P is for Pinakbet (Vegetable Stew)
The ABCs of Recovering Ilocano series (#16 of 26)
Mama was rarely in the kitchen, relying on Papa and my older sister to cook for a household of seven. But when it came to pinakbet, she was the queen. The vegetable dish cooked with bagoong (anchovy sauce) was her specialty. It was the only thing she knew to cook, along with a similar dish called dinengdeng.
I called her recently, “Mama, when did you learn to cook pinakbet?”
“Your Auntie Naty taught me.” While in college, Mama lived with her older sister in La Trinidad, near Baguio City. Mama studied at Saint Louis University, where she met my dad. They raised us in Baguio, and we also went to the same university.
Mama chuckles at the memory of her sister. “Tatang used to debone little fish for me. He arranged them on a pink plastic plate, and I had my fill. Manang Naty bristled at Tatang spoiling me. She often called me to dinner, ‘Mayka manganen, señorita.’ ”
Mama was the little princess in her childhood home. Auntie Naty was ten years older and expected her ward to do chores around her household. Mama often balked, and would threaten, “Ipulongka ken ni Tatang.”
“Go ahead, tell Tatang,” Auntie Naty would not relent.
“Manang Naty did not trust me to cook. ‘Agnatengka laeng,’ she commanded.”
“I was allowed to pull leaves off their stems or cut them according to her specifications. For pinakbet, I would cut a large eggplant into four chunks, then quarter them, but not all the way so they are still connected at the bottom.”
Auntie Naty, like most Ilocanos, was frugal and made sure Mama pulled off all the leaves from the stems. When she spied a missed leaf, she deplored waste. “Na, kailala.”
Soon, Mama mastered pinakbet. To this day, she would not allow anyone else to interfere.
Imelda’s Pinakbet
Ingredients:
Eggplant, bitter melon fruits, okra, string beans, squash-optional. Pork and/or shrimps.
Sauté garlic, onions, tomatoes, ginger. Add pork and/or shrimps and a cup or two of water. Remove the shrimps. Add bagoong 3-4 tbsps. Bring to a boil. May add just enough water or patis (fish sauce).
Add okra, beans, bitter melon, and squash. Remove the shrimps so as not to overcook. Moderate fire. If the vegetables are half-cooked, remove the pan cover to shrink the veggies.
Pinakbet means vegetables are made to shrink (kebbet in Ilocano).
Don’t overcook. Enjoy!
How Mama Became a Vegetarian
Mama preferred vegetables, unlike Papa who preferred meat dishes like kilawen (goat meat marinated in vinegar, onions, and garlic), dinuguan (entrails cooked in pig’s blood), menudo (beef chunks cooked in tomato sauce), and pinapaitan (entrails cooked in bile). He cooked igado for me, saying that liver would help me battle my anemia.
Mama did not touch those dishes and looked away with disgust. The smell made her nauseous, and she would recall her dad’s sister.
“Auntie Rosa was a butt-cher,” as she pronounced butcher. “After her work at the market, she would bring us pails of meat she did not sell. I could see the fat jiggling as she walked through the house. I could not stand the smell, it made me gag.”
Her other specialty is dinengdeng. Unlike pinakbet which has a specific combination of ingredients, dinegdeng is a stew using whatever vegetables are grown in the backyard—long beans, marrunggay (moringa), katuday (vegetable hummingbird), or those used for pinakbet. After a summer thunderstorm, mushrooms and saluyot sprouted in the yard like weeds.
I despised saluyot, a jute plant. In dinengdeng, they looked to me like snakes in a river of the perpetual bagoong. I would scarcely bring it to my mouth, and it would slither down my throat. I recoiled at the sensation of saluyot slithering down my esophagus. Lola cooked dinengdeng all the time while we were in Ilocos. During the summers, I often hungered for the fresh crunchy vegetables in the chop suey Papa cooked back home in Baguio.
Lola used bagoong for everything. She taught me how to prepare it using one kilo of small monamon fish and one kilo of salt. She mixed them in a basin, turning them over in her hand, and then she would drop the mixture into a burnay, a clay jar. She covered the top with banana leaves and secured it with twine. The burnay sat in the kitchen corner, where the salted fish fermented for at least a month. She would check on it, patting the burnay like a baby.
She was pleased when the fish fat had risen to the top. “That’s the patis,” and showed me how to scoop it so as not to disturb the bagoong underneath. Lola prided herself in her handiwork. “As good as Pangasinan bagoong.”
