Find the transcript of my interview with Jenn de la Vega below.
INTRO
Welcome to Exploring Filipino Kitchens. I’m your host, Nastasha Alli.
Hard to believe it’s been two years since I started the podcast. While it still feels very indie, and there’s a lot I’d like to improve, what really keeps me going is the excitement with everything I wanna share with you all. I
Because on the show, what I really want to do is talk about our culture, our traditions and history, and how that interweaves and mingles with our food, to really make cuisine a part of who we are. This kinda stuff fascinates me…and I think you’ll find it captivating, too!
The biggest thing that’s happened is that today there’s a number of amazing podcasts out there about proudly being Filipino. If you think about it, that’s pretty amazing. There definitely wasn’t this much content out there, or this many voices, from the Filipino community when I started, and it’s only gonna get better and bigger. If you haven’t listened to shows like “This Filipino-American Life” or “Long Distance”, which are two of my favourites - you guys need to, right now.
The reason I fell in love with podcasting in the first place is because it really just allows you to share a good story. At the end of the day, that’s really what it is. On a technical side, it kind of democratizes this ability for us to share those stories, with anyone in the world. And the really good ones, they’re like listening to a friend, a friend you miss from back home. You can talk about anything, talk about life right now, what you’re feeling, what you’re thinking about. And for me, when you listen to someone who’s a good storyteller - someone who can really get you into it, wrap you up in that story - it’s amazing, because then it makes you feel that you can be part of something bigger. Like, they get me!
And I love it because when I first started writing about food, I didn’t really know anyone who felt that same way as I felt, about cooking, or really about the world in general.
Exploring Filipino Kitchens has been great for that because it’s how I get to meet people like Jenn de la Vega, who’s an author, editor, a caterer, and super skilled don’t-put-her-in-a-box kind of person. She edits a magazine called “Put A Egg On It” which I love because it’s just as crazy fun indie as I like them. And after I read her book called “Showdown Comfort Food” I badly wanted to get to New York City asap.
So I went - and it was great! Let’s get to it.
INTERVIEW
NA: Today we are sitting in a lovely park in Brooklyn, that’s um…what’s the name of this park?
JV: This is McCarren Park, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
NA: So we’re on location today, and it’s a beautiful, sunny winter day, and I am here with Jenn de la Vega. Welcome Jenn!
JV: Thanks for having me!
NA: It’s a pleasure! So I was wondering if you could start by introducing yourself and telling us about what you’re doing.
04:25 About
JV: Well hello! I have always been a person who juggled careers. I left my job in technology of four years, to pursue cooking. On the side, in the mornings and at nights, I would be cooking non-stop, every day. And exploring Filipino food, as you do. But also, other cultures that I was interested in, like Spanish food and classic French, so that I could build my skills. For [that] one day, when I did have the time and opportunity to pursue it - which is now - so I’d be ready.
NA: I got in touch with Jenn because I got a copy of “Showdown: Comfort Food”. I’ll start by asking if you could tell us how the book came about, because one thing I really really loved about this book is that as I read it, I felt like I was really drawn into your neighbourhood, and into your world. And the detail that you give with Takedowns, and you know, sometimes forgetting things, like tongs, when you’re out to go catering, it gives you kinda like, I don’t know if insider is the best word…but I kinda feel like I’m there with you.
05:35 From competitions to a cookbook
JV: And in the vein of forgetting things, I also forget that I am an author. Page Street Publishing, which is the imprint that helped me release Showdown, they approached me, oh gosh, I think it was two years ago, to write a book. And we sort of had trouble, we were brainstorming on the phone, like what we could write about, I had trouble focusing on topics…I have varied interests. So I love all kinds of food. I have all kinds of career interests. But I really wanted to write a cookbook. It was in my five-year plan.
NA: It’s a good plan to have.
JV: Yeah, and we were moving the timetable up, so they were asking me earlier than I thought. And I still had to put together a proposal and things like that. But I was looking around my apartment, and before we were about to hang up, I said, oh, how do you feel about competitions? They’re like, why? Well, I’m standing in front of a 7 foot trophy that I won maybe in 2012, and they’re like, well why do you have that? Oh, I forgot to tell you, I won this barbecue series in Bed Stuy, which is not known for its barbecue, but they’re known for cookouts and sort of family gatherings, and there was a bar that hosted a friendly competition one summer. I joined in, thinking oh, this is one way to get to know my neighbours. And I did not know that the format would be very intense. It was NCAA bracket style elimination rounds, all summer long.
