Find the transcript of my interview with Marvin Gapultos and the Pluma Writing Collective below.
INTRO
Welcome to Exploring Filipino Kitchens. I’m your host, Nastasha Alli.
This episode we’re gonna try something new - like, a new format for the show. In addition to talking about a Filipino food book - whether it’s a cookbook or reference book - what I’m gonna do is invite a few people over to my place, to chat, to eat, and enjoy Filipino food in the ways that the foods we’re gonna be talking about are really meant to be experienced. To be honest, there aren’t any hard and fast rules for what I’m gonna call Nastasha’s Filipino Dinner Parties, except to come hungry, come excited, be yourself and ready to learn. It’s gonna be a lot of fun!
01:25 On Filipino drinking food
So we’re gonna start off this episode by talking about “pulutan” - basically, that’s food that we Filipinos typically eat with a beverage. They aren’t strictly bar snacks - because, as we talk about later on - “bars” in the western sense aren’t really where most Filipinos go to drink. Having done my fair share of drinking, I know that Filipinos do enjoy typically drinking at home and in places where they can gather with other people. Like the neighbourhood basketball court, a sari-sari store, or even somebody’s garage. When I was in high school, we’d often spend Friday nights underneath this tin-roofed garage at my friend’s house. We’d squish in between her parents’ car, the water tank, her mother’s gigantic plants, and usually a couple clothes hanging on a line to dry.
The point of having pulutan, for me, is that it’s an integral part of the “inuman” or overall drinking session. The thing that keeps people fed and, by extension, the party, pretty much going. Plus, pulutan is really just an entire category of recipes that are pretty easy to make - they’re economical, super tasty, and they’re literally all over the Philippines. At the tricycle terminals, jeepney terminals, basically anywhere people are out on the street. And this kind of cooking totally aligns with my current “eating well on a dime” situation here in Toronto. I promise you will be surprised at least once, with the kinds of foods and ingredients that eventually turn into really great pulutan.
Let’s get into things and kick this pulutan session with our interview with Marvin Gapultos. Marvin is the author of “Pulutan: Filipino Bar Bites, Snacks and Appetizers.” This is a book that came out last year, in the fall. I’ve wanted to chat with Marvin for the longest time. His “Adobo Road Cookbook”, which has always been on my shelf, since I got it maybe six or seven years ago, it’s always got a place in my kitchen now. And as soon as I read Pulutan, I knew I wanted to ask him more about how that cookbook came to be, and really about how the recipes that are in there, translate into what people who live outside of the country, can do in terms of experiencing a real pulutan session. So as soon as I got my hands on it, I knew I had to make some of the recipes, and invite people over to try them.
Let’s get to it.
INTERVIEW
04:45 About Marvin
MG: My name is Marvin Gapultos, and I’m the author of Pulutan. It’s essentially a book of Filipino drinking food. Mainly appetizers, finger food, and things of that nature, that go great with an alcoholic beverage. Mainly [with] beer. I don’t want to pigeonhole Filipinos as mainly being beer drinkers, but we are. At least I am, and at least my family is. So yeah, that was the approach I took with this cookbook. [It’s got] some traditional Filipino appetizers, some more contemporary takes, or a Fil-Am take on some things. That’s what I wanted to do with this cookbook.
05:45 What does pulutan mean to you?
NA: The thing that I really love about it, is that it does kind of put that ‘spirit’ behind pulutan, and the idea behind pulutan, front and centre. And I know you talk about it in the beginning of the book as well. Like for me, and the people I grew up with, pulutan really meant sort of a gathering, right. It’s very much an opportunity for you to like, hang out with people, and enjoy some food and drinking with it. So for you - what does it mean for you to have people over for that kind of cooking or eating experience?
MG: It’s always been just about being with family and friends. And the food and drink just happens to be the thing that brings us together, and keeps us in whatever vicinity we are eating and drinking in. For me, growing up, I mean we had birthday parties and family reunions and things like that, but sometimes, people just came over to hang out. Somebody would cook some food, and people would start drinking.
