Find the transcript of my interview with Regina Tolentino Newport below.
INTRO
Welcome to Exploring Filipino Kitchens. I’m your host, Nastasha Alli.
This episode, we’re going nuts - you know it’s coming - for the coconut. I am so excited. You know, I kinda forgot how much fun it is to do a spotlight on certain ingredients, and while this episode isn’t comprehensive in any way…if you wanna learn about coconuts and how they’re prepared in the Philippines, Regee Newport is basically the best person to ask.
01:40 Why I loved the book
I first learned about Regee and her book, called “Coconut Kitchen: Appetizers and Main Dishes”, through the Culinary Historians of the Philippines, which I’ve actually been following online for a couple of years now. When I went back to Manila, I went to a bookstore that I knew specifically stocked the book, because it was just really interesting to me, to see that there’s this person based in the east coast of the US, writing about coconut recipes in the Philippines. And I mean, lots of other cookbooks feature coconuts, for sure, but this was more like the kind of cookbook you would pick up at like a Chapters Indigo bookstore, that’s like a big chain here in Canada. It looked appealing, the titles of the recipes all sounded like things I wanted to make, and the instructions - and the way the recipes were structured - as I was browsing through the book, seemed very approachable. And that to me, is a good hallmark of a cookbook that I’m actually gonna use.
And so I was excited to bring it back with me, here to Toronto. And honestly, all the dishes I’ve made from it have been amazing. They turn out they way I picture them to. They’re colourful, there’s like, lots of different textures in the dishes, and they’re packed with all this flavour, which, I mean, I know coconuts are flavourful, I know they’re got a lot of depth to them. But when you combine them with other ingredients and spices…you can get a really deep and complex mixture from it. Anyway, so I tried using canned coconut milk, and frozen coconut strips to make some of the recipes, and they turned out pretty well. So right now, I’m just imagining - if I actually had a kitchen in the Philippines, where I could easily get like mature, dried coconuts, with that really nice kind of coconut meat…the kind you can freshly grate, from something called a ‘kabayo’, or horse. It’s that little bench, with the tool scraper thing at the end. I can just picture myself spending hours on this thing, scraping away a whole bunch of coconuts. And like, squeezing them, feeling that thick coconut cream just glide through my fingers as I press into it. Probably it’s gonna be in like, this plastic tub, maybe a metal one. And you know, you’d use the first press of that cream for a really nice stew, and then use the second press as coconut milk - like, really good coconut milk, we’re not talking canned stuff here. And a third, because nothing ever goes to waste.
So you can imagine, I’m reading this book, and thinking about how i can bring a sense of that into my kitchen, into my condo. It’s exciting. So I’m equally excited to share this episode with you all. We’re gonna learn all about what the Coconut Kitchen is with Regee Tolentino Newport, and we’re gonna learn about her incredible culinary journey. Going back to school, rediscovering the value of foods that grow in the Philippines, and what led her to founding the Culinary Historians of the Philippines, which is such an amazing organization in itself. And of course, we’re gonna talk about the book. If you find a copy of “Coconut Kitchen: Appetizers and Main Dishes”, I highly recommend you buy it!
Let’s get to it.
INTERVIEW
05:00 About Regee
RN: I am Regina Tolentino Newport, but friends call me Regee. First off, I am a lola to two really adorable grandchildren. And secondly, I’m a late blooming cookbook author and culinary student. I grew up in the Philippines and I moved to the US when I was 29. After I retired from the IMF (International Monetary Fund) in 2003, I decided to go to culinary school, at the age of 55. There’s a whole story to that.
NA: I'll bet! When we came to Canada, I worked in different hotels for a long time. I really like that work, and I’m still sort of in the hospitality and travel industry now, at my day job. But I also really wanted to learn how to write, because like I mentioned in my first email, the appreciation for the depth and the diversity of Filipino cuisine…I think really, as with a lot of people, it kind of hits you, when you start missing it, and you’re out of the country.
RN: Well, times have really changed, you know. I’m really very happy and proud that Philippine cuisine is now in the forefront, you know. And a lot of people are putting a spotlight on it now, globally. You know, it was very different just ten years ago. I mean, even I have four sisters, and three brothers, and all the girls are good cooks, including my mom, her mom, and her mom’s mom. Everybody is a good cook. So it’s just taken for granted, and you never really focus, you know. And this is what I realized, you know, when I went to culinary school. People were asking me, why are you going to culinary school? Because I love to cook, and I really did not think that way before. You just cooked because, well, because you cooked! And you get compliments here and there, but you never really focus on [the fact] that you can really cook up a storm, and make yourself proud. It never occurred to me. Only now.
