It was supposed to be all systems go for the launching tomorrow of Louella Eslao Alix’s book on heritage cooking entitled, ‘Hikay: The Culinary Heritage of Cebu’ at Casino Español de Cebu.
Planned way ahead of the supertyphoon now about to drop another disaster on the laps of Visayans, the launching of this 264-page tome has now been moved to a later date, perhaps on Wednesday, November 20, assuming that Cebu will not bear the brunt of this unwelcome visitor or that this supertyphoon will just wither away. Anyway, Cebuanos, like all Filipinos, are used by now to all kinds of disasters, that another one just a few hours away will not dampen their spirits.
Although ‘Hikay’ will not make its debut tomorrow, let me just introduce it here nonetheless in a bid to veer the mind away from supertyphoon that we have absolutely no control of.
‘Hikay’ is not just a fancy full-color instruction book for people who want to cook. It is also a celebration of the 90th anniversary of what appears to be the first printed cookbook in Cebuano entitled, “Mga Lagda sa Pagpangluto” by Doña Maria Rallos, wife of Don. Florentino Rallos who was municipal mayor of the town of Cebu in 1907.
While many will remember the Ralloses today because of the multi-million peso case still pending in the courts concerning a road within a property owned by this mayor a long, long time ago, it is also best to remember that in 1913 his wife published a ground-breaking book on the standards and methods of preparing gustatory delights that many no longer recognize today.
Enter Louella Alix, or Loy to close friends, who has not only brought back to the present some of the recipes in the book (translated in English, of course) but also adds a number of old recipes from where else but the old families of Cebu, including that of her late grandmother.
All told, this coffee-table book is the latest in a line of heritage books published by University of San Carlos Press, which for purposes of transparency I must admit I head as its business manager. My bias for the book therefore is obvious. But it is always in the tasting (and in this case, the reading) that a book can be judged.
Note, by the way, that if you have no talent whatsoever with cooking, the book is replete with discussions on traditional practices and locales for different types of food preparation, knowledge that ended with the untimely passing of all our grandmothers and grand-aunts.
Did you know, for example, that in the past to cook mongos (Mong bean) soup was a half day affair that involved roasting the beans on fire before pounding them to smithereens and soaking the remainder in water before even pouring them on a boiling pot?
And how many of us remember ‘pan pranses’, the best tasting of which could only be had at the Elite (pronounced by Cebuanos then as ‘Elayt’) only for the current generation to realize that this actually meant French bread?
These and many more will bring you back to a time of peace and the innocence of cooking, way before it became too cumbersome to prepare so that we all had to troop to the restaurants to do the cooking for us.
For now, let us all hope that this book will be one more reason why supertyphoon Yolanda will just, as the old rhyme suggests, simply go away.
For inquiries as to the definite launching date and price of the book, please call USC Press at 2310100 local. 290. I wish to personally thank our media sponsors in the book project, Cebu Daily News and SunStar Cebu and our constant supporters of USC Press book publishing, China Banking Corporation, BPI Foundation, Bank of the Philippine Islands.
Storm, storm go away! Come again another day!