The Pangasinan Connection
Pangasinan is a province south of San Esteban. These days, it is a three-hour drive. During Lola Andang’s day, it took a few days of travel by carison, a cart pulled by a carabao (water buffalo). Her father, Florencio Benitez, took Lola’s sisters along. It was in the 1920s, in a year the rains did not come, and the harvest failed. Lola stayed behind, as she was married with two children and was gainfully employed as a school teacher. Her father later returned to San Esteban, but his daughters Ellen and Pepang met their husbands in Pangasinan, and they settled in Pozzurubio.
The Pangasinan-bagoong connection surfaced recently when I reread America Is In the Heart by Carlos Bulosan.
He recounted his childhood in the rural farming village of Mangusmana, near Binalonan, half an hour from where my grandaunts settled.
Pangasinan, derived from asin or salt, was famous for its fermented fish, which Bulosan called boggoong.
“I remembered all my years in the Philippines, my father fighting for his inherited land, my mother selling boggoong to the impoverished peasants. I remembered all my brothers and their bitter fight for a place in the sun, their tragic fear that they might not live long enough to contribute something vital to the world. I remembered my own swift and dangerous life in America. And I cried, recalling all the years that had come and gone, but my remembrance gave me a strange courage and the vision of a better life. “Yes, I will be a writer and make all of you live again in my words,” I sobbed.”
Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart: A Personal History
He recalled his mother’s entrepreneurial spirit, making bagoong like my Lola. As a little boy, Allos, as his family called him, accompanied his mother, who was peddling bagoong to the remote households in Binalonan, Pangasinan. Her mother was kind and spared a few teaspoonfuls when people had no money to spare.
In one scene, an old woman pleaded for a taste of bagoong, which she hadn’t tasted for a long time. Allos’ mother let her dip her hand in her jar. The old woman swirled her finger in a bowl of water, flavoring it with bagoong. She gulped the bowl as if it were the elixir of life.
America Is In the Heart chronicled Filipino migrants’ lives in the US from the 1930s until the author’s death of tuberculosis in 1956.
In 1943, The Saturday Evening Post commissioned four writers to write essays modeled after Norman Rockwell’s The Four Freedoms. The painting depicted an aproned mother about to set the Thanksgiving turkey on the dinner table while the family looked on. Their bright smiles reflected anticipation of the feast. (Normal Rockwell painted himself in the corner of the picture).
Carlos Bulosan wrote Freedom From Want with a poignant challenge to the principle of democracy:
“But sometimes, we wonder if we are really a part of America.”
Freedom from Want, The Saturday Evening Post, March 6, 1943
It is unlikely that Bulosan ever ate at such a wholesome table with white linen and a gravy boat. I know one thing is for sure. As an Ilocano like me, Carlos Bulosan would have eaten pinakbet cooked in bagoong. It is a simple dish, but life-giving like his stories.
Yet, the road ahead is not complete. In 2018, Time Magazine described a revival of The Four Freedoms to include the diverse population in America:
One gap between Rockwell’s images and reality was obvious to artist Hank Willis Thomas and photographer Emily Shur. Though the four original images contain a relatively large cast of characters — including specific representations of Protestantism, Catholicism and Judaism in the “Freedom of Worship” tableau — that group barely brushes against the depth of American diversity at the time, much less today.
“[Rockwell] was one of the people who really shaped the iconography of America and our visual culture,” Thomas tells TIME. “There are a lot of people who are missing in those images.”We still need to tell stories from our point of view. Only then can we celebrate our history, and feel that we truly belong.
We may have come a long way, from the time when it was “a crime to be a Filipino in America.”
Since 2021, I have been chronicling my Ilocano family’s journey from San Esteban and Santa Catalina, Ilocos Sur, and Baguio City, where I was born. I have mined many stories and I am enriched beyond my wildest expectations.
Carlos Bulosan is only one of the Ilocano and Filipino writers who has shown me the way. I have learned from many historians, writers, and artists. Though we live in different times and face disparate struggles, we share the dream of making our ancestors live again.
Recommended Reading:
America Is in the Heart for the 21st Century, Part 1
America is in the Heart for the 21st Century, Part 2
Author, Poet, and Worker: The World of Carlos Bulosan
Freedom from Want, The Saturday Evening Post, March 6, 1943
I had to admit—I’m not a fan of bagoong, but I’m a picky eater lol
So awesome! Pinakbet is one of my favorites!