So there were maybe four times during the summer where we had to pretty much build up a pop-up restaurant in the back of a bar. It was like throwing me into a pool. Which is the best way for me to learn.
NA: It’s a sink or swim situation.
06:55 The thrill of it all
JV: Exactly. I love learning by doing. And we had to learn how to make a menu, how to develop recipes. Week to week, we had to learn how to sell and price things, make vegetarian food. That was new to me. So it was really fun to innovate and iterate very quickly, much like a start-up does. But I think the competition really pushed me to keep going and keep creating. And I got addicted to it. As you read in Showdown, I also started to participate in the Takedowns, which is a quarterly competition in Brooklyn. There’s a low bar of entry, anyone can enter. In the beginning there used to be a fee to participate, but they took it away because they wanted more people, more diverse sets of talents, and recipes and flavours. And again, like I said, I got addicted to the feeling of competition. But it wasn’t necessarily winning. I lost a lot. I lost for maybe five years straight. But I kept going because the people that you compete against become your friends, and you get to try maybe 20 to 30 new dishes each time, and I don’t know, I really loved it.
08:40 "Showdown" was born
JV: And so Showdown, the book, sort of rounds up 100 of the recipes that I’ve thrown into competition. I’ve gone through and fixed them, I’ve tested them again, I’ve sent them around to friends and made sure it actually tasted good this time around, you know, it was refined. And very much [like] how you said, you get immersed in the story - I very purposefully structured the book so that you sort of were growing along with me. And recipes get a little…you know, they kinda grow in skill level, and incorporate the concept of using your leftovers.
The thing that annoys me about other cookbooks is they introduce a specialty ingredient to you, and you never see it again. So I made sure that either it was threaded through the book, or that there were notes in the back on how to use it, how to use up leftovers. I don’t like wasting things. It’s a very Filipino thing, you know we don’t like to waste.
NA: But that’s what I loved about the book as well. Because apart from being written in a very conversational tone, and having things like lumpia chips…like it’s a common ingredient, but you’re like, oh, you really can serve this in a non-traditional manner. That’s the fun part of it, it puts that ingredient front and center, not wasting it, and you can serve it to people and have fun.
11:10 Bake that lumpia chip!
JV: I like that you caught that. Because in this book, it’s not Filipino-focused, but there are notes of it. Lumpia chips are like nachos, and that is something that as a Filipino-American child in northern California who had a Taco Bell nearby, that was, you know, very nostalgic for me. To combine both my 90s childhood with you know, a nod to the past. But also, introducing people to this new ingredient. Even sort of challenging the traditional Filipino notion of, oh, it should only be rolled. Or it should only be fried. Like, you can bake it! Whoa.
NA: I mean other people have talked about this at length, about how food is really an entry point or gateway into learning about culture, and really getting other people to kind of, share an experience I guess. One thing I love about talking with people in the food industry, or people who cook…like you mentioned earlier, you iterate a lot, and it’s just a process of, oh well this didn’t taste as great as I think it should, so you try it again next time. There’s this spirit of just wanting to do it. You want to get better, even if it’s just this competition against yourself.
JV: There’s a lot of that, yeah. Like, can I do that better next time? Yes, I can.
NA: Did that drive your recipe structure, and recipe building, for the Showdown recipes?
11:55 "I'm not just cooking for me”
JV: Yeah, it did. As soon as I found out that I lost a competition, I was already, in my head, making notes, or on my phone making notes. Like next time, do this. And I’m not just cooking for me…I realized over time. I mean, that sounds so obvious, but I’m accommodating all kinds of palates and experiences. So I’ve learned [from it].
12:15 A spectrum of taste
JV: There’s a paragraph about this in the book, [that] I’ve learned to under-season. That’s okay, because I’ve found that as I take this book to other cities…like in the midwest, or Pennsylvania…it was interesting to hear people describe the food as too spicy, but not in a ‘hot’ sense. I didn’t understand. I thought, but I didn’t put any jalapeños in this one, this time around. Why do you think it’s too spicy? And then I noticed, oh, okay. There’s a different definition of spiciness. It is “seasoned”. Like there’s a spectrum of taste, that’s interesting [to see] across America, and I’ve learned that I need to accommodate both the expert and the amateur and the novice. Food is always adjustable, it can be changed. And that’s really beautiful.
