Our meal always consisted of tinuwa nga badlon or tangigue, sinugba nga isda. (We never had kinilaw because eating it at night can give you digestive problems.)
The fresh fish in the tinuwa and the sinugba is a welcome treat for city folks like us!
Such is a typical Cebuano meal.
The cooking is simple but the freshness of the ingredients is sacrosanct.
This demand for freshness in seafood is the result of living on an island with coastal towns, where proximity to the sea affords Cebuanos the choice of deep sea fishes like badlon, tangigue, and lapu-lapu. This also explains why Cebuanos never learned to appreciate fresh water fishes like hito and bangus.
Visitors to Cebu are wont to say that we only know how to serve sinugba, tinuwa and kinilaw.
In a way, they are right.
These are the usual fare in the homes of Cebuanos.
The preference for these food preparations has been passed on from generations through the hundreds of years, waves of colonizers who brought their own cuisine.
This can be likened to a steady undertow beneath turbulent waves of colonization, passing on a culinary tradition from mothers and fathers to daughters and sons throughout the centuries.
To this day, the ubiquitous STK (sugba, tuwa, kilaw) restaurants around the city and the rest of the island are testaments to our age-old cooking preferences.
History tells us that these kinds of dishes were served to the explorer Ferdinand Magellan when he arrived on our shores in 1521.
We owe this knowledge to Antonio Pigafetta, the Italian chronicler of the voyage of Ferdinand Magellan, for writing everything he saw when they landed in Zubu in April 1521.
He wrote about our manner of dressing, the houses we lived in, our language and the food that we ate.
First, let us take Sinugba. The root word is “sugba,” which means to cook on live coal.
This is a primeval method of cooking pieces of meat, fish and other animals.
To this day, our liking for meat cooked in this manner remains.
The aroma of sizzling fat dripping on live coal permeates the heart of every Cebuano.
The ultimate sinugba is the inasal. When Cebuanos roast a whole animal, the term used is asal. So we have Inasal nga Baboy or slow-roasted pig, Inasal nga Baka or cow and Inasal nga Kanding or goat.
Then we have Tinuwa, a soup which is the most simple way to cook fresh fish, shrimps or shellfish.
It has to be fresh because fish that is a day old will disintegrate during the boiling and the smell will be offensive.
Water is boiled and into it slivers of ginger, tomatoes, green onions and sili espada are added.
After some 10 minutes, the fish is gently slid into the water along with salt and allowed to boil for another 10 minutes or so.
The aromatics will enhance the flavor of the fish and the resulting broth is clear.
Finally, there’s Kinilaw, which is basically eating raw seafood.
Cooking this is a race for freshness–from the moment the fish is brought from the sea.
It is cleaned and cut into bite-sized pieces and immediately immersed in a vinegar bath which will transform the fish into a state of opaqueness.
This way, the fish is not given a chance to lose its freshness.
Slivers of tomatoes, ginger and spring onions (sibuyas bisaya), salt and some Bird’s Eye Chili (siling kulikot) are added then the final fillip of thick coconut cream.
Kinilaw is also cooked all over the Visayas and Mindanao.
What makes it Cebuano is the addition of thick coconut cream before serving, which will sweeten the dish. It makes one remember a tender kiss with each spoonful.
These three basic methods of cooking persisted beyond Chinese, Spanish and American influences.
There is no denying our love affair with Pancit and Ngohiong.
Or the Adobo of the Spaniards or Mexicans that we claim as a Cebuano dish (more on the adobo in a future column).
The Americans introduced specific measurements, thus taking away guesswork from cooking.
They taught us how to bake and look what we did! We made Torta Cebuana, a rich cake often served as afternoon snack or painit. Torta uses pork lard instead of butter.
As leavening agent, we use Tuba (fermented sap of the coconut). We managed to make the foreign dishes Cebuano by adding our own ingredients and by tweaking the process.
A cuisine is defined as a style of cooking characterized by distinctive ingredients, techniques and dishes, and is usually associated with a specific culture or geographic region.
It is influenced by the ingredients that are available locally or through trade.
We can say then that Cebuano cuisine is characterized by its simplicity, its penchant for freshness, and by its use of locally sourced ingredients mainly from the bounty of the land and the sea that surrounds it.
This is the first of a series of articles I hope to write about Cebuano cooking.
There is a wealth of recipes or dishes waiting to be brought to light like our Adobo, Paklay and Inun-unan, Caldereta and Pochero, the intricacies of which will surely whet our appetites.
Writing about our culinary traditions have enriched my knowledge and appreciation of the food in Cebu.
It is my wish to highlight age-old techniques and dishes which will make Cebuanos feel proud about their food.