PHILIPPINE GASTRONOMIC

TOURISM MODULES
MODULE 5 – COMMON DISHES: PHILIPPINE CUISINE

(Photo grabbed from theculturetrip.com)

INTRODUCTION
Filipino food is a blend of different cultures with an added unique Filipino twist.
The available ingredients, preference in terms of taste and even the occasion
play an essential role on what and how a meal or dish is prepared. Filipinos love
to eat – no matter the time of day. This module highlights the food that are
commonly enjoyed and served in the Philippines at different times of the day.
TEST IT!

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LEARN IT!

Learning Objectives:

1. Identify the common dishes in the Philippines

2. Describe the common food eaten by Filipinos from their breakfast to
merienda.
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COMMON DISHES: PHILIPPINE CUISINE

As with most Asian countries, the staple food in the Philippines is rice. It is often
steamed and served during meals.

Leftover rice is often fried with garlic to make sinangag, which is usually served
at breakfast together with fried egg and cured meat or sausages

Rice is often enjoyed with the sauce or broth from the main dishes. In some
regions, rice is mixed with salt, condensed milk, cocoa, or coffee.

Rice flour is used in making sweets, cakes and other pastries. While rice is the
main staple food, bread is also a common staple

Popular catches include:

• Tilapia
• Catfish (hito)
• Milkfish (bangus)
• Grouper (lapu-lapu)
• Shrimp (hipon)
• Prawns (sugpo)
• Mackerel (galunggong, hasa-hasa)
• Swordfish
• Oysters (talaba)
• Mussels (tahong)
• Clams (halaan, tulya)
• Large and small crabs (alimango and alimasag respectively)
• Game fish
• Sablefish
• Tuna
• Cod
• Blue marlin
• Squid/cuttlefish (both called pusit)

Also popular are seaweeds, abalone, and eel

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A variety of fruits and vegetables are often used in cooking like:
 Bananas (the saba variety in particular),
 kalamansi,
 guavas (bayabas),
 mangoes,
 papayas, and
 pineapples
Lend in a distinctly tropical flair in many dishes, but mainstay green leafy
vegetables like water spinach kangkong), Chinese cabbage (petsay), Napa
cabbage (petsay wombok), cabbage (repolyo) and other vegetables like
eggplants (talong) and yard-long beans (sitaw) are just as commonly used.
Coconuts are ubiquitous (abundant).

Coconut meat is often used in desserts, coconut milk (kakang gata) in sauces,
and coconut oil for frying. Abundant harvest of root crops like potatoes, carrots,
taro (gabi), cassava (kamoteng kahoy), purple yam (ube), and sweet potato
(kamote) make them readily available. The combination of tomatoes (kamatis),
garlic (bawang), and onions (sibuyas) is found in many dishes.
Meat staples include chicken, pork, beef, and fish. Seafood is popular as a result
of the bodies of water surrounding the archipelago.

The most common way of having fish is to have it salted, pan-fried or deep-fried,
and then eaten as a simple meal with rice and vegetables. It may also be cooked
in a sour broth of tomatoes or tamarind as in pangat, prepared with vegetables
and a souring agent to make sinigang, simmered in vinegar and peppers to
make paksiw, or roasted over hot charcoal or wood (inihaw).

Other preparations include escabeche (sweet and sour), relleno (deboned and
stuffed), or “kinilaw” (similar to ceviche; marinated in vinegar or kalamansi). Fish
can be preserved by smoked (tinapa) or sun-dried (tuyo or daing).

Food is often served with various dipping sauces. Fried food is often dipped in
vinegar, soy sauce, juice squeezed from Kalamansi (Philippine lime or
calamansi), or a combination of two or all.

Patis (fish sauce) may be mixed with kalamansi as a dipping sauce for most
seafood. Fish sauce, fish paste (bagoong), shrimp paste (bagoong alamang)
and crushed ginger root (luya) are condiments that are often added to dishes
during the cooking process or when served.

Breakfast: Philippine Cuisine

A traditional Filipino breakfast will include:
• Pandesal (small bread rolls)
• Kesong puti (white cheese)
• Champorado (chocolate rice porridge)
• Sinangag (garlic fried rice)

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 • And meat – such as tapa, longganisa, tocino, karne norte (corned beef),
or fish such as daing na bangus (salted and dried milkfish) – or itlog na
pula (salted duck eggs).

Coffee is also commonly served particularly kapeng barako, a variety of coffee

produced in the mountains of Batangas noted for having a strong flavor

Certain portmanteaus in Filipino have come into use to describe popular

combinations of items in a Filipino breakfast. An example of such a combination
order is kankamtuy: an order of kanin (rice), kamatis (tomatoes) and tuyo (dried
fish).