13:25 Embracing new culinary ecosystems
NA: It is. I was talking with Allie Cuerdo, she directed this documentary called “Ulam: Main Dish”. And we talked about that, about food being, like it doesn’t have to be boxed in. What’s really exciting about the way that people are approaching Filipino cuisine today, is that there’s a lot more…even just that openness to interpretation. Having a set of people and an audience - like a set of people from the chefs’ side, who really want to experiment, and know that they can, unapologetically - and the combination of having an interested audience and people who are learning a lot more because we now have this ecosystem of people writing about it, pop-up dinners, just like bringing more awareness and stuff. [It’s] an entry point to Filipino cuisine. And as you mentioned, with Showdown, it’s not a Filipino cookbook, strictly. But what’s great is, we really get a sense of how your Filipino culture is played out, as well, in the kind of cooking that you do.
14:25 Longganisa and champorado
JV: Yeah. A lot of my entries for these competitions were to educate. That was the biggest point. There was one specific dish in there that features longganisa, and champorado, together. Champorado is usually a sweet chocolate dish. This competition was hosted at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, it was the chili chocolate festival. You could enjoy both those things at once. So they had a bunch of chocolate vendors, they had a bunch of chili vendors, and then they had a competition in the middle, where you had to combine both. And I did not know a single Filipino dish that combined both. So I had to make one. But instead of adding so much sugar to the champorado, we made it more savoury. I took the idea of adding chocolate to mole, and ‘remade’ champorado in that way. Then I made my own longganisa, super spicy this time, for the competition. And there were just people who weren’t expecting that, you know.
15:20 Contextualizing the food we grow up with
JV: This an interesting challenge of [doing] Filipino food, you know. I grew up with it en masse. It was in bowls, and stews, and it kind of piles, in a way, that is unappetizing to some cultures, or some people who have never seen that before. And so visually, it’s something that I try to work on. To either re-contextualize the ingredients and food, or introduce common elements, like nacho chips [to] lumpia chips, you know, things like that, that I grew up with.
16:00 "I'm influenced by a lot of things”
JV: My experience with jobs and the things that I do is pretty multi-faceted. And I think that’s how I approach food. I don’t think that it can be wrong…if it tastes good, and it can feed you, you feel nourished, then [that’s] wonderful, right? And you can see, just flipping through the book, and through my Instagram, that I’m influenced by a lot of things. And you can choose how many things, or how much it can impact you. And for me, I’m always hungry. I’m always looking, always reading. Much like you, I’m always cracking open a book, about this or that. Like, gosh, I need to go look that up, right now, right now. That’s what’s exciting about keeping it going, and moving on, and changing and evolving.
NA: Jenn’s story is of somebody who grew up in the US, with roots in the Philippines - and it’s one of millions. The point of this show is to shed light on as diverse a set of stories as I can, knowing that it’s never gonna be perfect, taking logistics and resources and stuff like that into account. But, I do think that it’s worth telling.
17:35 My story and your story matters
NA: And even that little breakthrough - that my and your story matters, that we don’t have to wait for an organization, or some other big entity to talk about something that’s taboo - I’m slowly starting to learn that, to own that. But if no one’s willing to do that in the Philippines - which is a place I clearly care a lot about, where many of the people who I love, still live - how do we, as a culture, stay afloat, and thrive, with these waves of change that sweep us up in with the rest of the world, to become this one, homogenized thing?
And in a place where you can see both extremes of “speaking your mind” played out so differently - on one end, for example, where you have reporters who vanish after writing about farm workers going on strike, and the other end where people say the craziest shit you can imagine on social media - that courage, that determination to speak your mind is something I really admire. Going against what’s normal can get you in trouble, for sure, even when we talk about food. But if we can’t talk about food without questioning “authenticity” every single time - how do we keep our food culture, which is such a big part of our identity - from simply fading away?
So it’s a beautiful winter day, Jean and I are sitting on this park bench in Brooklyn, a couple blocks away from the Museum of Food and Drink, where we’re heading to next. As you can tell, we talked a lot about why we loved to cook. You can hear things like people walking their dogs pass by, you can probably heard a siren or two in the background, and a lot of “likes” peppered through our conversation because, well, that’s just how we talk! And clearly, we can talk quite a bit about food, because this conversation went on for a lot longer than this podcast episode is.
Kidding aside, I asked Jenn when she started competing in these local cooking throwdowns, because I wanted to know - what was the vibe like? What were the people like? How did it lead to the “Showdown: Comfort Food” cookbook, which I now had?
20:40 8 years of throwdowns
JV: This was maybe a cumulative 8 years.
NA: Wow.