NA: As you say in the book, it’s never too late, and there’s always a lot of room to learn.
07:50 Going to culinary school at 55
RN: No, no…it’s never too late. So it was a year and a half Cordon Bleu diploma course. And it very funny, you know, because my classes, at 55, literally all my classmates were younger than my kids. So I was the mommy of the class. They called me ‘mom’.
Now I have to make yabang, brag a little bit, because my cookbook won two awards - one international, and one national. My cookbook is the “Coconut Kitchen”, and I’m gonna tell the story of why I decided to write a cookbook about coconuts. The Coconut Kitchen was published by Anvil, in the Philippines, in late 2017. I really got the surprise of my life when I was informed that I had been nominated as one of the three finalists in its category, for the 2018 annual Gourmand World Cookbook Award. I nearly fainted when I saw it, I thought it was a prank, you know, when I got the email. Anyway that’s the international award. The other one is a local one, again, one of the three finalists for the 37th National Book Awards of the Philippines. The category was ‘Best Book - Food’.
09:45 On becoming an author
RN: So can you imagine, this tiny little book, you know, which I laboured for more than two years on, all of a sudden won these two awards. And my mother, my own mother, when she heard it, she was just astounded. Like we all were. Well, my husband, who’s my number one fan, was the one who said, “Who was not surprised? See?” Anyway, so I’m very proud of that.
So I divide my time between Washington, DC, and Manila. And while I was working on the book for the past, more than two years really, I made so many trips to Manila. And there was an agreement with Anvil for me to do a second book, but I haven’t really started focusing on that. Because this first book, at their insistence, includes recipes for appetizers and main dishes. Because, they said, coconut desserts deserve their own book. So they didn’t want me to include desserts in this first book. So I said, okay. Now, the second book is supposed to be all coconut desserts. But, you know, I have all the recipes collected, and I just need a kick in the behind to start working on it. So that will be another, I don’t know, another maybe two years of my life down the line.
NA: Okay, so I gotta pause here for a minute and say that every time I listen to this part, when Reggie shares her plans for a second book about how coconuts are cooked in the Philippines, for desserts especially…and she lets us glimpse a little bit into the amount of work this entails - it makes me feel all kinds of things. Like, I can only imagine how daunting it might be to see all these amazing, delicious recipes, like laid out on a table, printed on paper, written out on cards. And knowing that there’s so much in there you just wanna be able to capture and share with everyone. But, also thinking that, wow, it’s gonna take a long time to test and evaluate and develop all these amazing recipes, which are treasures in themselves, but translated for a home kitchen. And then, obviously, to write an entire book about it. And I don’t know, it just excites me, because I love the idea of developing recipes for people to actually replicate and cook from.
Anyway, at the same time, like from the perspective of a Filipino person living in Canada, who just like yearns for this stuff. This pretty simply made, but still incredibly better than anything you can find in a grocery store. This kind of dessert, like the homemade stuff, I can’t help but think, what can I do to show that I support the creation and publication of these kinds of resources. Because, we need them. Like, if I asked any Filipino chef in the diaspora - even just starting with that set - whether they would like to include a cookbook of coconut desserts in their collection, I bet you 100% would say yes.
And I think of this stuff because, imagine you're at a dinner party, or maybe a potluck at work. If you're listening to this, there's a pretty high chance you live somewhere where at least one other person around you has never had a coconut dessert from the Philippines. Maybe you haven't either. And maybe on your picnic spread, you see a Korean rice cake, or a sweet Indian gulab jamun on the table. Would it be great to see some some biko - that sticky rice cake, that’s just proudly Filipino, topped with latik, and latik is like this coconut cream that’s reduced to this beautiful caramelly, syrupy consistency. It’s made with coconut milk and sugar and it’s thing that you just drizzle on top of rice cakes, and basically everything else you put in front of me, if we’re being honest. I can just taste it now. I’m aspirational, but admittedly, this is the kind of thing I aspire to.