Another is tapsi: an order of tapa and sinangag. Other examples include

variations using a silog suffix, usually some kind of meat served with sinangag
and itlog (egg)

The three most commonly seen silogs are:

• tapsilog (having tapa as the meat portion),
• Tocilog (with tocino)
• Longsilog (with longganisa)

Other silogs include:

• Hotsilog (with hotdog)
• Bangsilog (with bangus {milkfish})
• Dangsilog (with danggit {rabbitfish})
• Spamsilog (with spam)
• Adosilog (with adobo)
• Chosilog (with chorizo)
• Chiksilog (with chicken)
• Cornsilog (with corned beef)
• Litsilog (with lechon/litson)

Pankaplog is a slang term referring to a breakfast consisting of pandesal, kape

(coffee), and itlog (egg).
An establishment that specializes in such meals is called tapsihan or tapsilugan.

Merienda: Philippine Cuisine

Merienda is taken from the Spanish, and is a light meal or snack especially in
the afternoon, similar to the concept of afternoon tea.

If a meal is taken close to dinner, it is called merienda cena, and may be served
instead of dinner.

Filipinos have a number of options to take with their traditional kape (coffee):
breads and pastries like pandesal, ensaymada (buttery sweet rolls covered with
cheese), hopia (pastries similar to mooncakes filled with sweet bean paste) and
empanada (savory pastries stuffed with meat). There’s also the option of cakes

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made with sticky rice (kakanin) like kutsinta, sapin-sapin, palitaw, biko, suman,
bibingka, and pitsi-pitsi

Savory dishes often eaten during merienda include pancit canton (stir-fried
noodles), palabok (rice noodles with a shrimp-based sauce), tokwa’t baboy (fried
tofu with boiled pork ears in a garlic-flavored soy sauce and vinegar sauce), and
dinuguan (a spicy stew made with pork blood) which is often served with puto
(steamed rice flour cakes)

Dim sum and dumplings, brought over by the Fujianese people, have been given
a Filipino touch and are often eaten for merienda. Street food, most of which are
skewered on bamboo sticks, such as squid balls, fish balls and others, are
common choices too.

Pulutan: Philippine Cuisine

Pulutan (from the Filipino word pulutin which literally means “something that is
picked up”) is a term roughly analogous to the English term “finger food”.

Originally, it was a snack accompanied with liquor or beer but has found a way
into Philippine Cuisine as appetizers or, in some cases, main dishes, as in the
case of sisig.

Deep fried pulutan include:

• Chicharron (also spelled as chicharon or tsitsaron), pork rinds that have
been salted, dried, then fried
• Chicharong bituka – pig intestines that have been deep fried to a crisp
• Chicharong bulaklak – similar to chicharong bituka, it is made from
mesenteries of pig intestines and has a bulaklak or flower appearance
• Chicharong manok – chicken skin that has been deep-fried to a crisp

Some grilled foods include:

• Barbecue isaw, chicken or pig intestines marinated and skewered
• Barbecue tenga – pig ears that have been marinated and skewered
• Pork barbecue – skewered pork marinated in a usually sweet blend
• Betamax – salted solidified pork or chicken blood which is skewered
• Adidas – grilled or sautéed chicken feet

And there is sisig a popular pulutan made from the pig’s cheek skin, ears and
liver that is initially boiled, then grilled over charcoal and afterwards minced and
cooked with chopped onions, chillies, and spices

Smaller snacks such as mani (peanuts) are often sold boiled in the shell, salted,
spiced or flavored with garlic by street vendors in the Philippines. Another snack
is kropeck, which is a fish cracker.

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Fried tokwa’t baboy is tofu fried with boiled pork then dipped in a garlic-flavored
soy sauce or vinegar dip that is also served as a side dish to pancit luglog or
pancit palabok

Bread and Pastries: Philippine Cuisine

In a typical Filipino bakery, pandesal, monay and ensaymada are often sold.

