451. ACHARA ART: Relishing our Artistic Pickling Tradition

Picked Me Pink: ATSARA, pickled vegetables, presented artfully.

The Philippines share many food preserving traditions with its Asian neighbors, the most popular being pickling fruits and vegetables. Our term for such preserved condiment is “atsara / achara”, from the Indian “achaar”, a generic term for anything pickled. India’s stamp on our regional cuisine is evident as well in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Brunei, where the condiment is called “acar” or “atjar”.

Just about any fruit or vegetable can be pickled, depending on the country’s produce. Indian prefer green mangoes, lemons, carrot, chickpeas. Pickling, like its allied processes like fermenting, preserving by sugar, and drying is a way of extending the shelf life of food, and ensures availability of out-of-season fruits, vegetables and other produce.

ACHARA Atbp, from "Filipino Heritage:The Making of a Nation" 

Papaya is the most common choice in Southeast Asian countries, including the Philippines. The pickling medium also varies—Japanese and Korean kitchens use salt, rice bran, miso (fermented bean paste), and mustard, while Indian cooks use mustard or sesame oil.  

Our local achara, made from green papaya laced with carrots, pepper, onion and optional raisins, is sweet and tangy. Its table uses also vary—as a side dish, dipping sauce, flavor breaker from the sameness of food, or relish to accompany longganisas and fish. I know at least one person who eats atsara as salad!

 MARMALADAS y CONSERVAS:  Orange, Pineapple, Kundol, Papaya

But it is in the manner of presentation that the Philippine achara is truly distinctive.While the pickling process is relatively simple--- upon boiling the fruit ‘n  vegetable mix, the pickling syrup takes over—and in a week’s time or longer, the atsara is ready to eat. It is the preliminary preparation of ingredients, however, where the creativity of local cooks found full expression. Grating the papaya is easy enough, but artistic cutting of the other achara ingredients requires a higher level of skill and attention.

Before placing in bottles for pickling, the vegetable and fruit pieces were delicately cut and carved with intricate designs—carrots were fancifully shaped into flowers, cucumbers became foliage or rosettes, and melons scooped into balls.

FRUITY FRETWORK, Sunday Time Magazine, 1966

This vegetable and fruit carving tradition harkens back to the ancient ages in Japan, where it began and known as “mukimono”,  then spread to the Malay region where the practice was adapted in local kitchens. The art thrived in some countries like Cambodia and Thailand especially, but not in the Philippines where, even before World War II, papaya carving was already a dying art.

Food technologist (and later, war heroine)  Maria Orosa, of The Bureau of Plant Industry, sought to revive the art by gathering trainees to learn the skill. Most of the talents came from Bulacan. One, Mrs. Luisa A. Arguelles of Meycauayan was a master carver of not just papayas, but kundol, candied orange and camote. She carved silhouettes of people’s profiles, various font styles, and figurals from peels and flat fruit pieces. Another, Mrs. Presentacion de Leon used locally-invented carving tools to make elaborate fruit and vegetable pieces that were shaped like balls, curls and petals.

ROSES AND THORNS, Vegetable Carving, STM 1966

Once the boiled in the pickling solution, the mixed fruit-vegetable achara is placed in wide-mouthed jars and the carved vegetable pieces are arranged and coaxed into positions to form  pleasant scenes and words (e.g. “recuerdo”, “ala-ala”, “amistad”). The bottles or jars are then sealed and let to stand on display on the aparador platera for all to see. The merits of these bottled achara lie not only in the decorative folk artistry but also in the rich flavor of its varied contents.

Aside from the papaya-based achara,  green mangos, kamias, radishes, and santols were also pickled in brine water. Filipino homemakers—from big cities to rural barrios—learned the art of pickling and preserving early—informally or home economics classes. Proof of their kitchen wizardry was when a group of Filipinos, mostly from Pampanga, won merit awards at culinary contest held at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.

FRUIT AND VEGETABLE CARVING TOOLS, Sunday Times Magazine, 1966

Among those recognized was Atanacio Rivera de Morales (buri palm preserves ); Isabel Mercado (preserved limoncito); Irene Canlas (preserved melon); Maria Guadalupe Castro (santol jelly); Rafaela Ramos Angeles (santol preserves) and Justa de Castro (kamias fruit preserve).

Imported pickled cucumbers in bottles were available in the Philippines in the 1930s under the Del Monte (Achara de Pepinillos) and Achara Libby’s brand. Local attempts to commercialize production of similar products began when American Mrs. Gertrude Stewart arrived in the Philippines in 1928. Living here, she was disappointed to find recipes in magazines calling for ingredients not found in the country so she created new recipes integrating local produce.