15:20 How Culinary Historians of the Philippines (CHOP) began
RN: I forgot to mention about CHOP, the Culinary Historians of the Philippines. I founded an organization called Culinary Historians of the Philippines, or CHOP for short. And it is a sister organization of the Culinary Historians of Washington DC. I founded this group in 2011, can you believe? It took almost three years to really get going, for the membership to expand. And now, we’re running close to about a hundred members. It’s a wonderful organization. Everyone is so friendly, you know, it’s like a family.
NA: I can almost imagine being in a room and in a meeting for that. I wondered if, for listeners, you could give us a quick summary of what the objectives of CHOP are?
RN: Oh yeah, of course. Well, first and foremost, it’s called “Culinary Historians of the Philippines”, but we do not claim to be historians in the scholarly sense of the word. We are students of culinary history, about the Philippines. And our principal objective is to study, help preserve, and promote [the] heritage cuisines of the Philippines.
There’s a lack of knowledge among, I’m not talking about people in the culinary world, but among regular folk, ordinary people, about our heritage cuisines. So we want to play a part, a role, in spreading that information and help educate ordinary Filipinos about our own cuisine. And we have been sponsoring a lot of events, food tours to different parts of the Philippines, seminars and lectures.
NA: The thing that I personally find very interesting, and I guess, a little bit of a calling for those who participate in CHOP and support it, is really that desire to spread awareness of the regional cuisines for example, and the deep history that it has played. Because for myself, growing up in Manila, and for a lot of Filipinos who grow up in the city…I guess, like in North America, it’s talked about a little more that there’s this disconnect between, you know, what people eat on a regular basis. And now that people are starting to be aware about where their ingredients or where their food comes from…even when I went to culinary and hospitality school in Manila, I don’t remember there being a course that really focused on regional cuisines of the Philippines. And after I started reading about it…
RN: Which, yeah, is a big mistake. Because, you know, when I went to culinary school here, we had courses on regional cuisines in the whole of the US. And this is something that is lacking. I have yet to sort of research what the curriculum is at the bigger culinary schools in the Philippines, and I really don’t know if they have such courses to educate culinary students there, about our own regional cuisines. I’m not sure.
19:30 A solutions-based approach to storytelling
NA: Okay, let’s pause again for a minute here. I feel this is a good time to like talk about something else I've been obsessed with recently. Something called "solutions journalism". So I've been reading all these stories from solutionsjournalism.org, which I totally recommend you visit. Basically, what solutions journalism is about, is the idea of bringing the ‘good news’ part of a story forward. Like right up in the lede. But it’s not just the fact that it’s a good news story. Really good pieces are able to highlight what is working in a particular situation, and really investigate further, like, the context of why this particular solution is working.
So what these stories and photo essays have in common, is that at their core, it has this approach to storytelling that focuses on solutions - the "good news" part of the story, we’ll say - versus the numbers and results that tell us a different story. So for example, that means that instead of story being about how much coral reefs have been damaged, and in places even wiped out in the Philippines - the story could be about, organizations, or even individuals, who are actually doing something to address that situation. Backed up with numbers and data and first person interviews, to show that this person’s approach to addressing that problem, their solution, is something worth noticing. It’s newsworthy in itself.
Anyway I bring this up because, here's my theory. It's not a secret that people who go to culinary school in the Philippines have immense talent. But the reality is, like right now, and I'd probably say for maybe a couple of decades now, like since the 70s - some of our best cooks and chefs have just gone abroad, to pursue their dreams of living in someplace like New York City, or London, or Copenhagen. And that’s great, and I totally respect that, but I can’t help but think. I’m certain a lot of them also do it simply because that’s where the work is. No one really likes the idea of having to leave your family behind, in order to have a career. And I mean, work in the culinary industry is just one of the many things that the Philippines has exported, talent-wise, out of the country. I can’t help but think that, what if we could draw people to different regional centres, throughout the Philippines, because of its food?
