Tasty

Shelly's back from a couple weeks in Shanghai, rural China and Hong Kong and, as she often does, she brought me a nice collection of newspapers to read. The October 29 South China Morning Post brought this Agence France-Presse story by Cecil Morella (Life, Page C7) about dining in the Philippines' Ilocos region:

Bile stew, buffalo brains, termites and raw grasshoppers -- even by adventurous Asian tastes the food of the Philippines' Ilocos region makes some visitors balk.

Over centuries, such delicacies have blended by necessity into the gastronomic traditions of this parched northwestern corner of the Philippines, where a brief rainy season heralds a time of plenty.

The tamarind trees on its scraggly hills shake violently as children pluck slumbering June beetles, while termites fly at night at their peril. Frogs are caught in the rice paddies, as are crickets and snails of various shapes, all which take pride of place as entrees on dinner tables, alongside young bamboo shoots, mushrooms and various vegetable shoots -- all smothered in cane vinegar and fish paste.

"Subtlety is not found in their gastronomic dictionary," says the official tourist guidebook of the cuisine of Ilocos Norte province. "Reflecting the difficult conditions of the land, most of the dishes are either salty or bitter.

"The Ilocanos' penchant for whipping up dishes from ingredients which others would consider inedible gives Ilocano cuisine its distinct edge."

At the weekly livestock fair on the outskirts of Batac, spouses Franklin Calacal and Minda Tan serve water buffalo meat and tripe cooked in bile, ginger and black pepper and served in a scalding soup. The diner used to cater to livestock traders ... but locals say the 35-peso (US$0.70) dish has turned the restaurant into the most popular in the province.

...

For those averse to bile stew, there's buffalo brain and a pork dish made of minced pig ears mixed with chopped onions and lime. "The peak periods are Lent and the Christmas season," says Calacal. His wife says that the clientele particularly love the "water buffalo meat. They say it's tastier and juicier than beef."

Western-style fast food restaurants are mushrooming across the region, "but I still go for the Ilocano food," says Jocelyn Corpuz, who runs a 40-year-old meat pie business with her mother.

She says Ilocos food is different. Her meat pies are made from papaya shavings, bean sprouts and egg wrapped in tangerine-coloured rice dough then deep-fried. "[Non-Ilocanos] think all we eat are weeds," she said.

An Ilocos-born senator once famously blew his top when his staff threw out the contents of his lunch box: nalta jute herb leaves, which they mistook for garbage.

...

Tina Bayden hawks frog meat for 150 peso per kilogram on Wednesdays and Sundays in the public market of nearby Laoag, the provincial capital.

The white meat is marinated in vinegar or lime and deep-fried, or seasoned with vinegar, garlic and soy sauce like a pork dish.

She keeps a few frogs alive in a small sack, just in case buyers want to prepare the dish differently. Fishermen catch the frogs from rice paddies using ordinary baited fishing rods.

The dry season brings new delicacies such as certain types of grasshoppers that are eaten raw as farmers harvest the rice crop. ... It's also the time when giant red tree ants build nests atop trees to breed their young. The large white eggs of these ants, which faintly taste sweet and sour, are among the most expensive of Ilocano delicacies.