My entry for @the-world-on-a-plate Fanzine, ft. Kuya Philippines cooking sinigang 😋
Big thanks to the wonderful @lyresbird for hosting! Incredibly delighted to have been able to participate and work alongside such a talented lineup of artists and writers 🫡 take some time to view the full zine ⬇️⬇️⬇️
The World On A Plate: A Hetalia Recipe Fanzine - Google Drive
Cultural tidbits & significance yap under the cut :)
RECIPE: The star of the show, sinigang 🍲🍲 it holds a special place in my heart as my fav filo food and has been since I was young. I’ll link a Canva infographic presentation below detailing more about it — I made it for an unrelated cultural exhibition but coincidentally it works brilliantly in this context too.
Briefly, it’s a sour-savoury soup with a strong tamarind and tomato broth base, rich in vegetables and can be cooked with a wide variety of meat. My favourite version is sinigang na baboy (pork), specifically pork ribs hehe. Here, Piri is depicted cooking the main vegetables I grew up eating it with: bok choy, okra, tomatoes, and eggplant. Aside from it being a personal comfort food, I wanted to showcase how pinoy cuisine is not exclusive to Jollibee, pancit, adobo, and halo halo — there’s such an expansive ensemble of dishes from across the archipelago, it would be a shame to limit representation of a deliciously eclectic menu through only a tiny slice of the whole picture 🥹🥹
👉 History of Sinigang, an informational slideshow
https://www.canva.com/design/DAFgYnt
Unsupported client – Canva
Some other details & explanations behind the illustration, if you’re curious:
MOTIF: I tried to incorporate elements of a traditional upper lower / lower middle class Filipino kitchen, drawing nostalgia from when I used to live in Manila. It’s typical for people not to have enough money for an imbedded cooktop or oven so a lot of families use portable gas stoves. Piri has a single burner here cus i imagine he lives alone, it’s also common in student accommodations to only have one.
DESIGN & CULTURE: Playing on the (painfully true) stereotype that Pinoys tend to paint their home interiors with vibrant tacky colours (anybody else got the mint green bedroom special??) by integrating bright blue cabinets and ofc the signature mismatched kitchen wall tiles and barred windows combo in the background iykyk 😆
DECOR: I took a lot of inspo from the layout of my childhood flat in the city and my grandparents’ homes in the countryside. maximalism is fundamentally ingrained in filipino/southeast asian culture — it may look cluttered and disorganized to some but it harkens a quaint, homey feeling for me. The uniquely ornate jar without a complementary pair, an array of differently sized plates in the metal, slightly rusted dish drying rack, and the classic red/blue kalendaryo thumbtacked to the wall are my favourite everyday household items depicted here — their inclusion immediately became a necessity during my initial planning of the composition.
CHARACTER: I hope the ‘ay nako’ shirt is distinguishable behind the adobo adidas apron (equivalent to ‘oh my,’ a filo expression used in annoyance or exasperation. Usually said by parents when scolding their kid lol) 😍 I think Himaruya mentioned in the official Hetalia Collezione book from 2021 that Piri is fond of collecting corny t-shirts, it’s pretty much in line with Filipino humour too lmao
