Somewhere out there is a webpage that
talks about Filipino food, about how Spanish influence gave us a fondness for thick
sauces and stewed meats, or how the Chinese brought noodles or pansit into our
rice-gobbling culinary culture. There is a Pinoy Food webpage out there that will tell
you about the country's best restaurants and how to find them in every province, city,
alley, estero in the land. And you're bound to read somewhere that we Pinoys eat
rice morning, noon and night. There must be a page out there doling out
free recipes for adobo, sinigang and pochero. And because I am assuming there are web pages
out there doing these jobs, I am going to talk about Philippine food in a different light. I'm going
to talk about Pinoy Food of the streets.
Fishballs come to mind right away as a Pinoy street treat. I first tried them way back in grade school when they
were being sold for 10 centavos a piece. These were the food Mommy warned us not to eat, because if you really think
of just how fresh, wiggly, silver gray fishes get transformed into tiny balls of
white substance that can be sold at a profit for 10 centavos, just thinking of the handling, of what kind of
factory worker molded those balls... ugh! But because it's the forbidden food, we just had to try
it! The other bonus is that we, gals from exclusive girls' schools, find an excuse to hang around the parking lot and
check out the boys picking up their sisters from school. But I digress... So the art of fishball buying is to select the
crunchy ones, the ones golden brown in color, and then make tusok-tusok (skewer them). Once the fishballs are lined up on
the stick, they are dipped into the magic sauces. I dip them first in the hot, spicy vinegar, hold them up in the air
for a few secs to give the vinegar time to permeate the balls. Then I dip them very quickly, not more than half a second on the
thick, sweet sauce. You allow the surplus sauce to drip a little bit and then you eat them while they're still hot. Hmmmmmmm...
Right beside the fishball stand is a sno-cone trolley. Sno-cone is the pauper's version of the granita. Julep-like juices, probably
98% sugar and 2% food coloring, poured onto crushed ice. Gastronomically incompatible with the fishballs, but because these vendors know
a trick or two about add-on selling, we usually end up being sales talked to buy them so we have something to wash down the hot sauce of
the fishballs.
Then we also had the mango-stick. A very simple, no-brainer kind of food, one cheek of a green mango in a stick topped with bagoong (shrimp
paste). This one you have when you're sure your crush will not pass by to say hi upclose. Breathmints do not jive with the flavors. There's
also a singkamas (turnip) version, but it is not as yummy.
The other amusing thing is the sorbetes. If you want to be a little "sosyal", you call it dirty ice cream. You call something dirty and you
buy and eat it just the same, funny. My favorite is queso flavor. If the mamang sorbetero let's me, I order a pure queso on sugar cones.
Now, after I got over the waiting-for-cute-brothers phase, the appeal of street food waned a bit. I specially did not go for the isaw and i.u.d. but
I know a few guys who, in the effort of showing off their machismo, would eat these visceral food stuff. Didn't earn points with me, but now that I am
more ecologically-sophisticated, I must admire the Filipino's ability to recycle food wastes into... tadah! Food again!!
Balut (duck's embryo) is another delicacy that I pass up on, unless it's the Penoy variety which, to balut-lovers, is like nicotine-less cigarette or
alcohol-free beer.
I was already on my second job the first time I tasted binatog. I have no idea how it is done and I do not want to to think of the hands that took away the corn
kernels from the cob. But I love this one. It is topped with shredded coconut, some salt and sugar, and it makes for one satisfying snack. Yummmy....
Another favorite is the banana cue. The essential barbecue stick saves the day once more in this delicious merienda. The bananas have to be just the right balance
of firmness and tenderness and the caramel should not be too finely melted as clumps of brown sugar make it a perfect banana-q. One stick of two bananas must be a
thousand calories already, but who cares?
And then there is the candy cabinet. A see-through, plastic cabinet filled with colorful candies is loaded into a bicycle. The biker rings his bell to attract people
to buy about a dozen varieties of sugar coated nuts, chinese preserves, jellybeans, etc. It can be tempting, not so much because of the flavors and nutritional value
but because for a shopaholic like me, making candy choices simulates the joyful sport of shopping and can give me as much satisfaction as selecting one color in a dozen
lipstick shades.
I am sure there are more street food I haven't discovered yet and maybe a lot more that I do not care to discover. Right now, I would give anything for a hot cup of
binatog.
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