I mean, culinary tourism in itself has always been a thing. Ask any Filipino and I’m sure they’ll tell you [that] they went somewhere once, at the very least, to eat a local specialty. What can we do to make it something that will keep the talent in? Something that will convince young people to stay and learn the traditions of their ancestors, for preserving these foodways? And being able to present that to people who will travel for food? Because there’s a growing number of that too, and I don’t know. If this tourism revenue, towards the development of those kinds of programs, could just like keep a lot more people…that’s like a win-win situation. And I’m really excited about this, because working in the travel industry, I see first-hand reports and experience, and myself see the effects of food tourism to local economies, also working as a tour guide here in Toronto. So it’s just something that I care about because, what if we could do that? What if we could set up coconut kitchens all throughout the country, and help preserve those foodways? I guess the thing that gets to me is, if that happened…what would Filipino food culture look like, twenty years from now? And how often can I visit? Wouldn’t you want to read a good news story about that? These are the kinds of solutions that I know are happening on the ground, and just need a little more exposure.
RN: Yeah. And you know something? I try to be up to date on our archives of all our events, because eventually, I have started making a list of all the dishes, those that count, of all the dishes that we tasted and we learned about, and we’re gonna come out with a cookbook. That’s my dream right now, is to do a cookbook for CHOP, on all our events, actually from the past five years. So that is a project for the hopefully near future. But that’s something we want to do.
NA: And hopefully, that’s something that we, collectively, people across the diaspora, would be able to support.
RN: That’s the thing. We need to find a way to make it international. So well, down the line, we’ll see. Just cross fingers that we can do that, because it would be good to be able to distribute the book to the diaspora, as you say. Very important.
26:00 Foods we take for granted
NA: It’s a good segue into the content of Coconut Kitchen. Because that’s one of the things that I guess I initially picked up on. And when I was showing my friends the book, who were not Filipino, they were reading the first couple of chapters, like the introduction, and the part where you describe the “tree of life”, and really kind of just list all the products from coconut trees. I guess for me, because, having grown up in the Philippines, I’m used to all this, I know the different food products you can derive from coconuts. I’m aware of the “tree of life” and how can really make use of everything from the tree. But what was interesting to me was like, the reactions that my non-Filipino friends had to the book. Because here, coconut water, for example, is so common now in a lot of supermarkets. And I have a personal thing about how I wish it would be a product from the Philippines one day, but that’s a whole other story. But they were just very surprised by all of the food products. And thankfully, there are more and more restaurants, even here in Toronto, that non-Filipino people get to visit. But they were just like, oh, I wish I knew that much about coconuts, like the magical fruit, there’s so much you can get from it. And I guess as a Filipino person, I was just like, I guess that’s something that we take for granted. That there really is so much.
RN: Exactly. Yeah. And really, you know, in my sort of journey to this point…I was so embarrassed to admit that I did not know anything about the coconut. You know. When I found this book by mistake, the book by Dr. Dayrit, you know, I couldn’t believe how much I did not know. And I started questioning myself, like how come I didn’t know any of this, you know? It’s because it’s part of your everyday life, and you take it for granted.
28:35 "The coconut figures a lot in our cuisine”
RN: My research is about three years old, but we’re at the top three or four coconut-producing countries in the world, together with Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka. The coconut figures a lot in our cuisine. And you know, just imagine a map of the Philippines. There’s not really much coconut life in the northern part, but starting from Bicolandia all the way down to Mindanao, to the bottom of Mindanao, there are plenty of coconut dishes. I did not know this, at the time.
NA: Yet further proof that it’s never too late to learn.
29:30 Regee's turning point
RN: First of all, after retirement, I started to try to think of, what am I going to do with my life? You know, I’m 55, and I need to do something to keep me busy and happy. I even considered going into the import-export business, you know, but that didn’t pan out. On one of my visits to Manila, a friend of mine treated me to a cooking demo, by Reggie Aspiras. She was one of the few, then, who was popular. And when she told me about it, at first, I must have sounded really reluctant. And she said, sis, you can’t say no because it’s expensive, and I already paid for it. So, okay, we went. And this was at the end of my search for trying to find what I was going to do in my retirement. So we got to this state of the art demo kitchen, in Ortigas. I sat there and I tell you, my dear, the room was packed. There must have been about 40 attendees. And all the dishes that she cooked, I already how to cook. So I just sat there, watching how she organized the whole thing. And something clicked in me. I said to myself, this is what I want to do. And I was leaving to come home to the US in a couple of days.
As soon as I got back home, in two weeks, I was in culinary school. That’s how I got into culinary school. And I don’t regret it. I don’t know about your experience, but I had the time of my life. It killed me physically, because of the high level of energy and stamina you need, you know. But I was in heaven. And I would do it again in a heartbeat. I loved it.
