Remembrances of Christmas comfort foods past

MANILA, Philippines - Twas the night before Christmas and all through my grandmother’s house, not a creature was stirring— that is, except for my grandmother, my Nanay Toyang, who would be bent over an age-worn stove, stirring a huge hot pot of rice porridge that she would later gingerly pour into big bowls to warm our little bellies on a cold Christmas morning. I remember she was always doing something in the kitchen — slicing, chopping, pounding, mashing, peeling something. It was like she was cooking for a whole battalion of starving soldiers. Which was understandable because when school was out for Christmas break, her over a dozen apos (me and my three sisters included) from some of her nine children, would descend upon her house in the province and invade her kitchen and hold her hostage for the next three weeks. It was like she never stopped cooking — and we never stopped eating. As I grew up, whatever she cooked for noche buena became my favorite comfort foods that were rich with many warm memories of Christmases spent with her. Never mind if it was her birthday on Christmas Eve, December 24, she never took a break from her perpetual cooking chores. The Christmas feast she dished up was her birthday treat to all her beloved apos. And to cap a belly-full meal, she always had this sweet treat in store for us: her leche flan divine! I’ve never tasted anything like it and probably never will. It’s rich without being indulgent, and so smooth it feels like velvet on the tongue. She would make a really big batch of leche flan, which she’d pour into little llaneras. Whenever we would fail to visit her for Christmas, she would take the bus from the province to Manila, lugging a whole bayong filled with llaneras of leche flan and boiled peanuts for her apos.

Then there was this one dish my grandmother never failed to cook especially for Christmas: embotido (Filipino-style meatloaf). Long after she had gone, the memory of her embotido continued to linger in our taste buds. It was her very own masterpiece, a well-kept family secret which she guarded with her life.  She did not follow any written recipe, she simply followed the dictates of her taste buds and her heart. Happily, she passed on the secret to my mother who did her embotido just like Lola until she was no longer fit to work in the kitchen. Sadly, my mother never bequeathed her embotido skill to any of her daughters and so, today, my grandmother’s embotido is but a delicious memory.

So, how did Nanay Toyang cook her embotido? But of course, first, she would buy all the ingredients in the palengke — ground pork, peas, eggs, chorizo, raisins, Vienna sausage, pickles, etc. There were no supermarkets back then. I don’t know how she did it, but she did it all by herself! Mixing the embotido ingredients to the finest consistency can be a painstaking exercise, you need to get some help or end up with sore arms. Well, my lola must have such robust arms she didn’t seem to need any help with the mixing. And bless her ingenious soul, she always came up with a perfectly blended concoction, so perfect it melts in your mouth. Then she would wrap her perfect embotido in immaculately clean cheesecloth and then in aluminum foil before it goes into the steamer. While it took Lola hours to do her embotido by herself, it took us just a few seconds to demolish one or two or three.

Meanwhile, living in the big city with hardly any time or inclination to cook like Lola, my childhood Christmas comfort food staples consisted of queso de bola (specifically Marca Piña) and a chunky leg of salty ham (either Excelente or Majestic — my father got legs and legs of ham as Christmas gifts) with US red apples and grapes on the side. The legs of ham you could buy in Quiapo (Echague) that abounded with stores selling assorted hams especially for Christmas; you knew it was Christmas when you’d see these big fat legs of ham hanging proudly on store counters on Echague. The hams were uncooked so my mother took the trouble of having them cooked in a neighborhood Chinese-owned convenience store. The cooked ham came with sugar syrup, which you could brush over your ham (salty and sweet can make a great combination). We certainly looked forward to these indulgences which came aplenty at Christmastime back in the ’50s-’60s. But I remember there was a time when apples were so prohibitively rare it was practically a luxury to have them on the Christmas table.  But even with the inflated prices for apples, some people were biting because, well, it was Christmas.

To this day, even with all the noche buena feasts that can be conveniently delivered to your home, I still can’t help pining for my lola’s priceless, to dine-for embotido. Deep in my heart and stomach, it’s the most perfect embotido in the world because my lola cooked it with love — lots and lots of it — to warm our hearts for many and many a nippy Christmas.