Go plant camote
Go plant camote
Updated 02:15am (Mla time) Jan 06, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A12 of the January 6, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
SOMEONE was saying at a table last week: Why do the local fast-food chains insist on serving French fries? Why don't they serve instead "Filipino fries," made from camote, or sweet yam, rather than potatoes? Why do we insist on growing potatoes on huge tracts of land, which are better for growing other things like rice and corn and, yes, camote? Indeed, why do we insist on importing potatoes when local substitutes are easily there? Camote is far more plentiful and possibly more nutritious. It certainly is not inferior taste-wise. It blends well with the hamburgers and chicken they serve at fast-food joints, such as you can even talk of gastronomic harmony among the gooey (and fattening) stuff to be found there.
Well, I do know that the French are befuddled at how so atrocious an invention as strips of potatoes dipped, or drowned, in containers of boiling cooking oil can be attributed to them. It is typically American, they say, both the invention of the food and the invention of its provenance. The French rather like to think of themselves as having more culinary imagination, or daring, the latter to be found in the pride of place escargot occupies in their menus. That, for the fast-food legions, means snails, or our very own kuhol.
I do know as well that the Brits call "French fries" chips. That's what you get when you order fish and chips, the chips there being "French fries." I used to think the chips meant potato chips in the sense of Lay's or Jack 'n Jill potato chips, but that wasn't so at all. If you order the fish and chips in the banketa, such as their simpler food stores can be called that, they wrap the chips in newspaper, and the sheer quantity of the thing will curb your appetite for potatoes. I used to like "French fries" until I got a surfeit of it in London. "Easy on the stuff," I'd tell the vendor. He'd say yes, and still shovel the thing into a whole newspaper page twisted into a cone.
Well, if the Brits are known for culinary enterprise, only they know about it. Our hosts used to take us to Indian restaurants when they wanted to treat. But that is another story.
To go back to "French fries," I myself suggested that banana strips might be a good substitute, if not better. I love bananas, particularly the kind we call "saba." I don't know how that's called in English, I've never been much good at agriculture, and can't even distinguish trees, to my eternal shame. To this day, I love fried bananas, or "maruya," and devour quantities of them wherever I can find them. I remember that when I was a kid our place had a version of it, which was banana strips mixed in batter and fried. We called it kalingking, if my 53-year-old memory serves. There were itinerant vendors aplenty in our street who hawked the stuff, and I do not romanticize when I say that they did not have to walk far to empty their baskets. It was paradise that sold for a song.
I don't know that fast-foods, which have had the most unsavory effect of killing the thriving kakanin industry (you find kakanin now largely in specialty stores, often in fancy wrapping) shouldn't make amends for that crime by introducing some of them in their fare. It should give a new generation of Filipinos quite literally a taste of their past.
But there's the rub. A great deal of "colonial mentality"--a complete misnomer, but one that has managed to survive the years: colonial mentality means imperialist mentality; what we really mean is colonized mentality--underlies our attitudes there. I remember how, when we were kids, our teachers would say when we couldn't answer questions, "Why don't you go home and plant camote?" The suggestion was also a derisive put-down of farmers, who were regarded as country bumpkins, the kind that descended on the city during fiestas, loud and uncouth.
I don't know that today's teachers still say, "Why don't you go home and plant camote?" to their unenlightened or befuddled wards, but I do know the low opinion about camote persists. It has slipped into the local lexicon surreptitiously, and quite insidiously, as when people say "nangamote sa test," in the case of students, or "nangamote sa interview," in the case of people applying for a job. Nobody has thought to say, "namansanas sa report" or "nangapple sa panliligaw."
The same is true of the banana, which is the pejorative adjective affixed to a republic that is going to the dogs (my apologies to dogs). We do not call it a cherry republic or an orange republic or a grape republic, we call it a banana republic. Which is no small irony, considering that what made many South American republics banana republics was the United Fruit Co. which turned vast tracts of land into plantations producing--what else?--bananas. But that is also another story.
If you can add spaghetti to local fast-food fare (I don't know if they still tell the joke about Filipinos in the United States ordering spaghetti at McDonald's), why on earth can you not add camote and banana to it as well? Why apple pie rather than guava pie?
I'm not fond of fast food to begin with, and cannot for the life of me imagine why many folks from the provinces announce with much pride that they now have a Jollibee or McDonald's as though that were the surest sign of the encroachment of civilization. But if a fast-food joint can offer camote and banana strips or indeed the whole gamut of local fruits, which are our pride and joy, in lieu of potatoes, I could be tempted to patronize it. In these days particularly, when money is so hard to come by and the dollar is battering the peso to a bloody pulp the way Manny Pacquiao did Fahsan 3K Battery in four rounds, I should think the advice would be:
Be wise: Do go home and plant camote.