31:15 Finding Dr. Dayrit
RN: So after that, not being able to decide what I wanted to do, I went back to the Philippines. And this is when I found Dr. Dayrit’s book.
NA: And this book by Conrado Dayrit - it’s called “The Truth About Coconut Oil” - was the next thing that opened up a whole new world for Regee.
RN: Do you remember how I came to learn about the coconut, when I found that book by Dr. Dayrit at a National Bookstore? I was just browsing, and I bought the book, and I read it from cover to cover. I showed it to a couple who were really good friends of mine, and I asked them, do you know anything about coconuts?
32:05 A visit to the coconut house
RN: And my friend, the husband, starting laughing. Before I knew it, they were driving me to this “coconut house”, a restaurant in Quezon City, owned and operated by a dear friend of theirs. So we went there for lunch, and I was just astounded. All the dishes had one or more components of the coconut. And they were all delicious. And so, luckily the owner was there. We were happily sampling, I was happily sampling a lot of the dishes. So I just asked, would your restaurant have a cookbook that I can buy? Because I want to cook these things at home, you know. And he looked at me and said, Regee, you know, fate brought you here. Would you do a cookbook for the restaurant? Oh my god, I nearly fainted. Anyway, so that was the beginning.
33:15 First setback
RN: Unfortunately, after a couple of years, or a little bit more, of recipe testing - on my own you know, I did this on my own - most of it, his restaurant’s recipes, and some I culled from research. The project fell through, because of financing problems. So that was a low point. And I thought that was the end of it. So I had all of this, more than two years of labour, hard work, and you know, testing recipes - and nothing to show for it. Anyway. When god has a plan, he has a plan. And you know, no matter what you do, the plan is gonna get accomplished.
I was at a cooking demo at the Maya Kitchen, and a friend of mine, a food writer, told me, “Regee, Gwen and Carina are here”, the marketing director and managing director of Anvil Publishing. “I want you to meet them.” So she dragged me over and introduced me to these two very nice people, in the world, you know, and she mentioned to them shamelessly, oh you know, she’s finished all the work, and she was going to publish a coconut cookbook but it fell through. And wouldn’t you know it, these two were very strong proponents of the health benefits of coconuts. I still remember, their eyes lit up and [they said] “Let’s do it!” So you see, it fell on my lap. And it took another year before the book was published. But you know, I’m just so grateful.
35:00 Finding our path
NA: One thing that I really like being able to highlight, and really feature, and something that I’ve kind of fallen in love with, in the course of doing these interviews, is that at the end of the day, even if we are talking about food, a lot of this is very much a ‘people’ story. It’s a story about how we sort of find our path. All of it is very personal, and even with things like publishing books, or if you’re an entrepreneur, like, getting that one deal that you know is going to bring your business up to the next level…
RN: Exactly. Yeah. And I tell you, my forming the CHOP group really was the beginning. It opened many doors for me. And this was the reason I went to culinary school, you see. Because I told my husband, if I want to do this, I need to have ‘street cred’. I cannot just go into the Philippines and try to seek out people in the culinary world and introduce myself. That’s not how it’s going to happen, you know. I need street cred, and I need to do a project that people can respect. That would be my way into the culinary world.
36:30 Building something you love
RN: And I tell you, Nastasha, I don’t know how many people you have met in the Philippines, in the culinary world - you have talked to a lot of the ‘biggies’, you know - but I was very happily surprised that almost all of the people I have met and known, and [that] have become good friends to me - they’re all nice people. I mean, I sort of went into this with trepidation. I didn’t know anybody in the culinary world. But through CHOP and my book, it all happened. Now, I have a big circle of friends, and I’m just very very happy, you know, in this second phase of my life. And you know, I just turned 70, and we really don’t know how long we are going to be in this world [for], but I have to tell you, ever since I went into this culinary journey, I have been the happiest person on earth.
38:00 "Cooking is so fulfilling”
RN: It’s so fulfilling. I mean, I’m not talking about the awards, or all these big things. Cooking something for people you love, you know, is so fulfilling. And it lifts me. Even though I die at the end of it, physically, it makes me so happy just being able to cook for my family, when my children visit. When I go visit them. Or when I’m in the Philippines, and here, when we have people over, you know, for meals. It is I think the most fulfilling effort that you can do. Cooking for the people you love.