06:45 Great Uncle Nick and his buddies
MG: I have these early memories as a kid of my great uncles. My great uncle Nick would have like, a card game going on in the garage, and he’d have a bunch of his buddies over, and I was just being a kid, playing with my cousins and stuff in the driveway. And at the time, you know, I didn’t know what pulutan was. It was just oh, my uncle’s drinking with his buddies and they’re playing cards. But you know, my auntie would bring food into the garage from the kitchen, and stuff like that. There would always be little bites while these grown men were playing cards, and laughing and arguing, and you know. I just remember lots of whiskey, and lots of Budweiser. Those were my early memories of that kind of setting where it was just friends having fun, eating and drinking. And not necessarily in a party, like a birthday party situation, if that makes any sense.
NA: That is something that I think is unique to Filipino culture. It’s that you also talk about, you know, our drinking food not being restricted to something you would have like, after 5 pm, like an after-work drink sort of thing. And it doesn’t always have to be, you know, for a big birthday celebration, but it’s also kinda everyday. And for people who grow up in the Philippines, myself included, you know, sometimes it would just be going to the corner store and you would have some barbecue grilling, and you would get a couple of beers, and chat with your neighbours, stuff like that. So it can be kinda casual too.
MG: Yeah, it is. And it can be very casual, just an everyday thing. Which I think is cool, that part of our culinary culture, and our culture in general. I have this quote in my cookbook, by Doreen Fernandez…I’m paraphrasing, it says something like, you don’t need to drink, to enjoy pulutan. But it definitely helps. That’s not word for word what she says, but that’s the spirit behind what she was trying to say. I don’t want it to sound like we’re just a bunch of, you know, alcoholics, but it’s just a part of being together, and having that camaraderie.
08:50 Doreen's advice
NA: For those listening, I’ll repeat the quote here. Doreen Fernandez - who’s the premiere food historian from the Philippines - the quote is: “True celebration is of the spirit, and needs no spirits to make it lively”.
MG: That’s it!
NA: And that’s really, I guess, at the heart of it. What is very infectious about the recipes you have in your book. Because you’re right - they’re not that fussy, you know, there’s chicken wings, which is almost, I’d like to say, a universal bar food. And in the process of, I guess, narrowing down, or even testing, the recipes that you wanted to appear in the book… what were two or three favourite things that you learned about how these flavours come about? Was there anything the came up while you were doing recipe testing, that you were like, now that you know how to do it in this particular way, it’s gonna be like the [only] way you’re gonna do this particular snack for like, a very long time?
09:50 Papaitan (a bitter Ilocano stew with innards)
MG: The one that jumps out to me is my papaitan recipe - which is a very Ilocano, bitter dish. Typical pulutan in the northern part of the Philippines. For those of you who don’t know, it’s typically made with different cuts of beef or goat. Tripes and livers, different cuts of meat. And it’s made bitter with bile, the bile of the animal. Which not only Filipinos use, it’s used all across southeast Asia. To the uninitiated, it might sound crazy, but it’s not. That bitter profile is one of the things I like and love about Filipino food. And knowing that there would be some people who’d be averse to using bile, [and] also knowing that bile won’t be easy to find - although it is generally easy to find in a lot of Asian markets, at least here in California - I wanted to see if I could come close to replicating that bitterness. And I found that by using a bitter IPA, or India Pale Ale beer, you can get that bitter flavour, without the bile. So that was a good discovery for me. And it was a fun experiment for me.
It’s funny, talking with other people, other Filipino cooks who have had people say, oh it’s not really papaitan without the bile…I agree, I’m not saying I won’t use bile going forward, it’s just discovering that I could get that flavour profile was just kind of a fun thing for me to discover in recipe testing.
11:40 Highlighting flavour profiles
NA: And I love that that is something you do focus on quite a bit as well. Not just with this cookbook, but even on your blog, even on The Adobo Road Cookbook. It’s really sort of the flavour profile that we want to be able to highlight, with the dishes, I guess. And that’s kind of a good segue to your Cicerone - am I pronouncing that right?
MG: Yeah, that’s right, Cicerone.
