Cebu food: When flavors meet humility

BLACK Chicken with Ginseng Soup is a herbal soup that is cooked for four hours. It is available in an upscale Chinese restaurant in Cebu City. BOBOI COSTAS/CONTRIBUTOR

Cebuanos tend to be apologetic about food, readily accepting dishes that are simple and require no elaborate preparation.

Get invited to dinner in a Cebuano home and you will always hear the host saying, “This is nothing fancy, just homestyle cooking.”

On the contrary, however, the table is overflowing with food.

A century earlier, Cebuanos were quite impressive hosts.

A dinner in April 1891 in honor of visiting Spanish colonial government dignitaries on the occasion of the feast of San Vidal had an impressive array of European dishes: consommé de aves for starter, pescado con salsa tártara, solomillo con salsa inglesa, espárragos al natural, jamón trufado and jamón dulce, paired with Bordeaux and Jerez wines, among others.

On a much grander scale, the April 1901 banquet and ball tendered for William Howard Taft and the visiting Philippine Commission had 34 entries in its bill of fare; the banquet would run until dawn, that one unimpressed guest was quick to say, “It was all social veneer and a pretentious American affair.”

To say that these historic banquets were foretastes for Cebu as a regional culinary force to reckon with is an understatement. The hosts after all included Maria Fadullon Rallos, or Señora Inday, the mayor’s wife and a homemaker who authored “Lagda sa Pagpanluto” (Guide to Cooking), a collection of 510 recipes published in 1924), and a Cebu’s Who’s Who, part of Cebu’s emerging urban elite—educated and articulate Chinese and Spanish mestizo families.

Influenced by Chinese

Cebu has undoubtedly been largely influenced by the Chinese being part of the ancient Chinese trade route with seas crisscrossed by merchants.

Cebuanos eat rice, use spices like coriander and cumin, steam and braise pork, and use steamers and woks, which the Chinese restaurants would later popularize when they began to flourish in the 1960s and 1970s.

And Cebuanos came to love and embrace it, improvising the ingredients to suit the local palate for convenience and commerce.

“We use toyo (soy sauce) and sili (chili pepper) as dip for lumpia; and instead of meat filling for ngohiong, we use ubod because they are cheaper and are available locally,” says Ben Chua, a Chinese-Filipino businessman and cultural worker.   “Despite the culinary changes, most Cebuano-Chinese still crave for these foods.”

So it’s not surprising that Cebu has bah chang, makimi, siopao asado, siomai and even ngohiong, the fried spring roll with vegetable filling which Cebuanos claim to be solely a product of their own ingenuity.

Family-owned Chinese restaurants in downtown Cebu now run by second- or third-generation Chinese-Cebuano families, or recently arrived Chinese emigrants, also serve soup noodles, as well as seafood, vegetables, chicken, pork and beef which are stir-fried, steamed, cured or curried.

There’s kikiam which is is ground pork, carrots, spring onions, garlic, egg and five-spice powder stuffed in paper-thin wrap called tao pei from soya beans. It is deep-fried and comes heftier compared to ngohiong, which is smaller and has a thicker shell when cooked. It comes close to embutido.

Ngo khong is a thick broth cooked to perfection (creamy and not oily) made of five boiled ingredients: sea cucumber, pork innards, chicken, pork knuckles and fried pork tendons.

Fish ball or meatball is used in the absence of any of the five ingredients.

Then there’s bah chang, sticky rice with shrimp, a chunk of pork, mushroom, chestnut and five-spice powder, wrapped in bamboo leaf (chang hyu) imported from China that imparts a flavorful aroma to the rice mixture after it has been pressure-cooked and steamed.

Spain’s influence in Cebuano cuisine, on the other hand, has found its way in hole-in-the-wall eateries and roadside carinderias.

These food are mostly chunks of meat in tomato-rich and achuete-colored sauces: menudo (sautéed cubed pork tenderloins in sauce), kaldereta (goat stew made with tomatoes, potatoes, spices, liver, olives, bell peppers and hot peppers), balbacua (cow’s skin, tails and tendon slow-cooked in tomato sauce and peanut butter and pineapple), and pochero (slow-cooked beef shank soup) are also mainstays in Cebuano tables during fiestas.

Of course, there are also high-end restaurants serving well-loved authentic Spanish dishes.

Fresh seafood around Cebu and neighboring islands are usually eaten in three ways which Cebuanos jokingly call sutukil (phonetically sounds like shoot-to-kill) for sugba, tuwa and kilaw (grilled, stewed and eaten raw).

Seafood are also eaten grilled (shellfish) or raw (seaweeds), dipped in coconut vinegar with spices.

When Ferdinand Magellan came to Cebu and paid his respect to Cebu’s chieftain Humabon, the latter was clad in loincloth, and was leisurely dining on turtle’s eggs and sipping palm wine.

Al fresco dining

Blame it on Cebu’s tropical weather, which calls for casual dressing and al fresco dining.

Food is prepared and passed around a grill and over bottles of spirits in the company of friends and families, at the beach or on a roadside facing the ocean.

Pork, chicken and fish meat are marinated in a sweet, salty and spicy marinade; skewered and grilled.

Even Cebu’s world-famous lechon (the best pig ever, according to Anthony Bourdain) is best eaten at the beach, or outdoors—with a bare hand, feet unshod—and the other hand clutching the pusô, cooked rice wrapped in coconut leaves (in six different ways) that had its origin as offering for the ancient gods.

For a bit of adventurous eating, Cebu has its own list of exotic food. Adventure is fraught with peril, so if one must dine out in the streets, one must use common sense and make sure the vendor, the utensils and the surroundings are clean and sanitary.

Aside from fried pig liver, ginabot (fried omentum, that part which holds the intestines to the cavity wall), ears and other assorted body parts, there’s linarang nga bakasi which is eel sautéed and then stewed in soy sauce, black beans and sambag (tamarind).

The dish is the closest approximation to the Asian tom yum.

There is also the piniritong bakasi (deep-fried crunchy eel). It is dipped in vinegar and soy sauce with lots of chili. The inagos is a recipe that calls for chopped pig lungs and small intestines sauteed in oil and garnished with onions, garlic, chili and iba fruit.

The tuslob buwa (sautéed pig brain, pork liver or intestines) has been recently mainstreamed and repackaged to cater to the less intrepid of eaters. There’s lansiao, which is stewed cow’s gonads and genitals, and reputed to raise the body temperature.

For refreshments, the Cebuano painit (snacks) is a ritual where snacks are served just before breakfast and just before dinner, when the town band goes around town to wake people up; or when guests coming to the fiesta dinner wait for the carroza bearing the image of the town’s patron saint to pass by.

Biko, bibingka, puto maya and budbud (Luzon calls them kakanin, which, surprisingly, are starchy food meals eaten before a heavy meal) are served to guests.

Up north, there’s budbud kabug (Cebu’s suman made from millet) in Catmon and Sogod towns; rosquillos in Liloan, and bibingka and masareal (sweet ground peanuts) in Mandaue City.

The southern areas—from Carcar City to Boljoon town—baked torta, a cake made from flour, sugar, egg yolks, tuba (coconut toddy) and pork lard.

Aloguinsan town has pan bisaya (native bread) and salbaro (baked bread with shreds of coconut meat). Best food to take home are chicharon from Carcar, dried mangos, danggit and lechon.

During the Fiesta Señor in January, street hawkers sell fish balls, sweet corn, boiled peanuts and potato twist to keep hunger at bay when one is out celebrating in the streets.

Cebuano cuisine still retains its foreign influences. But obviously, the Cebuanos’ sense of taste and sensibilities has changed.