NA: One of the things that I especially love about your cookbook is that there’s a good mix of very ‘everyday’ sort of dishes that you can do. As well as things like the recipe Beth Romualdez shares, the guinataang kurakding at kayos, which is mushrooms with coconut milk and black-eyed peas, which is a very regional thing…
39:20 Recipes from contributors
RN: Yes, these are just a few of the very nice people I have become really good friends with. And you know, I ask them, would you contribute a recipe or two to my book? Of course, no problem! So that’s how I wanted to, sort of get from them, these recipes that they love to cook. These dishes they love.
NA: For coconuts especially, like the way that Filipinos use coconuts in their cooking, is I guess, for lack of a better word, really not that complicated. There’s the three different, I guess, presses of the coconut that you can use. So I just wondered if you could give an overview of some of your favourite ways of preparing coconuts?
40:10 The magic of burnt coconut cream
RN: Well, most of the ways that coconuts are used are quite simple, as you say. But there are also very curious and interesting ways. Like have you heard of burning the grated coconut, before squeezing the milk?
NA: So Regee explains that this particular method is best enjoyed in a dish called “kulawo”. Kulawo is made of grilled eggplants, with their charred, toasty skin peeled right off, swimming in like this pool of thick, gingery burnt coconut sauce that just tastes so much better than the sum of its parts. To make it, she says…
RN: What they do, they grate the fresh coconut, unsqueezed. And then they put live coals into the grated coconut, and sort of “burn” the grated coconut. After that, they squeeze the milk, which has a smoky taste. That’s what they use for cooking, instead of just regular coconut milk. So it’s very interesting. And I never knew anything about that, until CHOP went on a tour to Casa San Pablo, [where] we had a food tour. We also had another food tour to Villa Escudero, and they also had a demo on the burnt coconut technique. Interesting. I never knew that. For me, it was just coconut milk. That’s it.
41:50 Coconuts in regional cuisines
RN: The coconut is very versatile. It can be used for savoury dishes, as well as sweet dishes, and desserts. And you know how it is with our kakanin (rice cakes) in the Philippines. Everything is with coconut. And the savoury ones, as I told you earlier, starting from Bicol all the way down to the bottom of Mindanao…I haven’t even scratched the surface. So many coconut dishes. You know, CHOP, [back] in January, we had a cooking demo by a datu who was also a chef. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Shariff Pendatun? He cooked Bangsamoro muslim dishes, and all of them were coconut based. And I tell you, we were in heaven. It was so good.
NA: …almost, like, representative, or a carrier of the cuisine. Because like yourself, people who kind of, really understand and believe that there’s so much more to this ingredient, than a lot of people sort of recognize and see. I’m such a big fan of the idea of showing and leading by example…so even if it’s something, like, a cooking demo, that’s able to sort of encourage people in the audience to sort of think about this dish, or this food, a little bit differently…I’m just amazed, because it has so much power, and possibility, almost.
RN: I know, yeah. And I love doing cooking demos. I did it at the beginning, after I finished culinary school. But I didn’t want to make a job of it. I did it for friends, I would invite them, you know, to my home. Going to culinary school really changed my life. And I have to say, I was a bit cocky about being such a good cook, [thinking] that I don’t need to do that, to learn that. But boy, it was humbling. There was so much I did not know when I went to culinary school, and I was is happy for that.
44:20 3 essential lessons
RN: For me, there were three essential principles, methods, techniques that I consider as the most important for any cook to know, and to master. The first is food sanitation. You know, a lot of people don’t pay attention to using the same chopping board for raw meat and vegetables. And that gets used, you know, and they just wipe it off. I was guilty of that, in the past. So that for me is prime, it’s at the top. And the second one is mise en place. It makes a big difference when you prepare everything before you turn the oven or the fire on. You have to have everything ready, that’s very important. For me, it’s the only way I would cook. Everything has to be next to me, and ready to go into the pan, before I start cooking. The third one is the technique of ‘blanch and shock’. Because specially if you’re handling beautiful vegetables, the one mistake a lot of people make - which I used to make myself - is to overcook the vegetables. And this blanch and shocking, I use it now whenever I cook vegetables.
