Editors’ Note: This book review first appeared as the foreword of the book Rekado asin Rekwerdo, Goldprint Publishing, Naga City, 2019.

Home Cooking

“What I want to eat is home cooking, somebody’s – anybody’s – mother’s or grandmother’s food.” – Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain

Rekado asin Rekwerdo is primarily a cookbook of Bikol homespun dishes written in Bikol, the first of its kind and one of a kind. Its author, Maria Leny E. Felix, has never trained formally as a cook. She has no degree from Le Cordon Bleu and no track record as a restaurateur. Rather, she is a passionate organic farmer, nurturing native trees, plants, and herbs in her private garden. She however cooks the dishes of her growing-up years all the time. A la Enrique Olvera of Mexico or Virgilio Enriquez of Peru, she also fearlessly concocts her dishes such as balimbing spring rolls with rose petals, pansit-pansitan honey suckle flowers salad, baked clams in alugbati, baked kamagong fruit with langka and mint, and a sumptuously unique cake bursting with dill!  She sources the green ingredients from her garden which she calls Hardin nin mga Aninipot; yes, fireflies still flit in its balanced ecology. She buys the fish and seafood from the local saudan bringing her own containers and bags, instead of from a supermarket. Not surprisingly, she is an advocate of food security and local food sources as a green activist.  

The recipes here are of simple everyday dishes in Bikol such as kamote tops soup and ginisang balaw. Now some might say everyone knows how to cook those. Not true though in this age of fast food, and I note the call to youth by experts to eat and plant traditional food (Sushma 2018) as a contribution to the ecology.

This book is also a literary anthology of sorts. As a social scientist rather than a litterateur, Leny’s literary flair is there in the alliteration, rhythm, rhyme, consonance, and resonance in her book and chapter titles, Bininó ni Ugbos Kamote, Buyod sa Parupagulong, Dinulsing Tangkwa. Her knack for language is also obvious in the choice of words, writing style, and earthy Bikol. She has been a Bikolista since high school after all, when she won a slogan and essay writing contest at the University of Nueva Caceres. As a member of the UP Ibalon in college, she initiated the Bikol quiz and essay writing contest called Padurunungan. As a professional, she led a team in the Bikol translation of Where Women Have No Doctor of the Hesperian Foundation (1997) and translated a Karel Çapek story to Bikol for the anthology Lambang Ika, Kita Gabos (AdNU Press 2016). Her original short stories in Bikol have been anthologized in Hagkus (DLSU Publishing House 2003) and Girok: Erotika (Kabulig-Bikol, Inc. 2017).  She therefore chooses to serve her recipes up in a local language, Bikol Naga, with a smattering of Bikol Rinconada which she learned from growing up with mother. She also carefully chooses poems and excerpts from stories plus a rawitdawit of her own to garnish each chapter of Rekados asin Rekwerdos.

Her degree in History from the University of the Philippines in Diliman may have something to do with her focus on memory as theme for the cookbook. Her graduate studies in Community Development and Public Administration from the same university and teaching experience at the College of the Holy Spirit and the De la Salle University explain her preference for the local and educational. Her present work as an international consultant for evaluation, organization development, and governance has brought her to such magnificent places as Marrakesh and Casablanca, Laos and Cambodia, Fiji, and the Maldives, yet she opts for the local in a literature of place. Most of all, this book bridges the love of a mother from daughter to granddaughter, who hopefully, like other youth who read this book, will teach the next generation these heritage recipes and tell the matriarch’s stories.

This genre-bender of a literary cookbook-memoir-homage, grounded in the earth and waterways and language of her Bikol home, plus the call to go back to the basics in food, to mother, and to Mother Nature are the things that make Rekado asin Rekwerdo a sumptuous, nutritious, and memorable dish of a book deserving of space in our bookshelves.

For copies of Rekado asin Rekwerdo by Librong Aninipot and supported by Sumaro sa Salog (SULOG), Inc. please contact Hardin nin Aninipot on Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/hardinninaninipot.

References:

• Bourdain, Anthony. Kitchen Confidential. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2000
• Sushma, M. “Indigenous food should be brought back to plates, say ecologists.” Down to Earth, December 4, 2018, excerpted from https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/food/indigenous-food-must-be-brought-back-to-plates-say-ecologists-62381.