NA: I think it’s really interesting, I don’t know how many of the folks listening are familiar with it, but if you could describe what that is, and how that plays into your cooking, and into your recipes and the book, particularly?
12:20 The Cicerone Program
MG: Well, basically, there’s this Cicerone program…the way I like to describe it, and the way other people in the beer industry like to describe it, is to compare it to the sommelier program, for those who drink wine. So Cicerone is basically a beer sommelier. And like the sommelier program, there are different levels of Cicerone. The first level is [for] a certified beer server, then there’s a certified Cicerone, then an advanced Cicerone, and a master Cicerone, similar to how there’s master sommeliers and things like that.
12:55 How it led to “Pulutan"
MG: So after I wrote my first book, I knew that Pulutan was something I wanted to focus on more, should I have an opportunity to write another cookbook. Because I like bar food, and I like to drink. I’ve always been interested in craft beer, and different types of beer. And so I decided it would be cool if I could go through the process.
In order to become a Cicerone, you have to take this huge test, very difficult test, and do all these tastings, and be able to identify different beer flavours. I don’t want to bore everybody, but I wanted to get that certification, just to kind of show that Filipino flavours are just as great with, you know, the world of beers, as any other cuisine. That was important for me to show.
13:45 Beyond ties to San Miguel
MG: Because you know, Filipino food is typically tied to San Miguel Beer. Which is great, I like San Miguel too. But in order for us to, you know, expand and introduce more people to Filipino food, as different chefs highlight stuff…
NA: So what Marvin’s basically saying is that as more professional chefs - and by extension, home cooks like you and me - learn about foods that Filipino people have enjoyed for ages….it’s pretty natural to want to know how to prepare those foods so that you can enjoy them, even if you’re far away from a neighbourhood street food stall in the Philippines. To my mind, if you swap the hockey for basketball on TV, who says you can’t have pulutan night in Canada?
In that sense, it’s really kinda more like, I guess an education, about the different flavour profiles in a beer. Reading that in Pulutan was educational, for me, and I can imagine that I guess is the appeal for you as well, in sort of teasing out those different combinations and flavours that are highlighted with those kinds of beers.
15:25 Filipino food and a world of beer styles
MG: Yeah, it definitely was the fun part of writing this cookbook, just my experience with Filipino flavours, I like to think. So it was fun to see how I could match that with different beer flavours, with different beer styles, in different parts of the world. It was definitely enjoyable and eye-opening. And also, I just want to say that they’re just suggestions - everybody’s palate is different. So I want to encourage people to not follow my suggestions to a T, although of course, I mean follow them if you like. But also, experiment on your own, try different beers with different Filipino foods, and see how you like it.
16:05 "It just clicked”
NA: I was gonna say, one of my favourite recipes in the book, just because I have a personal affinity to gin poms…your gin pomelo shrimp cocktail, which is a really nice, sort of, like a version of kinilaw, where the seafood, the shrimp is cooked in the citrus, and I thought that was a really fun way of bringing that technique, a new way of [making it].
MG: Yeah. It was one of those recipes where it just kind of clicked, and made sense. You know, I have the gin pom cocktail recipe, and I knew I wanted to make some sort of shrimp kinilaw. And then it just made sense, to use the pomelos in there, and it kinda just evolved from that. So I’m glad you liked it.
17:15 Moving up the ladder
NA: It was really…when I moved out of my parents’ house, at like 21, that was really my first sort of, I got thrown into the deep water of like, okay, if you really miss Filipino food, if you miss the tastes and the flavours of what you love eating…you’re gonna have to cook it yourself, and you’re gonna have to sort of explore and learn.
MG: Definitely. I can definitely relate to that. I mean, I grew up with Filipino food all the time. As somebody who was born here in the States, my mom still cooked it, and I didn’t realize, I took it for granted until I moved away. Similar to how you were saying, right. I missed it, I missed that taste. And then that’s what led me on this journey of learning how to cook. And its funny, you know, you wanna learn to cook the food that you grew up with, but then there’s so many other different variations beyond what your mom cooks. And that’s the cool thing, you know. Like you could learn how to cook your mom’s pinakbet, but then learning to cook like a Tagalog version of it, or just another person’s version of any Filipino dish.