From vegetables and fruits--to blooms, petals,  and flowers!!

In 1959, Mrs. Stewart was contracted by Estraco Inc, a distributing company, to supply pickles, fruit preserves and marmalade products for their new food division. Thus Mrs. Gertrude Stewart Homestyle Foods was born. Her greatest contribution to the food industry is the utilization of native Philippine fruits like the duhat, bignay and sayote that she used to create mock maraschino cherries.

CUT ABOVE THE REST. An expert fruit and vegetable carver

Today, the bottled achara has become a familiar offering in pasalubong stores, food stalls and even big groceries and supermarkets, supplied by small to medium sized home industries. Packaged in bottles labeled with catchy brand names, the commercial atsara may still hold the same taste appeal, but for sheer visual attraction, nothing can match the presentation of atsaras of yesteryears.

Though some might dismiss this pleasing bottled arrangement as purely culinary, the art of fruit and vegetable carving/cutting is part of our cultural heritage, a charming form of folk art where food becomes the art itself.

For to fashion a santol into a multi-petalled dahlia flower, to create stars out of carrots, green papaya into curlicued leaves, mangos into palm fronds, to carve sentiments of love and names of beloved on a pomelo, constitutes a skill worthy of an artistic genius.

SOURCES:

All About Achaar, the Indian Pickle: Recipe and Tips, Written by MasterClass

The Folk Art Issue, The Sunday Times Magazine, May 1963

The Food Issue, The Sunday Times Magazine, 1966

“Let’s Preserve our Preserves”, The Sunday Time Magazine, 12 March 1961 issue, p. 32

“Conservas”, The Tribune, 25 Nov. 1933, Rotogravure Section, p. 3.

Homefront section, The Tribune, 10 Dec. 1943, p. 27

 

450. BOBOTU: More Connected with Indonesian Bobotok than with Mexican Tamales

I  SAY BOBOTU, YOU SAY TAMALES...

My earliest encounter with local kapangan was not with the readily available puto (both lason and kutsinta), the common kalame and suman, but with bobotu—the banana leaf-wrapped treat with a rather unusual taste and an even stranger name.

It was always made at home during the yearly fiestas of my town, prepared by Ati Bo, my dad’s former nanny who came to live with us and her family for the rest of her life.

Exposed early to the making of the bobotu, I acquired a taste for its delicate “malinamnam” mix of spicy-salty-peanutty flavors, so different from other kapangans that were mostly sweet.

A week before the fiesta, Ati Bo would recruit extra help from Arayat, her original hometown. The women would efficiently turn the back of our home into a dirty kitchen, cleaning and bringing out implements like the kawa (vat),  the stone gilingan in which to ground malagkit rice to a paste (galapong), and the coconut kudkuran.

My favorite part of the process takes place on the long bangku (benches) where the bobotu was “assembled” efficiently . One lays a line of cut, fire-softened banana leaves on the bench, while another plops a dollop of the cooked bobotu mix on the wrapper with a sandok.

 She is followed by another worker who tops the mix with the right amount of rich, orange spiced sauce—made pretty much like the one used for pancit palabok. The next helper deftly arranges slivers of chicken (or sometimes ham), slices of hard-boiled eggs, and crushed peanuts on top of the sauce. The final step is steaming the leaf wrapped bobotu, but I prefer eating it some hours after, when the consistency is firmer to my liking.

Documenting bobotu makers with Bryan Koh, culinary writer

The sheer number of ingredients explains the bobotu’s distinctive taste, making it more than just a kapangan to me. It can very well be an ulam (viand) or a meal in itself. But what about the name—Bobotu? When did people start calling it “tamales”?

For as long as I can remember in the early 1960s, we only called it “bobotu”—and by no other name. I started hearing the term “tamales”  more frequently to our bobotu, from mostly Manila friends and outsiders. Maybe “tamales” sounds more “sosy” (classy) than bobotu, for those with more refined tastes. Even ambulant vendors have been hollering "Puto!! Tamales!" when they make the rounds of the nieghborhood. During a 2012 food research trip with Singaporean culinary writer Bryan Koh in San Fernando, Pampanga, kapangan makers there differentiated the tamales from a bobotu. Tamales, they say, is a more special version because it has more toppings!

I have also heard stories about it being a Mexican import, introduced here during the time of the galleon trade. Sure, our amigos introduced us to the avocado, the camachile, and the guava, but I still have yet to see references about “tamales” in the Philippines in written works or old documents.  I have always thought that given the use of basic ingredients, and the fact that the Asiatic region has an ancient established culture of leaf-wrapped cooking, the “bobotu” of Pampanga must be known even before the Conquest.

