Rice is the core of Filipino meals, the steady, supportive background to all food. All other dishes are meant to be eaten with it, its mildness shaping the food, and allowing the Filipino to eat salty, sour, sweet, and even bitter food because all are eased by the benevolence of rice. It completes the meal, because without rice the act is not a meal but a snack, a pantawid gutom, a mere bridging of hungers.
Doreen Fernandez, from "A World of Rice in 17th-Century Philippines" in Tikim: Essays on Philippine Food and Culture (1994)
Happy Birthday to the late Doreen G. Fernandez. She would have been 91 today!
She is reknowned for her contributions to the writing, study, and appreciation of the different cuisines of the Philippines. In the preface to her book, “Tikim: Essays on Philippine Food and Culture” whose cover inspires this art, she wrote:
“My teachers are all those who give me information about food: market vendors, street sellers, cooks, chefs, waiters, restaurant and carinderia owners, farmers, tricycle drivers, gardeners, fishermen, aficionados, nutritionists, readers of my columns, friends, food critics, and historians, fellow researchers, authors of books (and cook books), writers of columns, food anthropologists - everyone who eats and cares.”
Doreen Fernandez first published her book Tikim in 1994.
Probably years after it went out of print, and soon after she passed in 2002, food bloggers, foodies, and even food events and symposia rose as Yelp, Foursquare, and other food review applications came up in the early to mid-2000’s.
I wonder what Doreen would have wrote on these apps, the photos she would have taken on Instagram.
Have a taste of her writing in Tikim, a compilation of her essays over 10 years of Filipino food writing.
I share more thoughts in my latest blog post:
https://filipeanut.art/tikim-by-doreen-fernandez/
FILIPINO STREET FOODS IN NEW YORK CITY | SO SARAP NYC | Ann Daniel
New Post has been published on https://street-food.newonline.help/filipino-street-foods-in-new-york-city-so-sarap-nyc-ann-daniel/
FILIPINO STREET FOODS IN NEW YORK CITY | SO SARAP NYC | Ann Daniel
This Summer’s highlight is satisfying our cravings for Pinoy street foods! Follow me on my Social Medias: Business Inquiry: [email protected] Follow …
source Street Food Liverpool
Lemongrass Custard with Mango Jerky and Coconut Camote Caramel Sauce
Although still not widely known about today, Doreen Fernandez was the leading food historian and writer of Filipino cuisine during the 20th century. Doreen was born on October 28, 1934 in Manila while the Philippines was under American control. During WWII, her family’s house was commandeered by the Japanese, and her family was moved to a farm where Doreen remembers eating camote and cassava roots boiled and dipped in sugar.
After studying English and history at university, Doreen married interior designer and architect Wili Fernandez in 1958. A decade later, Wili was asked to write restaurant reviews for The Manila Chronicle. Doreen would later reveal that he said “Sure I’ll eat, and she’ll write.” And write she did. While the reviews had a joint byline, Doreen soon went on to write many food columns, essays, and academic articles. This all occurred while she taught literature, creative writing, and journalism and chaired the English, Communication, and Interdisciplinary Studies departments at Manila University. She often also wrote about theater, which to her wasn’t so different from her writings on food. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett said, “Doreen treated food as a performing art. Both food and theater require that the writer attend closely to an ephemeral experience.”
Doreen published several works on cuisine, including two collections of her food essays, a book on Kinilaw (a very traditional Filipino fish dish), one on Filipino fruit, and a guide to Manila restaurants. Her writing revealed deep histories, local embodied knowledge, and collective memory. Her research began with those involved in the food system: fishermen, farmers, food sellers, and chefs. She shared stories about restaurants and street vendors, language, cooking processes, and cultural change. Aware that there wasn’t one answer to “what is Philippine food,” Doreen often wrote about how Filipino food was indigenized and the influence from colonial powers such as Spain, the United States, China, and Japan. In her essay titled “Culture Ingested,” Doreen writes that the evidence of Filipino cuisine “is always being manufactured and discovered anew, every day, in every meal in every home.”
When Doreen began her path as a food writer and historian, she doubted her vocabulary, asking, “How many words are there for ‘delicious’?” Of course, she would go on to utilize a rich and sensory-loaded lexicon that would not only give Filipinos their culinary history, but would also teach those outside of her culture and country the what and how of Philippine food. On her way to NYC in 2002, Doreen died. As Filipino cuisine finds its footing in America and around the world today, Doreen’s career has been recovered by many, and discovered for the first time by many more. To continue honoring Doreen’s contribution to the food world, remember her quote: “If one can savor the world, then one can swallow the world.”