It’s like you keep moving up in this Filipino food ladder, I guess. And the higher you get, the more experience you have, the more you gain familiarity with the different varieties. And it’s fun, it’s great.
18:55 Cooking is a process of discovery
NA: I guess it’s sort of about establishing a comfort level too, for those tastes. I wasn’t the kid who like hung around with my lola in the kitchen, and like pestered her to teach me stuff. I didn’t really have much of an interest in cooking until I became older. And I guess because I’m really interested in also, just what happens when you cook food, like the different techniques you can apply, how you apply heat to a certain ingredient, to a dish, is going to change what the end result is. The texture of it, how you can impart different flavours, and stuff like that.
Filipino cuisine is such a great example of starting with those sometimes very basic ingredients, but like many other cultures, if you start with a really good thing, and you treat it well, and you have a few little things…like for us, the vinegars. When Amy Besa and Chef Romy (Dorotan) were out west, you attended one of their cooking demonstrations, right? Where they had different ingredients from the Philippines?
MG: Yeah, and they had brought a mulberry vinegar. Which blew my mind. Chef Romy had made it, I believe, if I remember correctly. It was cool how he used it to make something as basic as an adobo, to be so different, to have a different flavour profile, with just a change in vinegar.
20:15 We all evolve as we grow
MG: You know, the more you make Filipino food, the more you cook certain dishes, the more you want to make something your own. That’s kind of an evolution in all of us, you know. We take a very basic recipe that we may have gotten from our mother or our lola. And just based on geography and availability ingredients, it slowly changes to what we like, and it becomes our own dish. So it’s definitely a cool thing.
Even now, as a father, it sounds weird saying this, but you know, I like to take comfort in knowing that someday, hopefully, my kids will take one of my dishes, that I took from my mom, and make it their own. And it’s just this continuing evolution of our culture and our cuisine.
21:15 Chicken wings with fish sauce and calamansi
NA: That sort of, desire to want to improve, and tweak things a little bit, is really exciting because, just going back to the chicken wings, your recipe for “Hot Wings with Fish Sauce and Calamansi Caramel” sounds like such a winning flavour combination, and that sounds like an example of like, really nailing how to do chicken wings right, and then kinda putting your own spin on it, and seeing how that turns out…and maybe even jumping off from there, and doing a different version of it. With a different citrus, or you know, some other tiny tweak.
MG: Yeah, definitely. And I had reservations, because I had another chicken wing recipe in my first cookbook…it’s funny, this is kind of an evolution, or a tweak to that one, using a different glaze with different ingredients, you know, using citrus instead of vinegar. And they’re completely different wings, but it’s funny you bring that up. Cause yeah, that’s a good example of you know, tweaking a recipe and making it completely different with some changes in ingredients.
22:25 Mind-blowing vinegar
NA: Like you were saying, that mulberry vinegar kinda like, blew your mind because, like, wow, I can’t believe that you can get so much depth of flavour, and that mulberries even existed in the Philippines. For me, it was the coconut products that were really kinda mind-blowing too. Because for people who are really keen to really try these different tweaks and experiment with these Filipino dishes that they already have a penchant, or a taste for…knowing that those kinds of ingredients exist is kind of exciting. Because if we can start demanding it a little bit more, then maybe, hopefully that’ll make its way outside of the Philippines, and a lot more people will get to try these different ingredients that are again, very unique and kind of speak to the flavours of the land and what Filipinos like to do with these ingredients.
MG: Definitely. And it’s something I’ve seen over the years. Cause I remember, way back when I had my blog I wrote about Ilocano sea salt. It must have been over ten years ago, like back in 2007, that I think X Roads [was selling it]…I believe they’re still around. They’re a company that imports sea salts from the Philippines. Like really great, flaky, sea salt. And so yeah, it would be great to see these different indigenous products from the Philippines get that kind of demand.
23:55 What should we take away?