• Pandesal comes from the Spanish pan de sal (literally bread of salt), and
is a ubiquitous breakfast fare, normally eaten with (and sometimes even
dipped in) coffee; it typically takes the form of a bread roll, and is usually
baked covered in bread crumbs. Contrary to what its name implies,
pandesal is not particularly salty as very little salt is used in baking it.
• Monay – is firmer slightly denser heavier bread.
• Ensaymada – from the Spanish ensaimada, is a pastry made using butter
and often topped with sugar and shredded cheese that is especially
popular during Christmas. It is sometimes made with fillings such as ube
(purple yam) and macapuno (a variety of coconut in which the meat is
often cut into strings, sweetened, preserved, and served in desserts)

Also commonly sold in Filipino bakeries is:

• Pan de coco, a sweet roll filled with shredded coconut mixed with
molasses.
• Putok, which literally means “explode”, refers to a small, hard bread roll
whose cratered surface is glazed with sugar.
• Kababayan is a small, sweet gong-shaped muffin that has moist
consistency.
• Spanish bread refers to a rolled pastry which looks like a croissant prior to
being given a crescent shape, and has a filling consisting of sugar and
butter
• Pianono – a chiffon roll flavored with different fillings
• Brazo de Mercedes – a rolled cake or jelly roll, is made from a sheet of
meringue rolled around a custard filling
• Sans rival – takes on a layered presentation instead of being rolled and
typically features caramelized sugar and nuts
• Silvañas – are large, oval-shaped, cookie-sized desserts, with a thin
meringue on either side of a buttercream filling and dusted with crumbed
cookies. Not overly sweet, they are rich, crisp, chewy, and buttery all at
the same time.
• Barquillos – sweet thin crunchy wafers rolled into tubes that can be sold
hollow or filled with polvoron (sweetened and toasted flour mixed with
ground nuts).
• Meringue – also present in the Philippines because of the Spanish
influence, but are called merengue – with all the vowels pronounced

Leche flan – is a type of caramel custard made with eggs and milk similar to the
French crème caramel. Leche flan (the local term for the originally Spanish flan
de leche, literally “milk flan”), which is a heavier version of the Spanish flan made

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with condensed milk and more egg yolks. Leche flan is usually steamed over an
open flame or stove top, although rarely it can also be seen baked. Leche flan is
a staple in celebratory feasts.

A heavier version of leche flan, tocino del cielo, is similar, but has significantly
more egg yolks and sugar.

Egg pie with a very rich egg custard filling is a mainstay in local bakeries, it is
typically baked so that the exposed custard on top is browned.

Buko pie is made with a filling made from young coconut meat and dairy

Mini pastries like:

• Turrones de casuy – are made up of cashew marzipan wrapped with a
wafer made to resemble a candy wrapper but take on a miniature look of
a pie in a size of about a quarter
• Napoleones – a mille-feuille pastry stuffed with a sweet milk-based filling
Hard pastries:
• Biskotso – crunchy, sweet, twice-baked bread.
• Sinipit – a sweet pastry covered in a crunchy sugar glaze made to
resemble a length of a rope
• Shingaling – a hollow but crunchy with a salty flavor
Softer treats:
• Mamon – a chiffon-type cake sprinkled with sugar, its name derived from
a slang Spanish term for breast.
• Crema de fruta – an elaborate sponge cake topped in succeeding layers
of cream, custard, candied fruit, and gelatin
• Mamoncillo – refers to slices taken from a large mamon cake, but it is
unrelated to the fruit with the same name
• Mamon tostado – basically mamoncillo toasted to a crunchy texture

Sandwich pastries:
• Inipit – are made with two thin layers of chiffon sandwiching a filling of
custard that is topped with butter and sugar
Stuffed pastries:
• Empanada – turnover-type pastry filled with a savory-sweet meat filling.
Typically made with ground meat and raisins, it can be deep fried or
baked
• Siopao – is the local version of Chinese baozi
• Buchi – another snack probably of Chinese origin. Bite-sized, buchi is
made of deep-fried dough balls (often from rice flour) filled with a sweet
mung bean paste, and coated on the outside with sesame seeds, some
variants have ube as the filling

There are also many varieties of the mooncake-like hopia, which come in
different shapes (from a flat, circular stuffed form, to cubes), and have different

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textures (predominantly using flaky pastry, but sometimes like the ones in
mooncakes) and fillings.

References:

Barreto, Gretchen; Calalang, Conrad; Fores, Margarita; Segismundo, Myrna;

Sincioco, Jessie and Tayag, Claude. (2016). Kulinarya, A Guidebook to
Philippine Cuisine. Tuttle Publishing

DDV Culinary. The Philippine Cook Book. Retrieve from www.ddvculinary.com

Sarthou, Tatung. (2016). Philippine Cookery: From Heart to Platter. ABS-CBN

Publishing Incorporated

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REVIEW IT!

1. In your opinion, which among the common dishes in the Philippines

embodies the culture and life in the country?

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 2. In your own words, describe one item (food) for each of the following:
breakfast, merienda, pulutan and bread and pastries.

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