45:55 Regee's pinakbet
RN: Even my pinakbet, you know. When I cook pinakbet, the sitaw, the okra, the ampalaya, even the shrimp - they’re blanched, half-cooked. And then, when we’re almost ready to eat, I start sautéing the garlic and onions, and put the shrimp head juice, and patis. And at the end, when you’re almost ready to eat, you just dump all the vegetables in, give it a stir until it’s heated through, and voila. You have radiant, green vegetables staring at you. And wonderfully cooked to perfection. For me, that’s very important. I do this even when I do kare-kare, or even sinigang. I blanch and shock my vegetables.
NA: Next, I wanted to know - what were some of Regee’s favourite recipes from the Coconut Kitchen cookbook?
47:05 Chicken coconut soup & roasted shrimp with coconut sauce
RN: There are some recipes that I go back to, to cook, specially when I have company. Because they’re tried and tested recipes, and they always come out really well. For the very easy ones, the quick and easy Coconut Chicken Soup - these are so easy, but they’re so good. For appetizers, I always, always do the dish on the cover - the Roasted Shrimp with Coconut Sauce. That’s always a “wow” dish. When I bring that out to my guests, they all say, wow. So I always do that. It’s a keeper, as I would say.
47:50 Shrimp summer rolls and coconut meatballs
RN: Now for the medium [difficulty] recipes…I’d say the Shrimp Summer Rolls. I serve this when I have friends over who are not Filipino. I would show them how I wrap it. I try to include heart of palm in there, with turnips, carrots, cilantro, and the shrimp, and I do a shortcut and buy the Thai sauce to save myself from making it from scratch. I just buy a jar of that, or a bottle, and it’s so good. So these Shrimp Summer Rolls are a winner. Even if it’s not summer, I make them. Oh, and my sweet and sour sauce. You know it’s very funny, my mom is an excellent cook. When my book came out, I told her, my sweet and sour sauce recipe is foolproof. She had that look in her eye, like, hmm, really? Better than mine, you know? So I said, why don’t you give it a try? Just follow the recipe to the letter, and let me see what you think. Which she did. She wrote the recipe on a 4 by 8 [inch] index card, and it’s now on the fridge.
49:00 Ubod-stuffed squid (with heart of palm and coconut)
RN: There’s one labour-intensive recipe that I also make a lot. It’s the squid with ubod stuffing. It’s labour-intensive, but oh my god. When I serve that, I sort of put the squid whole, and then I slice it in front of everybody, then they see the filing, and then I put the coconut sauce. Oh my god. I would like to cook some now, it’s making me hungry. So that’s my favourite, the ubod-stuffed squid.
NA: I’m looking at the picture of it right now, and I have not tried that, but I definitely would like to, because that’s an afternoon, when you have a weekend to cook [kinda thing].
RN: One tip that could help with the prep, you know, when you stuff the squid…I used to just use my finger and a teaspoon, you know, and it’s a hell of a job. It’s really time-consuming. The other day, when I made the dish, all of a sudden, it came to me. I put the mixture in a piping bag and I tell you, I went through those squid in a jiffy. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. I wish I could include it in the recipe, you know, as a tip. Because it really makes all the difference in time management.
NA: Personally, what I really love about cooking too, is that it’s always going to be a process of discovery, and a process of improving. And just like, sometimes, if you just want to change the way you do things, or how long you cook it, there’s always room to kind of change things, a little bit. Like for me, and I don’t know how many people have had a similar experience…like, there’s no shame in going away from the way a Filipino dish is traditionally prepared. Obviously you have to make those sorts of adjustments, if you’re not in the country. But then it doesn’t mean that just because you change the ingredient, or you change the substitution, that the ‘soul’ of the dish is kind of lost.
51:15 "For me, dishes evolve"
RN: No, no. I mean, for me, dishes evolve. If that’s the way that it’s made back home, and you’re in a different place, you need to adapt. But even with that, you know, it’s okay to substitute things, for some of the ingredients. There should not be any guilt in it. I mean, a dish becomes yours when you cook it.
NA: And on the topic of adjusting to your tastes, and like, what’s available around you, Regee and I talk about vinegar - and what to expect when you find really good coconut vinegar.
RN: When I make my sawsawan with vinegar, like for instance, for my lumpia, sometimes I would scoop the vinegar with a teaspoon and put it straight into my mouth. I love it. And when I buy singkamas, or turnips - when I make the Shrimp Summer Rolls, of course I don’t use the whole turnip…so whatever is left, I peel and chop, and I have this vinegar, a salted vinegar, to use as a dip. And I almost drink the vinegar. Anyway, I digress.