NA: So I guess as sort of, a bit of a parting thought for us…beyond the Pulutan cookbook, and beyond the Adobo Road cookbook, what’s the one thing that you kinda want to see, in terms of how people take their Filipino culture, and have that play out in their cooking and what they like to eat?
MG: Just to not be afraid to share it, and not be afraid if it’s not as good as your mother’s. When I started cooking Filipino food, I was always in my own head and worried. What will other Filipinos think of this? What if they don’t like my adobo? But ultimately, who cares? You know. I want us to stop comparing what we cook to what someone else cooks. We should base how good a Filipino dish is, based on how it tastes, rather than how it compares to some preconceived notion. Our own pride that we have, is definitely spreading it, it’s taking our food to new levels. We’re kind of moving away from that adobo comparison. So you know, taste the dish and if it’s good, it’s good.
NA: I think it is personal for people whenever we talk about food. It’s never just about what’s in front of you, or what you’re preparing. It’s always, the gateway I guess to a lot of other things, like family. So I really like that that’s something you believe in as well. That there’s no right or wrong. If you like how you cook a particular dish, and it makes you happy, then go for it.
25:45 Dinner party #1!
NA: Welcome to the first of Nastasha’s Filipino dinner parties! So after chatting with Marvin and getting a little more insight on the foods that become pulutan, I wanted to know whether this category of drinking food was something familiar to Filipinos who grew up in Canada. You’ll have to listen to find out! One very snowy, wintery, stormy day in January - like, I was so thankful these guys trooped it out - Jennilee Austria, Eric Tigley, Jaisa Sulit and Justine Abigail Yu came over for pulutan.
So this month we are cooking from Pulutan. We’ve tried the meatballs from the book this evening, as well as the mushrooms with lemongrass, it’s turned out pretty well so far. But what really interested me about the book is just the concept, that there is a book specifically about pulutan recipes.
So pulutan is drinking food - lots of cultures have drinking food. Filipinos definitely have food that they like to pair with drinks. A lot of it is grilled, or fried. And so this book is able to sort of translate some of those common pulutan recipes into things that you can cook in your kitchen, such as the Bicol Express meatballs that I made in my apartment in Toronto. Right now, it’s like minus 20, I believe outside…but it’s feeling pretty tropical in here. So we’re gonna talk about pulutan this episode. If you could tell us a little bit about yourselves, and we’ll start from there.
28:15 One of Jennilee's favourite words
JA: Hello everybody. My name is Jennilee. I’m a YA author, and I also run a workshop series called “Filipino Talks” in district school boards, where I try to introduce Filipino culture to a bunch of educators, and then do workshops with students. So, pulutan, is one my favourite words in Tagalog because it sounds literally like what it is, like a pollutant…it is junk food, and I just find that hilarious. It’s so perfect. And when I think of pulutan, I always think of, you know, a bunch of Filipinos around a really small table, like there’s one bottle of beer and you’re passing it around, and you know, there’s isaw, kwek-kwek, Adidas, and Betamax. I always think of those kinds of things, that I think would probably scare off a lot of Canadians. And it’s the kind of food that brings you together. And this is a word that I feel like other cultures should have too, because I don’t know any culture that drinks and then eats healthy food. Right? Like everyone’s got their poutine.
NA: I mean, in the Philippines, some of the really popular pulutan items are things like sisig, which is pig’s ears, cheeks, jowls, boiled then grilled, and possibly fried, with like an egg on top. It’s personally one of my favourite things to eat. So then we talked about sisig for awhile - how to cook it, why keeping a crisp texture to sisig is everything, and about the one time I cooked pigs ears sous-vide for half a day and then finished them in a blazing hot cast iron skillet. I was really, really craving some serious old-school sisig that day and it totally hit the spot. So it’s not surprising that pigs are like top of the food chain when it comes to pulutan. And that, we proved next.