JV: Yeah! I look back and I didn’t realize that that much time had passed, because I just mechanically would just be entering these things, going when’s the next one, when’s the next one? And it changes when you actually do win things. The dynamic changes. Because, like, once I won the bacon takedown…
NA: I was gonna ask about that.
21:05 Winning a bacon challenge
JV: So [for] this specific competition, they gave us 15 pounds of bacon to use. It was sponsored.
NA: Wait, so 15 pounds split between…
JV: No no no. It’s per person.
NA: 15 pounds of bacon per person?
JV: Well, we had to make like 200 or 300 bites of something. And so, I really really wanted to make kare-kare. I don’t know why, I got really stuck on it. Like, I’ve just been working on this kare-kare for a long time, I just really want to make it happen, for bacon. And eventually, what happened is…to the audience, what I made was a bacon curry peanut nacho, using the lumpia chips. But, you know, a Filipino would walk by and go, “psst…that’s kare-kare, right?” You want some? It was interesting that, previously, if I had just put this over rice, and showed it to this room full of people…they probably would have passed it by. So that recipe won. And I was supposedly was going to get a year’s supply of bacon. I got gift certificates for bacon afterwards, and it was really tough because not every grocery store in my area would accept them…
NA: So no pallet of bacon on your front door?
JV: That’s what I really wanted! I really wanted it, cause, how glorious would that have been? My eyes would have been starts poking out of my head. I would like, FaceTime my mom, and be like, look at me now! I have made it. I have made it once. So what I’m getting at, is that once you win, you actually can’t come back for the next year, it’s kinda just not fair. So I had to take a little bit of a break from competing, which transitioned into judging. Which is so fun. I had no idea I had a knack for it. Holding a clipboard is one of my favourite things to do.
NA: I declare this to be better than yours.
JV: No, [but] that’s the thing though. The thing that I love about a competition, coming from the judges’ side now, is we cannot compare against other days or other experiences. You only judge against the 30 people who are here and now.
NA: What’s the word I’m thinking of….like a jury, deliberating.
JV: With our clipboards, yeah. But also, I really love it because, for those of you who happened to have a Costco near your house…
23:55 Childhoods at Costco and seeing yourself in others
JV: Part of my childhood was free sample at Costco. And it is like that, with the little plastic cups. It’s also wonderful, getting to know other chefs, and hearing where they come from, how did this dish inspire you. And I see a lot of my story there too, which is so great. And I keep encouraging people, at the end of every competition, before we announce any winners, I say you all are amazing. You have spent money out of your pocket, you are doing this unpaid, you are doing it because you love it, and that’s amazing. Please keep doing it. Write your recipes down, because I did not, for the first four years. So when it came time to write the book, it was really difficult to round up the first half of the recipes. I really had to dig into my email.
24:45 Put A Egg On It
NA: On that note, I’d like to ask if we can talk a bit about “Put A Egg On It”.
JV: I would love to! So “Put A Egg On It”…a lot of people ask us, is it “Put A” or “Put An” [Egg On It]? We know, we know what the correct sentence structure is. We know that written down, it’s “put an” egg on it, yes, okay. But the founders, Sarah and Ralph, the way that they approach it is, if you were arguing with your friend about who is gonna take the leftovers…[we might hear] “I want it”, “no I want it”, “no I want it, I wanna put a egg on it”. That’s exactly the argument that they had. And that is the communal, like casual, approach we take to food and art. So we’re not just a food zine.
We also try to tie in the art world, and how food sort of plays its role there. And so from some issues, we have portraits of Andy Warhol, we have historical pieces about Cafe Florent, which was a hub for a lot of artists, and it didn’t matter if you were poor or made tons of money, all of you could eat at Cafe Florent, that sort of thing. We loved telling those stories. I joined, oh I don’t even know, how many years I’ve been with them…three or four? But Put A Egg On It is celebrating its tenth year in 2018.
26:15 Zine themes
JV: We love to have a theme every issue. Previous themes were like…[on] canned food, so we were exploring a lot of oily fish. Then another one was [on] shame. For that one, I submitted a recipe for munggo - mung beans.
26:30 On shame and mung beans
NA: What was the shame association?
JV: When I was growing up, I was embarrassed when my parents would serve it. And I was afraid, when my friends came over. I was one, afraid of it, and two, embarrassed if anyone saw it in my lunchbox. So I was very very ashamed. So the recipe I’ve added to Put A Egg On It, I’ve added bacon - like big chunks. It became more of a comfort, [rather] than shame, after that.
