Why We Really Need To Standardize Filipino Dishes
I feel that the move to standardize Filipino dishes meant no harm. It was clearly misinterpreted. The information about the campaign that sprung from different news agencies never actually told the reasons why there was a need to standardize, which caused a great furor for netizens. It was a disaster. What was the point? The agency never explained it well.
It’s normal for people to react with something they can relate to, especially with matters they consume every day. And that is food. Only a day after the online bashing that the Department of Trade and Industry Facebook page released an explainer poster, and said the move was actually meant for “international” promotions, where a traditional recipe will be created, culled from industry experts, and not intending to make this mandatory. Ironically, the poster, aside from the text, laid out two types of adobos, one was made with a fried version of chicken meat, while the other one was made with sauce. As the official instigator of the standardization, posting two samples of adobo that explains standardization made the netizens more confused and asked the question: “So which of these two is the standard?”
Standardizing is crucial and important, as this sets a defined recipe that has been tried and adapted, yielding the same result by complying with the same procedure regardless of who the cook is. Its benefits include uniform expected nutritional value and specific taste, especially if the dish is to be consumed by international consumers. It’s a way for Filpino dishes to be at par with popular Asian cuisines that are easily recognizable. In fact, even to this very day, the debate between a sisig with an egg against a sisig with no egg hasn’t been settled yet. It’s not only a case of preference but also a case of regional origin. Standardizing the sisig for an international audience may put the dish into the culinary spotlight. And the people who disagree with each other can settle the debate between themselves. While eating, I guess.
If the intention is to achieve international popularity of Filipino dishes on a global scale by creating a standard dish to make it definite and specific, I would have to agree with that. But the process of coming up with this “standard” is somehow questionable. Who determines what is a “standard” adobo? According to the page published on the DTI website, the main reference for the recipes will come from the book, “Kulinarya: A Guidebook to Philippine Cuisine”, authored by Chef Glenda Barretto, who also heads the Bureau of Philippine Standards/TC 92, which is the official technical working group of the standardization.
With 3 easy steps, the site tells that benchmarking the cooking technique for Philippine adobo will help preserve the country’s cultural identity despite the variations made to it. This makes sense. But how?
Reading the article makes me worry about the lack of mention of representatives from different ethnolinguistic groups, which is crucial in deciding what kind of contemporary process each region makes to a common dish, given the reality that the Philippines is divided into many islands, thus, ingredients and resources vary from region to region. Bloggers may not be enough, as these usually feature food spots for clickbait and there are many unsung heroes of cooking that were never publicized. How can this committee be called “experts” more than a grassroots cook from our barrio that prepares the best-tasting sisig but will never be a part of this working group?
If these standards are not followed, will a family goes to jail if the mother cooked a sisig that didn’t conform with this official technical process? And will the government afford a regulatory board that handles this standardization to implement where people should follow it? Is it sustainable?
Creating a TWG for this as the committee that would launch the idea towards the implementation is not a verbal thing. Using public funds to lodge a meeting, hiring “ food experts ” to attend discussion and deliberation as well as assessment would cost millions from taxpayers’ money. How would this make an impact on the current needs of the people just to say that our taxes go to a deserving project where everybody can benefit from it?
So as you can see, it’s a class divide. where standardizing becomes a delineating line of what makes an authentic dish from a non-standard one, which would ignore the idea that a dish is actually developed as a social- economic and environmental expression, generations to generations, not through the technical process under the approval of some few people in power that are in the limelight of top culinary circle.
I hope that DTI would use data science, creates a system where every region should be made as leads of the research for data analysis, and come up with a decision based on empirical science, to see why is sisig became how it is to be or how adobo became what it is today. Include young people to do this so representatives can come from the grassroots level. There are several carinderias out there who serve a glorious sisig, far better than those served in fancy restaurants and posh spots. Let’s get the opinions of everybody.
To simply put it, traditional cuisines cannot simply be recreated to form a hybrid dish, like a “cyborg adobo” or a “cyborg sisig” where ingredients and processes come from different regions as a means to tell that the agency taps every region as representatives. You can’t build a “traditional dish” under a training regulation complying with a technical process just to come up with a product meant for promotional purposes.
It’s revolting to some, where food, with its evocative nature, is an agreed form of nourishment, where taste profile is created through a conscious effort, inside the abode of a family to cherish and enjoy. That is the standard.
Ruston Banal is an interdisciplinary artist who writes about food and art. He and his fellow Kapampangan advocates pioneered the online debate that a sisig has no egg, which became viral and one of the most talked-about topics in culinary history.
He is a top graduate of the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts, majoring in Art History and an MA Designing Education and Post Graduate Studies Student of Miriam-Goldsmiths, the University of London under a CHED scholarship.
He is a woodworking and woodcarving expert, authored books and created an award-winning film on woodcarving, and won several major photography competitions abroad.
#rustonbanal #kapampanganfood #kapampangan #sisig #adobo #cooking
To contact: ruston.banal@benilde.edu.ph