30:20 Eric on sacred pulutan
ET: My name is Eric, I’m a teacher in Toronto. And I did a couple of books. I like to make art. And I like to eat things. That’s why I’m here today. And with pulutan - I haven’t been to the Philippines that often - my only memory of pulutan was how it overrided everything else. [My family] is from the province of southern Leyte, and I remember somebody was like, hey, you want some chicken? I was like, sure, and he just reached underneath the chair to kill the chicken. You know, it’s not like you’re ordering off a menu. Extremely fresh. And you just got off a plane, and you’re like, okay, wow. And I remember we were saving pork, for Christmas, and you know, at Christmas everybody sees their family and everybody starts drinking…I remember we were saving one, just this one bowl of pork, to cook for Christmas, but a couple of my cousins got drunk two days before, and they cooked it that night. At like, three o’clock in the morning, and they ate it. And my mom was so pissed off the next morning. But then their whole alibi was, oh, it was pulutan, like, what else are we supposed to do? Like, we needed to drink and eat, so, we’re all family, you know? What’s yours is mine? And she was obviously upset by it, but then it got a pass for some reason. So that’s my only experience with pulutan, is like it was kind of, sacred, you know, when you’re drinking it’s what you have there to eat. It overrides everybody’s authority, I don’t know.
32:00 Jaisa and connecting through food
JS: So my name’s Jaisa, I’m an author and therapist. I’m born and raised in Toronto, and I didn’t have any cousins growing up, they didn’t immigrate until I was already in my twenties. So I actually never learned of the word, or the concept of pulutan, until like a couple of years ago. I’m turning 40 this year. And that’s one of the reasons I’m inspired to learn more about Filipino food, and just connect with other Filipinos, is just because I only learned last year, how food can be the most direct way to connect with the Philippines. And I was like, oh, right. Being born and raised in Toronto, Queen and Bathurst, I didn’t even know if a fruit or a vegetable grew on a bush or a tree. Like I had never been to a farm until I was in my twenties. And so this is kind of like, for me, a way of still learning about myself, and this like disconnect from this sense of who I really am. So coming here today, and just being with you guys is just, really helping heal this part of me that’s like, you know, I do feel like my soul chose to be Filipino in this lifetime. Why? And I was really surprised today with what we ate, that it can be really healthy and different! Because normally, so when I just discovered pulutan in the last couple of years, it’s always deep fried. Tonight was kinda like, inspiring, that okay, I could feel quite in line with my diet, whatever it may be, and desire to eat healthier while still having pulutan, over wine.
33:40 Justine's fam jams
JY: I’m Justine, and I am the founder and editor of a new magazine called “Living Hyphen”, which is all about exploring the experiences of people who are living in between different cultures, within the diaspora here in Canada. So that’s what I do, and I’m really relieved actually that Jaisa, you mentioned you hadn’t come across the term pulutan, because when you were first talking about the idea for this podcast, I was like, I don’t know if I have anything to contribute really…I was born in the Philippines, and I lived there for four years, but I’ve lived most of my life here in Canada. And honestly, I’ve learned a lot about Filipino food, mostly from you Nastasha, so that’s within the last year. It’s all very new to me, but as we’re having this discussion, I’m realizing that pulutan has always been a part of my life, I just didn’t know the word for it necessarily. But you know, [we had] so many Filipino fam jams growing up, and you know, there’s always karaoke or always drinking, and there’s always, always food around. And you know, you’ll have dinner, and then you’ll have drinks, and then the magic mic will come out and all the titas will get on and start singing. And then it’s like, round two of eating, and round three, and I guess I just didn’t figure that as pulutan, specifically, but it totally is. And now, it’s cool that I have the language for it, or that I have a word for it, which is really really special.
35:20 University parties in Toronto
JY: I’m listening to everyone talk and it is so different from so many of my experiences growing up, and you know, partying here in Toronto. I went to U of T (the University of Toronto), and went to a bunch of university parties. Now that I think about it, drinking and food for a lot of the parties that I went to, were always very separate. Like in university parties, like I feel like they would’ve had food there, but it would’ve been either chips or like, some cheese or something like that. But it was never part of the party. It was a ‘side’ thing that was there. And then even outside of university, you know, when you go clubbing like in the Entertainment District, it’s all just at the bar. You’re just dancing, and you’re drinking. And then, after, you would go to Smoke’s Poutinerie or something. And that’s the food portion. It was never together, it was always very distinct from each other. Which, yeah, is so different from a lot of Filipino family parties that I grew up going to. It’s funny, I just never thought about it in that way.