27:10 Dinner conversations
Those are sort of the themes and prompts that we work with. We have one feature called “Dinner Conversation”, where we invite three different artists, from different backgrounds, and we record their conversation at dinner, and they are purposefully from different generations. So it’s really interesting to give them a bunch of food, and then either the food will inspire their conversation, or just because of their experiences, they will have something interesting to talk about. That’s something fun that we do.
Put A Egg On It is a green zine, we are print only, [and] we print on green paper. You’ll see us at most independent bookstores, I believe Barnes and Noble, and we’re available online at putaeggonit.com.
28:25 The allure of an egg yolk
NA: Now onto the fun, random stuff. First off, I ask Jenn about her penchant for the kinda thing that, to me, is also incredibly sexy - something we’re gonna call “yolk porn”. As in, bursting the runny yolk of a fried egg, with a yellow as deep as the sun.
JV: I love me a silog porn. I love popping an egg yolk on camera. Yes, I’m obsessed.
NA: It’s very sensual.
JV: It’s interesting, that’s a feeling that we sort of suppress, I think, or that I was taught to suppress when I was growing up.
NA: Sensousness to food, specifically?
JV: Yeah, just cause like, growing up it’s like, I have my rice, my egg, and my spam. And I’m eating it, you know because I need it to live, and that’s it. You know, there’s no meditation, or sitting upon it, or digesting it, mentally. Now, I sort of spend time, with my eggs. And I really enjoy it. It’s not just eating, the way that I enjoy food. [I like] the way it looks, the way it feels, when I poke it with a fork.
NA: It totally lures you in. I love having fried eggs with rice and a smear of bagoong, because it’s my “I’m broke as hell but I can eat well” dinner, with a little atchara from the jar I keep in my fridge. Last week, I put up a bookshelf in my new apartment, and so now, all I gotta do is look to my right and see my lovely little trilogy of Lucky Peach single subject cookbooks - Power Vegetables, The Wurst of Lucky Peach and All About Eggs. Eggs are essential.
Next I asked Jenn if she’d heard about the study of “foodways”, which is this structured, academic way of understanding how the history, the traditions, and the culture of a place, basically create its food.
30:25 Foodways of Iloilo
JV: I like that you said that. I did that, for a month. I was in Iloilo for a month to learn. I found out that there’s a side of my dad’s family that all own restaurants. And I was shocked because I had never heard of that at all.
NA: They didn’t really talk about it?
JV: No. My dad’s an engineer and my mom is a nurse. Like, that’s it, that’s all I was supposed to be. And when both my brother and I ended up being in creative fields, they were like, well, we may as well tell you…it blew my mind. We went to Bacolod, too, took a ferry over, and I found I had a Tita Mely who owns a Spanish-style ranch house restaurant, turo-turo style, beautiful. I picked her brain for like, two hours. How do you run this place? What do you do, you know, when you want to retire? And so I learned so much from that trip. Even going to the farmers’ market, you know, is such a big social affair. I loved it. And I highly encourage, you know, if you’ve never been back, to seek out your roots, both in city and in the provinces.
NA: And finally, I had to ask about the Filipino recipes, that made it into the book and the magazine. There’s this recipe I love from “Showdown: Comfort Food" called Adobo Wangs. It’s so good. But, what’s with the misspell?
32:10 Everyone loves adobo and chicken wings
JV: That was something I did with my roommates. I would creep around the corner, and say “does anybody want some waaangs?” And that’s the origin of that. That’s why I spelled it W-A-N-G-S. But that recipe uses the beginnings of just a traditional adobo recipe, which is simmering the gastrique - the vinegar and the soy sauce - together. And we use a hot marinade, because it renders off some of the chicken fat, from the skin. So that when you smoke it, or grill it, or bake it, or fry it later, it is crispier. Less drippage, and it’s crispier. And it soaks up more of the marinade.
NA: So basically proof that adobo really is the best thing ever - specially if we’re talking chicken wings.
WRAP-UP
My warmest thanks to Jenn de la Vega, who I met last year in New York City. Follow her online @randwiches - like sandwiches with an R - on Instagram, and pick up a copy of “Showdown Comfort Food”. I’m a fan of Jenn’s recipes and think you would be too!
Our opening theme is by David Szeztay, segment music is by Eric and Magill and Blue Dot Sessions.
Follow the show @exploringfilipinokitchens on Facebook and Instagram, and if you know someone else who might like it - please tell them about it! I’m already super thankful.
Maraming salamat and until next time - thank you for listening.