Ginataan for the Wandering Soul

Do not think of knocking out another person's brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago. -- Horace Mann

As lunch time progresses, everyone's eager to see what i have for the day. Being the only non-supervisory-guy-who-eats-lunch-with-the-rest-of-us, I also happen to be the only foreigner within the group. I was raised in the Philippines...therefore I cook Filipino ...duh. As always, everybody awaits then tries whatever weird stuff I have for the day. They've come accustomed to: Adobo - a vinegar-soy sauce based viand, Sinigang - a clear sour soup, and Tinola - your regular chicken soup with ginger, Longganiza (sausage) and Tocino (sweetened pork). Other than these, I try to limit my lunch menu into non-offensive-smelling cullinaries. There are certain rules/adjustments that I have learned as far as my cooking/food intake is concerned:

1. Patis - Unless you are a Thai, Indonesian or Filipino, fish sauce is not welcome in any place where people breathe.
2. Bagoong - shrimp paste is as worse as 1.
3. Filipino taste is extreme. Shake the salt down.
4. Tuyo -dried anchovies shares the fate of 1 and 2.
5. Avocado in Japan is to soy sauce , as it is to condensed milk in the Philippines.
6. Oil is not a basic ingredient, and yes, you can fry food without the unnecessary oil depth.
7. Animal fat and oil should be avoided like its some kind of a potbelly-inducing ingredient...it is.
8. Potato and Rice whatever the manner it is cooked is as redundant as eating tinapay-palaman fried rice.
9. Dinuguan - Swine blood in vinegar, is considered a barbaric and just plain eeky food... I can only eat it alone, at home...with the lights off.

My taste buds were honed in the carinderias of Manila, therefore its highly accustomed to extreme tastes; really sweet, salty, sour, or spicy. But in time, as I have learned to adopt to the Japanese cuisine (which is by my first impression, bland), I've relearned to identify the natural tastes of food.

Magoro-toro (a pricey fatty Tuna) sushi for example, has a lot of stages in taste. From the time it enters your mouth to the time you swallow it...the first experience after dipping on the Jap-brewed soy sauce is its salty and alcohol-like fermented spirit spreading on your tongue, then as you chew, the creamy fat of the fish spreads out, making the taste totally indescernible from that of an Avocado (mentally connect to no. 5), then the raw Tuna taste kicks in, followed by the nasal arrest of the horse-radish...you pause to take a deep breath from your nostrils to ease the wasabi tang, then back again to the enjoyment of the whole sushi as its taste conjures up into one dynamic sensation. But in contrast, I used to remember how Aling Ising's Sinigang tastes like... sour...dip to Patis..salty..ease away with rice, repeat.

I still enjoy authentic Filipino food. But now, it just became a tad bit too tasty. The Ginataang Hipon that I used to order at the Fil resto here , as I have realized lately, was really salty ...they didnt change the recipe, my taste has changed...and maybe my perception of food, and perhaps ...life itself.