industry. Mud crabs then were easy to come by and were a delicacy for the poor, unlike today where a kilo would fetch as high as P1,500 during Christmas enough to cause a heart attack. On the other hand, the use of tausi harkens to the ancient Chinese residents of the town (probably the ones who survived the great Chinese Massacre of 1762) that have long integrated with the local Kapampangan population of Guagua which inherited some of their culinary influences, the use of tausi among others.
Tausi or tochi, which originates from China, is a fermented and salted black soybean sauce made from black soybeans. My granduncle would argue that you can cook meat or fish with tausi and it would just taste like, well, tausi. You will get no overwhelming flavor. No alchemic miracle. But marry tausi and mud crabs together with vinegar as a binding ingredient and the result is a new universe of flavor. The secret is the manner of cooking. My granduncle would insist on the crabs should be the fattest from the season’s harvest.
We would usually troop to the Guagua Public Market at 2:00 in the morning of December 24 each year to catch the first batch of mud crabs being carted to the stalls of sellers from the nearby Consignacion. He would insist on buying the male crabs, but not just any male crabs, the mud crabs would have to be bakla which are more expensive.
His choice for such crabs is not out of superstition, but from his long years as a pond worker. Mud crabs that are bakla are actually juvenile crabs that have yet to reach full maturity. These crabs are just of the right size, not too big not too small, and are easy to clean.
My granduncle would personally choose the plastic batsa for each crab for slaughter. Each crab would need to have a round apron on its belly distinguishing it from the more phallic aprons of its male counterparts. He would weigh them against each other by the hand and choose the heavier of the two with a murmur of prayer to whomever saint comes to mind that the batch chosen would be blessed with the most aligue (crab fat). It is this fat that interacts with tausi and vinegar in producing the distinctive flavor of the dish.
My granduncle would clean each crab with a new unused toothbrush removing gunk and whatever dirt from each crab’s body. Scrupulously cleaning the carbs ensures the dish would last longer. Blanching the crabs with hot water instantly kills the crabs and allows one to safely cut them in two, any fat that drips out would be saved for cooking. Tausi and vinger would be mixed together in a hot pot. My granduncle would insist on the tausi brand that is sold in small plastic yellow cups. This brand is less salty than the canned ones. The ratio of the two ingredients would be 2 cups of tausi to ½ cup of vinegar for a whole kilo of crabs. Simmered in a hot pot, the crabs would be cooked for five to ten minutes mixing them evenly with the vinegar and tausi sauce allowing the aligue to seep into the mixture. One would then add four cups of water to the dish and allow it to simmer for another three minutes. By this time, the magic has already worked its way. The aligue had already morphed with the tausi and the vinegar. The flavor is just the right saltiness with a tinge of light sour and sweet rich taste from the vinegar and aligue. The sauce from the dish would be enough to flavor a hot plate of rice.
My granduncle would always remark that simple ingredients when tweaked in the right ratio and combination could spell a lot of flavorful differences. Cooking, he said is like a happy marriage, the flavors get along with one another, complementing and not overpowering to produce one ideal taste. Tasting this dish with your bare hands and slurping and sucking the flavor from the carbs would really convince you that there are indeed ingredients made for each other.