36:25 Jennilee's pet peeve
JA: Can I tell you a pet peeve of mine? It’s when people have parties, and there’s alcohol, and all they have is like that little plate of vegetables. Like celery, and carrots, and the hummus. And you’re like, no Filipino house would ever only serve that. There’s no way. You would leave, right? Or just a fruit platter, with all the grapes are off the vine at that point. There’s a couple of really gross pieces of pineapple.
37:00 Celebratory vs solitary drinking
NA: And then, well, we started to get a little tipsy, and we ended up talking about celebratory versus solitary drinking. I mean that in like, how the experience itself is different. Whether you’re ‘celebratory’ drinking for, example, like a birthday or some kind of special occasion…versus ‘solitary’ drinking, where you’re having a quiet drink at the bar, maybe reading a book on a good night or maybe mulling over your life choices on another night. I also talked about how, like, one of the first things I kind of learned to shed my misconceptions of, was this idea of going to a bar and spilling your problems to a bartender. Maybe it’s because that’s all I saw on American TV and movies growing up, but the initial reaction I had - here, once I got to Canada - was thinking, “doesn’t this person have anyone else to talk to?”. You end up spilling all your secrets to this stranger at the bar. That kinda stuff was set aside and given a little more room for interpretation. And it’s really just part of the process, of understanding the situation and community you live in now. Justine basically says what’s on my mind pretty clearly.
38:45 Justine on a certain kind of western freedom
JY: I thought of two things while you were talking about that. And I think a lot of it is rooted also in the different between east and west, in eastern and western cultures. In how, I don’t know, in the east it’s very much, like ‘it takes a village’, you know. There’s so much more emphasis on community and family and creating those really embedded - sometimes too embedded - support systems, you know. Whereas in the west, it’s like there’s just so much focus and emphasis and prioritizing around individualism. And dealing with your problems on your own, and having that kind of independence, that I think lends itself to that kind of, you know, going to the bar and speaking to the bartender. And I don’t know if I prefer any one way over the other, but I guess it’s because I grew up here, that I can see how that can also be very liberating, in a sense. And I’ve travelled a lot and it’s similar I think, in that when I’m travelling, I’m so much more open, and I’m so much more…all the inhibitions go away, and you go to a bar, and you’re just much more open to talking to anyone. And it kind of helps to not know the person, and to be able to just lay your shit, you know, without having to think of who’s gonna know? Or who will this be relayed to? Like, the ‘too embedded-ness’ of Filipino culture.
40:20 Why Nastasha loves bars
NA: Exactly. That’s why I said, one of the reasons why I love living in Toronto is because I love going to a random bar…nobody knows anything about me, and I can just be like…
JA: No chismis around?
NA: Nope. I can just be who I want to be, and just enjoy.
WRAP-UP
My warmest thanks to Marvin Gapultos for the interview on his book, “Pulutan: Filipino Bar Bites, Appetizers and Street Eats.” Last year was a pretty monumental one for Filipino cookbooks published in the US, and Pulutan is definitely one you’re gonna want to cook from.
Super huge thanks as well to Jennilee Austria, Eric Tigley, Jaisa Sulit and Justine Abigail Yu for coming over to talk about pulutan. I promise it won’t be the last! Most of us met through Pluma, a collective of Filipino writers, poets and artists in Toronto. Please take a minute to learn about their work and visit the links in the show notes.
Our theme music is by David Szeztay, segment music is by Eric and Magill, Podington Bear, Blue Dot Sessions, and Makaih Beats. Visit FMA.org to listen to their tracks and more. Visit exploringfilipinokitchens.com for past episodes, and a couple new tweaks to the website. Before the next episode airs, let me know what you think of this one!
Maraming salamat, and thank you for listening.