52:50 Simplicity in Filipino snacking
NA: It’s not a digression! I was actually gonna add that that’s one of the things that I personally have found fascinating about Filipino food products. Like the example you just shared with us. It can just start from that, but even that in itself is almost like a microcosm of what makes Filipino cuisine so distinct, and so unique. Because there’s that balance between the strong acidity of the vinegar. And if it’s a good quality coconut vinegar, for example, you can tell that it’s had time to ferment and age. And then, the simplicity of a sliced turnip. And it’s not that it’s kind of, putting it [that way]…if you were a US food writer, for example, you would go, oh this is a great revelation! But really, this is just a regular snack, that a lot of people eat.
RN: You know that sawsawan is a very important part of our heritage cuisine. You can custom tailor [what you eat]. If you have four people eating, four Filipinos eating - they can custom tailor their meal by the sawsawan they choose. You can have soy sauce, suka, patis, bagoong. Or you know, all these [kinds of] atchara. It’s just part and parcel of our cuisine - sawsawan, you know, condiments.
NA: And because really, what most of us are gonna be cooking with, is a can of coconut milk or coconut cream, I wanted to hear Regee’s thoughts on how to properly cook with it.
54:30 Coconut cooking tips
NA: For Filipinos who live outside of the country, if their sort of, main access to coconut is canned coconut milk, or coconut cream - I hope that that doesn’t deter them from trying to cook a lot more with coconuts. Would you say that one of the keys to not letting the coconut milk or cream curdle, is just to do it low and slow, in terms of like, heat?
RN: Yeah. Slow, with gentle stirring. And not leaving it with the fire on for a long time. What you do is you heat it up until it starts to bubble a little bit and simmer. And then you turn it off and just keep stirring. And then when you’re ready to serve, do that again, just a gentle simmer. Then you serve it right away. Otherwise if you keep reheating it, it’s gonna curdle. You don’t hard boil coconut milk. I think I mention in the headnotes for some of the recipes, that you can use tinned or canned coconut milk, because I do here, in the US.
I have my favourite brand of canned coconut milk, it’s Chao Koh. I also get the Trader Joe’s, but you have to be careful with the Trader Joe’s brand. They have the coconut cream, which is thicker, and the coconut milk, which is more liquid. And there’s a big difference, because you know once, I made guinataan, the dessert…and in my hurry, I pulled out the Trader Joe’s can and [only then] realized it was the cream. But I already opened it, and so I said oh, what the heck. Big mistake. It should be the liquid kind. There are uses for the thick, almost solid cream, but not very many uses if you’re using it for cooking savoury dishes.
NA: Finally, I ask Regee - what does she hope readers can take away from the Coconut Kitchen?
56:45 Takeways from Coconut Kitchen
RN: Well, the very first thing would be, I would love it if more people could be educated about the coconut, specially among Filipinos. If we can all be educated about the coconut and its importance in our history, culture and economy. The second one is the knowledge and the belief in the science and the evidence about the health benefits of eating coconuts. And I would like people to master how to cook with coconut milk, and make it a staple in their kitchen. That’s my third takeaway.
WRAP-UP
My warmest, sincerest thanks to Regina Tolentino Newport for this interview. I really do feel blessed getting to speak with some incredible people, and I hope to continue sharing these kinds of conversations and experiences around Filipino food with anyone who wants to listen!
Our theme music is by David Szeztay, segment music is by Eric and Magill, Podington Bear and Blue Dot Sessions. As always, if you enjoyed this episode - I’d love if you tell someone else about it! Honestly, word of mouth means everything. And I think it’s the reason why the podcast is steadily growing. I’m totally committed to doing this show, you guys, and I want to keep working on episode ideas, themes, deep dives, researching a bunch of stuff…and finally, I hope to hire a producer to help with my audio, that’s my ‘in the next year’ plan. But the reality is, living in Toronto ain’t cheap, and it takes real world resources to polish up and take Exploring Filipino Kitchens to the place I’d love it be. And ultimately, a better place for you to listen to.
Head to exploringfilipinokitchens.com and find the show on Facebook and Instagram, drop me a quick line if you think we can do something like Patreon!
Maraming salamat, and thank you for listening.