Updated 02:15am (Mla time) Jan 06, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A12 of the January 6, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
SOMEONE was saying at a table last week: Why do the local fast-food chains insist on serving French fries? Why don't they serve instead "Filipino fries," made from camote, or sweet yam, rather than potatoes? Why do we insist on growing potatoes on huge tracts of land, which are better for growing other things like rice and corn and, yes, camote? Indeed, why do we insist on importing potatoes when local substitutes are easily there? Camote is far more plentiful and possibly more nutritious. It certainly is not inferior taste-wise. It blends well with the hamburgers and chicken they serve at fast-food joints, such as you can even talk of gastronomic harmony among the gooey (and fattening) stuff to be found there.
Well, I do know that the French are befuddled at how so atrocious an invention as strips of potatoes dipped, or drowned, in containers of boiling cooking oil can be attributed to them. It is typically American, they say, both the invention of the food and the invention of its provenance. The French rather like to think of themselves as having more culinary imagination, or daring, the latter to be found in the pride of place escargot occupies in their menus. That, for the fast-food legions, means snails, or our very own kuhol.
I do know as well that the Brits call "French fries" chips. That's what you get when you order fish and chips, the chips there being "French fries." I used to think the chips meant potato chips in the sense of Lay's or Jack 'n Jill potato chips, but that wasn't so at all. If you order the fish and chips in the banketa, such as their simpler food stores can be called that, they wrap the chips in newspaper, and the sheer quantity of the thing will curb your appetite for potatoes. I used to like "French fries" until I got a surfeit of it in London. "Easy on the stuff," I'd tell the vendor. He'd say yes, and still shovel the thing into a whole newspaper page twisted into a cone.
Well, if the Brits are known for culinary enterprise, only they know about it. Our hosts used to take us to Indian restaurants when they wanted to treat. But that is another story.
To go back to "French fries," I myself suggested that banana strips might be a good substitute, if not better. I love bananas, particularly the kind we call "saba." I don't know how that's called in English, I've never been much good at agriculture, and can't even distinguish trees, to my eternal shame. To this day, I love fried bananas, or "maruya," and devour quantities of them wherever I can find them. I remember that when I was a kid our place had a version of it, which was banana strips mixed in batter and fried. We called it kalingking, if my 53-year-old memory serves. There were itinerant vendors aplenty in our street who hawked the stuff, and I do not romanticize when I say that they did not have to walk far to empty their baskets. It was paradise that sold for a song.
I don't know that fast-foods, which have had the most unsavory effect of killing the thriving kakanin industry (you find kakanin now largely in specialty stores, often in fancy wrapping) shouldn't make amends for that crime by introducing some of them in their fare. It should give a new generation of Filipinos quite literally a taste of their past.
But there's the rub. A great deal of "colonial mentality"--a complete misnomer, but one that has managed to survive the years: colonial mentality means imperialist mentality; what we really mean is colonized mentality--underlies our attitudes there. I remember how, when we were kids, our teachers would say when we couldn't answer questions, "Why don't you go home and plant camote?" The suggestion was also a derisive put-down of farmers, who were regarded as country bumpkins, the kind that descended on the city during fiestas, loud and uncouth.
I don't know that today's teachers still say, "Why don't you go home and plant camote?" to their unenlightened or befuddled wards, but I do know the low opinion about camote persists. It has slipped into the local lexicon surreptitiously, and quite insidiously, as when people say "nangamote sa test," in the case of students, or "nangamote sa interview," in the case of people applying for a job. Nobody has thought to say, "namansanas sa report" or "nangapple sa panliligaw."
The same is true of the banana, which is the pejorative adjective affixed to a republic that is going to the dogs (my apologies to dogs). We do not call it a cherry republic or an orange republic or a grape republic, we call it a banana republic. Which is no small irony, considering that what made many South American republics banana republics was the United Fruit Co. which turned vast tracts of land into plantations producing--what else?--bananas. But that is also another story.
If you can add spaghetti to local fast-food fare (I don't know if they still tell the joke about Filipinos in the United States ordering spaghetti at McDonald's), why on earth can you not add camote and banana to it as well? Why apple pie rather than guava pie?
I'm not fond of fast food to begin with, and cannot for the life of me imagine why many folks from the provinces announce with much pride that they now have a Jollibee or McDonald's as though that were the surest sign of the encroachment of civilization. But if a fast-food joint can offer camote and banana strips or indeed the whole gamut of local fruits, which are our pride and joy, in lieu of potatoes, I could be tempted to patronize it. In these days particularly, when money is so hard to come by and the dollar is battering the peso to a bloody pulp the way Manny Pacquiao did Fahsan 3K Battery in four rounds, I should think the advice would be:
Be wise: Do go home and plant camote.
posted by Dante at 2:15 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home