Viv Yumul

When we follow the strings of stories and artifacts of our archipelago's cooking traditions, we sit around the fire of deep ecological awareness. Every story is rooted in ancient truths born in the observation and experience of the earliest humans interacting with nature. These stories evolved from generation to generation, found their place in developing cultures, and were exchanged through trade. In looking back, we find insightful parallels. A full world opens up again as we take the "first look" at our magic palayok.

The sea welcomes the fervent battering of the graceful rafts of the islanders. The busy harbors of Asia swell with amusement, in the exchange of spices, crafts and gestures rich in the poetry of what the world space entails. Tales of river and sea-dwelling snakes inform the sailors to steer clear of certain routes in particular seasons. Back in the islands, those who dwell in the forest march quietly through the hunting grounds, ensuring the deities' blessing and protection. After countless hours of stalking, a small, quick arrow knocks down the deer. As hard work and peril comes with every journey outside the village, the rewards of this expended energy - the fisherman's catch, the hunter's fallen prey, the farmer's fresh harvest, come together in smoke and fire within the palayok (earthen pot). The palayok in slow fire transforms the material acquired through fantastic human experience, into tingling nourishing food.

As the rounded palayok holds the long chains of linked molecules that make up our food, so too does the belly of a mother housing the building blocks that make up a new human life. In Palawan, the Tagbanua tribe ascribes the forming of man out of the earth for "the earth could speak":

First the deities made stone but the stone could not speak. Then they made earth and the earth could speak. The earth became a man, the Tagbanuwa. Finally the deities gave man the elements of fire, the flint-like stones, iron, and tinder, as well as rice and rice-wine. Now that the people had rice-wine (tabad), they could call the deities and the spirits of their dead." (Fox, 1982, as cited in Clark, 2020)

The goddess of the old southern tribe is generally referred to as Diwata. She is the world-engendering figure, in consonance with the celebrated female being of the Hindu mythology. In describing the nature of the universe as having female aspects, Campbell writes "...she is the female figure through whom the Self begot all creatures. More abstractly understood, she is the world bounding frame: "space, time and causality"--the shell of the cosmic egg." (Campbell, 1949) Much like an egg shell, the palayok envelops its' contents with pores to breathe through. Steam escapes but the nourishing juices don't. Thus the food remains moist.

Slow fire

Life on earth draws its' breath from the splendor of the sun. Such heat is so invaluable that our ancestors acknowledged fire as a gift from god. In a Legend of the Tagbanua, to be able to make fire is a significant marker of being human:

A hunter dreamt of a man telling him to go to the riverside where an otter owned a fire. After his dream, he proceeded to the riverside and saw the fire. He picked up the fire-starting device composed of fine tree fiber, a chert and the striking metal.

The mother otter asked her children where the fire-starting device was. The children answered that they did not see who took it. The mother otter got angry and fed her children uncooked shrimps. They jumped into the river and from then on, ate raw food and became real otters. (Batoon, Raqueño, & Calida, 2001)

To create the precious fire, an implement of flint ignites the panggatong (wood). While the slow blaze crawls through the pile, heat embraces the belly of the palayok. Conditions must be low and slow, as a more intense flame would cause it to break. The long process proves to be fruitful for the hungry men. For in the mother chamber, ingredients melt and mix in even heat. The flavors come out deep, the texture soft, making hearty stews that can feed many. When the pleasant savory smoke fills the village, it must be time to gather and eat!

An old carinderia cook still practices the traditional method even with just boiling saba (plantain). When asked, she gestured with her hands the opening, flowering, and widening ability only slow cooking can bring. Her relationship with fire is to be the observing support. "Alalay lang", she says. Jane, a librarian at the Living Library, explains that while she wishes that the process of making cacao in a palayok was faster, she found beauty in the texture and a sense of play in tending to the flame. At certain moments, using this process, the scent of the cacao was released in a unique way. "Sobrang bango!" she says with a smile.

In the modern world, where quick solutions abound in the kitchen, and pots and pans of many grades and materials are more and more available, it is striking to notice the subtle poetry of the clay pot. Made of material found on the surface of the earth, capable of sustaining the nutrients in our food, and nourishing the earth further when returned to it at the end point of its usefulness, one could come to question the necessity of all the cheap, low grade items made from metals mined from deeper underground. Mining that harms the land, and troubles and displaces indigenous people that have fed themselves from the land for centuries, even millennia. If the earth, which many perceive as a motherly being, can provide us with what we need to do just the opposite, we can at the very least reflect on what that could mean to us as the human race, just as both the tool and the process reflects the very process that brings us to life.

Reference:

Batoon, L., Raqueño, E., Calida, C. (2001). A primer on the Tagbanua/Pala'wan syllabic writing. Manila: National Museum of the Philippines.

Campbell, J. (1949). The hero with a thousand faces. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Casas, D., Gagatiga, Z. (2011). Tales from the 7000 isles: Filipino folk stories. Santa Barbara: Libraries Unlimited.

Clark, J. (2020, January 21). Tagbanua cosmology: multi-layered universe, deities, diwatas and creation myths. Retrieved from https://www.aswangproject.com/tagbanua-cosmology/

McDonald, J.H. (2017). Tao te ching: an insightful and modern translation. (n.p): Qigong Vacations.org.

Quicho, D., Sebastian, C., Bayabay, G., Delos Santos, M., Del Prado, & M., Toledo, J. (2019). Enhancing Filipino food using the old and traditional native equipment "luto sa palayok". Asia Pacific Journal of Education, Arts and Sciences, 6, 105-111.

Redzepi, R., Zilber, D. (2018). The Noma guide to fermentation. New York: Workman Publishing.

Wilhelm, R. (1962). The secret of the golden flower, a chinese book of Life. San Diego: Harvest/HBJ Book.