I can only offer a few conjectures. Could it be that the Spaniards saw the banana-wrapped bobotu and noted some similarities with the corn husk-wrapped “tamales” of Mexico, their Nueva España of central America—and began calling them as tamales (of the East) , too?

Or just maybe, it was the Mexicans themselves who saw our “bobotu”, which triggered memories of their homemade “tamales”.  Could there have been a case of reverse adaptation where the Mexicans made tamales here, substituting local ingredients, like our rice, for their corn? Did the Mexicans turn the bobotu into tamales? Or did the Filipinos turned the tamales into a new bobotu as a way of resisting what was alien to their palate?

Just a few years back, an origin story alleging how the delicacy came to be called “bobotu” circulated in the local culinary circle. In pre-women’s suffrage days (i.e. before 1937), it was said that women huddled together and voted to cook “bobotu”, while their menfolk were out casting their ballots in the town elections. The dish they cooked was reportedly, “bobotong asan”.

I heard this story few months after the folk song, “Eleksyon Ding Asan”, collected by Dr. Lino L. Dizon in San Fernando, saw print in a popular Singsing magazine.  I am inclined to believe that the overly-imaginative storyteller learned of this song, borrowed the plot about fishes involved in the electoral process, to cook this yarn of a tale.

“Bobotu” sounds Malayo-Polynesian to me, so I proceeded to locate the word and its variations in Bahasa, Javanese, Malay dictionaries and on-line translators. This led me the Javanese word “botok / bothok”,  defined as “a traditional dish made from grated coconut flesh, which has been squeezed of its coconut milk, often mixed with other ingredients such as vegetables or fish, and wrapped in banana leaf and steamed.” The key words: “coconut flesh”, “coconut milk”, “banana leaf”, “steamed”, leaped out from the page, as they are associated with preparing “bobotu”.

It goes on to describe its consistency ( “It has a soft texture like the mozzarella cheese and is usually colored white.”), cooking and serving suggestions (“To add flavor and nutrients… use additional ingredients as...tofu,..catfish,..salted fish..egg… salted egg…shrimp..minced beef”).  Like in Pampanga where we have “bobotung asan”, Indonesia, too, has “bobotok lele” , steamed banana-wrapped catfish laced with spices, tomatoes, and peppers.

Botok was so popular among the Indonesians that it has become a generic term for any dish made by wrapping various ingredients in banana leaves, then steaming them.

Now the clincher:  The plural form of “botok” is botok-botok, which, when contracted becomes another alternative name with a familiar ring-- “BOBOTOK”! Have we found bobotu’s nearest of kin?

Of course, there are telling differences too. “Bobotok” doesn’t make use of rice dough—it is in fact, served as a viand, to be eaten with rice. On the other hand, the Mexican tamale uses a masa of corn flour, while Pampanga’s uses rice flour. Tamales are filled with a mix of meats, beans and cheese, wrapped in corn husks, while bobotu is topped with achuete-based sauce, meat, eggs and nuts, wrapped in banana leaf. And, as mentioned earlier, they taste a world apart.

It is interesting to note that in South Africa, another dish inspired by “bobotok” is served in many homes where it is called “bobotie”.  According to Jakarka Post writer Theodora Hurustiati, bobotie was “first introduced by Javanese slaves, brought to South Africa through Cape Town by the Dutch East India Company in the 1600s”. Apparently, a large number of workers from Southeast Asia were recruited who practiced their cooking traditions as one Malay-speaking community. Indeed, good food, like good news, travels.

I’ve always known bobotu as bobotu, so I will always call it bobotu, not tamales--never mind if the English bard maintains that “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”. Tamale never tasted anything like bobotu, anyway.  Bobotu originated in this part of the world, with a name that is clearly Malayo-Polynesian, not Mesoamerican. The Spanish/Mexicans may have contributed the word tamales—their sole influence-- but not the origin of a kapangan we know ever since as bobotu. We could say merely that they built on the Philippines’ leaf-wrapped cooking tradition that is aligned with the well-entrenched Asian gastronomic culture.

 SOURCES:

Bobotie's Melting Pot, https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2013/11/10/bobotie-s-melting-pot.html

 Tamale Digest. https://tamaledigest.blogspot.com/2014/05/filipino-tamales.html

 Vegegable Dish: Botok. https://www.tasteatlas.com/botok

 Anchovy Botok Recipe, Nutritious Home Cooking Menu, https://endeus.tv/resep/botok-teri-menu-masakan-rumahan-yang-bergizi